Dashed Off XI

 Intellectual caution often requires a robust imagination.

"The scientist does not study nature because it is useful, he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights init because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth konwing, life would not be worth living." Henri Poincare

NB that Poincare takes mathematical induction to be based on synthetic a priori judgment.

Animals have fuzzy borders.

One may own things that do not exist and may never exist, e.g., you may by contract own the next book I write, which I never write. How this sense of 'own' relates to more standard cases of 'own' is tricky, however.

Human beings enjoy fitting themselves into a greater intelligibility. This greater intelligibility may be:
social local (family, personal 'identity')
social global (general politics, society at large)
natural local (immediate environment)
natural global (cosmic)
theistic local (relation to divine)
theistic global (role in providence).

Eusebius says that in his time 2 Peter *may* be a second epistle by Peter "for it is doubted" (HE 6.25..8) and that it is not received as canonical but has seemed useful to many and has been studied with the canonical scriptures (HE 3.3.1-2) -- i.e., it was not read in Church, as far as Eusebius knew, (= not canonical) but it was in wide use as possibly but not universally recognized as being from Peter.

The fact that Jude says spilades and 2 Peter says spiloi, as well as the fact that Jude says agapais and 2 Peter says apatais, seems to me to indicate that that the link between the two is (1) oral (either both derived from an oral source, or one derived orally from a source the other hand in writing, or one derived from hearing the other read aloud, and/or (2) entirely by memory.

Oen of the most most important functions of a head of state or head of government is to press others to have reasons for what they do, by asking the relevant questions and demanding the relevant explanations.

The human heart is only really ever held in place by goodness and truth; understanding and love are our most fundamental means of stability.

A recurring pathology in human life is assuming that being right is a license to do wrong.

1 Peter 3:18b-20 interpretations
(1) Descent into hell: cf. Acts 2:27-32, 1 Pt 4:6 with which it easily connects; associated with Alexandrians: Clement, Cyril, Athanasius
(2) Spiritual preaching through Noah: cf. 1 Pt 1:11; associated with Augustine, Bede
(3) Victory over angelic powers: based in part on comparing 1 Enoch with 1 Peter 3:18-20; more recent, see William Dalton's Christ's Proclamation to the Spirits
1 Peter 4:6 interpreations
(1) Spirits in hell: easily connects with 3:18b, 20; associated with Alexandrians
(2) spiritually dead: cf. Mt 8:22, Jn 5:25, Eph 5:14; associated with Augustine
(3) the faithful dead: fits context reasonably well; common among modern scholars

Paul's description of the church in Romans 12:7-8 arguably suggests a structure still similar to that of a synagogue at the time, particularly a Hellenistic synagogue in the diaspora.

Every mutable object has a level of description with respect to which it is immutable.

We do not start with individuals and build communities out of them; we start with communities (families, at the most basic) and build individuals out of them.

the Cross, a dark symbol of the heavenly Throne

2 Sam 6:9 // Lk 1:43

The question of who and what Jesus is comes up multiple times in Mark, and the consistent theme is that people do not, and perhaps cannot, understand the answer. What is more, it's not merely that they do not understand Jesus in his inner self (represented by His repeated withdrawal into prayer); they do not understand even His outward, public face, in His ministry.

1 Tim 6:7, 10 // Polycarp to the Phil 4:1
-- PPhil 3:2 recommends Paulin letters and so 1 Timothy was c. 130 certainly among those that he recommends, since the entire passage after 3:2 is filled with obvious allusions to Galatians, 2 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians, and likely 1 Timothy (3:8) and 2 Timothy (2:12).

natural desire argument for the external world (the tendency of our sense organs) (our kinaesthetic impulses)

Newton's Rules of Philosophy as four forms of parsimony

Locke rejects the toleration of atheism because he takes it to be inconsistent not with ordinary daily contracts but witht he social contract itself, there being on atheistic principles no higher arbiter to provide the social contract the force of a contract.

earth : law :: air : life :: fire : light :: water : love

"No one willingly believes that what he greatly admires is admirable only for him." Balfour

If it doesn't improve with training, it isn't real talent.

Civil liberties require an effective rule of law.

Believing is the beginning of loving.

"The Lord Himself dyes us in the color of his Love." SGGS 117
"The world is a garden, and my Lord God is the Gardener. / He always takes care of it -- nothing is exempt from His Care." SGGS 118

empires as utility monsters

propositional attitudes are reflective objectual attitudes

We experience paintings both holistically (as arrangement in apparent space) and sequentially (as possible rhythms for the eye).

use value, sentimental value, and moral value as coloring acceptance of tradition

Appropriate sequence is one of the central pillars of emergency response.

The problem that usually plagues attempts to read the Bible 'as literature' is that they tend to use extremely flat conceptions of 'reading as literature'. Actual readers of actual literature read in the round: this passage is read not merely as part of a texgt but also as part of an interaction between author(s) and readers; thus people read a text in light of other texts by the author, in light of other texts in the tradition, in light of other texts in the genre, in light of the presumed life of the author, in light of the readership receiving it, both as a whole and partwise with detachable parts.

One of the signs of whether you are reading something 'as literature' is whether you are reading it in a way that involves allegorization, not necessarily consistently or as a whole, but occasionally and on the fly, in an ad hoc (but not arbitrary) way. We read literature as concrete expression and comment on general principles and categories, both literal (reading about two friends as expressing and commenting on friendship in general) and figurative (reading events and scenes as emblems, objective correlates, of psychological states).

Chance is an important maker of friends

National borders are functionally a way of reducing conflict.

The Librarian of Congress

 I've mostly been keeping out of political questions, in part because I have been deliberately taking things easy (at least to the extent possible) after a rather brutally exhausting 2024, in part because it has become very difficult to get good information about some things (a lot of news sites seem to have given up on even the appearance of objective investigation), and in part because it's quite clear that, even more than usual, people are completely unwilling to treat arguments seriously, which is my only conceivable reason for talking about the matter here. There are also other cases, like the issue of the Trump administration's civil rights enforcement with respect to Ivy League universities, in which I have nothing to say that anyone wants to hear, and would in any case not be able to remain temperate in giving all sides -- and it would be all sides, including some who certainly think themselves righteous -- an earful. I've never been one to back down from a fight, but I have no moral obligation whatsoever to be a minority of one fighting against everyone else, much less an 'everyone else' who are not bothering to listen, and I have much more constructive things to do.

Nonetheless, there are political questions that have clear  answers, and yet are associated with incorrect arguments that pass my screen so often and in so irritatingly that I just might as well point out the clear answer here rather than just biting my tongue. And one topic that has been irritating me in this way recently is the Librarian of Congress, a topic in which I already have a minor interest. President Trump recently fired the Librarian of Congress. Can the President fire the Librarian of Congress? The answer as a general matter is yes, undeniably. The Library of Congress as an institution serves a number of important functions for Congress, as the name suggests; but the Library of Congress is also an executive branch agency -- it explicitly includes the United States Copyright Office, which performs the executive function of administering copyright law, and the Librarian of Congress has explicitly been recognized by courts as a Head of Department in the executive branch. The Librarian of Congress is also by statute appointed by the President, and therefore, as the statute would usually be interpreted, and as Presidential appointments have generally been interpreted by the courts, the President can remove the appointment and therefore remove the Librarian from office.

Of course, doing so without prior courtesies in consulting Congress is asking for pushback; because the Library of Congress serves some important functions for Congress itself, sudden replacement of the Librarian of Congress has the potential to disrupt Congressional business in various minor ways, and it's not surprising that you would find members of Congress angered by it. But it's not illegal, and almost the only thing Congress can do about it would be to change the law. Presumably they would have to do it by legally removing the United States Copyright Office from the Library of Congress and making all the staff, including the Librarian of Congress, official Congressional staff; although conceivably they might try the simpler and much riskier path of just trying to impose restrictions on removal, which may or may not, and probably not, survive challenge in court because, again, the Librarian of Congress, despite serving Congress in various ways, is clearly and explicitly an executive office under current law. I suppose they could impeach the President for it despite the fact that it is legal -- Congress can impeach and convict anyone for anything for any reason and there is no recourse; this is always a potential option, but good luck with it in practice.

Give Me Then an Ant to Eate

 The Beggar to Mab, the Fairie Queen
by Robert Herrick

 Please your Grace, from out your Store,
 Give an Almes to one that's poore,
 That you mickle, may have more.
 Black I'm grown for want of meat;
 Give me then an Ant to eate;
 Or the cleft eare of a Mouse
 Over-sowr'd in drinke of Souce:
 Or, Sweet Lady, reach to me
 The Abdomen of a Bee;
 Or commend a Crickets-hip,
 Or his Huckson, to my Scrip.
 Give for bread, a little bit
 Of a Pease, that 'gins to chit,
 And my full thanks take for it.
 Floure of Fuz-balls, that's too good
 For a man in needy-hood:
 But the Meal of Mill-dust can
 Well content a craving man.
 Any Orts the Elves refuse
 Well will serve the Beggars use.
 But if this may seem too much
 For an Almes; then give me such
 Little bits, that nestle there
 In the Pris'ners Panier.
 So a blessing light upon
 You, and mighty Oberon:
 That your plenty last till when,
 I return your Almes agen.

'Souce' is actually salt-pickle or the liquid for making salt-pickle, 'orts' are food-scraps, and the prisoners' panier was a basket that prisoners (who were often not fed well) were allowed to hang out their window in order to collect alms. 

Music on My Mind

 

Stellar Kart, "Procrastinating".

Multiformis Nominem Christi Dispensatio

But manifold in name is the dispensation of Christ:

Lord, because spirit;
Word, because God;
Son, because only-begotten from the Father;
Man, because born from a virgin;
Priest, because He offers himself as total sacrifice (holocaustum);
Shepherd, because guardian;
Worm, because He rose;
Mountain, because strong;
Way, because right (rectus);
Harbor, because through Him is the entry into life;
Lamb, because He has suffered;
Stone, because cornerstone (structio angularis);
Teacher, because demonstrator (ostensor) of life;
Sun, because illuminator;
True, because from the Father;
Life, because creator;
Bread, because flesh;
Samaritan, because guardian and compassionate;
Christ, because anointed;
Jesus, because savior;
God, because from God;
Angel, because sent;
Bridegroom, because mediator;
Vine, because we are redeemed by His blood;
Lion, because king;
Rock, because foundation (firmamentum);
Flower, because chosen;
Prophet, because he revealed the future.

[Gelasian Decree, my rough translation]

The Decretum Gelasianum is a decretal that is found in a number of versions in different early collections (going back in extant manuscript to the eighth century); it is always attributed to a council in Rome, although different versions are attributed to councils under different popes from Pope Damasus (d. circa 384) to Pope Hormisdas (d. circa 523). Historically the most common view was that it was due to Pope Gelasius (d. circa 496), probably using material from an earlier council under Damasus (with the opening chapters, including the the above passage, usually being attributed to Damasus). Thus the name. In the main, this is probably still the common view, with many variant forms as to details, although we don't really know anything for sure. In any case, this is a striking passage.

Unstoppable Force, Immovable Object

xkcd.com

 

Links of Note

 * Antoine D. Dessault, Fuctionalism without Selectionism: Charles Elton's "Functional" Niche and the Concept of Ecological Function (PDF)

* Irina Dumitrescu, What makes me mad about AI in education, at "the process"

* Molly, AI resistance isn't hopeless, at "style analytics"

* Melissa Moschella, The Pre-Political Origins of Parental Rights, at "Humanum"

* Daniel H. Spencer, Social Trinitarianism and the Tripartite God (PDF)

* Eline Gerritsen, The Second Revolution of Moral Fictionalism (PDF)

* Boze, Every Episode of Agatha Christie's Poirot with David Suchet Ranked, from Worst to Best, at "Biblioll College"

* Kieran Setiya, Who wants to live forever?, at "Under the Net"

* Therese Scarpelli Cory, Intentionality as vital striving? Edith Stein and Thomas Aquinas (PDF)

* Incertus, How Old is 'HaHa'? The Sound of Medieval Laughter, at "Incertus"

* Robert Keim, Modern Celebrations of Easter Are Woefully Inadequate, at "Via Medievalis"

* Deacon Tom, The Year of the Three Popes, at "Weird Catholic"

* Guido Alt, Empty Reference in Sixteenth-Century Nominalism: John Mair's Case (PDF)

* Fr. Stephen Freeman, The Tradition of Being Human, at "Glory to God for All Things"

* The Maccabees and 1 Corinthians 15:29, at "intertextual bible"

* Thorsten Sander, A hint as to my grounds for judgment: Frege's positive account of modality (PDF)

* Martin Butler, The Case for Being Non-Judgmental, at "3 Quarks Daily"

* Reuben Stern & Benjamin Eva, Causal Direction in Causal Bayes Nets (PDF)

* Clare Carlisle, George Eliot, at the SEP

* Frank Y. C. Chong & Chris Frazer, Dai Zhen, at the SEP

Dashed Off X

 timing in a process: change used to structure change

Anxiety highjacks imagination and therefore limits it.

Even in the deepest sorrow we may be genuinely glad for what keeps us from drowning in it; sorrow and gladness do not always nullify each other.

We take propositions to be true or false because we take lots of related things to be true or false.

spatial, temporal, and social reasoning as growing out of reasoning about presence and absence

"The Inner-Knower, the Searcher of hearts, is always with you; recognize Him as the Creator." SGGS 46
"God Himself acts and causes others to act; everything is in His hands. / He Himself bestows life and death; He is with us, within and beyond." 48
"The One Lord is the Doer, the Cause of causes, who has created creation." 51
"The Guru is the Sacred Shrine of Pilgrimage, the Guru is the Wish-fulfilling Elysian Tree." 52
"One who understands himself finds the Mansion of the Lord's Presence within his own home." 56

Every concept suggests a realm of applicability.

the 'mine' of use & the 'mine' of fruition

expressive persona, dominative property, cooperative contract, subordinative allegiance

The moral standpoint is the standpoint of the will insofar as it is rational appetite.

The moral good is the union of the particular gwill with the end of will as such.

Obligation does not merely call the obliged to what is obligated; it also calls the obligated to be conscientious.

conscience as the realm in which the 'objective' and 'subjective' aspects of morality intermingle

Martin Luther's comments on Revelation show that there are serious problems with his understanding of apostolicity and apostolic preaching.

maslin-farming approaches to inquiry

Note that Locke's standard of good distribution of property is the ability to use before spoiling.

mutual attention, mutual communication, and mutual recognition as elements of social relationships

meaning : apprehension :: truth : assent (Richard Burthogge)

Tillotson's argument against transubstantiation (1684) may be derived from Burthogge's Organum vetus et novum (1678).

"The rule of Proportion is the King-Key, unlocking all the mysteries of Nature." Burthogge

functionality of body : sanctity :: historicity of body : apostolicity
body in light of virtue : sanctity :: body in light of skill : catholicity

one, functional, active, historical body

"The body is the field of karma in this age; whatever you plant, you shall harvest." SGGS 78

perversion of another person's life -- in slavery, prostitution, etc.

Middle Earth as a sandbox for learning how to work with texts

We approach Scripture that we may be approached by the Holy Spirit through it.

Human beings are the animals that go into themselves and extract truth from themselves.

Puppets have no duties.

The household flows into civil society, which forms the state, which in a just society upholds the household. The circle must be completed.

Marriage as moral, jural, sacral friendship

Bureaucratic processes cannot take responsibility, so require a human role in assessing the process as it goes.

All powers of the state are borrowed from those of persons.

As a nation becomes more democratic, its state becomes more complicated.

the right to act for and the right to act through

Slavery is a child of war.

We learn our duties by studying virtues and refine our virtues in studying duties.

Arguably, Hegel's consistent criticism of Schlegel and teh Romantics generally is that what Schlegel wants unformed actually has a (dialectical) structure, and that this structure cannot be purely subjective.

It is alien to human will to be locked up in itself.

"The Deist, as a Deist, believes, implicite at least, so many and stupendous miracles as to render his disbelief of lesser miracles, simply because they are miraculous, gross inconsistencies." Coleridge

As the centuries pass, the tenor of historical evidence changes; fresh evidences fade, old evidences are unearthed again, new evidences slowly bloom.

"St. James sublimely says: What the *ceremonies* of the law were to morality, *that* morality itself is to the faith in Christ, that is, its outward symbol, not the substance itself." Coleridge
"...matrimony not only preserveth human generations so that the same remain continually, but it preserveth the generations human."

Jude teaches us that Christians with discernment may use apocryphal works, and Paul that they may use pagan works.

"In place of a hermeneutics  we need an erotics of art." Sontag

No matter how we understand ourselves, we do so by recognizing ourselves as the likeness of something prior to us.

"The incomprehensible is approached by way of this knowledge of one's ignorance." Nicholas of Cusa

Cusa, De visione Dei 7 as // to Malebranche

An unordered list unites a collection of possible ordered lists.

Consent builds responsibilities -- both culpabilities and authorizations.

idealization as a sign we are dealing with final causes

Pain is often not experienced as itself bad; this is straightforwardly a fact, and shown in a wide variety of human behaviors. And it is often treated as an indicator not of bad but of candidacy for bad.

feeling that pain is bad vs feeling that the painful thing is bad

One can tell the importance of the Petrine sees by how much the Devil has done to destroy them.

"As justice gives every man a title ot the produce of his honest industry, and the fair acquisitions of his ancestors descended to him; so charity gives every man a title to so much out of another's plenty as will keep him from extreme want, where he has no means to subsist otherwise." Locke

Everyone experiences that 'mixing one's labor with something' makes it theirs in some sense, making it something in which they are invested. It is merely inadequate for private property as an institution, not for property as mineness (which latter admits of degree).

The spoilage requirement for property in Locke would require that ownership respect the natural ends of what is owned, at least indirectly.

the executive power of the law of nature (Locke T2.13)

causing of gratuitious suffering vs gratuitous causing of suffering

"All other loves are transitory, as long as people do not love their Lord and Master." SGGS 83

Some beliefs are more like implications or intimations than assertions.

"...what makes representation possible in both painting and literature is the existence of a medium in which an artist can effectively direct our thoughts to pre-established objects." Scruton

profile-fitting and the root of aesthetic realism (the particular as things in general are)

There are lots of different ways of drawing the border between your body and its environment, many of which are legitimate depending on what you are trying to do.

Natural selection, not being intentional, is holistic; it does not, for instance, distinguish particular organs, but only this whole that includes them, in which they all act together for effects that may affect survival and reproduction.

"Artificial forms of society inevitably develop artificial forms of literature." Alexander Japp

The earliest undeniable treatment of 1 Timothy as Pauline is Polycarp to the Philippians 4:1, which cites, closely alludes to 1 Timothy 6:10 & 6:7 in a context talking about Polycarp being guided by the letters of Paul. Tehre are several other citations and allusions to 1 & 2 Timothy throughout the letter. This practically guarantees that they were used authoritatively as Pauline no later than the  middle of the second century, and perhaps as early as 110. If one accepts much less certain possible allusions in Ignatius of Antioch, this pushes it back to the first decade of the second century.

We do not have Paul's theology in the New Testament, but its impress -- its residual effect suggesting an image, originated in various contexts that serve as something like different media for the impress.

Pauline passages often taken to derive from hymns: Phil 2:6-11; Col 1:15-20; 1 Tim 3:16; 2 Tim 2:11-13.

justification
make right ontically: infused justice
make right morally: relational justice
make right jurally: imputed justice
make right sacrally: justice as represented in Christ as representative of us before God

the three modes of apostolic teaching clearly identified in the New Testament: personal visit, delegation, epistle

Jude 11 -- Cain's way, Balaam's error, and Korah's rebellion all have in common problematic sacrifice and giving to oneself an authority one does not have. And notably, this is a plausible interpretation of the accusation in Jude 12, as well.
--> Arguably there is a progression: way (hode) -> error (plane) -> rebellion (antilogia) -> these

Jude 24 and justification: Now to Him capable of (1) preserving you from stumbling, and (2) establishing before His glory, unblemished in ecstasy -- to the only God our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord, glory, greatness, might, and authority therefore all time and now and to all eons.

All fields of knowledge may be considered dialectically (as inquiry), demonstratively (as scientia proper), rhetorically (as discourse), and poetically.

'seventh from Adam' in Jude 14 may be explicitly mentioned in order to underline how swiftly corruption enters

honesty -- selectivity with regard for truth -- selectivity without regard for truth -- dishonesty

What we call 'beliefs' are results of filtering processes; there are quite a few different filtering processes, and focusing on different filtering processes may result in different attributions of belief.

Justin Dial 82.1 // 2 Peter 2:1
-- "pseudodidaskaloi" is rare (before Origen, these and Polycarp Phil 7.2's "pseudodidaskalia" are the only cases) and the syntax is similar
-- Some have argued, based on multiple similarities between Dial 81 and 2 Peter, that the latter is based on the former. But this seems an entirely arbitrary hypothesis for a text in which Justin clearly takes himself to be explaining standard Christian themes. It makes more sense to say that Dial., 2 Pt, and the Apocalypse of Peter are all drawing on already common tropes in already common associations.

use of 'theos' applied to Jesus: Jn 20:28, Rm 9:5, Tit 2:13, 2 Pt 1:1, Hb 1:8, Jn 1:1, Jn 1:18

Scientific inquiry is something that can't be done without opening one's heart to it.

Mechanisms only explain by structuring possibilities, including counterfactual possibilities.

Pope Leo XIV

 The news says that Robert Cardinal Prevost was elected by the papal conclave, and has chosen the name Leo XIV. The new pope was born in Chicago, making him, quite unexpectedly, the first person born in the United States to become pope, but he has spent most of his ecclesiastical career in Peru, in service to the Order of St. Augustine (for whom he was prior general for a while). It's hard to guess what his tenure will bring;  his career for the most part hasn't been particularly notable (he seems to be a relatively quiet person), and he's mostly been a bit-of-everything bureaucrat, but perhaps that was what favored him in the voting.

Hidden in Them, and Veiled by Them

 I, O King, by the grace of God came into this world; and when I had considered the heaven and the earth and the seas, and had surveyed the sun and the rest of creation, I marvelled at the beauty of the world. And I perceived that the world and all that is therein are moved by the power of another; and I understood that he who moves them is God, who is hidden in them, and veiled by them. And it is manifest that that which causes motion is more powerful than that which is moved. But that I should make search concerning this same mover of all, as to what is his nature (for it seems to me, he is indeed unsearchable in his nature), and that I should argue as to the constancy of his government, so as to grasp it fully — this is a vain effort for me; for it is not possible that a man should fully comprehend it. I say, however, concerning this mover of the world, that he is God of all, who made all things for the sake of mankind. And it seems to me that this is reasonable, that one should fear God and should not oppress man.

[Aristides, Apology 1]

Aristides of Athens was one of the second-century Apologists; from Eusebius and Jerome we learn that he delivered his defense probably to Hadrian around 125, and he is usually thought to have died between 130 and 135. Beyond that, almost nothing is known about him. It was semi-lost for a long time -- that is, it was thought to be lost, although when it was rediscovered (first in an Armenian, then in a Syriac, version) in the 1870s and 1880s, it was also discovered that parts of it were preserved in the Life of Barlaam and Josaphat. These versions, plus a Greek fragment discovered in the twentieth century, make The Apology of Aristides the oldest extant apologetic work from the early Church.

Constitution-of and Constitution-from

 Daniel Guy has an argument against creation ex nihilo:

1. Whatever is created ex nihilo is completely metaphysically dependent on God. 

2. Whatever is created ex nihilo is not constituted of (or from) anything further. 

3. Whatever is not constituted of (or from) anything further is constitutively independent. 

4. Whatever is constitutively independent is at least partially metaphysically independent, because constitutive independence is a kind of metaphysical independence. 

5. Therefore, whatever is created ex nihilo is both completely metaphysically dependent (from 1) and at least partially metaphysically independent (from 2–4). 

6. Nothing can be both completely metaphysically dependent and partially metaphysically independent. 

7. Therefore, nothing can be created ex nihilo.

This argument is much less bad than the usual arguments I've come across. Nonetheless, it is very obvious where the problem in the argument is; constitution-of and constitution-from are entirely distinct things but the argument, through (2) and (3), attempts to elide them. This is obvious in ordinary changes; bread is constituted from flour and water and so forth, but to become bread, the ingredients have to be modified (to get bread, you have to stop having flour through a process of mixture and thermal chemistry). Thus, in colloquial English, bread is made out of flour but is not made up of flour.  This distinction, however, is also relevant here, as creation ex nihilo is a doctrine specifically and explicitly about constitution-from (that's the ex), and not constitution-of. 'Creation ex nihilo' is claiming that, while the cosmos exists because of the act of creation, there are no ingredients for the cosmos prior to creation; it is not claiming that that the created cosmos doesn't have its own constitution and constituents. But (3) and (4) only have a plausible sense for constitution-of. 

Bread is a consolidated non-homogeneous foam (a) made by the baker, (b) made from the prior ingredient of flour (and water, leaven if any, etc.), and (c) made up of starch granules (and some secondary compounds) in an unstable matrix. In the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, the cosmos is a heterogeneous system (a) made by God, (b) not made from any prior ingredient, and (c) made up of things engaging in and undergoing various sorts of interactions and relations natural to them. It is dependent in the sense of (a); it is only independent in the sense that it has its own make-up and not some other make-up (c), although even there we have to be understanding this as not talking about the dependence of the cosmos on its own constituents. (Any ultimate constituents, though, would be completely independent in the sense of (c).) The 'ex nihilo', concerned with (b), does not indicate any kind of independence at all; it clarifies that the dependence in (a) is complete and exhaustive, i.e., the cosmos derives from God's act of creation and ultimately nothing other than God's act of creation. Thus the contradiction doesn't occur.

Two Poem Drafts

The second poem is an experiment. I took a very early draft (2012)of a  previous poem I'd written, "Despair", then inverted it -- literally turned it upside-down, with the last line now the first line, etc. -- and lightly revised it until it started to made some sort of sense, then reorganized it to make more sense, then revised it again. It can also be compared to the most recent draft  (2013) of "Despair", which I didn't look at until I had finished "Dread" (it is currently still the stronger poem). It's interesting to see the elements that have endured in both forks of the drafting.

 Podunk Hollow Spaceport

Many rivers and streams run through here,
the West, the Taughannock, the Quahoag, the Milky Way,
and out on Vinton's Pond the starfish gleam
near where the High Rocks rise to sky sublime.
Out near Holley they speak Italian and Rigellian.
The rockets began sometime ago,
linking planet to planet and star to star.
The whizbangs and gizmos are for sale at the corner store.
But still the quiet reigns, the unanxious calm,
and little things done well, the boring way.
The galaxy is vast beyond imagination,
the future is greater than the realm of dreams,
even here, and perhaps especially here;
but in every future on every star
the simple places are simple still.

Dread 

I crossed a glassy sea of illusions;
 my mind's boat now drifts
on shadowed seashore.
 Darkness swirls in the enveloping mist,
 in the clouds, crying out for judgment day.
 From the darkest shadows of dreams,
 a web of lightless thread,
dark and ungleaming, holds all.
But I followed a thread astray
 and now see the terror of divine judgment.
 Beneath the earth, like a mighty image,
 in iron chains water-rusting
 until they crack, twist, break,
 is the darkest god on a rocky isle.
 Gloomy, in iron chains, for long ages he sat,
 and from him came darkness,
 and the darkness blinded the light.
 The shadow of darkness sits in chains,
 a mountain peak rising up from a mighty cliff.
 In the deep silence, stars are hidden.
 Water falls through cavern stones,
dripping and dripping on holy chains,
turning god-iron into red rust;
dark shadow waits enmeshed
in rotting chains until the chains are no more,
until the shell of the earth is broken,
until the darkness of the earth knows
 the fire and light of the sun
and hungers for it.
The darkest darkness is star-exclusive night,
 and from it I trembled and fled;
 but I knew the future
 and saw the end too clearly.
 Once long ago that gigantic figure,
a lifeless light, beyond the reach of the stars,
 surrounded by chains,
 was dragged before the ancient court, and knelt.
 His crown was broken, the war over.
 He was the darkest god, the darkness-bringer,
 the fear of the night,
 but even divine wars subside,
 even gods suffer heavy defeat.
 What mortal thought can imagine
the fierce convulsions of warring gods?
 The wind tore rock from its roots,
 monsters fought in the endless depths.
 Mountains splashed like stones in the sea,
 the sea devoured longstanding lands.
Yea, it is said that a war between the gods
 shook the world in ancient times.
Yea, it is said that it will begin again.
The darkness one day will reappear
 and final judgment come.

Fortnightly Book, May 4

 Maurice LeBlanc's third Arsene Lupin book, L'Aguille creuse, in English The Hollow Needle, was serialized in the magazine Je sais tout in 1908 and 1909, and was brought out in somewhat revised book form shortly after its serialization finished. I know very little about this book; I don't think it's one of the ones I've listened to in audiobook. Nor is it easy to find much definite about it online. What I do know is that in it, Lupin is on the trail of the legendary lost treasure of the Kings of France. His major opponent, Isidore Beautrelet, also is widely considered to be one of the best 'schoolboy detectives' in the genre (he's in high school, and it seems generally agreed that he is both more likable and more plausible than most boy-genius detective characters).

Prin Abraam Genesthai

 The Judeans answered and said to him, Do we not say well, that you are a Samaritan and have a demon!

Jesus answered, I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father and you dishonor me. I do not seek praise for me; there exists the Inquirer and Judge. Amen, amen, I say to you, if someone keeps my word, he shall absolutely not see death, unto the perpetuity. 

Therefore the Judeans said to him, Now we know that you have a demon. Abraham died, and the prophets, and you say, if someone keeps my word, he shall absolutely not taste death, unto the perpetuity. Are not you greater than our father Abraham, who died! And the prophets died! Whom do you make yourself!

Jesus answered, If I praised myself, my praise is nothing; it is my Father praising me, of whom you say, He is our God. But you have not known him, whereas I know him. And were I to say I have not known him, I would be like you, a liar. But I know him and I keep his word. Abraham your father exulted that he should see my day, and he saw and he rejoiced. 

Therefore the Judeans said to him, You are not yet fifty years, and you have seen Abraham!

Jesus said to them, Amen, amen, I say to you, Before Abraham came to be, I am.

Therefore they picked up stones that they might throw them at him. But Jesus was concealed and went out of the temple, leaving through the middle of them, and thus departed.

[John 8:48-59, my rough translation. 'Judeans' could also be translated as 'Jews', but in John is used exclusively for people associated with the Temple worship in Judea, who are contrasted with Samaritans (as here) and Hellenistic Jews, and sometimes (but not always) Galileans. The particular Judeans here are not initially hostile; they are explicitly said (verse 31) to be Judeans who had been believing in Jesus. 'Demon' is daimonion; in ancient Greek, it literally means a semi-divine intermediary between gods and men, good or bad, but in a Jewish context gets the negative association. 'Perpetuity' is the literal meaning of aion, which likely refers here to the Messianic age. I think the Judean comments should be understood throughout as being in a sarcastic or derisive tone, and indeed in an increasingly sarcastic or derisive tone, which is why I've given them exclamation points rather than question marks. 

'Praise' is usually translated 'glory'; it is doxa and its cognates, and that has to do with fame, report, celebrity, honor, public recognition. While I think we tend to think of 'glory' with a primarily visual tone (shining) and secondarily an auditory tone (praising), doxa (like Latin gloria) is usually the reverse -- it means primarily praising (as it does here, linking to the notion of testifying or givine witness in verse 14), although the association with shining does also exist (and in fact here also has this association, carried over from verse 12). Both associations, of course, have to do with making excellence known. (This is also linked to its less common association with weight or felt heaviness, in something like how we might say that we are giving weight to something.)

Verse 58 is widely read as a reference to the I Am of Exodus 3:14; we don't have any Greek translation of Exodus that translates it just by ego eimi (the LXX has ego eimi ho on, I am Being, which is then shortened to ho on), but it's very difficult not to read it as such a reference here because: (1) The switch of tenses (Before X became, I am) is odd, indicating that special emphasis is put on the 'I am', and that this is not an inadvertence, nor just a 'present of past action', is seen by the fact that Jesus keeps using the aorist with both Abraham and the Jews (and the counterfactual case in which he would be wrong), but the present with himself -- e.g., the Judeans did not know God, but Jesus knows God, where the distinction in tenses is clearly not incidental or purely grammatical, and is clearly intended to indicate that Jesus in the present is superior to what the Judeans ever were. (2) The immediate and extreme reaction of the Judeans to it, in which they try to execute him on the spot for blasphemy, while in itself it could possibly be just a reaction to Jesus claiming superiority to Abraham, is more consistent with their taking him to be associating himself with the divine Name. (3) John 8:17 already explicitly referred to the passage in Deuteronomy discussing the punishment (stoning) for those who propose or worship strange gods, so the passage itself sets this association up. (4) The Church Fathers who discuss the verse (e.g., Chrysostom) seem consistently to have read this verse as a statement of divinity, and indeed, the notion that it is not is historically rare, which at the very least is evidence that any other reading is not an obvious one.

'Leaving through the middle of them, and thus departed' is missing in most manuscripts, and is often regarded as an insertion (from Luke 4:30) rather than original to the text; 'and went out of the temple' is also  missing from some manuscripts, but is much more common and usually thought to be original.]

Orkneyinga Saga

 Introduction

Opening Passage:

There was a king called Fornjot who ruled over Finland and Kvenland, the countries stretching to the east of what we call the Gulf of Bothnia, which lies opposite the White Sea. Fornjot had three sons, Hler (whom we also call Aegir), a second called Logi and a third, Kari, the father of Frosti, who was in turn the father of Snaer the Old, the father of Thorri. He had two sons, Nor and Gor, and a daughter called Goi. (p. 23)

Summary: The Orkneyinga Saga is a text about divisions. We begin with a legendary history of Scandinavia; nobody knows for sure what 'Fornjotr' means, but the myths are consistent that he is the father of the elements: sea (Hler), fire (Logi), and storm (Kari). Storm begets frost or cold (Frosti), which begets snow (Snaer); Thorri is a god about whom we know very little who is associated with the winter and had a winter month and festival named after him. Ultimately we get to the children of Thorri; Thorri's daughter Goi goes missing, and Nor and Gor vow to find her. Nor skis across the land, laying claim to wherever he travels; Gor sails across the sea, doing the same. They do eventually find Goi, but a division has been laid between the house of Nor, which rules Norway, and the house of Gor, which rules the northern islands. From there we focus in on the Orkneys and the Shetlands (with Caithness, the northern tip of Scotland nearest to the Orkneys, occasionally relevant), as they live a somewhat precarious existence trying to maintain their independence while being an easy sailing distance from the much more powerful kingdom of Norway. 

When the islands are unified, things are good, but the situation is not stable, and no matter how much any Earl of Orkney unifies them, divisions keep arising. Part of this is the meddling of Norway; Scotland too occasionally interferes, although not as often. More often it is just family feuding over inheritance and property. The Earls of Orkney in the period primarily covered by the saga (from about the late ninth century to the beginning of the thirteenth century) are all from the house of Eystein (whose younger son Sigurd the Powerful becomes the first Earl of the house). About twenty-eight descendants of Eystein were Earls of Orkney in that period, a number of them concurrently. Given the geography of the islands, the division when there are two Earls of Orkney tends to be roughly one Earl controlling about two-thirds of the territory and another controlling the rest, but it easily flips. And of course, while Christianity comes to the islands during the course of the saga, it comes in waves rather than a clear, clean conversion, and in any case it's still early medieval Scandinavia -- if the Earls aren't successful getting each other's land by legal and political machinations, they are not opposed to getting it by force.

The Orkneyinga Saga has a less unified story than one often finds in Icelandic sagas. We get a full smorgasbord of things; legends, genealogies, hagiographies, battles complete with heroic verse, a pilgramge to the Holy Land, property disputes, truly byzantine political maneuvering. However, the saga is not completely disunified, either; it gets a sort of unity having two major peaks. The first peak is the martyrdom of St. Magnus Erlendsson, which is fairly brief in itself but plays an outsized role in the story, and the second is the much longer life of St. Rognvald Kali. The two are connected in part by being local saints from the same family (Rognvald is Magnus's nephew), although their stories are about as different as can be. St. Magnus, the Holy Earl, is exactly the sort of person you would expect to be a saint; he tries to keep the peace somewhat naively by making concessions, which works for a little while, but only for a little while, and in his dispute with Earl Hakon he goes bravely to his death praying for divine mercy to be given to the man whom Hakon forces to behead him. St. Rognvald, on the other hand, is a wily political operator engaged in large-scale political maneuvers against several other wily political operators; he very obviously has a zest for a good fight, for battle-poetry, for flirting with beautiful women, and for crushing his enemies with all the force they deserve. It's not surprising that St. Magnus eventually graduated from the local calendar to the universal calendar while St. Rognvald's right to a place on any calendar of saints has occasionally been questioned; but as far as the saga itself is concerned, they are both obviously saints, confirmed both by divine miracles and papal permissions, and of course, if anyone would know who is a saint, it's God and the Pope. 

St. Rognvald's pilgrimage to the Holy Land is itself part of his holy life, although it is as full of fighting as you would expect a Scandinavian pilgrimage to the Holy Land to be, and indeed, has much more fighting and much less Holy Land you would expect. The goal just seems to have been to get there and then come back, which might seem odd to us, who tend to think of pilgrimage as a sort of religious tourism. That is not at all how Scandinavian Christians (and indeed many early medieval Christians elsewhere) saw it; it was primarily a penitential practice. The hardship on the road was penance, and was the point; the destination was primarily of symbolic force. We might not think of heading out with the boys to lay siege to castles and fight Saracen pirates on the seas as holy penance, but if it was done on the way to Rome or Jerusalem, my Scandinavian ancestors in the Viking Age certainly thought it could be. The pilgrimage is the stuff of legend -- it occupies five detailed chapters of the saga -- but it was probably a political mistake; it allowed his major enemy, Svein Asleifarson, time to make trouble why he is away, and although he is able to start getting a handle on the trouble when he returns, he keeps finding himself in vulnerable positions until his luck and cleverness run out and he is murdered. Then again, he might have had similar problems had he stayed. Less popular than some of his rivals, he had leaned heavily into the cult of St. Magnus, and he was buried in the church of St. Magnus that he himself had built. One of his first miracles was that the rock on which he had been murdered remained wet and bloody.

The saga has everything, so it is not surprising that it has all the things that are most charming about sagas -- dry wit, direct action, one-liners, and, of course, the Scandinavian habit of distinguishing people by nicknames. I confess, at one point I wondered whether the author was doing a bit of leg-pulling, when I read about Einar Buttered-Bread -- we are never informed about why he is called Einar Buttered Bread -- is murdered by his cousin, Einar Hard-Mouth. (Neither should be confused with Einar Belly-Shaker, Einar Wry-Mouth, or Einar Vorse-Raven.) Is it really true that Buttered-Bread was murdered by Hard-Mouth? Actually, it seems that it was not quite the case; Einar Buttered-Bread's nickname was actually Kliningr, which is usually thought to be related to the word for 'smear'. So Einar the Smearing, I suppose? He seems to pre-date any actual known practice of buttering bread -- which is invented later than one might think -- although it may very well still refer to smearing something else on bread. In any case, it perhaps fits; a member of a family who often get nicknames like Skull-Splitter, Einar Buttered-Bread was inevitably doomed to be toast.

This is a fun saga, although it's not one of the easier ones to get through. It's fragmentary construction and everything-and-the-kitchen-sink content can be a bit overwhelming. Nonetheless, I can also guarantee for the same reason that anyone can certainly find parts that they would enjoy.

Favorite Passage:

On the tenth day of Christmas, a day of fine weather, Earl Rognvald stood up and told his men to arm themselves and to blow the trumpets summoning everyone to the castle. The firewood was taken right up to the ramparts and piled all around. Then the Earl gave orders where each of his chief men was to attack; he himself and the men of Orkney from the south, Erling and Aslak from the west, John and Guthorm from the east and Eindridi the Young from the north. When they were all prepared for the assault, they set fire to the wood-piles, and the Earl made this verse: 

Most admired of maidens,
gold-decked at our meeting,
Ermingerd the exquisite
once offered me her wine -- 
now fiercely we bear fire
up to the fortress,
assault the stronghold
with unsheathed sword-thrust.

They attacked ferociously with iron and fire, hurling a shower of missiles into the fortress, this being the only way they could assault it. The defenders held the ramparts none too decisively, poured down burning sulphur and pitch, though this did little harm to the Earl's men. Eventually, as Erling had foreseen, the ramparts started crumbling before the fire, leaving huge gaps where the mortar failed to hold. (pp. 169-170)

Recommendation: Recommended. 

****

Orkneyinga Saga: The History of the Earls of Orkney, Palsson & Edwards, trs. and eds., Penguin (New York: 1981).

The Beacon of Alexandria

 Today is the feast of St. Athanasius, Bishop and Doctor of the Church. From his work, On the Incarnation 16:

For men's mind having finally fallen to things of sense, the Word disguised Himself by appearing in a body, that He might, as Man, transfer men to Himself, and centre their senses on Himself, and, men seeing Him thenceforth as Man, persuade them by the works He did that He is not Man only, but also God, and the Word and Wisdom of the true God. This, too, is what Paul means to point out when he says: That ye being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length, and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God. For by the Word revealing Himself everywhere, both above and beneath, and in the depth and in the breadth — above, in the creation; beneath, in becoming man; in the depth, in Hades; and in the breadth, in the world — all things have been filled with the knowledge of God. Now for this cause, also, He did not immediately upon His coming accomplish His sacrifice on behalf of all, by offering His body to death and raising it again, for by this means He would have made Himself invisible. But He made Himself visible enough by what He did, abiding in it, and doing such works, and showing such signs, as made Him known no longer as Man, but as God the Word. For by His becoming Man, the Saviour was to accomplish both works of love; first, in putting away death from us and renewing us again; secondly, being unseen and invisible, in manifesting and making Himself known by His works to be the Word of the Father, and the Ruler and King of the universe.

Links of Note

 * Mateusz Kotowski & Krzysztof Szlachcic, Deconstructing the Phantom: Duhem and the Scientific Realism Debate (PDF)

* Jane Psmith reviews Peter Lawrence's Road Belong Cargo, at "Mr. and Mrs. Psmith's Bookshelf". Highly Recommended.

* Erich Przywara, Philosophy as a Problem, at "Church Life Journal"

* Carla Bagnoli, Kant and Sidgwick on Practical Knowledge and Rational Action (PDF)

* SDG, What is a miracle? It depends partly on interpretation, at "SDG's Dailies and Sundays"

* David Hume and Suzanne Collins's Sunrise on the Reaping 

* W. Matthews Grant & Mark K. Spencer, Activity, Identity, and God (PDF). This paper makes the common mistake made on this topic, of conflating identitas with identity (the former is a much less restrictive term), and (a perhaps related mistake) in at least one passage seems to make odd assumptions about rationally distinct acts (e.g., that they are not actually distinct). I think this mistake also leads to exaggerating some of the differences among the Thomistic commentators. But with that caveat, it's a nice collection of arguments on various aspects of what it means to say that distinct acts are not diverse things in God.

* Ken MacVey, Corporations, Free Will, Responsibility, and AI: How Do They Fit Together?, at "3 Quarks Daily"

* Leonardo Flamini, Inquiry and conversation: Gricean zetetic norms and virtues (PDF)

* Chad Hansen, Daoism, at the SEP

* Klaas Kraay, Divine Freedom, also at the SEP

* Bartosz Biskup, Two Senses of Law as an Artefact (PDF)

* Bradley J. Birzer, Canticle for Leibowitz

* Laurenz Ramsauer, The Efficacy Problem (PDF), on the nature of legal systems

*John Michael Greer, The death of Progress, at "Unherd"

* Lisa Cassell, The Positive Argument for Impermissivism (PDF)

* Armand D'Angour, The truth about love, on Diotima and Socrates, at "Aeon"

* Nathan Pinkoski, Pope Francis's Managerial Revolution, at "Compact"

In Love's Empty Chair

 A Song
by Lizette Woodworth Reese 

O Love, he went a-straying,
 A long time ago!
 I missed him in the Maying,
 When blossoms were of snow;
 So back I came by the old sweet way;
 And for I loved him so,
 I wept that he came not with me,
 A long time ago! 

 Wide open stood my chamber door,
 And one stepped forth to greet;
 Gray Grief, strange Grief, who turned me sore
 With words he spake so sweet.
 I gave him meat; I gave him drink;
 (And listened for Love's feet).
 How many years? I cannot think;
 In truth, I do not know--
A long time ago! 

 O Love, he came not back again,
 Although I kept me fair;
 And each white May, in field and lane,
 I waited for him there!
 Yea, he forgot; but Grief stayed on,
 And in Love's empty chair
 Doth sit and tell of days long gone--
'Tis more than I can bear!

Lizette Woodworth Reese, the Poet Laureate of Maryland in 1931, spent most of her career as a high school English teacher in Baltimore; she has quite an extensive oeuvre, prose as well as poetry, most of which did quite well, both in popularity and in critical acclaim, in her day. Her most famous poem is "Tears".

Devereaux on Spiritual Power in Tolkien

 Bret Devereaux, at "A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry", recently had a very good series on Rings of Power, that touches on issues that go well beyond that series, with problems in how one's handling of medieval settings in fantasy fiction can go wrong:

The Siege of Eregion, Part I: What Logistics?

The Siege of Eregion, Part II: What Siege Camp?

The Siege of Eregion, Part III: What Catapults?

The Siege of Eregion, Part IV: What Siege Equipment?

The Siege of Eregion, Part V: What Tactics?

He's also had two other post that are not strictly part of the same series, but do have some broader thematic links:

Why Celebrimbor Fell but Boromir Conquered: The Moral Universe of Tolkien

How Gandal Proved Mightiest: Spiritual Power in Tolkien

The latter is especially good, and is the one to read if you only read one. One thing I will add is that the Wizards' staffs seem to function as insignia of (spiritual) authority, and thus (like their words) as part of how they exercise authority (which for them can have effects on the world) -- this seems quite clearly indicated by Gandalf's breaking of Saruman's staff, in which, having been promoted by higher powers, he is effectively removing Saruman from office, both substantively and symbolically. (It's an interesting comparison and contrast with the Ring. The staffs seem to be just effective symbols of an authority received by mission from a higher power; this is essential to the function of Wizards, who are in fact massively more powerful than they appear but who are only authorized to use that power for purposes related to their mission. With the Ring, however, Sauron has alienated much of his own power into an artifact in order to use his own power more effectively -- he is a case study in the evil of using yourself as a mere means. The Ring is not a sign of his authority, because he has no mission, but just is partly Sauron himself. And the closest we get in The Lord of the Rings to seeing Sauron himself directly exercise power is when Frodo, seeming to be a figure in white with a wheel of fire on his chest, faces Gollum and out of the fire a commanding voice tells Gollum to go, and if he ever lays hands on him again, he shall be cast into the Fire of Doom. And it is so. Frodo is not Sauron -- but the command through the Ring has much of the authority of Sauron, limited only by the limitations of Frodo himself. Someone like Gandalf or Galadriel could do far more with it, effectively adding much of the power of Sauron to their own; and Sauron, of course, far more still.)

Sympathetic Affections

 It is true that nature has sympathetic affections gently inclining us to love and do good to our neighbour. Philosophers did not delay in firmly attaching their shaky morality to them, but the effort was soon seen to fail. Good sense saw that sympathetic affection and gentle inclinations did not contain the authority of law. Subject to illusions and eccentricities, and even to serious disorders, they also vary capriciously in different individuals,a nd sometimes lead us to offend rather than practise virtue. Affections, therefore, could not be considered the principle of the moral activity necessary for individuals, for society and for the human race. Moreover, even if we found affections on the same level and with the same nature in everyone, and free from the restrictions we have mentioned, we would still have to take account of their uncertain tenuous power....

[Antonio Rosmini, The Essence of Right, Cleary and Watson, trs., Rosmini House (Durham: 1993), pp. 119-120.]

Another Himself

 Today is the feast day of St. Caterina di Jacopo di Benincasa, Virgin and Doctor of the Church. usually known in English as St. Catherine of Siena. From the Dialogue:

The soul, who is lifted by a very great and yearning desire for the honor of God and the salvation of souls, begins by exercising herself, for a certain space of time, in the ordinary virtues, remaining in the cell of self-knowledge, in order to know better the goodness of God towards her. This she does because knowledge must precede love, and only when she has attained love, can she strive to follow and to clothe herself with the truth. But, in no way, does the creature receive such a taste of the truth, or so brilliant a light therefrom, as by means of humble and continuous prayer, founded on knowledge of herself and of God; because prayer, exercising her in the above way, unites with God the soul that follows the footprints of Christ Crucified, and thus, by desire and affection, and union of love, makes her another Himself. Christ would seem to have meant this, when He said: To him who will love Me and will observe My commandment, will I manifest Myself; and he shall be one thing with Me and I with him. In several places we find similar words, by which we can see that it is, indeed, through the effect of love, that the soul becomes another Himself.

Intellect and Alternate Possibilities

If we look at positions that accept the idea that human beings can select from alternative possibilities, we can divide a large portion of them into two families.

(1) Both the intellect and the will are free powers. On this view, the full phenomenon of what we call 'free will' involves not merely freedom of choice in the will but also a kind of freedom in the intellect (sometimes called freedom of decision). The intellect, when dealing with matters less than perfectly certain can decide to suppose, or presume, or hypothesize, or guess, or select, or some such, entirely as part of its own operation, and in a way that is distinct from any choice of the will. (This is not necessarily to say that every case in which the intellect seems involved with alternative possibilities is purely on the part of the intellect; depending on the specifics of the position, there may be cases in which the will can direct the intellect as well.) An example of a major philosopher who accepts a position like this is Thomas Aquinas. 

However, this is by far the minority view. The majority view is:

(2) The intellect is a natural power and the will a free power. While the will may freely choose from among alternatives, the intellect is entirely natural and determinate; any case in which the intellect seems to be doing something involving alternative possibilities is in reality a case in which the will is directing the intellect. The Cartesians are a major modern example of (2); this position in fact plays a significant role in Cartesian theories of error. As Descartes develops the idea in Meditation V, we only ever go wrong because the will misuses its freedom to jump to a conclusion that is not clearly and distinctly perceived. 

Malebranche gives a slightly different, and much more explicitly developed, version of the Cartesian position in The Search after Truth (Book One, Chapter Two). As Malebranche develops the idea there, for something to be genuinely evident (i.e., obvious), the intellect has to have examined the matter fully, and in particular has to have considered all relevant relations. This is pretty much the entire function of the intellect -- it perceives, either incompletely or completely, either clearly and distinctly or not. When the intellect has done so, there's nothing left for the will to do -- it can't will for the intellect to consider a new relation, because there isn't any, so it has to repose with what the intellect has done. 

On Malebranche's account, this repose is what we are talking about when we talk about judgment and inference as if they were involuntary things. The will is in fact what does them, it's just that it has reached the end of what it can do, so it rests. In matters in which the intellect has not done a complete examination, however, so that parts of the subject are unexamined or still obscure, the will can choose to have the intellect look at something new, or it can stop. This covers cases in which our judgments and inferences seem to be voluntary.

As Malebranche notes, this account means that there is no fundamental distinction between what is called intellectual assent and what is called the consent of will; intellectual assent just is volitional consent. When we are dealing with good, most people can easily recognize that consent to good is a voluntary act of will, but they struggle when it comes to consent to truth:

But we do not likewise perceive that we make use of our freedom in consenting to truth, especially when it appears altogether evident to us; and this makes us believe that consent to truth is not voluntary. As if it were necessary that our actiosn be indifferent to be voluntary, and as if the blessed did not love God quite voluntarily, without being diverted by anything whatever, just as we consent to this evident proposition, that twice two is four, without being diverted from believing it by anything indicating otherwise. (LO 9)

The real distinction between the two doesn't have to do with the act but the object; the true consists in the relations we perceive between things, whereas the good consists in the relation things have with us. The will merely consents to their being relations between things we perceive, but it consents both to the relation of a thing to us and also to our impulse to it, and it is the double consent in the case of goodness that makes it more obvious to people that the will is involved. 

Error, of course, is when we either consent to a relation that the intellect has not actually perceived or consent to a love or impulse that is imperfect. However, Malebranche's conception of this is somewhat different from Descartes's, because he takes us to have an experience of "inward reproaches" (LO 10), shocks or blows as he calles them elsewhere, of reason, and he relies on this more than on the bare case of clear and distinct perception. Thus the rules for avoiding error are, paraphrasing slightly:

1. Never give complete consent to something as true unless it is so evident that we cannot refuse our consent without experiencing internal pain and "inward reproaches" of reason. 

2. Never completely love something if we can refuse to love it without remorse of conscience.

It's important, however, in the case of the first rule that it's not the bare experience of internal pain when we try not to consent, but the experience of it on the basis of the evidentness of the thing, which is tied, again, to the intellect having thoroughly examined the matter. This way of thinking means that the thorough examination rule from Descartes's rules of method plays a much more obvious role than it sometimes does in other Cartesians, including Descartes himself. Malebranche holds that we should sometimes consent to probabilities, albeit specifically in a way that recognizes them as such, as parts, so to speak, of an inquiry not yet finished. It also means that we can in principle always tell whether we are in error or not simply by self-examination.

In any case, the work here is all done by the will, which directs everything. The intellect is a passive power, and Malebranche thinks that treating it as if it were an active one like the will is a serious mistake that creates methodological problems. There are other varieties of the second family noted above, however, that regard the intellect as active -- they would in fact distinguish assent and consent, they just think that the assent of the intellect is natural. Thus we get the division:

	The intellect itself is a free power	The intellect itself is not a free power
The intellect is an active power	(1), e.g., Thomas Aquinas: the intellect and the will each have their own distinctive free acts	(2a), e.g., John Duns Scotus: the intellect has its own distinctive acts, but all free acts are of the will
The intellect is a passive power	(completely empty, as far as I know)	(2b), e.g., Nicolas Malebranche: the intellect merely receives representations of relations, and all acts, free or not, are of the will

****

Nicolas Malebranche, The Search after Truth, Lennon & Olscamp, eds., Cambridge UP (New York: 1997).

A Poem Re-Draft

 Triptych 

 I. Fire Sermon
Of earth, which slides toward hell 

 Beneath the wisdom tree,
made free,
we see the final victory;
alas,
the world is gone
if we move on!
Without the piety of dawn,
alas,
the world is gone!
Proclaim it
and convey it
in its pure and spotless form;
all who go forth to meet it
are rescued from the storm:
All is burning,
burning,
everything is burning,
all things in fire turning
as ember in the flame.
The eye is burning,
burning,
its vision consumed the same.
With craving and aversion,
with the darkened mind's delusion,
the eye is burning,
burning,
an ashen end is earning.
The ear is burning,
burning,
the nose to flame is turning,
the tongue its fire earning,
body and mind are burning.
The noble seeker tires
of his senses
with their fires,
and casts aside all craving,
all aversion with its raving,
the mind from delusion saving,
now made free.
For beyond rebirth is victory,
the victory of sanctity,
the sanctity of sanity,
an ecstasy fulfilled and done. 

 II. Raja-Yoga
Of purgatory, which stills all desire 

 Work,
devotion,
insight grow,
an intermingled fire-glow,
into a kingly lore,
growing more and ever more
in light
that purges every sin,
purifies the hearts of men,
with inner splendor shining,
every glory intertwining.
The world of flesh is ever-changed,
battered,
moved,
by force deranged,
but it cannot enchain
the light unmoved to fear or flight,
unchanged above the fight.
Those who tread the holy course
come to rest in purest source,
which is both psalm and sacrifice,
which is both priest and priest's device,
the ever-burning fire
that quenches all desire,
the candle,
offering,
and adored,
the Prayer,
Priest,
and holy Lord,
the baptizing font of eternity
beyond and more than victory!
Who will in hope of heart convert
will to heaven's Lord revert,
no matter sin,
no matter shame,
return again to holy name.
Fix heart and thought on what endures,
the being,
thought,
and bliss most pure! 

 III. The Most Songly Song
Of heaven, which is the saint in God 

 May he kiss --
 -- your love more sweet than wine,
the bliss
beyond all fruit of vine --
 -- the incense fair,
a holy name,
all things love you,
who are one and same;
as king into the inmost place,
loving lure and loving chase --
-- all wealth is as nothing next to you --
 -- like crocus I am overflowing dew,
more pure than all,
with love lily-true.
He is an apple tree,
freshly sweet;
beneath his shade I take my seat.
Refreshed with apples,
drunk with love,
may his hand be underneath me,
he above,
like gazelle leaping on the hill,
a splendor that my eyes would fill --
 -- the flowers bloom;
in spring is heard
the singing of the gentle bird;
arise,
my love,
come away,
my love,
unveil your splendid ray:
let loose your voice,
unhide your face --
-- with him do I find my place,
thought and thought intertwine,
for I am his and he is mine.
O north-wind rise,
upon this garden blow;
O come,
my love,
as breeze-held spices flow! --
-- I come into my garden,
O bride most fair and mine,
and gather myrrh,
taste honey,
and drink my wine --
 -- a mansion of riches is my beloved,
marble and gold to his feet,
altogether lovely
and mouth most lovely sweet --
 -- my pure,
my dove,
is one and only one,
joysome as dawn;
she is fair as moon,
clear as sun;
I went down to the garden
to see the earth bloom bright
and I was made a king
by the sight --
 -- I am my beloved's,
his love is for me;
let us go down to the garden,
the blooming to see --
 -- set me as a seal upon your heart,
forever same,
for love is strong as death
and (I dare to speak the Name),
it is God-flame,
unquenched by any water's flood,
ever-resting,
ever-acting,
ever good.

Non-Papabile

In times of papal conclave, people can't help but speculate about who might be the next pope. Here's the most helpful graphic for such speculations (it's been going around online, and I don't know who first started it).

 

Dashed Off IX

This begins the notebook started in January 2024.

***** 

It is in the sacrament of marriage that we most clearly see the transfiguration of the earthly and mundane (water) into the heavenly and spiritual (wine).

levels of pedagogy
(1) nominal (classification scheme)
(2) verbal definition (how classifications are used)
(3) representational (experiential familiarity)
(4) knowledge (logical ordering)
(5) understanding

"Consciousness is a being outside being within being." Novalis (tracing out an idea in Fichte)
"Science [Wissenschaft] is the projection, grapsed in signs of the essence and qualities of A Whole."
"Almost every person is already an artist to a limited extent."
"The ground of all perversity in attitude and opinion is -- mistaking the means for the end."
"Marriage is to politics what the lever is to mechanics. The state does not consist of individual people, but of pairs and societies. The condition of marriage is the condition of the state -- wife and husband."
"The art of estranging in a pleasing way, of making an object strange and yet familiar and attractive -- that is romantic poetics."
"Where there are no gods, ghosts rule."

The citizen is not the servant of the state; the state is the servant of the citizenry as a whole.

Landmarks are used in navigation to orient forward/backward, to identify points of turn, to confirm correctness of path, and to provide warning of navigational error.

the importance of doing things the hard way for training one's skill and taste

"In every sphere, through everything that becomes present to us, we gaze toward the train of the eternal You, in each we perceive a breath of it; in every You we address the eternal You, in every sphere according to its manner." Buber

The -le at the end of many English verbs seems to be a frequentative, indicating a repetitive or continuous action. (E.g., sparkle, repeatedly or continually giving sparks.)

the importance of a man finding his comfortable oddity

Revolutions are forest fires, and they are fools who set them lightly.

Dogma expresses itself into praxis.

free will, chance, rationality (providence), and original sin (broadly construed) as the key principles underlying good historical scholarship

No amount of emphasis on method can eliminate the need for good taste in historical scholarship.

All human beings fictionalize the world to some extent -- by anthropocentrism and personification, by allegory, by pedagogical illustration, by transference from story to nature, and more.

development of doctrine // philosophia as shared love of wisdom

Newman's Notes of Development as ways of learning doctrine

NB Conyers Middleton's argument (in Introductory Discourses) that essential seeds of 'Popery' were established by the fifth century at the latest: "the institution of Monkery; the worship of reliques, invocation of saints, prayers for the Dead; the superstitious use of Images, of the Sacraments, of the Sign of the Cross; and of consecrated oil." He takes these to be confirmed in the eyes of the Fathers by primitive miracles, so that "if we admit the Miracles, we must necessarily admit the rites, for the sake of which they were wrought; they both rest on the same bottom, and mutually establish each other." Thus he rejects the one by rejecting the other. It is not surprising, I think, that magisterial Protestant divines often saw this as an attack on them, not despite but because of Middleton's insistence that this line of thought was a necessary implication of Protestantism. (Note that on at least a few things, like the Eucharist, Middleton traces the line all the way to the second century; he holds that the assertion of miracles, although dying out with the Apostles, was revived about fifty years later.)

From scoffing premises it is hardly surprising that one derives scoffing conclusions.

An ideal can only be fully grasped in a person.

"As we cannot give a general definition of energy, the principle of the conservation of energy siply signifies that there is a *something* which remains constant." Poincare

"An affirmative hypothetical is not simply convertible, and in respect of distribution, its consequent practically corresponds to the undistributed predicate of an affirmative categorical in which the terms are general. On the other hand, a negative hypothetical *is* simply convertible and its consequent corresponds to the distributed predicate of a negative categorical." J. N . Keynes

NB Keynes' use of Euler circles to illustrate distribution of predicate

Words shift about in meaning depending on the sentences in which they are found.

Copulas are not identity functions.

"Who is a hero? He who subdues his inclination." Ben-Zoma, in M. Avot 4.1

You are not called to complete the great task but to continue it.

"Science is permeated with values, ethics in the search for truth and aesthetics in the conceptual judgment of hypotheses." Eccles

Sensory impressions mostly affect us by jostling with other sensory impressions.

Critique is dialectical and tehrefore interpretable only in light of an end.

The existence of the Other extends my freedom.

History is woven of many histories.

Freedom cooperating with freedom is much more than two freedoms.

Always look skeptically at the self-assertion of the University; the politics may change but the nastiness of it does not.

Grace is the only revolution that ultimately matters.

the atmosphere of truth, goodness, and beauty

"Science is a continuous human struggle with what is as yet unintelligible, and this struggle is its very life. The petrified science of an inferior text-book is not science at all." J. S. Haldane

If consciousness is epiphenomenal, scientific inquiry is also epiphenomenal; if the universe is deterministic, scientific inquiry is also deterministic; if everything in the universe is a physical process, scientific inquiry is also a physical process.

"We discover natural law not because Nature is obviously an orderly system but because we labor and struggle to extract order from the chaos of experience. Natural law is a result obtained when man works for an end." E. W. Barnes

"Revolutions have never found it easy to give power to the people when revolution is accomplished. Liberals were not always democrats. The power of the people is not invariably exercise to make men more free." Owen Chadwick
"Religion is a commoner interest of most of the human race than is Physics or Biology. The great public was far more interested in Science-versus-Religion than in Science."

evolutionary selection by recurring development of habits of behavior (Lamarck takes this to be far too direct and singular)

Part of the problem with Veatch's attack on 'Hippocratic ethics' is seen in the discussion of confidentiality, in which he attributes to the Hippocratic ethics exactly the opposite of what the Hippocratic Oath says. The Oath makes it a matter of sacred oath not to disclse the secrets of the patient, and Veatch repeatedly claims that the "standard Hippocratic position" requires disclosures for benefit. This is tied to his (incorrect) reading of the Hippocratic tradition as consequentialist.

Veatch seems not to grasp that his deployment of diversity against professional codes actually works against his own common morality approach, as well, with very little modification. Nothing in Veatch's account of secular ways of knowing norms is consistent with Barth, proving the falseness of the 'common'. (And it's worth noting in connection with this that Veatch completely bungles the discussion of Catholic medical ethics.)

the Poirot conundrum -- when we know what *must* have happened, but not *that* it happened (Death on the Nile)

social functions as arising from intentions + incentives + constraints

What we identify as our interests is based on what we take to belong to us, including what belongs to us by right.

Canonical texts are, as canonical, an expression of the effectiveness of pedagogy.

Autonomy is a matter of the universality, the unboundedness, of reason.

types of cheese; fresh, soft-ripened, semi-soft, semi-firm, firm, blue

"The Categorical Imperative, in all its versions, including the Formula of Autonomy, articulates this double modal structure fo the supreme principle of reason for the domain of action: we *must* act on principles others *can* follow." O'Neill
"If blanket scepticism is not a feasible basis for life we must place trust selectively and with discrimination even when we lack any guarantee that agents or institutions of any specific sort are unfailingly trustworthy."
"The first step in a pursuit of greater trustworthiness is to ask how and how far structures are in place to ensure that institutions and individuals generally act in trustworthy ways."
"Trust will be restored only if the public have ways of judging matters *for themselves*."

Trustworthiness can be built. Trust must be grown.

faith as an organizer of our sense of loyalty and our sense of adventure

"We have made alive everything through water." Sura 21:30

"Free will is the endeavor to thank God for His beneficence." Rumi

category theory & demonstrative regress in the order of formal causes

A formal model is a logical structure (set of relations associated with set of objects) consistent with a set of admissible expressions.

the actuality operator as a what-if-actual operator

Liberty of conscience is required in some form for the community actually to be common, and thus a community, not merely an imposed association.

Human nature posits an ideal commensurate with its own potential.

"An institution is a pattern or framework of personal relationships within which a number of people cooperate, over a period of time and subject to certain rules, to satisfy a need, fulfil a purpose, or realise a value." Macbeath

Only God and the Devil actually have the patience to be utilitarians, and neither is one.

In scholarship you do not merely learn about the thing, you participate in it, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly and in more complex ways, sometimes even by a sort of opposition.

the liturgical system: the Church Triumphant reflected in the Church Militant
the penitential system: the Church Patient reflected in the Church Militant

the habitudo between subject and predicate arising from their locations in a common classification

Every person is a sign of God's holy work.

The unity of the Church is not based on ambiguity.

Understanding the spiritual aspects of sex requires extraordinary ascetic discipline; it is purification, not sexual experience, that creates the insight.

kinds of murder mystery
time-shifted murder 
time-shifted alibi
person-shifted alibi (decoy)
time-delay (prepared) murder (trap)
remote-initiated murder (mediated)
-- the alibi must apply to the relevant person at the right time, in such a way as to prevent the murder being able to prevent the murder being able to be perpetrated by that person (are there stories that disrup this latter that aren't traps? Right person at right time, but in fact the alibi only apparently shows that they couldn't do it. [place-shifted alibis! mediated murder])
-- decoy can be intentional or accidental/opportunistic 

possibility-exclusion scenes, possibility-discovery scenes

whodunit, howdunit, whydunit, howcatchem

Mos Def's characterization of pop music: "compatible with shopping"

Locked Room solutions
(1) Locked Room is after murder (time-shifted).
(2) Locked Room has non-obvious access.
(3) Murderer was nonobviously in the Locked Room.

Jane Kalmes:
The victim was (1) alone (or alone with patsy) in a (2) locked room in which (3) he died.
-- eliminate (1): murderer was in the room
-- eliminate (2): there was actually access
-- eliminate (3): the death was at a different time

-- any form of apparently impenetrable security or apparently unsurmounted loneliness can be the structure of a 'locked room'

The human body is always already juridical.

Hegelian philosophy can be seen as a gesture toward the hypercivilizational tier of philosophy, but is too crude to be successful at that level.

The Hidden Power

 Blessed is the hidden power that dwells in the bones of the martyrs: for they are situated in their graves, and they chase demons out of the world. Through their teachings, they abolished the error of idolaters, and they quietly visit creation, and teach it to worship you, who alone are the Lord.

[From the Basilica Hymn for Friday of the Confessors, in The Book of Before and After: The Liturgy of the Hours of the Church of the East, Fr. Andrew Younan, ed. and tr., The Catholic University of America Press (Washington, DC: 2024), p. 506.]

Immunity to Obsolescence

 A comment I made (about cursive and shorthand) in April 2022; I was put in mind of it by some comments I came across about various AI programs:

You should not trust anyone trying to convince you that anything learnable is obsolete; this is a term that is only appropriate to tools with very specific purposes. Moreover, I think that if you are actually teaching it, it is not obsolete. If people are learning shorthand, shorthand is not obsolete. If people are learning Old Norse, Old Norse is not obsolete. If people learn how to build a steam engine, steam engine design is not obsolete. If people are learning it, it is not obsolete. And part of this is that, if you can learn something, you genuinely have options now that you wouldn't have at all if you didn't. If you keep up your learning of it, even if only by refreshing your memory, you continue to have those options. Maybe you'll use your Boyd's syllabic shorthand or your Gregg shorthand, and maybe you will not; but as long as you know it, it is not obsolete, it is just, at most, uncommon. Perhaps it stops being mainstream and becomes a hobbyist's field, perhaps it becomes less a general field and more a specialized one, but there is no sense in which it is obsolete. What can be learned and retained has no obsolescence.

The Token of Life to Come

 Your death, Lord Jesus, became the beginning of new life for us. and through baptism into you, we receive the token of life to come, which is your resurrection from among the dead. And so, in feasting and joy, we glorify your name, O Lord, because you abolished error and took away the sin of the world. And the one on whose head was placed the decree of Adam's condemnation, you returned to life everlasting.

[From the Basilica Hymn for Thursday of the Week of Weeks, in The Book of Before and After: The Liturgy of the Hours of the Church of the East, Fr. Andrew Younan, ed. and tr., The Catholic University of America Press (Washington, DC: 2024), p. 506.]