This finishes the notebook that was completed in January 2024.
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"Through taste we strive to realize the implied community which gives sense to the aesthetic experience: our matching of thought to thought and image to image is also a matching of person to person, the active creation of the first-person plural to which we aspire." Scruton
"Wit propagates the sense of membership."
"True musical constraint depends not on intellectual systems, but on custom, habit, and tradition -- on the forms of a common musical culture which create the currency of allusion."
"The aesthetic impulse is latent in irrational nature, arising from the need to complete and instrumental reasoning with a conception of the end."
"A musical culture arises whenever music enters into the life of the tribe, to become a system of allusion, and a way of 'joining in'."
"Cliche involves a stereotype, an unthinking bid for effect which falls short of meaning anything."
"Through melody, harmony, and rhythm, we enter a world where others exist besides the self, a world that is full of feeling but also ordered, disciplined but free."
"The avant-garde persists only as a state-funded priesthood, ministering to a dying congregation."
Ramsey's definition of subjective probability can only apply to cases in which outcomes allow for continuous gradations of value.
It is better to think of utilities as presupposing probabilities than vice versa.
possibility -> probability -> utility
Determining probabilities requires a testing of possibilities.
Living things carry part of the context for their actions within themselves.
What benevolence is possible often depends on what order already obtains.
Actual forensic justification even in human cases does not merely declare one just but in so doing give s a status as justified; it is not a mere recognition or certification but a bestowal of at least a juridical status.
past necessity : faith :: future possibility : hope :: the finality that unifies both : charity
When important truths are scattered to the wind, one can hardly avoid being eclectic.
"Move far away from deceit." Ex 23:7
"The image of God is the active mutuality possible only between God and humans." David Novak
"To be sure, unlike creation, the covenant does have historical antecedents, but like creation, its existence comes from nowhere (ex nihilo)."
Noah is justified by being recognized as righteous before God and brough to the ark to be saved (Gn 7:1).
Ex 24:7 -- "we shall do and we shall hear" (i.e., we shall obey and we shall learn in obeying and having obeyed)
"One's agent is like oneself." M. Berakhot 5.5
B. Sanhedrin 74b on Lv 22:32: martyrdom as hallowing the Lord in the midst of the people
"Although she has sinned, Israel is still Israel." B. Sanhedrin 44a, on Jos 7:11
Reality itself is an external reason on which we regularly rely.
(1) that which is ours because we are possessed by it
(2) that which is ours because we are given possession of it
(3) that which is ours because we take possession of it
Architecture involves the interrelation of three structures, the mereological, the perspectival, and the affordant.
Music and language arguably branch off different aspects of maternal communication with child.
architecture as an organization of suitabilities
"Style ennobles choices, giving them a significance that otherwise they have." Scruton
"The institutions of courtship (and the kind of self-reflection which they require) transform passion into a kind of rational entreprise, through which the subject is in some measure distanced from his present need, and comes to see his self-fulfillment as equally involved."
the sense of design as a sense of solvedness
An essential part of sincerity is the attempt at consistency.
To have rational hope that something is true posits that reasons and evidences supporting its truth may be found.
"The most important rights I exercise as a whole person before someone else, are rooted in duties to others, which when we fulfill them are good for us as well." Novak
"My right is a means to a dutiful end. That is why these rights are to be exercised for us when, for whatever reason, we are unable or unwilling to do so by ourselves."
Dt 16::20
Tsedeq tsedeq you shall pursue [Justice/Justly Justice you shall pursue]
To dikaion you shall pursue dikaios (LXX) [The just/right you shall pursue justly/rightly]
Laws as applied are not laws as on the page but laws as living rules in reason.
the Noachide commandments as the laws for the basic rights of a civilized society
"Human sexuality is inseparable from family." Novak
"A coherent balancing of the rights of the community and the rights of individuals is possible only when both sets of rights are relative to the absolute rights of God."
Children are owed parents whom they can honor.
Rigor is inherently instrumental & only has value insofar as it contributes to reasoning and the ends of reasoning.
Association, commutation, and distribution are logical properties of operational notations.
NB Poincare takes proof by recurrence to correspond to the synthetic a priori (as opposed to analytical proof, experiment, or postulation/convention)
analogues of reasoning by recurrence (finite -> infinite) for possibility/necessity, permissibility/obligatory, etc.
The space we experience is not three-dimensional but an interrelation of many different ways of sensing space, on the basis of which we localize things three-dimensionally. Our experience of *location in space* is three-dimensional; our experience of space is much richer (which is one of the things that allows us to do our 3D localizing).
mathematical equality as a zeroing relation
To investigate requires recognizing a hierarchy of facts.
Descriptions of that at which one aims are normative; this is in fact one of our normal ways of constructing normative statements.
Relevance is position in a hierarchy of facts.
genus/species as res, as function, as cognitive object
Rv 7:17 as Trinitarian: the Lamb on the Throne leading to the Fountanins of the Waters of Life
Ps 111:4-5 on the Eucharist (cf Sir 38:11)
Ps 4:7 on the sacraments
the right hand of the Father Ps 16:11
Pr 30:18-19 -- The eagle in flight, the serpent winding its way through crags, the ship navigating the sea, and the man in youth can only do so by continual adjustment, improvisation, adaptation in light of circumstances: there is no strict rule or method.
Pr 11:30 on the Church
"That charity is called genuine which admits of nothing corruptible." Albert
Experiences are analyzed into causal components.
Even purely at the level of self-love, we see ourselves reflected in other people.
There is a natural sanctity to the devoted pursuit of transcendental perfections (truth, goodness, beauty, nobility), and even failing to recognize this is often a grave error.
We know substances through acquaintance with their accidents, but we know accidents themselves by how they express the substances known through them.
We understand the essential principles of Scripture to the extent we are united to Christ.
allusive continuities in traditions
(distinct from continuities based on preservation or reconstruction)
Discussions of political representation are often ambiguous between behalfness and resemblance as teh key element in representation.
Living things in changing themselves give ends to other things; every living things is the center of a system of extrinsic teleology, which interlocks with other systems in complex way s(symbiosis, parasitism, predation, habitat-building, etc.). The early modern period took this relativity of extrinsic teleology to be evidence of its nonreality, but in truth what it means is that real nature has many, many systems of extrinsic teleology.
Creatures not only receive an intrinsic teleology in creation; they, and the whole cosmos, have an extrinsic teleology relative to God in eschatological consummation. Providence is what ties together created destiny and final glory.
(1) The standard that arises from the will's ultimate relation to its final end is not heteronomous to it.
(2) The final end of the will is union with God.
God chooses Israel so as to give his Torah to Israel.
-- choice contrasts withneed; it is free, not necessary; it is historical, not natural.
-- it is a choice of a specific people, contrasted with other people (the nations)
-- it is initiated by God
-- the giving of Torah occurs within the context of this choice.
Jesus' promise to His apostles of judging the tribes establishes that Israel will continue to exist as a distinguishable people in the world to come.
Covenant is how law is both received and self-given.
Dt. 17:11 as the foundation of rabbinical authority in Judaism
A significant portion of quantum mechanics consists entirely in discussing that models of probabilities for physical processes have to be constructed from complex-number amplitudes.
We know actions by knowing substances through them.
Two definitions of circle:
(a) set of points p with fixed distance to fixed point
(b) set of points p such that, given a fixed line segment ab, the angle formed by apb is a right angle.
-- With infinite divisibility these are equivalent; in discrete geometry, they come apart.
the duty of civil self-governance
-- requires moral responsibility : rights of conscience
-- requries cooperation and coordiantion with other citizens : rights of speech and peaceable assembly
-- requires input into broader government (to maintain and make effective self-governance) : rights of direct voice/election, petition, etc.
Citizenship postulates:
(a) civilization as human destiny (possibility of civil society)
(b) a moral order (under which the citizen is responsible)
(c) a hierarchy of governance (within which the citizen has a role)
claims on profit
retensive: payment of debt
protensive: sustainign of enterprise into future
distributive: sharing of profit
Thin normative expressions seem to have an obviously unsaturated relativity -- ie.., to say something is 'obligatory' doesn't tell us relative to what (obligator, domain, end), whereas telling us that it is compassionate gives us a lot of this information. Saying something is obligatory is like saying that something is a part or that something is relevant, as opposed to being a vital organ or being a distinct individual of this same particular species, exactly resembling on the point under discussion.
'I ought to take X as true' as creating a subargument ('Suppose X to be true') within which X is true. ['conditional subdomain' might be better]
God as the cause of sufficiency to effect
If truth were not a rule for what we ought to take as true, we could justify nothing.
free will as the manner in which human capacity for good is nonfinite
The intellect, like the will, is an end-setting power.
The value of the activity of end-setting necessarily depends on the value of the ends set.
Always use one's intellect in such a way as is consistent with the person as an end.
The existence of the intellect in itself establishes the world, and particularly the self, as noumenal.
moral heroism, spontaneity of thought, experience of sublime, and pursuit of beautiful as expressions of human transcendence
co-purposiveness as an essential element of reason and thus of human nature
That which is in itself inconsisent with being purposive in a way consistent with the purposiveness of others, is irrational in itself. Kant is correct so far; but he treats the conditional as biconditional, and is somewhat muddled about how to understand the purposiveness.
The intellect must think of itself in terms of the harmony of intellects.
To think according to local principles that are consistent with universal principles.
(1) To think according to the local principles that can be applied with those principles that apply to everything.
(2) To think according to the local principles that are consistent with the end and nature of the intellect.
(3) To think according to the local principles that all intellects can apply in a manner consistent with all other intellects.
free will & moral life as mutually and reciprocally implying each other and each otehr's implication of the other
The intellect in pursuing the real also waits for the real to give itself.
Things that can be believed or not presuppose what must be known. Things that can be known or not presuppose what must be understood. Things that can be understood or not also presuppose what must be understood. What must be understood presupposes what is necessarily true.
natural rights, artificial rights that are based on natural rights, fictional rights (artificial rights that are formed purely for practical convenience), illusory rights (things that seem like rights but are not)
The union of happiness and morality in Kant is aunion of empirical self and noumenal self, the latter being the summum bonum in which we are fully able to live as human and as moral agents; this requires some cause or ground that makes the union itself possible.
Our capacity to think of ends is proof that there are ends (although not always those particular ones that we think there are).
The actuality operator privileges a given possible world, making it a reference world; 'actually' in both colloquial and metaphysical contexts indicates 'with respect tothat which all possible worlds together model or describe.'
The revelation on Sinai is expressed and communicated not merely by the written Torah but by the Jewish people themselves.
"The great innovation of the covenant with Israel is that both the community and the individual are granted the power to make claims upon God." Novak
Act in such a way as to treat eternal reason, and humanity insofar as it participates eternal reason, always as an end in itself.
Freedom only exists where divine action overflows.
Practical reason must postulate moral freedom as given, and this freedom can only be so if given by freedom, and therefore if it is gift.
Kant seems to recognize that his accounts of freedom is apparently inconsistent with the principle that human persons are creatures.
intellectual first principles as divine gifts reflecting the divine
Free will is a participation of divine creation, and thus inherently subcreative.
rational life as prudence in intellect and prudentness in will
Moral life requires recognizing ourselves as participants in a moral system; that is to say, as not being involved in a quixotic individual venture but an orderly and harmonious co-venture.
God is the first principle of both the noumenal and the phenomenal, and their unity; Kant's inability to recognize this transcendence of the distinction is an uncritical weakness.
The moral world is only cognizable as personal.
The only world adequate to a moral world is that whose principle of coordination is commensurate with the universality of the moral world.
the Kantian practical postulates as moves against determinism, annihilationism, and nihilism as obstacle to a robust and meaningful moral life
Whewell's Five Virtues as reflections of the Divine Word (the Word as the Benevolence, Purity, Order, etc., of God)
In human beings, understanding and sensibility must cooperate, but this does not imply the strict one-to-one correspondence that Kant tends to assume. We cannot have intuitions without concepts *of some kind* or concepts without intuitions *of some kind* in human cognition, but there are myriad possible ways this can happen. And intuition does not fall wholly one the sensibility side nor (in Kant's sense) concepts wholly on the understanding side. (Both Leibniz and Locke, as interpreted by Kant, are more correct than Kant on this, and Leibniz more correct than Locke.)
One of the functions of the Book of Revelation is to prevent Christian doctrine from over-intellectualizing.
"The Christological heresies are a reflection of tendencies to make pagan the Christian sense of the divine." Sokolowski
"Marriage is an act of will that signifies and involves a mutual gift, which unites the spouses and binds them to their eventual souls, with whom they make up a sole family -- a domestic church." Wojtyla
Fighting evil requires finding the positive good that is lacking.
We often seem to will in a way inconsistent with our actual preferences.
Much of fine art is concerned with love of means precisely as means.
To say that something is false always implies that there is a greater truth with respect to which its falseness is identifiable as falseness, and its relationship to the truth it falsifies is established.
Covnenant is inherently tied to memory; its effects are extended by way of memory.
"Kingship wants to be paternal." Aristotle
"No one by nature is a slave." Philo
"The body is the first human manifestation, which precedes in time the emergence of man's intellectual faculties." David Novak
It is fundamentally important to see the human body as an integral expression of the human person.
While we tend to classify feelings of joy and grief as 'mental', we actually experience them as 'tinging' the world around us, as well.
We do not usually experience pain as such but painful things as painful.
memory as a kind of self-knowledge
Money does not get its value merely from attitudes of valuing but from actual practical exchanges and means of exchange. The attitudes are dispositional to the means and ends that actually make things valuable; something could be valuable even though someone never thought about it in terms of value.
