Probability and Truth

  Such is the number of the works written by [Aristotle]. And in them he puts forward the following views. There are two divisions of philosophy, the practical and the theoretical. The practical part includes ethics and politics, and in the latter not only the doctrine of the state but also that of the household is sketched. The theoretical part includes physics and logic, although logic is not an independent science, but is elaborated as an instrument to the rest of science. And he clearly laid down that it has a twofold aim, probability and truth. For each of these he employed two faculties, dialectic and rhetoric where probability is aimed at, analytic and philosophy where the end is truth; he neglects nothing which makes either for discovery or for judgement or for utility. As making for discovery he left in the Topics and Methodics a number of propositions, whereby the student can be well supplied with probable arguments for the solution of problems. As an aid to judgement he left the Prior and Posterior Analytics. By the Prior Analytics the premisses are judged, by the Posterior the process of inference is tested. For practical use there are the precepts on controversy and the works dealing with question and answer, with sophistical fallacies, syllogisms and the like.

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, "Aristotle", Book V.28-29. This is an early form of a view of Aristotle's logical works that would become central with the Islamic commentators.

Dashed Off III

 Baptism & eucharist, organizing the sacramental economy, also function as ordinances in the social economy of the Church, in which they function as signs and seals of the New Covenant.

the headship of Adam as moral, jural, and sacral

People will easily make small sacrifices for what they think obviously ethical; as either the sacrifices grow greater or the obviousness grows less, people begin to struggle; and eventually all people reach a point at which they need assistance.

In politics it often happens that people associate themselves with values that do not come easily to them -- they take these values to be especially valuable because they work so hard for them, but for some of these they have failed to notice that other people, due to different backgrounds, do not have to work hard for them at all. This explains some of the behavior of political partisans, particularly when they start drawing the conclusion that other people can't exemplify the values because they are obviously not doing the work for them.

'Correct' is always 'correct for such-and-such perupose'.

Popularity works by association with that to which people are already attending.

arguments as keys to intelligibilities

What makes a nation in part is deliberately choosing not to be enemies.

If you don't work on yourself, the devil will take the job.

man as the most imitative animal (Aristotle)

self-imitation and memory
habitus vs. self-imitation

"Art partly completes what nature cannot bring to finish and partly imitates her." Aristotle

Human beigns are hyperimitative because it is natural to us to imitate the divine.

The ghost is always where one does not quite look.

We may act in patterned ways, and we may produce patterns of actions, and these are distinct.

All art finds its completion in worship, either by integration or by sign; but particular works can be inherently defective.

Physicists study the musica mundana, the mathematical harmony of interaction with interaction across the entire cosmos.

The only true rationality is a kind of spirituality of reason.

"Books delight as through and through, they talk with us, they give us good counsel, they enter into a living and intimate companionship with us." Petrarch

NB that Leunissen argues that Aristotle himself does not use final causes as middle terms but as major terms -- thus not as explanatory of the conclusion but as identifying the presence of a feature argued for on the ground of some other cause; that is, as limits of developments.

The final cause unifies the other three causes.

"The arts make their material, some without qualification, others as good to work with, and we use it as if everything exists for the sake of us. For we too are in some sense ends." Aristotle 194a33-36

Darwin's general argument for natural selection (by comparison to artifiical and unconscious selection) can be generalized to an argument for natural teleology.

Aristotle takes nature to have two kinds of action: the necessary and the better (optimizing).

The modern approach to legislation grows out of petitioning and still has the structure of petition (bill), deliberation, and decree.

The stories of our lives are for the sake of our lives, not vice versa.

The 1215 Lateran Council seems to have touched off extensive judicial reforms across Europe.

Institutional corruption is methodical rather than occasional.

To establish a civil right one must first establish a civil duty as its context.

social roles as extrinsic denominabilities

"Christ, loving all men, and rendering all men lovable in Him, has made them all neighbors." Rosmini

Pragmatism mostly works because practical success loosely approximates success for understanding.

In inquiry we use our mind as if it were a lens.

As understanding things requires contrasts, it therefore requires beings of reason.

Obligations 'to our past selves' or 'to our future selves' are just obligations to ourselves, in respect to something past or future.

Reason requires nothing other than itself to be practical.

Aquinas on powers flowing from the essence of the soul: DQ in DA q10 ad 12, q 12 corp.

Ideas that are obscure and confused can have an intellectual picturesquenes, suggesting without requiring, giving room for association and guess.

'natural' and 'unnatural' as aesthetic terms

The human intellect is not an unlimited intellect but an intellect appropriate to a rational animal, and its apprehension of being is that appropriate to a rational animal.

Being as first known to the intellect is the canvas on which all our understanding is painted.

Phantasmata are not merely of singulars but also of similars together.

Terms can be applied
(1) inequatively: according to different grades of perfection of the ratio/notion
(2) attributively: according to ratio being intrinsic or extrinsic
(3) extensively: accoring to ration being proper or improper
(4) proportionatively: according to ration being primary or secondary
(5) simply: according to the ratio being same and equal
Accordingly, the ways one term can be different in different uses are:
(1) more or less full
(2) by what it is itself or relative
(3) strict or loose
(4) primary or secondary.

ways of thinking about concepts
concept : by origin :: formal sign : by end :: species expressa : by genus :: verbum mentis : by species

"Understanding naturally seeks out and erupts into manifestation." John of St. Thomas

manifestation as expression of presence into representation

problems with idealism
(1) We do not experience experiences as purely mental.
(2) The idealist has to admit that we know there are things independent of our own minds (i.e., other minds). -- cp. Shepherd
(3) We identify the phenomenal as phenomenal, appearances as appearances, only because we take them to express things other than themselves.
(4) We do not experience ourselves as purely mental.

the externality of the world as a specific form of its inequality of relatedness (we are not related to everything in the same way)
-- Shepherd's kinaesthetic argument fits very well with this.

utilitarianism as ethical idealism (the good is wholly in its appearing)

"The principle of probability is the principle of least action (least arbitrary action) in logic." William Pepperell Montague

the civil obligation to give counsel

Augustine on Scripture: "one must stoop to enter but it is lofty within, and veiled in mysteries"

charity as uplifting all friendship, whether of pleasure, or of use, or of virtue

"Blessed are those who love you, and their friend in you, and their enemy for your sake. For they alone lose no one dear to them to whom all are dear in him who is not lost. And who is this but our God, who made heaven and earth and fills them, because by filling them he made them." Augustine Conf. 4.9.14

Over time, the hammer of argument in factional politics cracks, fractures, fragments political ideas and ideologies; if these are not made to recohere, you get a sort of political brain damage, in which one part of a political project is not communicating with another part relevant to it, thus inducing confusions and inconsistencies in an ever-breaking slide to political insanity.

(1) Groups are not merely fusions of their members.
(2) Whether groups should be considered as singular or as plural depends on context.
(3) If two groups have the same members, they are not necessarily the same group.

social expectancy: A social expectancy is a rule of behavior to which people conform on the basis that (a) most poeple in the reference network conform to it and (b) most people in the reference network treat it as normative.
-- this is sometimes called a 'social norm', but the latter should be reserved for the broader genus

faith: kingdom of God in potentiality :: hope : the kingdom of God in becoming :: charity : the kingdom of God in actuality

The lesser is the analogue of the greater; this is a major principle of teaching.

The Church is a Temple composed of temples.

Genuine ecumenism requires a shared ecology.

Every virtue is a kind of being of love.

Human beings quite obviously have a design suitable for cooperation in long-term projects, which made us effective cursorial hunters and makes us effective engineers.

'Determined' is ambiguous between a formal and an efficient reading.

One liberty amplifies another.

The Good and Noble Agatha

 Today is the feast of St. Agatha of Sicily, Virgin and Martyr. She died in the third century in the Decian persecution of the 250s, probably in Catania, Sicily, where she apparently had been born. We have very little direct information about here; most of our early information about her is very indirect. According to later legend, she was a fifteen-year-old girl from a Christian family who made a vow of virginity. The local prefect, Quintianus, had taken a fancy to her and attempted to pressure into marriage. When she still refused, he reported her to the authorities as a Christian; she was tortured, with (among other things) her breasts being cut off, and was sentenced to burned to death. Thus far, the pattern of her story is fairly standard for an early Virgin Martyr, but the story has an interesting twist; Agatha was not burned to death. While she was in prison, there was an earthquake, and for obvious reasons the local magistrates had more immediately serious matters on her mind, and St. Agatha at some point died in prison, for reasons unknown. It would make sense if she did so because of complications from her torture, but in fact the legend itself says that her wounds were healed by St. Peter after the earthquake, and thus Agatha is an unusual case of an early martyr for whom we have a legend and tradition but no early story of how she died, at all.

In any case, St. Agatha, like many of the early Virgin Martyrs, is easy to recognize in paintings, in her case because she usually has her cut-off breasts on a platter. And her name is preserved in part because she is such an early martyr that she is already commemorated in the Roman Canon, so her name is explicitly said every Mass along with several other early martyrs venerated in Rome. 

(The other Virgin Martyrs mentioned in the Canon are Agnes, Lucy, and Cecilia. Incidentally, in making sure that I got that right -- as it turns out I was forgetting Cecilia -- I was struck by how diverse the saints listed in the Roman Canon are. Besides the holy Virgin, the Baptist, and the Apostles, we have the early Papal Martyrs [Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus, Cornelius], Bishop Martyrs [Cyprian, Ignatius], a martyred priest [Marcellinus; maybe also Alexander (there are several different Alexanders who could have originally been meant, including a pope, a priest, and a soldier-martyr)], deacon-martyrs [Stephen, Lawrence], a martyred exorcist [Peter], and various lay martyrs -- a lay catechist [Chrysogonus], soldier-martyrs [John and Paul], physician-martyrs known for their almsdeeds [Cosmas and Damian], catechumens [Perpetua, Felicity], Virgin Martyrs [Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia], and a married woman about whom we know nothing else [Anastasia, although some sources list her as a Virgin Martyr, probably incorrectly; but Perpetua and Felicity were also married women]. While most are for obvious reasons associated directly with Rome, Sicily, the East, and North Africa are all represented. This is so diverse that it is obviously deliberately so, picking saints of all sorts of background from those who were popularly venerated in Rome when the Roman Canon was formed in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries -- probably the saints that had churches in Rome at the time.)

And to the Sea as Happily Dost Haste

 To The Nile
by John Keats

Son of the old Moon-mountains African!
Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile!
We call thee fruitful, and that very while
A desert fills our seeing's inward span:
Nurse of swart nations since the world began,
Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile
Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,
Rest for a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan?
O may dark fancies err! They surely do;
'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste
Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew
Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste
The pleasant sunrise. Green isles hast thou too,
And to the sea as happily dost haste.

Links of Note

 * Ed Simon, Close Reading Bad Poetry, at "3 Quarks Daily"

* Emanuel Rutten, A Modal-Epistemic Argument for the Existence of God (PDF)

* Brad Skow, The Grotesque in Flannery O'Connor, at "Mostly Aesthetics"

* Michael Yuen, Kant on Hope's Value and Misanthropy (PDF)

* Brendan Hodge, Is migration padding the USCCB 'bottom line'?, at "The Pillar"

* Patrik Engisch, Creativity, Imagination, and the Culinary Arts (PDF)

* Jesper Kallestrup, Knowledge-Qua in Groups

* Dan Williams, The world outside and the pictures in our heads, at "Conspicuous Cognition"

* Verena Wagner, Committing to Indecision: A Taxonomy of Suspension of Judgment (PDF)

* Philip D. Bunn, Reflecting on the AI Crisis in Higher Education, at "Fusion"

* Luis F. Bartolo Alegre, Was Aristotle a non-classical logician? (PDF)

* Don A. Howard and Marco Giovanelli, Einstein's Philosophy of Science, at the SEP

* Ashley Purdy, Shared Tastes: Similiarity in Aristotelian Character Friendship (PDF)

* Miriam, The Warehouse of Good Intentions: On Folly and Friendship, at "Between Monk and Myrmidon"

* John T. Maier, The Agentive Modalities (PDF)

* J. B. Manchak, The universe is unknowable from within it

How to Remember

ST 2-2.49.1 ad 2, my rough translation; the Dominican Fathers translation is here. Of course, these are relevant to more than just memorizing things; they are, to take just one example, part of how we become thoughtful (i.e., keep important things in mind), including being mindful of God and our fellow human beings. The references to Cicero are actually to the Rhetorica ad Herennium, perhaps the most influential rhetorical handbook of all time, which is no longer attributed to Cicero. Sollicitudo, here translated as 'care', is one of the major acts of the virtue of prudence; it could also be translated as 'vigilance', 'watchfulness', or, for that matter, 'solicitude'; it is associated with ingenuity and alertness.

 

******

To the second it must be said that just as we have an aptitude for prudence from our nature, but its completion comes through practice or grace, as Tully says in his Rhetoric, so too memory not only derives from nature, but is made greater by art or diligence (industriae).

And there are four ways by which a man progresses in remembering well. The first of which is that he who wishes to remember something should take some likeness appropriate to it, but not wholly appropriate, because that which is inappropriate is more wondered-at, and so engages the soul more, and more vehemently. And this is why we see that in childhood we remember more of what we saw. Now the need for discovering these likenesses or images is because simple and intellectual dispositions (intentiones simplices et spirituales) easily escape the soul unless they are bound to some corporeal likeness, because human cognition has greater power over sensibles. Therefore the memorative [power] is placed in the sensitive part.

Secondly, whatever a man wants to remember he ought to hold in his attention (consideratione) and organize (ordinate disponat) so that he may proceed easily from one memory to another. Thus the Philosopher says, in the book De Mem., From a commonplace (a locis) we seem to remember something, because we go swiftly from one to the other.

Thirdly, a man ought to have care (sollicitudinem) and concern (affectum) about the things he wants to remember, because the more something makes an impression on the soul, the less it escapes it. Thus Tully says in his Rhetoric that care (sollicitudo) conserves the features of representations (simulacrorum figuras) whole.

Fourthly, one ought to meditate frequently on what one wants to remember. Thus the Philosopher says in the book De Mem. that meditations save memory, because, as is said in the same book, custom is like nature. Thus what we often apprehend (intelligimus) we quickly remember, as it were proceeding by natural order from one to the other.