Dashed Off XXXI

 In organizing themselves instrumentally as states, civil societies incorporate elements derived from their history and heritage, including various kinds of particular powers and restrictions.

All societies have to deal with people inimical and corrosive to them, and the decisions about how to do so are always difficult.

Social contract theory grows out of thinking that civil society membership is a form of servitude; servitude of adults outside of the family is either penal or contarctual. (Cp. Rosmini)

"It is necessary to test experience not in one way but according to all circumstances, that it be truly and correctly a principle of acting." Albert (Ethica VI tr 2 c25)

One should not merely read but read and compare to experience. It is this kind of reading whereby (eg) the novels of Austen or Dickens or Eliot help to improve us morally.

energy, momentum, etc. as having dispositional being (esse intentionale) in things, as if transferred through a medium

'so bad it's good' in art as arising from harmless but extreme incongruity

The existence of final causes is what makes physics possible.

"The definition of an organic body is that it is a body, every part of which is there for the sake of the other (recirpocally as end and, at the same time, means)." Kant OP 21:210 (cp OP 21:181, 22:548)

We experience some systems of moving things in such a way that to unify our experience requires positing the being of reason, 'empty space'. Thus empty space is an object of possible *experience*, namely, by perceiving privation of medium through the model of being. This is in the same way that a hole can be the object of possible experience, and a constant one even if the repletive medium for it is changed or even taken away entirely.

Freedom gets its value from truth.

the internal almsgiving of the Church

If I say, 'X appears to be Y', I can mean:
(1) As appearing, X is Y.
(2) X is Y-like enough that one could confuse them under relevant conditions.
(3) X, despite being not very Y-like, under the circumstances could be mistaken as having Y-like features.
(4) No distinguishing features of X as opposed to Y appear.

We are already on the threshold of hell; it is a proof of, and way to, heaven that we need.

It's dangerous to have no conception of excellence except comparative.

To be human is to have potential for roles in deontic frameworks.

artificial vs natural federalism

Much of paleontology consists of translating fossil contexts into abstract representations -- maps of fossil locations, timelines, diagrams of fossils, records in archives for the use of other researchers, etc. It is this that makes the material evidence useful for scientific purposes.

The mystery is not why spirits and the resurrected live with their choices. The ystery is why we do not necessarily have to do so. We have a power of probationary repentance; it is tied to our mortality. In salvation, then, God uses our mortality to save us from everlasting death.

Kant's practical postulates are concerned with the gap between human will and holy will.

the external world as arena for moral action, as a practical postulate

"The experience of community is the presupposition of understanding." Dilthey

The only real critique of system is a more powerful system.

the categorical imperative & not treating conditional goods as unconditional

possibilities -> structure of possibilities -> change in structure of possibilities -> moving and efficient causes

In the long run in a democratic politics, people do not vote for the most reliable instrument but for the blade most dangerous to those they see as opposing them.

ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments for the external world

doubt: subject-object
experience: act-potency
hope: agent-patient? agent-field of action?

externality/outness as a kind of systematically differentiated readiness to appear

the integration of anomaly into nomality/nomicity

externality as a limited form of nomality/nomicity

external world as
(1) instrumental power
(2) immediate object
(3) mediated object
(4) arena for action
(5) standing reserve
(6) intersubjective medium
(7) system of harm/benefit, safety/danger

Most social evils are the daughts of pride and fashion.

Punna, often translated as 'merit', should be translated as 'happy act' -- it indicates not desert but beneficial karmic fruitfulness, auspiciousness with respect to karma, fortunateness with respect to becoming pure. Thus the Sangha is the 'field of punna', the most fruitful place to plant a gift. Punna is a treasure that cannot be lost. There are three major kinds: almsgiving (dana), virtue (sila), and meditative self-cultivation (bhavana); btu there are arguably many others, like teaching and learning Dharma or showing respect to the good or empathizing with another's good deed (anything, in fact, that can affect karma positively).

doing good on another's behalf or in another's name

ariya-sacca ('Noble Truth')
sacca: truth, reality, genuine existent
ariya: noble, ennobled, socially superior
thus sometimes understood as 'true reality for those who are ennobled'
perhaps: reality for (or as seen by) those with superior achievement, i.e., for those who are enlightened.
Thus: reality is fudnamentally dukkha, tanha, nirodha, magga -- pain/suffering, thirst/craving, nirvana/cessation, path.
"This, monks, for the noble, is the painful (dukkha) reality (ariya-sacca)."

In democracies, people become more crass in order to fake being democratic; in aristocracies, people become more hoity-toity in order to fake being aristocratic.

Cause and effect are one and not the same, distinct but not separate, because each thing has reference to another in causation.

"Jesus Buddha, who is the most powerful and compassionate person in the world, forgives my sins." -- from the "Praise Jesus Text" in the Xiabuzan (British Library S.2659), a Chinese Manichean hymn scroll from the Tang dynasty (perhaps somewhere between 8th and 11th century)

Much of what is seen as genius by others is in fact simply successful confidence.

asymmetric cooperations in which A is cooperating with B, although not vice versa
(1) anticipatory cooperation
(2) qualified coopeation with the resistant or uncooperative

reason as objective cause of motivation

Hume's account of causation is so broad that reason must have influence on acting and affection if anything does.

'Something is to be done' as self-evident practical truth

the external world here and now vs the external world in a general point of view

It is more obvious that there is safety and danger in the world than that there are planets or atoms; and such safety and danger can continue to exist independently of, and distinctly from, the mind's perception of them.

'Metaphysics of race' is just philosophy of classification with race as an example.

Everything is a normative standard to some kind of judgment.

energy as a measure of instrumentability

the vicarious and the objective aspects of the sign

"Since you cannot act without reasons and your humaity is the source of your reasons, you must value your own humanity if you are to act at all." Korsgaard
"Obligation is the reflective rejection of a threat to your identity. Pain is the *unreflective* rejection of a threat to your identity. So pain is the *perception* of a reason, and that is why it seems normative."

We do not pursue pleasure for its sake, but for our sake. (cp. Balguy)

intimations of free will in the products of artistic skill

the Incarnation as the election of Israel within the election of Israel
Out of the nations, He calls Israel; out of Israel, He calls the nations.

kitschy vs non-kitschy uses of kitsch

Hohfeldian incidents as relations between persons and jural goods

Every person has a right to law; that is, law is itself a jural good.

All legal systems have moral, judicial, and ceremonial aspects.

puzzles, debts, challenges, enticements

All virtues in the justice family call forth rites for their communication, coordination, facilitation, and protection.

deferential responsibilities -> ceremonies and rituals and formal procedures

All rights a person may have are participations in eternal right, that is to say, divine sovereignty over creation.

To have a right to X posits others having an obligation to you with respect to X, which requires that they have a power relevant to that obligation.

The order in which good law contributes to making men virtuous is different from the order in which (eg) self-discipline does; law prioritizes duties, especially more obvious duties, especially more obvious duties concerning harms in social interactions.

There is no such thing as a 'total body of evidence' except with respect to this or that end.

pricing as a general theory of proportioning mesurable means to measurable ends in the context of exchanges

profit as an ability of one exchange to make possible other exchanges

"The only appropriate way to love God is as a good infinitely shareable." McInerny

Moral action can only be conceived as a sort of cooperation with the world at large.

"To have an emotion is to stand *in the presence* of a normative fact: to feel fear is to stand in teh presence of the dangerousness of danger, to feel grief is to stand in the presence of the infinite loss of death." Korsgaard

Every civil freedom presupposes a right.

All of creation is a juridical good for God, for all of it is due to Him. In creation, God posits the created world not only ontically (as being and metaphysical goodness) but also juridically and liturgically. The created world is good and very good.

the eye glinting with glances

To love a person is to know them as bigger than death.

Common possession is limited by the limtis of the friendship it presupposes.

Totalitarianism arises from trying to have without friendship what comes only from civil friendship.

organisms as making themselves normative for themselves

Blameworthiness gets its importance from its limitations, and especially from forgiveness.

concrete crime scene -> abstract crime scene -> interrelations of abstract crime scene as effects -> causal context

the 'word' as a pedagogical unit
-- We first learn words as words in being taught segments of language as children.

The underlying principles of the Turing Test are the same as those of many design arguments.

Reason, being social, requires communication with other reason, and therefore testimony.

scenic aesthetic // problem-focused approach to philosophy

generative mediation -- e.g., time-lapse photography allows perception (generates perception) of what could not be perceived without that mediation

natural law, natural title: human right
natural law, conventional title: moral right
positive law, natural title: social right
positive law, positive title: privilege

The way we attribute vice and virtue always implies (1) that there is more of character than is found in the attribution, since the attributions are indirectly grounded, through signs, and (2) that such attributions can be wrong, even if made collectively, for the same reason.

What is, sometimes expresses what ought to be, and sometimes does not. This is different from the two being separate.

modal operators as diagram construction instructions

The Power of Discovery in Science

 The power of discovery in science is the ability to distinguish new dimensions in things, new dimensions that can become correlated into functional relationships, idealized into an internal measurement system, and captured in the formulas of a theory. The power of discovery is the ability to articulate wholes into new kinds of parts and new kinds of relationships among parts: to articulate a moving body into mass, acceleration and the force that it undergoes, or to distinguish "heat" into the two factors of "quantity of heat" and "temperature." When such parts are articulated, the thing in question itself becomes seen as a new kind of whole. And progress occurs by zigs and zags: the new theory suggests new measurements and instrumentation, and these in turn suggest new wholes and parts and new theories.

[Robert Sokolowski, Pictures, Quotations, and Distinctions: Fourteen Essays in Phenomenology, University of Notre Dame Press (Notre Dame, IN: 1992) p. 150.]

Apples

In various places online, they are talking about apples, in part because of the Apple Rankings website, whose weird and quirky rankings have earned it the enmity of cidermakers and apple lovers worldwide. I am certainly not an apple expert in anything like the way that a cidermaker would be, but I have eaten a lot of apples in my lifetime. I don't eat as many as I used to, but I have had all sorts of apples. So I thought I'd say a few things about apples.

(1) When it comes to cultivation, apples are immensely weird. The apple is an unstably reproducing fruit-bearing tree. If you take a variety of apple and plant it in your yard so that it grows into a tree, you will virtually never get apples of the same variety. In order to grow a variety of apples, you have to take apple branches of that variety and graft them into a new tree. Then every apple of that variety is ultimately from one tree whose branches were grafted into other tree, and then other branches from those branches and so forth. This also means that actual apple varieties that come from just growing trees are mind-bogglingly diverse. Virtually every natural-grown apple tree has a different variety.

(2) Almost everyone's sense of what apple varieties taste good is distorted. Most of the apples that most of us buy most of the time have been sitting around in cold storage for months. In order to store them for months, they are usually picked too early so that they will ripen off the tree. This a huge issue, because there is an immense difference, for any variety, between a ripe apple just off the tree and an apple picked early and stored.

(2) An excellent example of this is the much-maligned Red Delicious. Discovered by accident, coming into prominence in the 1890s, in the 1940s it became the apple, the favorite of all favorites. The Red Delicious became popular because it was -- in fact, still is -- one of the best sweet-tasting apples. It has a nice aroma, a balanced flavor that involves a nice sweetness without being crazy-sweet or very tart, and at the right time, it is very nicely crisp. It doesn't hurt that it's on the large side and that it spoils relatively slowly. It was the first really good sweet apple that you could transport all over the country and put in grocery stores everywhere. Why, then, is it so despised today? Well, roughly, it's because even it has limits. A Red Delicious apple at its peak is an extraordinarily good apple. But it doesn't stay at its peak long; it relatively quickly becomes merely OK, and then goes into a long, slow decline. So as grocery stores relied more and more on apples stored for a long time before they even reached the shelves, Red Delicious dominated, but at the same time the Red Delicious apples most people were eating were farther and farther down the decline slope. Eventually it was overtaken by Gala and Fuji and Braeburn apples, and then it was all over. You can barely find them anymore.

(3) Lots of people enjoy a good Honeycrisp, to the extent that people often say it is the best apple. It is not, and they are very, very wrong. But it was an apple that was specifically chosen to be marketed for its juiciness; it has larger cells than most apples do.  The relatively recent Cosmic Crisp (a cross between Honeycrisp and Enterprise) is probably the easiest to obtain improvement on it; essentially, it's a Honeycrisp that stays at its peak longer and declines in quality more slowly. It's also much less temperamental than Honeycrisp, which is why it's so easy to obtain -- as a decently sweet apple that lasts well and is easy to grow, the entire apple industry has reasons to market it as widely as possible.

(4) The Gala is the apple that toppled the Red Delicious, and while it's not the tastiest apple, I like it quite a bit, because it's a very good all-around apple. It doesn't excel at anything, but it does moderately well at everything: decent for eating raw, decent for baking, decent for sauce.

(5) The apple that has been near the top of the heap for the longest period of time is the Granny Smith. It was first discovered in the 1860s, and was the first of the great apple varieties, for the same reasons that led to the dominance of Red Delicious much later. Its great advantage is that was tart enough to be a decent baking apple, but unlike many cooking apples, it was sweet enough to eat raw. It's also crisp and has an unusually long shelf-life and -- a not inconsiderable point -- it's extremely easy to tell whether it's ripe. When it's good it's the healthy Granny Smith green; as it proceeds it becomes increasingly yellow. It is the Swiss Army knife of apples; it excels at almost everything you could want an apple to do, and is in many ways my personal favorite. There are other apples in its league -- Esopus Spitzenburg is a good one -- but in general they are all harder to get, precisely because very few apples are able to stay good as long as a Granny Smith.

(6) The Fuji is another popular variety; it makes a decent applesauce, although I don't favor it for much else. I've heard it described as the apple variety for people who like pears, and that seems probably about right.

(7) Apple fashions are unpredictable, but an apple that may be on its way to popularity is the Arkansas Black; a bit on the tart side, but also long-lasting, it was a popular roadside stand apple whose popularity spread by word of mouth before it started becoming available in supermarkets. In a way it's a lot like the once very popular Winesap variety.

(8) I always see Rome apples in the grocery store. Rome is not a very flavorful apple at all; the reason it stays around seems to be that it cooks very well, keeping a nice texture, and cooking brings out more of its apple flavor.

(9) Wickson apples are mostly used for cider, but they have an interesting taste -- they are very tart and very sweet at the same time, so that if you eat a good one raw, it's almost like eating sour apple candy. They are rarely in grocery stores, but cidermakers love them. I know very little about cider apples, really, but it's a cider apple that I would bet is among the very best. The long-enduring champion among cider apple varieties is the Dabinett, which is still popular after over a century, and a lot of ciders are made with it.

(10) I eat a lot of Cripps Pinks these days; they are easy to get, and I like the taste quite a bit. They are almost never sold under their variety name, but under the trademarked name, Pink Lady. It was a cross between Golden Delicious and Lady Williams, and is basically a better version of Golden Delicious, although it doesn't look much like one. It's popular in supermarkets in part because it has a crazily late harvesting season.

What is your favorite apple variety?

Habitude XIV

 Next we must consider the distinction of habitudes, and about this four things are asked. Further, whether many habitudes can be in one power. Second, whether habitudes are distinguished according to objects. Third, whether habitudes are distinguished according to good and bad. Fourth, whether one habitude is constituted from many habitudes.

To the first one proceeds thus. It seems that there are not able to be many habitudes in one power. For with those that are distinguished according to the same thing, one being multiplied, the other is also multiplied. But powers and habitudes are distinguished according to the same thing, namely according to acts and objects. Therefore they are multiplied in similar ways. Therefore there are not able to be many habitudes in one power.

Further, power is a sort of simple impulse [virtus]. But in one simple subject there is not able to be diversity of accidents, because the subject is cause of the accidents, but from one simple thing nothing seems to proceed except one thing. Therefore in one power there is not able to be many habitudes.

Further, just as body is formed through shape, so power is formed through habitude. But one body is not able to be formed all at once by diverse shapes. Therefore neither is one power able to be formed all at once by diverse habitudes. Therefore several habitudes are not able to be all at once in one power.

But contrariwise is that the intellect is a power, in which nonetheless there are habitudes of diverse kinds of knowledge.

I reply that it must be said that, as was said above, habitudes are sorts of dispositions of something existing potentially to something, whether toward nature or to the operation and end of nature. And of those habitudes that are dispositions to nature, it is clearly that there are able to be several in one subject, because the parts of one subject can be taken in diverse ways, according to whose disposition habitudes are named, as, if we take the humors of the parts of the human body, in the way they are disposed according to human nature, there is a habitude or disposition of health, but if we take like parts such as nerves and bones and flesh, in their disposition in ordering to nature, there is strength or weakness, but if we take members such as hands and feet and suchlike, in their disposition of fitness to nature, there is beauty. And thus there are several habitudes or dispositions in the same thing.

But if we speak of habitudes that are dispositions to works, which properly pertain to powers, then there are also can happen to be several habitudes or dispositions in the same thing. The reason for this is that the subject of a habitude is passive power, for active power alone is not subject to any habitude, as is obvious from what is said above. But passive power is compared to the determinate act of one species as matter to form, in that, as matter is determined to one form through one agent, so also passive power by reason of one active object is determined to one act according to species. Thus, just as severalobjects can move one passive power, so one passive power is able to be the subject of diverse acts or completions according to species. But habitudes are sorts of qualities or forms inherent in powers by which power is inclined to determinate acts according to species. Thus to one power several habitudes are able to pertain, just like several acts of different species.

To the first it must therefore be said that, as in natural things diversity of species is according to form, but diversity of genus according to matter, as is said in Metaphys. V, for they are different in genus whose matter is different, so also the diversity of objects according to genus makes for distinction of powers; thus the Philosopher says in Ethic. VI that for things of another genus there are also other compartments of soul. But diversity of objects according to species makes for diversity of acts according to species, and consequently habitudes. Whatever is diverse in genus is also diverse in species, but not vice versa. So too of diverse powers there are diverse species of acts, and diverse habitudes, but it is not needful that diverse habitudes be of diverse powers, but there are able to be several in one. And just as there are genera of genera and species of species, so it can also happen that there are diverse species of habitudes and powers.

To the second it must be said that power, although it is indeed simple according to essence, is nonetheless multiple in impulse [virtute], according as it extends to many acts that differ in species. And thus nothing prohibits there being in one power many habitudes of different species.

To the third it must be said that body is formed through shape as through its proper termination, but habitude is not a termination of power, but is disposition to act as ultimate term. And so there is not able to be several acts all at once in one power, save insofar as one is comprehended under another, just as there cannot be several shapes in one body, save according as one is in the other, like the triangle in the square. For the intellect is not able to understand by many acts all at once. But it can know many things all at once by habitude.

[Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 2-1.54.1, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.

Links of Note

 * Gregory B. Sadler, Reading Recommendations About Alasdair MacIntyre's Works

* Pierre Aubenque, Cameron F. Coates, & Khafiz Kermov, The Cosmology of Prudence (PDF)

* Ronald Purser, AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself, at "Current Affairs"

* Aldo Filomeno, Humeans Should Suspend Judgment on the Humean Account of Laws (PDF)

* Henry Oliver, Jane Austen's first biographer, at "The Common Reader"

* Daniel D. De Haan, The Power to Perform Experiments (PDF)

* Tara Isabella Burton, Believe for Your Own Sake, Not for "the West", at "Wisdom of Crowds"; 'memetic Christianity' is a potentially useful term.

* Miguel Garcia Godinez, Institutional Proxy Agency: A We-Mode Approach (PDF)

* Klaus Corcilius, Aristotle's De Motu Animalium, at the SEP

St. Ambrose

Today was the feast of St. Ambrose of Milan, Doctor of the Church. From his work On the Holy Spirit (Book I, Chapter 16, section 184).  

If you seek Jesus, forsake the broken cisterns, for Christ was wont to sit not by a pool but by a well. There that Samaritan woman found Him, she who believed, she who wished to draw water. Although you ought to have come in early morning, nevertheless if you come later, even at the sixth hour, you will find Jesus wearied with His journey. He is weary, but it is through you, because He has long sought you, your unbelief has long wearied Him. Yet He is not offended if you only come, He asks to drink Who is about to give. But He drinks not the water of a stream flowing by, but your salvation; He drinks your good dispositions, He drinks the cup, that is, the Passion which atoned for your sins, that you drinking of His sacred blood might quench the thirst of this world. 

The Achievement of Letting Things Appear

 When we move from the darkness into the light, it becomes possible for us to let many things appear that could not appear in the dark. The presence of light lets us see things like trees and tables, which we can touch but not see when there is no light, and it lets us see things like colors and pictures, which cannot be present at all while we remain in darkness. We are all familiar with light as that which lets such things appear to us. However, there is something besides light, something we can call, metaphorically, another kind of illumination, that is also at work when things appear to us; this is the achievement of letting things appear. It comes about in us, and if it did not take place, going from darkness into light would not do us much good. Only because we are engaged in the achievement of letting things appear do we normally prefer light to darkness, and there are also times when we achieve manifestation better in darkness than in the light.

[Robert Sokolowsi, Pictures, Quotations, and Distinctions: Fourteen Essays in Phenomenology, University of Notre Dame Press (Notre Dame, IN: 1992) p. 3.]

Music on My Mind

 

Alex Williams (with Gigi Perez), "Eternity".

Habitude XIII

 Intension and remission of habitude plays an important role in the theory of virtue, so it's worthwhile to jump over to some of St. Thomas's discussions of intension and remission of virtue.

Intension of Virtues Generally

In considering whether virtues are all equal, he notes that virtues can be greater than other kinds of virtue by being more closely tied to reason, so that prudence, for instance, is the highest moral virtue. However, he goes on to say, we can also find virtues being greater than other virtues when dealing with the same species of virtue:

And so, according to what was said above, when considering the intensions of habitudes, virtue can be greater and lesser in two ways: in one way, according to itself, in another way, on the part of the participating subject.  Therefore, if it is considered according to itself, its greatness and smallness is directed according to that to which it extends. But whoever has some virtue, such as temperance, has it inasmuch as it extends to all that to which temperance extends. This does not happen with knowledge or productive skill, for not everyone who is grammatical knows all that pertains to the grammatical. And according to this, the Stoics said well, as Simplicius says in the commentary on the categories, that virtue does not admit of more and less, just like knowledge and productive skill, because the nature of virtue consists in a maximum.

But if virtue is considered on the part of the participating subject, virtue can happen to be greater or lesser, either according to diverse times in the same person, or in diverse human beings. Because in reaching the mean of virtue, which is according to right reason, one is better disposed than another, either because of accustomedness, or because of better disposition of nature, or because of more perspicacious judgment of reason, or even because of greater gift of grace.... [ST 2-1.66.1]

 

Intension of the Virtue of Charity

Union with God is by virtue of the infused virtue of charity, so as one 'draws nigh' to God, one's charity must increase in intensity. This cannot be by addition, because then it would be a matter of adding new charities on top of distinct old charities; rather, it increases in essence (i.e., being): the person with the virtue of charity participates charity more and more fully.

The spiritual growth of charity is in a way similar to the growth of the body. But bodily growth in animals and plants is not continuous change, that is, such that if something grows so much in so much time, it is necessary that it change proportionally in each temporal part, as happens in place-change, but through some time nature works by disposing to growth and not actually growing anything, and afterwards produces in effect that to which it had been disposed, actually growing the animal or the part. So also not every act of charity actually grows charity, but every act of charity disposes to the growth of charity, inasmuch as from one act of charity a human being is rendered more prompt to act again according to charity, and, ability increasing, the human being breaks out into more fervent act of love, by which he endeavors to advance in charity, and then charity actually grows. [ST 2-2.24.6]

Charity, however, since it is directed to God has no limit; that is, in itself it can grow indefinitely without ever reaching a maximum, and as it grows it gives us the ability to endure even greater charity.

A New Poem Draft

 O Antiphons

O Wisdom, who from out the mouth Most High
from end to utter end dost wholly reach,
as strongly, sweetly, thou all order ply,
come, ways of prudence to our hearts now teach.

O Lord and war-chief of the Israelites,
who through the fiery bush to Moses seemed
and gave him law on Sinai's holy heights,
come, that by outstreched arm we be redeemed.

O Root of Jesse, of all the people sign,
the kings before thee cease to speak their say;
the Gentiles to thee prayerwise will incline;
come free us now and make no more delay.

O Key of David, Israel's scepter bright,
who opes all locks and shuts what none may ope;
for those who sit in darkness of death's night
come, lead them out from prison unto hope.

O Dawn and brightness of the righteous sun,
who shinest with a clear eternity,
enlighten with thy glory everyone
and those in shade of death now swiftly free.

O King of Gentiles, whom all nations crave,
foundation making Jew and Gentile one,
come, and mortal man from shadow save,
who was formed from clay to be God's blessed son.

O Emmanuel, the bearer of all law,
from whom the Gentiles seek the living word,
their Savior and their King held high in awe,
come save your people, God, O holy Lord.

The Damascene

 Today was the feast of St. Yuhana ibn Sarjun, Doctor of the Church; he is most often known in English as St. John Damascene. He was Syrian (although he may have also had Arabic background) and lived in the Umayyad Caliphate; his family were Christian civil servants serving under the Muslim governorship. He himself became a monk, and in Greek is sometimes called Chrysorrhoas (stream of gold) as a compliment to the quality of his writings. From his Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book IV, chapter 13:

God Who is good and altogether good and more than good, Who is goodness throughout, by reason of the exceeding riches of His goodness did not suffer Himself, that is His nature, only to be good, with no other to participate therein, but because of this He made first the spiritual and heavenly powers: next the visible and sensible universe: next man with his spiritual and sentient nature. All things, therefore, which he made, share in His goodness in respect of their existence. For He Himself is existence to all, since all things that are, are in Him, not only because it was He that brought them out of nothing into being, but because His energy preserves and maintains all that He made: and in special the living creatures. For both in that they exist and in that they enjoy life they share in His goodness. But in truth those of them that have reason have a still greater share in that, both because of what has been already said and also because of the very reason which they possess. For they are somehow more dearly akin to Him, even though He is incomparably higher than they. 

 Man, however, being endowed with reason and free will, received the power of continuous union with God through his own choice, if indeed he should abide in goodness, that is in obedience to his Maker. Since, however, he transgressed the command of his Creator and became liable to death and corruption, the Creator and Maker of our race, because of His bowels of compassion, took on our likeness, becoming man in all things but without sin, and was united to our nature.For since He b estowed on us His own image and His own spirit and we did not keep them safe, He took Himself a share in our poor and weak nature, in order that He might cleanse us and make us incorruptible, and establish us once more as partakers of His divinity.

Habitude XII

 After he discusses the causes of habitudes, St. Thomas goes into the important question of the intension and remission of habitude. The importance of this question cannot be overestimated. In working out intension and remission of habitudes, scholastics tried to clarify the matter by expanding their view to the intension and remission of dispositions generally, and it is out of this that the late medieval scholastics discovered the Mean Speed Theorem, the Calculatores first began applying crude geometrical tools to explore how acceleration works, and the first tentative shifts away from Aristotelian physics began to pick up steam so that the early modern experimental revolution should begin to happen. The topic that particularly precipitated all of this, however, was originally not a physical one but an extremely important one for spiritual life: the increase and decrease of the virtue of charity. Thus it is quite important. It also leads to some relatively technical discussions. So I've decided to do here what I did with the topic of the subject of habitudes: I'll mix commentary and selective translation.

Increase and Decrease of Habitude

The first question that has to be asked, of course, is whether habitude admits of intension and remission. Intension is a kind of increase, and remission a kind of decrease, and we mostly associate increase and decrease with quantity. However, says Aquinas, we transfer the idea to capture that is true about quality: that just as there is a kind of distinguishable completeness that is tracked by quantitative increase, so there is a kind of distinguishable completeness for quality. We can recognize greatness not just of (say) size, but also goodness. The quantitative analogue is exactly that, only an analogue, but the analogy can sometimes be quite tight. This is a point that distinguishes both quality and quantity from substance, for instance. Not all qualities have this feature, however; it is a feature of quality that arises from how the quality relates to other things. As St. Thomas says:

If any form, or anything whatsoever, gets the notion of the species from itself or from something of itself, it has a determinate notion, which is able neither to exceed by more nor to fail by less, and such are hotness and whiteness, and other suchlike qualities, which are not said by ordering to another, and even more so substance, which is being per se. But those which receive their species from something to which they are ordered can be diversified in themselves by more or by less, and nonetheless be the same species, according to the unity of that to which they are ordered, from which they receive their species. [ST 2-1.52.1]

Health, for instance, varies according to more and less, because it is a disposition that concerns something other than itself, and can be related to it in various ways (generally by various excesses and deficiencies) while still being health. If we only called health what was completely healthy, then there would be no increase or decrease of health, by definition; but 'health' would then be the maximum, or the most perfect balance, of something that did admit of more and less. 

This, however, is only one of the ways a disposition can increase or decrease, namely, by the very nature of its form as related to other things. Dispositions can also vary by how their subjects participate that form. If a form consitutes the very species of a thing, then that thing does not have a participation that admits of more and less; this is the case with substantial forms. This is also with quantitative forms or qualitative forms like shapes that are derive very closely from substances and quantities, because they are not just divisible in a way that admits of more and less. Actions that are more associated with actions and passions, however, are 'farther away' from substance and quantity; their subjects may participate them to a greater or lesser degree.

Thus habitudes may increase or decrease (1) in themselves or (2) according to participation by subject.

The Manner of the Increase and Decrease

This increase and decrease, however, that we find in intension and remission of qualities, cannot be by addition (which would effectively make it reducible to quantity. If something is more intensely Q, this is not the same as having more of Q. As Aquinas likes to put it, more and less white is not the same as larger and smaller white. If we consider intension and remission of the quality in itself, any addition or subtraction would actually change the kind of thing we are talking about; we would have a new thing that was not the previous quality. This doesn't rule out there being a kind of addition or subtraction for quality. You can for instance, know more or fewer things just as you can know them more or less well. But this is not guaranteed either; Aquinas points out that bodily habitudes like health, while admitting greater and lesser degree, do not themselves admit of larger and smaller amounts, at least if we're not just using a metaphor.

We've seen, however, that habitudes can be caused by multiplication of acts, and so we can ask if they are increased in some kind of one-to-one way with those acts. Aquinas's answer is interesting:

Because the use of habitudes consists in human willing, as is obvious from what was said above, then as one who has the habitude might not use it, or even act contrarily to it, so also can it happen that the habitude is used according to an act not proportionally corresponding to the intensity of the habitude. Thus if the intension of the act is proportionally equated to the intension of the habitude, or even exceeds it, then each act either increases the habitude or disposes to its increase, so that we may speak of the increase of the habitudes on a similarity to animal increase. For not all food taken in actually increases the animal, as not every drop hollows out a stone, but food being multiplied eventually makes an increase. So also, with multiplication of acts, the habitude grows. But if the intension of the act proportionally falls short of the intension of the habitude, such an act does not dispose to the increase of the habitude, but rather to its decrease. [ST 2-1.52.3]

'Intension' could also be translated as 'intensity'. Thus, for instance, if we have a virtue, let's say generosity, that is of such-and-such intensity, acts of generosity that are less intense than that will eventually reduce the intensity of the generosity. To increase in virtue, or knowledge, or such, the intensity of the acts matters. And much the same is true of remission or decrease, mutatis mutandis.

Corruption of Habitude

Forms perish, or are corrupted, either by their contraries or the corruption of their subjects. Your health can break down either by a sickness being introduced or you dying. In an incorruptible subject, of course, the latter sort of loss of form cannot occur. What this means is that whether or not a habitude can be lost simply depends, in the case of corruption by subject, on the corruptibility of their subject; habitudes depend for their existence on the existence of their subjects.

Corruption by contrary is a somewhat more complicated matter. It of course depends first and foremost on whether the habitude has a contrary. Intelligible species in the agent or potential intellect do not have a contrary, so any intelligible species caused in the latter by the former is incorruptible. Examples of this are first principles, both of the theoretical and of the practical intellect, "which by no oblivion or deception are able to be corrupted" (ST 2-1.53.1). However, habitudes concerned with conclusions do admit of contraries, either because they depend on assumptions that are not necessarily known, or because false reasoning can lead to a different conclusion. So habitudes like knowledge or opinion are corruptible and can be lost. Moral virtues likewise can be lost, as we know all too well, because they presuppose the movement of reason, and so they can be erased, whether through ignorance or the influence of the passions or deliberate choices; fortunately, moral vices can also be lost, for essentially the same reason.

In some cases habitudes can be lost not merely by acts themselves that are contrary, but simply through the cessation of some sustaining act. This occurs when the action is removing some impediment to the habitude, and therefore removing the action results in an external contrary being imposed. This is especially true in the case of both moral virtues and intellectual virtues, which begin to erode if you stop using them. You eventually stop knowing things that you don't actively know; you eventually lose opinions just from not doing anything with them; you eventually stop being honest by no longer doing honest things. How quickly this happens, of course, depends on the opposing forces and the extent of one's exposure to them.

Witching Softness, and Eye-Soothing Sheen

December's Moonlight
by Anne Garton 

Sure it was not remembered, placid moonlight,
When dread December darkly flitted past,
The gloomy fancy -- nought save the stormy night,
With its chill breath and wildly howling blast!
Now on the gaze fair sights are opening fast;
So purely calm, it seems almost a scene
Bestowed from Paradise! The shining queen,
Smiling on courtly stars around her cast,
In stateliest silence moves -- a golden zone
Circling her silver vest. The blue demesne
Is sweetly decked with fabrics, not of stone,
But witching softness, and eye-soothing sheen.
 Its influence lights on dreary plains below,
 For Autumn's parted spells I will not languish now.

Links of Note

 * Daniel D. De Haan, Thomist Classical Theism: Divine Simplicity within Aquinas' Triplex Via Theology (PDF)

* Henry Oliver, The triumph of logical English, at "Works in Progress"

* Daniel Klugman, Cracked Foundations: Pascal's Internal Critique of Descartes's Theory of Knowledge (PDF)

* Miles Hentrup, Hegel's Theory of Rational Proof (PDF)

* Bradley J. Birzer discusses Stephen Lawhead.

* Miguel Garcia Godinez, The Ontology of Social Practices (PDF)

* Nicholas Hune-Brown, Investigating a Possible Scammer in Journalism's AI Era, at "The Local", on a rising worry about journalistic scams.

* Michael Deigan, Questions Should Have Answers (PDF)

* Flame & Light, Word-Sculpture

* Alex Ding Zhang, Hugo Grotius on the Loose Obligation of Natural Law (PDF)

A Poem Draft and a Poem Re-Draft

 The Engineer

I walk the world with weary blade
that cuts the knots that have no name;
unconquered kingdoms I have saved;
I've sought, though never grasped, the grail.
To know the word that worlds will kill
yet never wield it, is my whim,
of box of trouble, loose the lid,
but never open, thus to win;
and should those problems prison fly
I hunt each one both day and night
in quest that is all front, no side,
with little deeds until I die.
At end no marble marks my grave
save massive monuments I've made
that line the ever-widening ways
of palaces where children play.

Aiming for Love Enduring 

 Even the overwhelming sun shall die,
but not my love; it shall, I swear, endure,
and remain in youth while stars flare out in sigh;
my love shall last, for it is holy, pure.
You scoff? My friend, you see the slightest part;
your equations cannot be stretched so far;
you have no experiments in the ways of the heart,
have never measured love against a star.
Your scoffing is just that, mere scoffing,
bare assertion that no evidence has known,
but if you are right, then at your death-coughing
you will have had a scoff, but be all alone.
But if I am wrong, I yet will live more sane,
and if I am right, I have truly soared above;
for if I am right, my love shall ever remain,
and if I am wrong, I shall have ventured in love.

Tabulated Syllogisms

 We can represent each categorical proposition in a tabular way, as follows:

	X	Y
All X is Y	-1	1
No X is Y	-1	-1
Some X is Y	1	1
Some X is not y	1	-1

Given this, we can represent syllogisms in a similar way.

BARBARA	S	M	P
All M is P	0	-1	1
All S is M	-1	1	0
All S is P	-1	0	1

Notice that the premises add to the conclusion, All S is P. We can do the same for the other First Figure syllogisms:

CELARENT	S	M	P
No M is P	0	-1	-1
All S is M	-1	1	0
All S is P	-1	0	-1

DARII	S	M	P
All M is P	0	-1	1
Some S is M	1	1	0
Some S is P	1	0	1

FERIO	S	M	P
No M is P	0	-1	-1
Some S is M	1	1	0
Some S is not P	1	0	-1

If we look at Second, Third, and Fourth Figure, we find that the C's all have the same pattern as Celarent, showing that they can be directly converted to Celarent in the First Figure. The D's and F's reduce to Darii and Ferio, for the most part; in fact, the only exceptions to this general pattern in the traditional figures are Bramantip/Baralipton/Bamalip (Fourth Figure), Darapti (Third Figure), Felapton (Third Figure), and Fesapo (Fourth Figure). These all have to involve subalternation in some way so as to get particular conclusions from universal premises. If we tabulate the the way we tabulated the First Figure, we find that the premises do not directly add to the conclusion. For instance, this is Bramantip:

BRAMANTIP	S	M	P
All P is M	0	1	-1
All M is S	1	-1	0
Some S is P	1	0	1

The P's do not add. But this is because there is a subalternation step. In Bramantip, this subalternation step is 'Some P is P', which gives us a double-dose of P. Thus:

BRAMANTIP	S	M	P
All P is M	0	1	-1
All M is S	1	-1	0
Some P is P	0	0	2
Some S is P	1	0	1

Bramantip, using 'Some P is P', is the weirdest of the valid syllogisms; Darapti, Felapton, and Fesapo use 'Some M is M' , because they all have -1 for both the M places in the premise, and therefore need something that can cancel out a -2 for M.  The same method will work for subalternated moods that take ordinary syllogisms with universal conclusions that are then subalternated (Barbari, Celaront, Cesaro, etc.), except that in those cases the subalternation can be handled extramodally -- i.e., one way to do them is to reach the conclusion using the standard mood and figure and then add the subalternation premise to the conclusion to get the particular conclusion (for these, the subalternation premise is always 'Some S is S').

The premises adding to the conclusion is a necessary, not a sufficient, condition for validity of syllogism; the tables don't actually track figure (which requires considering order, not just value), so they only identify syllogisms that are invalid purely because of mood. For validity, syllogisms also need to be regular, i.e., universal conclusions have to come from all universal premises, and particular conclusions have to come from premises that have one and only one particular proposition (which may be the subalternation premise).

Habitude XI

 To the fourth one proceeds thus. It seems that no habitude is poured into human beings from God. For God has himself equally to all. If therefore He pours some habitudes into some, he would pour them into all, which is obviously false.

Further, God works in everything according to the way appropriate to its nature, because divine providence is for saving nature, as says Dionysius, De Div. Nom. ch. IV. But human habitudes are naturally caused by acts, as was said. Therefore God does not cause any habitudes in human beings apart from acts.

Further, if any habitude is poured out from God, through that habitude a human being is able to produce many acts. But from those acts a like habitude is cased, as is said in Ethic. II. It follows therefore that there are two acts of the same species in the same human being, one acquired, the other poured, which it seems is impossible, for two forms of one species cannot be in the same subject. Therefore no habitude is poured into a human being from God.

But contrariwise is what is said in Eccli. XV: The Lord filled him with the spirit of wisdom and understanding. But wisdom and understanding are sorts of habitudes. Therefore some human habitudes are poured out from God.

I reply that it must be said that some human habitudes are poured out from God for two reasons. The first reason is that there are some habitudes by which a human being is disposed well to an end exceeding the faculty of human nature, which is ultimate and complete human beatitude, as was said above. And because it is needful that habitudes be proportionate to that to which the human being is disposed according to them, it is also necessary that habitudes disposing in any way to such an end exceed the faculty of human nature. Thus such habitudes are not able to be in a human being save from divine pouring, as it is with all gratuitous virtues. 

Another reason is because God is able to produce the effects of secondary causes apart from the secondary causes themselves, as was said at the first. Therefore, just as sometimes to show his force he produces health without the natural cause, so also sometimes to show his force he pours into man those habitudes that are able to be caused by natural force. So he gave to the apostles knowledge of scripture and of all languages, which human beings through study or custom are able to acquire, although not so completely.

To the first therefore it must be said that God, with respect to his nature, equally has himself to all, but according to the order of his wisdom, for a definite reason he grants to some what he does not grant to others.

To the second it must be said that God working in everything according to their ways, does not exclude God from working that which nature is not able to work, but it follows from this that nothing is worked contrary to what is appropriate to nature.

To the third it must be said that acts which are produced by a poured habitude do not cause any habitude, but confirm a pre-existing habitude, just medicinal remedies applied to a man healthy by nature do not cause any health but rather strengthen the prior habitude of health.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.51.4, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.]

I have deliberately avoided the word 'infused'; it's a perfectly good word, but I think it's worth remembering the underlying metaphor. I've also translated with 'faculty' rather than a more generic term like 'capacity' because the technical meaning is operative here -- a faculty is a power or capacity that can be directly disposed by will, which then makes it possible for the power or capacity be disposed well or badly.

This short article has more going on than might meet the eye. It will, of course, be the foundation of some of the most important discussions of virtue in the Summa. We also have here the essential argument for a key Thomistic idea, that we have no natural habitude to our natural end, because the latter is our natural end in the sense that we have it as an end by nature, not in the sense that it is within the capability of human nature to achieve it. It is therefore natural to human beings to seek a higher power than our own. This idea would lead to argument in the nineteenth century, by the clumsy device of an imaginary 'pure state of nature', and then again in the twentieth century, over the natural desire to see God.

In addition, the response to the third objection is more important than it might look, because it identifies a principle that will play a significant role in the Thomistic account of infused virtue.

This article completes St. Thomas's tour of habitudes in light of their causes. We have

natural habitudes

acquired habitudes

infused habitudes

but we've also discovered that the boundaries among these are not quite so hard and fast as might be assumed. There are natural habitudes that also require human acts for their full specification, and thus are in a sense mediate between natural and acquired habitudes, and as God can infuse any habitude whatsoever, something's being a natural or an acquired habitude does not necessarily rule out its also being an infused habitude. There are, of course, infused habitudes that are definitely neither natural or acquired habitudes, but the mere fact that something is poured out on someone by God does not itself make it itself  'supernatural', as we might say today. Likewise, the fact that something is a natural or acquired habitude does not exclude the possibility that it is a direct gift from God.

Dashed Off XXX

 This is the beginning of the notebook begun at the end of July 2024.

We recognize God from being moved by Him, being created by Him, resting upon Him, being uplifted by Him, and being guided by Him. Many ordinary people will spontaneously say such things. But these are the Five Ways, loosely expressed in experiential terms.

the flavor story of a meal
the hospitality story of a meal
the prestige story of a meal

Treating everything as a matter of exchange for one's own benefit is the root of all evil.

'his name' / 'her name' etc. as quasi-demonstrative (cf.: His name is Bob. This is Bob. He is Bob.)

prudence: the world as a field of need for plan and decision (the agible)
justice: as a field of the due (jural goods)
fortitude: as a field of challenge and achievement
temperance: as a field of need for balance of good

Familial society and civil society need mediation. (Rosmini)

regulation of the modality of rights
(1) to protect rights from suppression
(2) to settle disputes (by agreement, custom, and reason)
(3) to modify minimally the exercise of rights to avoid harm (by agreement, custom, and reason)
(4) to form frameworks by which people may exercise their rights in mutually beneficial cooperations

"The effect of genius is not to persuade the audience but rather to transport them out of themselves. Invariably what inspires wonder casts a spell on us and is always superior to what is merely convincing and pleasing." Longinus

Sex must be done in a way consistent with friendship and justice to all who are potentially affected by it.

'white horse is not horse' and ignoratio elenchi

The New Natural Law principle, "Do not choose to destroy, damage, or impede any instantiation of a basic human good" (Finnis), is defective in formulation in two ways:
(1) it is common good instantiations, and not individual good instantiations, that are relevant to moral ought;
(2) choices are often comparative and thus the principle has to be formulated as to deal with choices between instantiations of basic human activity (which is nto the same as choices between basic human goods).

the family as community of grace and prayer

humanizing goods

"For the role of prudence is to ensure that one's natural understanding of the basic human goods *is brought all the way down to action and a whole lifetime of actions*." Finnis

that something continues to exist as a presupposition of scientific inquiry, and the ultimate foundation of conservation laws

ideals to strive for (must be practicable) vs. ideals for assessment of progress (organize ideals to strive for into judgments of value)

modality of rights: "everything that can be done with or about a rigth without diminishing the good contained in it" (Rosmini)

Not all aspects of our union with Christ are experienced.

the already-knowledge account of immediate inferences
-- it is easy to see how Simplification is justified (knowing the conjunction is already knowing the conjuncts), but Addition seems to fail (knowing p is not already knowing that q is a logical possibility) (cp. Williamson)

Nothing we clearly imagine is impossible, but only to the extent we clearly imagine it.

The good and bad of reasoning gets you farther than it might seem, because many other kinds of good and bad are specific applications to particular domains, while others are extensions or analogues.

the role of scientist as witness to phenomena in science communication

obstinacy as misplaced loyalty

passive vs active participation in the human moral community

Humanity is both received and expressed.

In choosing, we partition the circumstances in which we find ourselves, dividing accidental circumstances from specifying circumstances, and indeed making the particular division betwene them by the choosing itself.

Human belief is not very systematic.

justice as order, justice as right, justice as participation in the divine

wisdom, sanctity, adventure, harmony

the juridical city, i.e., civilized life qua juridical

Act in a way always consistent with the friendships of civilized life.

law, right, and liturgy

sacrifice, purity, and wisdom as the three aspects of imitation of Christ at which human beings have special potential to excel, in part because they create special challenges for us

three ways of considering what is right: component of honorable life, requirement of non-injury, one's own/due
-- these perhaps can be considered positive, negative, union of two, or else formal, material, total

the right as the mediating factor in just relation and action between persons

Headlines are not descriptions of what the article says; headlines are editorial comments by which the editors express why they think it is important.

Justice creates derivative rights as part of its respect for rights.

incongruity immediately resolved: surprise
incongruity of uncertain character: puzzlement/bafflement
unresolved and definite incongruity: humor
-- but this is idealized; as Beattie and Gerard note, other sentiments can interfere, either overriding or redirecting the first impulse

humorous laughter -> uneasy laughter -> bitter laughter

The city that is the heart of civilization is the relatively self-sufficient city, i.e., not the urban area alone but all that makes the city possible and sustainable.

Everything is germinal philosophy.

One thing that makes Norse mythology splendid is the well-roundedness of the major gods -- they are complex, and we can both identify with them and find them alien, sometimes at the same time.

three aspects of a functional state: representation, preservation of rights, orderly action encouraging order

Many things are believed because they are beloved.

rite : moral person :: habitus : natural person

political philosophy as katabasis and anabasis

"There is no point in abstaining from vice unless you embrace moral excellence, because when it comes to noble pursuits, the beginning is not as praiseworthy as the end." Jerome

"Any right whatsoever, held by a person, causes inequality in others because it causes duy in them." Rosmini

Distributive justice is based on the inequality created by rights. (Rosmini)

the jural equality between state and citizen

common good -> community -> community as moral system -> suum of community

injustice qua intention of inequality in interaction (taking advantage) vs. injustice qua intention toward unjust thing (violating rights)

prudence, fortitude, and temperance with respect to another as included in complete justice

academic life as scaffold-building

Many modern discussions of love make more sense if you substitute 'need for love' or 'desire for love' in place of 'love'.

One sign of an adequate ethics is that it can serve as the framework for excellent stories with rich characterization.

We all owe to the human community as a moral person to act in a way appropriate to its survival and betterment.

A (subjective) right is possession of title to a jural good given a general obligation regarding it.

It is against the nature of governance to impede people from acting according to their officia, except in emergencies. (cf. SCG 71.4)

Habitude X

 To the third one proceeds thus. It seems that habitude can be generated through one act. For demonstration is an act of reason. But through one demonstration is caused the knowledge [scientiam] that is the habitude of one conclusion. Therefore habitudes is able to be caused from one act.

Further, just as one habitude happens to increase through multiplication, so an act happens to increase through intension. But acts being multiplied, habitude is generated. Therefore if one act is intensified a lot, it could be a generative cause of habitude.

Further, health and illness are sorts of habitude. But from one act a man happens to be healed or sickened. Therefore one act is able to cause habitude.

But contrariwise is what the Philosopher says in Ethic. I, that neither one swallow nor one day makes a spring, so certainly neither one day nor a short time makes beatitude or happiness. But beatitude is working according to a habitude of complete virtue, as is said in Ethic. I. Therefore the habitude, and for the same reason any other habitude, is not caused through one act.

I reply that it must be said that, just as has already been said, habitude is generated through act inasmuch as passive power is moved from some active principle. But in order for any quality to be caused in the passive, it is needful that the active wholly overcome the passive. Thus we see that because fire cannot at once overcome its combustible, it does not at once inflame it, but bit by bit casts down contrary dispositions so that, wholly overcoming it, it may impress its similitude on it. But it is manifest that the active principle that is reason, is not able wholly to overcome the appetitive power in one act because the appetitive power has itself in many ways and to many things; but through reason is judged, in one act, that something is sought [appetendum] according to determinate reasons and circumstances. Thus from this the appetitive power is not wholly overcome, so as to be brought mostly to the same thing, by the way of nature, as pertains to the habitude of virtue. And therefore the habitude of virtue is not able to through one act, but through many. 

But in the apprehensive powers it must be considered that the passive is twofold, one of which is the possible intellect itself, but another intellect which Aristotle calls passive, which is particular reason, that is, the cogitative impulse along with the memorative and the imaginative. Therefore with respect to the first passive, there is able to be some active that by one act wholly overcomes the power of its passive, as one proposition known through itself [per se nota] convinces the intellect to assent firmly to a conclusion, which indeed a probable proposition does not do. Thus it is needful for opinionative habitude to be caused from many acts of reason, even on the part of the possible intellect, but habitude of knowledge [habitum scientiae] is possibly caused from one act of reason as regards teh possible intellect. But as regards inferior apprehensive impulses, it is necessary to reiterate the same act many times so that something may be impressed firmly on the memory. Thus the Philosophers in the book on memory and recollection says meditation confirms memory. 

But bodily habitude is possibly caused from one act, if the active is of great force, as sometimes strong medicine at once induces health.

And from this is obvious the response to the objections.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.51.3, my translation. The Dominican Fathers translation is here, the Latin is here.]

Thus we get a basic account of habituation, and also the first reason why it was necessary to determine that habitudes are qualities. Qualities admit of contraries, and thus when you induce a qualitative disposition in anything, you have to do so against any contrary disposition it might happen to have. Thus, where such contrary dispositions exist, you have to act enough to overcome the contrariety, whatever it may be, and depending on the situation, it may take many actions to do so. In the case of the intellect affecting appetitive powers, there need to be many actions, as also there will need to be many actions for the internal senses, and, depending on the situation, possibly the body.  

But in purely intellectual matters that are certain, it is possible, as when understanding a proof at once gives you knowledge, for the habitude to arise from a single action. In other cases, as in probable matters, it takes many actions. (St. Thomas elsewhere characterizes opinion as arising from when we have reasons on both sides, but greater on one side, so this is again a case of action overcoming contrary disposition.)

A Poem Re-Draft

 A Bit of Thanksgiving 

 I thank you, Lord, for fruitful fields,
for wide and healthful skies,
and for the hopes that we can have
that are not marred by lies.
And thank you, God, for mysteries
still left for us to solve
upon this awesome floating ball
that rotates and revolves. 

 Thank you, Lord, for infant smiles
and children bright at play;
thank you for the silly souls
who goad us every day.
(We appreciate those most, O Lord,
those crosses that we bear,
and we thank you that we're not yet bald
from pulling out our hair.) 

 I thank you, Lord, for mercy!
It saves us from the brink;
and thank you, Lord, for righteous wrath --
we need more of it, I think.
But thank you for all gentle souls
who always tempers keep;
protect them, Lord, from the rest of us,
lest we kill them in their sleep. 

 I thank you, Lord, for cheerful sun
that rises every dawn,
and that my students learn to hide
the sound and sight of yawn;
that education is a joy
that overflows with awe,
and, on those crazy grading days,
that there are murder laws. 

 I thank you that we live here free
in houses without bars,
that there are things that we can own,
that no one owns the stars,
that joy and virtue freely flow
without a market price
while we have markets fully full
of grain and fruit and spice. 

 I thank you, Lord, for politics,
for presidents and such,
that they work so hard to get their way,
that they never get it much;
yea, for the limits you have placed
on corruption, fraud, and spite,
that we need only deal with them
a dozen times each night. 

 I thank you for the not-quite-hinged,
the high-strung drama queen,
who overreacts ten times a day
(and twenty more if seen),
and for the fact we have the right,
however the world may go,
to stand our ground, though he may wail,
and simply tell him, 'No.' 

 For those who make such trouble, Lord,
I thank you, too, for them;
they force us to be on our toes
and keep us fit and slim.
I thank you for our heartache-pains,
for things that go awry,
and thank you for each helping hand,
however small and shy. 

 Thank you, Lord, for critics harsh
who attack with whip and flail;
and because of harsh reviewers, Lord,
I thank you too for hell.
And thank you, Lord, for stupid folk,
that we can clearly see
in blatant view the foolish things
from which none of us are free. 

 And thank you for those shocking times
when we pedants who lecture all
on every foolish folly
into those follies fall,
for it teaches us the wisdom
of gentleness's restraint
lest we in turn be painted
with the brush by which we paint. 

 Thank you for your graces,
the good of little things,
which even in harsh and hurtful times
can make us laugh and sing.
And thank you for all wonders
that stimulate the mind --
no matter the occasion,
new truths our minds may find. 

 But I thank you most for absurdities --
they overflow every bank,
so that if I thank you for each one,
I'll never cease to thank!
And thank you for sweet irony;
it gives the wit to see
that all the things we moan about
may be thanksgiving's seed. 

 But most of all, I thank you, Lord,
that long before we die,
we can see ourselves with wry regard,
and laugh until we cry.

Eucharisteite

 We call you, brothers, to caution the disorderly, soothe the dispirited, hold on to the weak, be undauntable toward all. See that no one gives bad for bad to anyone, but always pursue the good both toward each other and toward all. Always rejoice. Unceasingly pray. In everything be grateful because of the inclination of God toward you in Jesus Christ. Do not suppress the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but all things test; hold tight the good. Keep away from every form of wickedness.

[1 Thessalonians 5:14-22, my very rough translation. Lots of interesting words here. Oligopsychia is usually pusillanimity or petty-mindedness, but the verb suggests that it is here indicating a weakness rather than a vice. 'Dispirited' is my guess, but I think it's probably reasonably close to what is intended. Antechesthe, here translated as 'hold on to', literally means to adhere or stick to something, and can be translated as 'care for', as well. Makrothymia is often translated as 'patience', but it's an active patience -- greatness of thymos, or great-spiritedness, the thymos being the part of you that rises to challenges. So for makrothymeite I've tried to capture some of that, with be undauntable. Chairete means 'rejoice'; but it's also related to the common Greek salutation. (Gabriel's Ave or Hail is in Greek Chaire.) 'Be grateful' is eucharisteite, which can also be translated as 'give thanks'.]

Habitude IX

 To the second one proceeds thus. It seems that no habitude is able to be caused by act. For a habitude is a sort of quality, as was said above. But every quality is caused in some subject inasmuch as it is receptive of something. Therefore since what acts does not receive something, but rather sends forth from itself, it seems that there is not able to be a habitude generated from act in an agent.

Further, that in which some quality is caused, is moved to that quality, as is obvious in a cooled or heated thing, but what produces the act causing the quality, moves, as is obvious with cooling and heating. Therefore if habitude were caused in something by its own act, it would follow that mover and moved, agent and patient, would be the same, which is impossible, as is said in Physic. VII.

Further, an effect is not able to be nobler than its cause. But habitude is nobler than act preceding habitude, which is obvious from this, that it renders act nobler. Therefore habitude is not able to be cause by an act preceding the habitude.

But contrariwise, the Philosopher in Ethic. II teaches that habitudes of virtues and vices are caused by acts.

I reply that it must be said that in an agent there is sometimes only the active principle of its act, as in fire there is only the active principle of heating. And in such an agent there is not able to be any habitude cause by its own act, and thus it is that natural things are not able to be accustoming or unaccustoming [consuescere vel dissuescere], as is said in Ethic. II. But some agent is found in which there is the active and passive principle of its act, as is obvious in human acts. For the acts of appetitive virtue proceed from the appetitive impulse [vi appetitiva] according as it is moved by the apprehensive impulse [vi apprehensiva] representing the object, and beyond this, the intellectual impulse [vis intellectiva], according as it reasons about conclusions has as its active principle a proposition known through itself [per se notam]. Thus from such acts habitudes are able to be caused in the agent, not indeed with respect to the first active principle, but with regard to the principle of the act that moves the moved. For everything that is endured and moved from another is disposed through the act of an agent; thus from multiplied acts there is generated a sort of quality in passive and moved power, which is called habitude; just as the habitudes of the moral virtues are caused in appetitive powers, inasmuch as they are moved by reason, and the habitudes of kinds of knowledge [scientiarum] are caused in the intellect, inasmuch as they are moved by first propositions.

Therefore to the first it must be said that the agent, inasmuch as it is agent, does not receivng something. But inasmuch as it acts as moved by another, it receives something from the mover, and so habitude is caused.

To the second it must be said that the same, according as it is same, is not able to be mover and moved. But nothing prevents the same being moved by itself according to diverse things, as is proved in Physic. VIII.

To the third it must be said that the act proceeding habitude, inasmuch as it proceeds from active principle, proceeds from a nobler principle than the generated habitude, just as reason itself is a nobler principle than the habitudes of moral virtues generated in appetitive impulse [vi appetitiva] by customary acts; and understanding of principles is a nobler principle than knowledge of conclusions [scientia conclusionum].

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.51.2, my translation; the Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.]

This, of course, gives us habitudes that are not natural in the sense that the previous article considered. It's easy to overlook, but this article is also an indirect discussion of free will and rational learning, which involve acts that cause habitudes.

The Wheel-Breaker

 Today is the feast of Queen Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Great Martyr, the patron saint of philosophers.

Raphael, Saint Catherine of Alexandria

Links of Note

 * Gregory B. Sadler, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Patroness of Christian Philosophers: Inspiration for Contemporary Christian Philosophy

* Daniel D. De Haan, Delectatio, gaudium, fruitio: Three kinds of pleasure for three kinds of knowledge in Thomas Aquinas (PDF)

* Virginia Weaver, Gender essentialism is inevitable -- and necessary for feminism, at "Overlong Memories"

* R. A. Nicolás-Francisco, On the Polish “Via Modalization” Approach to Paraconsistency (PDF)

* Ashley Frawley, Are We Not Catholics, Too?, at "Compact"

* Miguel Garcia-Godinez, Easy Social Ontology (PDF)

* Dirk Schlimm and David Waszek, John Venn's pluralism regarding logical forms (PDF)

* Tim Powers has a substack on writing fantasy. Orson Scott Card occasionally comments.

*Tim Juvshik, Why Be Realists About Artifact Kinds? (PDF)

* Bañezian Thomist, Domingo Báñez on the Logical Problem of the Trinity

Habitude VIII

Next we must consider the cause of habitudes. And first, as to their generation; second, as to their growth; third, as to their diminution and corruption. About the first, four questions are asked. First, whether any habitude is from nature. Second, whether any habitude is caused by acts. Third, whether habitude can be generated through one act. Fourth, whether any habitudes are infused into human beings by God.

To the first one proceeds thus. It seems that no habitude is from nature. For of those things that are from nature, the use is not subject to will. But habitude is that which one uses when one wishes, as the Commentator says on De Anima III. Therefore habitude is not from nature.

Further, nature does not do by two what it can do by one. But the powers of the soul are from nature. Therefore if the habitudes of the powers were from nature, habitude and power would be one.

Further, nature is not defective in matters of necessity. But habitudes are necessary for working well, as was said above. Therefore if any habitudes were from nature, it seems nature would not be defective in causing all necessary habitudes. But this is obviously false. Therefore habitudes are not from nature.

But contrariwise is that in Ethic. IV, among other habitudes is put understanding of principles, which is from nature, whence also first principles are said to be naturally cognized.

I reply that it must be said that something is able to be natural to someone in two ways. (1) In one way, according to the nature of the species, as it is natural for a human being to be risible, or fire to rise. (2) In another way, according to the nature of the individual, as it is natural for Socrates or Plato to be illness-prone or health-prone, according to his temperament [complexionem]. Again, according to both natures, something is able to be said to be natural in two ways, (i) in one way, because it is wholly from nature, (ii) in another way, because according to something it is from nature and according to something it is from an external principle; just as when someone is healed through himself, health is wholly from nature, but when someone is healed through the help of medicine, health is partly from nature and partly from external principle.

So, therefore, if we speak of habitude according as it is a disposition of a subject ordered to form or nature, in any of the aforesaid ways habitude can happen to be natural.  For there is some natural disposition that is due to human species, outside of which no human being is found. And this is natural according to the nature of the species. But because such a disposition has a certain latitude, it happens that diverse gradations of this sort of disposition can be appropriate to diverse human beings according to the nature of the individual. And this sort of disposition is able to be either wholly from nature or partly from nature and partly from exterior principle, as was said of those who were healed through art.

But habitude that is a disposition to working, whose subject is a power of the soul, as was said, is able to be natural both according to the nature of the species and according to the nature of the individual: According to the nature of the species, according as it is held on the part of the soul itself, which, as it is the form of the body, is a specific principle; but according to the nature of the individual, on the part of the body, which is the material principle. But in neither way does it happen in human beings that there are natural habitudes so that they are entirely from nature. (In angels this does happen, in that they have naturally innate [inditus] intelligible species, which do not belong to the human soul, as was said in the first place.) 

There are therefore in human beings some natural habitudes as it were existing partly from nature and partly from external principle, in one way in the apprehensive powers and in another in the appetitive powers. For in apprehensive powers there is able to be natural habitude according to incipience [inchoationem], both according to the nature of the species and according to the nature of the individual: according to the nature of the species, on the part of the soul itself, as the understanding of principles is said to be natural habitude. For from the nature of the intellectual soul itself, it is appropriate that a human being, cognizing what is whole and what is part, cognizes that every whole is greater than its part, and likewise in other things. But what is whole and what is part, he is not able to cognize save through intelligible species received from phantasms. And because of this is the Philosopher, at the end of the Posterior [Analytics], shows that cognition of principles comes to us from the senses.  But according to the nature of the individual, there is some cognitive habitude according to natural incipience, inasmuch as one human being from the disposition of organs is more apt to understand well than another, inasmuch as we need sensitive virtues for the working of the intellect.

But in the appetitive powers, there is no natural habitude according to incipience on the part of the soul itself according to the substance of the habitude itself, but only as to certain principles of it, as principles of common right are said to be seminal virtues. And this is because inclination to proper objects, which seems to be incipience of habitude, does not pertain to habitude, but pertains more to the very notion of powers. But on the part of the body, according to the nature of the individual, there are some appetitive habitudes according to natural incipience. For some are disposed from their own bodily temperament to chastity or gentleness or to some such.

To the first, therefore, it must be said that this objection proceeds from nature as divided over against reason and will, whereas reason and will themselves pertain to human nature.

To the second it must be said that something is able to be naturally superadded to power that nevertheless is not able to pertain to the power itself, as in angels it is not able to pertain to some intellectual power that it be through itself cognizant of everything, because that would need to be the act of everything, which is God's alone. For that by which something is cognized needs to be the actual similitude of what is cognized, whence it would follow, if the power of the angel through itself cognized everything, that it would be the similitude and act of everything. Hence it needs to be the case that some intelligible species, which are the similitudes of intellectual things, be superadded to the intellectual power itself, because through its participation of divine wisdom, and not through its own essence, their intellects can be actual for those things which they understand. And so it is obvious that not everything that pertains to natural aptitude is able to pertain to power.

To the third it must be said that nature does not equally have itself to causing all the diversity of habitudes, because some are able to be caused by nature, some not, as was said above. And thus it does not follow that if some habitudes are natural, all are natural.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.51.1. The Dominican Fathers translation is here, the Latin is here.]

So this mazy article is a partial taxonomy of habitudes. We are considering only those habitudes in some way caused by nature, and we have to consider a prior distinction in habitudes, namely, habitudes insofar as they are ordered to nature or form, and habitudes insofar as they are ordered to operation. The classification looks something along these lines:

NATURAL HABITUDES INSOFAR AS THEY ARE ORDERED TO NATURE

(1) According to the nature of the species
--- --- (i) as wholly from nature (e.g., natural disposition pertaining to human species, presumably those natural balances that are necessary for vital human functions)
--- --- (ii) as partly from nature, partly from external source (e.g., one's vital functions as restored or corrected by medicine)

(2) According to the nature of the individual
--- --- (i) as wholly from nature (e.g., variant forms arising from the latitude of the natural disposition pertaining to human species, such as sickly or healthy physical temperament)
--- --- (ii) as partly from nature, partly from external source (perhaps as examples we could include healthiness in part from dietary regimen, or physical fitness, which refine the natural health of the body)

NATUR AL HABITUDES INSOFAR AS THEY ARE ORDERED TO OPERATION

(1) According to the nature of the species (in human beings, on the part of the soul)
--- --- (i) as wholly from nature (do not exist in human beings, although angels have them, e.g., innate intelligible species through which the angel understands by nature)
--- --- (ii) as partly from nature, partly from external source (in natural incipience or inchoation)
--- --- --- --- (a) in apprehensive powers (e.g., understanding of first principles)
--- --- --- --- (b) in appetitive powers (do not properly exist, although in a loose sense seminal virtues in the apprehensive powers, insofar as they prepare for appetitive operation, can be considered as standing proxy for them)

(2) According to the nature of the individual (on the part of the body)
--- --- (i) as wholly from nature (do not properly exist)
--- --- (ii) as partly from nature, partly from external source (in natural incipience or inchoation)
--- --- --- --- (a) in apprehensive powers (e.g., sensitive virtues, i.e., better disposition of the physical organs so as to facilitate understanding, like quickness of imagination or clarity of memory)
--- --- --- --- (b) in appetitive powers (e.g., bodily temperaments facilitating character)

So since 1.i, 1.ii.b, and 2.i  of those ordered to operation are empty classes for human beings, there are seven kinds of natural human habitudes. This is, of course, not a complete taxonomy of habitude, but only covers natural habitudes; there are other habitudes that are acquired in ways that make them not natural in any of these senses, which the next articles will go on to discuss. From what we see here, the natural habitudes insofar as they are ordered to nature are the principal foundation for health and medicine; the natural habitudes insofar as they are ordered to operation are the principal foundations for human social and cognitive life; but we should not consider this as a sharp separation (e.g., since we are naturally social, there could be socially-oriented natural habitudes ordered to nature, and 2.ii.a and 2.ii.b clearly intersect with medical concerns).

An interesting question for understanding how natural habitudes work in principle is how many kinds of natural habitude angels have. As far as I know, St. Thomas never addresses this, but I am inclined to say four: they can have all of the natural habitudes insofar as they are ordered to nature, but there is no distinction between individual and species at the angelic level, at least in St. Thomas's account -- every individual angel just is its own species of angel, carrying everything that is possible to that species. Thus these collapse to two. The same occurs for natural habitudes according to operation, but the reason for denying the existence of 1.ii.b to human beings seems quite general and thus would apply to angels. So of those natural habitudes, angels would have at least innate intelligible species (1.i) and innate apprehensive habitudes for understanding (1.ii.a). One could perhaps argue that these latter also collapse in angelic intellects; but I think both angelic self-knowledge and angelic communication, as St. Thomas characterizes them, allow for 1.ii.a that is not 1.i.

Fortnightly Book, November 23

 Owen Wister was born into a wealthy family and spent part of his early education in Swiss and British boarding schools. He went to Harvard and spent time in a Paris conservatory, hoping to write operas. He eventually concluded this was not going to work, began working for a bank and going to Harvard Law School, after which he became a lawyer. That's a very upper class lifestyle. But Owen Wister is not famous for any of this, and he himself was rather bored with it. What he really liked was research the American West and writing stories about it. And today he is famous for a novel he published in 1902, drawing on and adapting some of those stories, that changed the shape of fiction for decades afterward. That novel is The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains. It was a runaway bestseller, has never been out of print, and is one of the bestselling books of all time. Because of it, Owen Wister is the father of the Cowboy Western. A large market for imitators suddenly sprang up; this spilled over into other media, theater, and radio, and movies, and later television, so that many of the standard tropes of cowboy fiction in any medium trace back to Wister's novel. At least five movie adaptations have been made, starting with a 1914 silent adaptation by Cecil B. DeMille, itself based on an already extremely successful stageplay adaptation.

Two of the movie adaptations are extremely famous -- the 1929 one with Gary Cooper and the 1946 one with Joel McRae. If I have the time, I might watch one of them to see how they adapt it. There are also several radio adaptations (including one by Lux Radio Theatre, which is usually good at movie adaptations) that I might listen to -- again, if I have time.