Habitude XXII

 To the first one proceeds thus. It seems that speculative intellectual habitudes are not virtues. For virtue is working habitude, as was said above. But speculative habitudes are not working, since the speculative is distinguised from the practical, that is, the working. Therefore speculative intellectual habitudes are not virtues.

Further, virtue is that by which a human being becomes happy or blessed, because happiness is the reward of virtue, as is said in Ethic. I. But intellectual habitudes do not consider human acts or other human goods through which blessedness is attained by a human being, but rather natural and divine things. Thus habitudes of this sort are not able to be called virtues.

Further, knowledge is speculative habitude, but knowledge and virtue are distinguished as genera not put forward subalternately, as is obvious from the Philosopher in Topic. IV. Therefore speculative habitudes are not virtues.

Contrariwise, only speculative habitudes consider necessities such that it is impossible that they should have themselves otherwise. But the Philosopher posits, in Ethic. VI, sorts of intellectual virtues in the part of the soul that considers necessities that cannot have themselves otherwise. Therefore speculative intellectual habitudes are virtues.

I reply that it must be said that, because each virtue is called so in ordering to good, as was said above, habitude is called virtue in two ways, as was [also] said above: in one way, because it makes the faculty of working well; in another way, because, with the faculty, it also makes a good use, and this, as was said above, pertains only to those habitudes that regard the appetitive part, in that it is the appetitive part that makes use of all powers and habitudes. Therefore, because speculative intellectual habitudes do not complete the appetitive part, nor do they in some way regard it, but only the intellectual, they can be called virtues inasmuch as they make a faculty of working well, which is consideration of the true (which is the good work of intellect), but they are not called virtues in the second way, as making good use of power or habitude. For from this, that someone has a habitude of speculative knowledge, he is not inclined to using, but becomes capable of reflecting [speculari] on the true in those things of which he has knowledge, but that which uses the habitude of knowledge is the moving willing. And thus virtue that completes will, such as charity or justice, also makes good use of these speculative habitudes. And according to this also, there is able to be merit in acts of these habitudes, if they are done out of charity, as Gregory says in Moral. IV, that the contemplative has greater merit than the active.

To the first therefore it must be said that work is twofold, to wit, exterior and interior. Therefore the practical, or working, that is distinguished from the speculative, is drawn from the exterior work, to which speculative habitude has no ordering. Nonetheless, it has an ordering to the interior work of the intellect, which is to reflect on [speculari] the true. And according to this is it is working habitude.

To the second it must be said that virtue belongs to someone in two ways. In one way, as to objects; and thus these sorts of speculative virtues are not about those things through which the human being is made blessed, unless perhaps inasmuch as the 'through' names the efficient cause or complete object of blessedness, which is God, who is the highest object of reflection [summum speculabile]. In another way, virtue is said to belong to something as to acting, and in this way intellectual virtues are those through which a human being is made blessed, both because the acts of these virtues can be meritorious, as was said, and also because they are a sort of beginning [inchoatio] of complete blessedness, which consists in contemplation of the true, as was said above.

To the third it must be said that knowledge is distinguished from virtue according to the second way, which pertains to appetitive impulse.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.57.1, my translation. The Dominican Fathers translation is here, the Latin is here.]

Multiplied Bearings

 I have said that all branches of knowledge are connected together, because the subject-matter of knowledge is intimately united in itself, as being the acts and the work of the Creator. Hence it is that the Sciences, into which our knowledge may be said to be cast, have multiplied bearings one on another, and an internal sympathy, and admit, or rather demand, comparison and adjustment. They complete, correct, balance each other.

[St. John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University, Discourse 5: Knowledge Its Own End.]

Dashed Off III

 'freedom to make public use of one's reason in all matters' as an intrinsic freedom of citizenship, arising from the citizen's responsibility for common good (this is much more robust than Kant's version; Kant still thinks like a subject in a Prussian autocracy, and therefore only comes close when he thinks of cosmopolitan citizenship)

Reading begins not with the text but with common humanity as context for the text.

A key skill in mathematics is being able to distinguish relevant and irrelevant abuses of notation.

Set theory mostly succeeds by conforming fairly closely to what mathematicians usually do, taking a bunch of things together and considering relations on them, etc. The intuitiveness of set theory lies entirely in mathematical practice.

CEO's have an excessive tendency to see themselves as leaders when in fact they are just coordinators.

idea-based theistic arguments mapped on rationalism vs empiricism
Can the senses convey ideas of infinity, &c.?
YES: [weak empiricism] -- religious perception arguments
NO: Then do we have such ideas?
--- --- NO: [strong empiricism]: analogical design arguments
--- --- YES: [rationalism]: Then can we think them without language?
--- --- --- --- NO: [weak rationalism] traditionary arguments
--- --- --- --- YES: [strong rationalism] Then can we do so immediately?
--- --- --- --- --- --- NO: causal infinite intelligible arguments
--- --- --- --- --- --- YES: ontological arguments

Scientific inquiry requires a memory much larger than one person can hold.

heroism proper vs relative heroism in narrative

How a right should be protected depends on what makes it a right.

the internal dogmatism of practice

"Matter is never without some privation; insofar as it possesses one form, it lacks another, and vice versa." Aquinas
"It is on account of matter that a singular is both one in number and divided from other things."
"Every body is potential, because a continuous object, as such, is infinitely divisible."
"Although art is not able to introduce a substantial form by itself, it can nevertheless introduce such a form by the power of nature, which it uses as an instrument in its own operation."
"Meriting reward requires the grace of a disposition."
"People can make more or less use of the natural love they have for God over everything."

domain-relative mereological fusion

transformation, transmateriation, transubstantiation

God has typically destined human beings for at least three states, each of which is to contribute to our full completion as human:
(1) our natally embodied state
(2) our mortally disembodied (immaterial) state
(3) our resurrected state.
Whether there are others, we do not know. There is reason to think that (2) will not in the end be universal.

being in place by being contained by a boundary vs. being in a place by objectively containing the place through exercise of power vs. being in a place by being a precondition of place (place itself being contained as under a condition)

Scripture : innate human immune system of the Church :: Creed : adaptive immune system of the Church
-- Scriptures provides part of the Church's non-specific defense, good for some immediate and common problems; the Creed, building on this as background, provides a framework for specific targeting that requries recognition of the exact type of problem.

In physics, geometry describes effects on measuring devices.

We are close to understanding when we doubt that we doubt.

"As the garments of the saints still retain wondrous powers, so is many a word sanctified through some splendid memory, and has become a poem almost on its own." Novalis
"He who cannot make poems will also only be able to judge them negatively. True criticism requires the ability to create the product to be criticized oneself. Taste alone only judges negatively."
"Whoever first understood how to count to two, even if he still found it difficult to keep on counting, saw nonetheless the possibility of infinite counting according to the same laws."

The regular use of materials for signs makes the materials themselves signs.

stage/film acting as using oneself as a sign for a particular kind of context

relics as physical memory

The material of a text modulates its functions.

precepts, rights, rites

The literal sense has in it aspects analogous to the spiritual senses, but distinct from them as being in the text and not its objects.

The two questions people often are reluctant to answer carefully in any matters of reparation, but which must have exact answers for reparation to succeed: Reparation from whom? What, specifically, is required for actual repair and restoration?

That there are many things therapy cannot heal can be seen simply from the fact that nothing can be guaranteed from therapy that cannot be paid for.

The human form is called 'soul' or 'life' in this individual considered as such, and 'humanity' insofar as as this individual is considered as related to others with the form.

We say that God is one substance to deny division and that He is three Persons to deny confusion; attempts to reject such formulae are premised on the idea that all unconfused are divided and all undivided are confused. Neither of these is true, and it would be wrong to say that they are true even for all creatures, nor is it difficult to find counterexamples.

polyonym: different names, common meaning

The common/proper distinction is a distinction in applied functionality of names, not names as such.

We can only base human ethical reasoning in reason insofar as reason involves a template of orderly good for human persons.

From our earliest days, we answer to those who answer for us.

Scientific understanding grows within a social ontology of theories, experiments, and inquiries.

pre-designated vs post-designated evidence

No one likes all the parts of a vocation; no one has a vocation to the fun and easy.

orbitronics: uses orbital angular momentum rather than charge or spin

In the Principia, Newton takes geometry to get its principles from "mechanical practice" and to be "nothing other than that part of *universal mechanics* which reduces the art of measuring to exact proportions and demonstrations." Taking this to be so, he holds that geometry applies to magnitudes and mechanics to motions only in the most common cases.

In Carnap's understanding of verification, the verification principle has to identify meaning with an ideal series of possible confirmations tending toward complete verification, one that is probabilistic and infinite -- which corresponds to a 'method of verification' that unifies the series.

A sentence has many different contexts at once; the 'context change potential' of any given sentence is an extremely complicated matter, since one has to consider the likely contexts and their interactions or relations with each other.

In even very simple conversations, the 'current state of the conversation' is multi-layered, as are the 'information states of the conversational participants' -- e.g., we assess from a sentence something about the world., something suggested or implied or implicated about the world, the mood of the conversation, the emotional state of the participants, the wya this conversation relates to other conversations, etc.

Any account of language understanding that first requires identifying the literal meaning is a nonstarter; literal vs figurative is a post-hoc comparative distinction, not one immediately discernible or even discernible without serious thought.

Language understanding involves many things, most of which are not particularly associated with belief.

Whether or not a proposition is such as to allow one to determine a weight or degree of probability for it, depends on that to which one compares it.

Logical empiricists tended to confuse observation sentences with lists of measurements; but actual observations are perspective- and method-based unifiecations into a given set of relations that are selected for specific reasons, and observation sentences describe these observations.

(object -> value) -> evidence

evidence as value for conclusion-drawing in an inquiry

"When the same, similar, equal, or congruent principium is posited (i.e., efficient, defiicent, or occasional causes), then the same, similar, equal, or congruent  principiates, causes, effects, occasions, etc., are posited as well; and vice versa." Baumgarten
--Baumgarten takes this to generalize Newton's 2nd Rule and Gravesande

experiments as premise-generators

Whether or not we can release ourselves from duties to ourselves depends on whether we can dissolve our relevant moral personhood, or, in other words, whether we can dissolve the moral situation in which the duty occurs.

Promises to oneself are taken to be binding to the extent that they are before a tribunal (conscience, public opinion, the gods, God, etc.).

Pr 29:27 -- being hated is not a sign of injustice, nor being loved a sign of justice, for one may be justly or unjustly loved or hated

The 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th Amendments to the Constitution all block common means by which tyrants use state power to dominate people.

"The Lamb who is at the center of the Throne will lead them to the Springs of the waters of life." (Communion for St. Catherine of Alexandria, cf. Rv 7:17)

presential gratitude for gratitude and reflective gratitude for gratitude

War crimes often lie in the organization of martial actions rather than in the actions organized; this is why it can sometimes happen tthat one giving the orders commits a war crime although none of his subordinates do.

Falsifiability is important for physical theories because it is a guide for empirical interpretability, which is in fact more important.

Accurate probabilities presuppose correct classifications.

The regulative/constitutive distinction, if it does not simply reduce to practical/theoretical, presupposes assumptions about the nature of the world.

intelligible, ordered, enduring harmony

When one cannot find a solution, it is often because one misconceives the problem.

The Spirit of Inspiration

 It is by no means to be denied that the man who subjects himself to studies too severe does violence to his nature; and, although he may sharpen his intellect on one point, yet whatever he does wants the grace and facility natural to those who, proceeding temperately, preserve the calmness of their intelligence, and the force of their judgment, keeping all things in their proper place, and avoiding those subtleties which rarely produce any better effect than that of imparting a laboured, dry, and ungraceful character to the production, whatever it may be, which is better calculated to move the spectator to pity than awaken his admiration. It is only when the spirit of inspiration is roused, when the intellect demands to be in action, that effectual labour is secured; then only are thoughts worthy of expression conceived, and things great, excellent, and sublime accomplished. 

[Giorgio Vasari, "Paolo Uccello" in The Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, vol. 1, Lavin, ed., Heritage Press (New York: 1967) p. 107.]

Common Doctor

 Today is the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church. From his commentary on Ephesians (lect. 6, sect. 124)

A city possesses a political community whereas a household has a domestic one, and these differ in two respects. For those who belong to the domestic community share with one another private activities; but those belonging to the civil community have in common with one another public activities. Second, the head of the family governs the domestic community; while those in the civil community are ruled by a king. Hence, what the king is in the realm, this the father is in the home. 

 The community of the faithful contains within it something of the city and something of the home. If the ruler of the community is thought of, he is a father: our Father, who is in heaven (Matt 6:9); you will call me Father and will not turn from following me (Jer 3:19). In this perspective, the community is a home. But if you consider the subjects themselves, it is a city since they have in common with one another the particular acts of faith, hope and charity. In this way, if the faithful are considered in themselves, the community is a civil one; if, however, the ruler is thought of, it is a domestic community.

Mereological Fallacies of Distribution

Due to the analogy between categorical syllogisms and mereological inferences, fallacies of distribution have mereological analogues. Some examples:

Undistributed Middle

Categorical Syllogism:

All C is B
All A is B
Therefore All A is C.

Mereological Syllogism:

C is part of B
A is part of B
Therefore A is part of C.

Illicit Process of Major

Categorical Syllogism:

All C is B
No A is C
Therefore No A is B.

Mereological Syllogism:

C is part of B
A does not overlap C
Therefore A is not part of B.

Illicit Process of Minor

Categorical Syllogism:

All A is B
All A is C
Therefore All B is C.

Mereological Syllogism:

A is part of B
A is part of C
Therefore B is part of C.

The matter, of course, is quite general. For mereological propositions in the form 'A is part of B', A is distributed and B is undistributed; for the form 'A overlaps B', both are undistributed; in the form 'A is not part of B', both are distributed; in the form 'A does not overlap B', A is undistributed and B is distributed. In mereological syllogisms, the same rules for distribution apply: middle terms must be distributed, and what is distributed in the conclusion must be distributed in the premises.

None of this is particularly surprising, since historically the mereological syllogisms seem to have come first, and the concept of distribution for categorical syllogisms seems to derive from thinking about mereological syllogisms. But sometimes it's worthwhile to think about things explicitly.

Links of Note

 * Céline Leboeuf, Walking in Simone de Beauvoir's Footsteps, at "Why Philosophy?"

* Marco Montagnino, Gadamer's Return to Parmenides (PDF)

* Gregory B. Sadler, By the Content of Their Character: Christian Love and Virtue Ethics in Martin Luther King's Writings

* Andrea Roselli & Gauvain Leconte-Chevillard, What a Powerful World (PDF)

* Kelsey Hartley, Kristin Lavransdatter Resource Roundup, at "Reading Revisited"

* Susanna Schwartz, The Enchanted Windows of Jane Austen, at "The Enchanted Window"

* Sergiu Margan, The Structural Necessity of Valuation: Why Biological Explanation Requires More than Selection (PDF)

* William Lambert, On Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, at "Short Views"

* Virginia Weaver, critic as physician, at "Overlong Memories"

* Matthew Minerd, A Noetic Taxonomy of Discursive Wisdom, at "A Thomist"

* Luke Russell and Brandom Warmke, Forgiveness, at the SEP

* Laurenz Ramsauer, Kant's Casuistical Questions (PDF)

* Ian Gubbenet, Did Tolkien's Elves Have Pointed/Pointy Ears?, at "Arda Rediscovered"; it also along the way discusses why pointed ears are often associated with fairy creatures today.

* D. Luscinius, Ennead I.3: On Dialectic [The Upward Way], at "Nelle parole"

* C. S. Lewis and the Greatest Arthurian Epic, at "The Library of Lewis and Tolkien"

* Dimitra Fimi, Where (or What) is Neverland? Peter Pan and the Fantasy Tradition, at "A kind of elvish craft"

In Mystery Their Birth

 The Divine Law
by Sir Aubrey de Vere 

 The natural Law, howe'er remote, obscure
Of origin, lies patent to the eye
Of Reason; whence astute Philosophy
From shrewd induction points to issues sure:
The laws of men but for a time endure;
And vary, as their plastic frame we spy
Through shifting glasses of expediency--
The Laws of God, immaculately pure,
Unalterably firm, whose sanctions claim
Affinity with naught of Earth, these laws
Have their deep root in Faith, in Hope their aim,
In Mystery their birth, in Love their cause;
League Earth with Heaven; and, knowing how to bind
Angels with Power, have care for human kind.

The Gentleman Saint

 Today is the feast of St. Francis de Sales, Doctor of the Church. From Introduction to the Devout Life, Part I, Chapter XXII:

As daylight waxes, we, gazing into a mirror, see more plainly the soils and stains upon our face; and even so as the interior light of the Holy Spirit enlightens our conscience, we see more distinctly the sins, inclinations and imperfections which hinder our progress towards real devotion. And the selfsame light which shows us these blots and stains, kindles in us the desire to be cleansed and purged therefrom. You will find then, my child, that besides the mortal sins and their affections from which your soul has already been purged, you are beset by sundry inclinations and tendencies to venial sin; mind, I do not say you will find venial sins, but the inclination and tendency to them. Now, one is quite different from the other. We can never be altogether free from venial sin,—at least not until after a very long persistence in this purity; but we can be without any affection for venial sin. It is altogether one thing to have said something unimportant not strictly true, out of carelessness or liveliness, and quite a different matter to take pleasure in lying, and in the habitual practice thereof. But I tell you that you must purify your soul from all inclination to venial sin;—that is to say, you must not voluntarily retain any deliberate intention of permitting yourself to commit any venial sin whatever. It would be most unworthy consciously to admit anything so displeasing to God, as the will to offend Him in anywise.

An Icedrop at Thy Sharp Blue Nose

 Winter
by Robert Southey 

A wrinkled crabbed man they picture thee,
Old Winter, with a rugged beard as grey
As the long moss upon the apple-tree;
Blue-lipt, an icedrop at thy sharp blue nose,
Close muffled up, and on thy dreary way
Plodding alone through sleet and drifting snows.
They should have drawn thee by the high-heapt hearth,
Old Winter! seated in thy great armed chair,
Watching the children at their Christmas mirth;
Or circled by them as thy lips declare
Some merry jest, or tale of murder dire,
Or troubled spirit that disturbs the night,
Pausing at times to rouse the mouldering fire,
Or taste the old October brown and bright.

I'm juggling quite a few things at the moment -- beginning of term, getting some projects up and running -- and we have a winter storm coming in, so posting might be light for the next week and a half, depending on various things. (I'll only be at the edge of the winter storm, but nothing here is properly built for a serious winter, so there's a lot to prepare for.)

Knowledge and Love

 In fact it is knowing that causes love and gives birth to it. It is not possible to attain love of anything that is beautiful without first learning how beautiful it is. Since this knowledge is sometimes very ample and complete and at other times imperfect, it follows that the philtre of love has a corresponding effect. Some things that are beautiful and good are perfectly known and perfectly loved as befits so great beauty. Others are not clearly evident to those who love them, and love of them is thus more feeble. 

[ Nicholas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ, DeCatanzaro, tr. St. Vladimir's Seminary Press (Crestwood, NY: 1974) p. 89.]

Habitude XXI

 To the fourth one proceeds thus. It seems that the definition of virtue usually assigned is not fitting, to wit, virtue is good quality of mind, by which one lives rightly, which no one uses badly, which God works in us without us. For virtue is human goodness, which is that which one having it good. But goodness does not seem to be good, as neither whiteness white. Therefore it is unfitting to say that virtue is good quality.

Further, no difference is more common than its genus, because it is divisive of the genus. But good is more common than quality, for it is converted with being. Therefore good ought not to be put in the definition of virtue as difference of quality.

Further, as Augustine says in De Trin. XII, where something occurs primarily that is not common to us and to cattle, it pertains to mind. But some virtues are also of irrational parts, as the Philosopher says in Ethic. III. Therefore not every virtue is good quality of mind.

Further, it seems rightness pertains to justice, so that the same things are called right and just. But justice is a species of virtue. Therefore right is unfittingly placed in the definition of virtue, as is said, by which one lives rightly.

Further, whoever is proud of something, uses it badly. But many are proud of virtue, for Augustine says, in the rule, that pride also ambushes good works that they may perish. Therefore it is false that no one uses virtue badly.

Further, man is justified through virtue. But Augustine, on John, He shall do greater than these, that he who created you without you will not justify you without you. It is therefore inappropriately said that God works in us without us.

But contrariwise is the authority of Augustine, from whose words the aforementioned definition is collected, and especially in On Free Will II.

I reply that it must be said that this definition completely encompasses the whole notion of virtue. For the complete notion of whatsoever thing is collected from all of its causes. But the aforementioned definition encompasses all causes of virtue. 

(1) For the formal cause of virtue, as of anything, is taken from its genus and difference, so it is called good quality, for quality is the genus of virtue and good the difference. However, it would be a more fitting definition if habitude were put instead of quality, which is the closest genus.

(2) Now virtue does not have from-which matter, as neither do other accidents, but it has about-which matter and in-which matter, to wit, the subject. The about-which matter is the object of virtue, which was not able to be placed in the aforementioned definition, because through the object the virtue is determined to the species, but here is assigned the definition of common virtue. Thus the subject is put in the material cause's place, when it is said that it is good quality of mind. 

(3) But the end of virtue, since it is working habitude, is the working itself. But it must be noted that some working habitudes are always to bad, such as vicious habitudes; while some are sometimes to good, sometimes to bad, as opinion has itself to true and to false; but virtue is habitude always having itself to good. Therefore, to distinguish virtue from those which always have themselves to bad, it is said, by which one lives rightly, but so as to distinguish it from those which sometimes have themselves to good, sometimes to bad, it is said, which no one uses badly.

(4) But the efficient cause of infused virtue, for which the definition is given, is God. According to this it is said, which God works in us without us. If this phrase is removed, the rest of the definition will be common to all virtues, both acquired and infused.

To the first therefore it must be said that what first falls into the intellect is being, whence we attribute everything apprehended by us to being, and so by consequence one and good, which are converted with being. Thus we say that beingness [essentia] is being and one and good, and that oneness is being and one and good, and likewise for goodness. But this does not have a place in specific forms, such as whiteness and health, for everything we apprehend, we do not apprehend under the notions of white or health. But nonetheless it must be considered that as accidents and non-subsisting forms are called beings, not because they themselves have actual being but because something is by him, so also they are called good and one, not indeed by some other goodness or oneness, but because something by them is good and one. So therefore virtue is also called good because by it something is good.

To the second it must be said that the good put in the definition of virtue is not common good, which is converted with being, and is in more than quality, but it is the good of reason, according to what Dionysius says in Div. Nom. ch IV, that the good of the soul is according to reason.

To the third it must be said that virtue is not able to be in the irrational part of the soul, save inasmuch as it participates reason, as is said in Ethic. I., as therefore reason, or mind is the proper subject of virtue.

To the fourth it must be said that justice is its own rightness that is constituted about external things that come into human use, which are the proper matter of justice, as will be obvious below. But rightness which implies order to due end and to divine law, which is the rule of human will, as was said above, is common to all virtue.

To the fifth it must be said that someone is able to use virtue badly as an object, such as when he feels badly about virtue when he hates it or is proud of it, but not as a source of use, so that the act of virtue is bad.

To the sixth it must be said that infused virtue is caused in us by God without our acting, yet not without our consenting. And so it must be understood when it is said that God works in us without us. But what is enacted through us, God does not cause in us without our acting, for he himself works in all will and nature.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.55.4, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.] 

Thus, taking all of this together, virtue is rational habitude ordered solely to what is good by reason, by which one's actions are regulated according to due end and divine law. Infused virtue is caused by God with our consenting but not through our acting; acquired virtue is caused by God working through our own acting. (Note that Aquinas very clearly does not say in the reply to the sixth objection that acquired virtue is caused by us rather than God.)

This passage, incidentally, is why one should understand the discussions of virtue in the Summa to be primarily about infused virtue, although, of course, Aquinas often uses the analogy between acquired and infused moral virtues to explain the latter.

It's an interesting question how this definition relates to Aristotle's definition of virtue: virtue is habitude of choice consisting in a mean relative to us as determined by the reason of a prudent person. Aquinas's reorganization of the concept of habitude means that all rational habitudes involve choice in some way or another, so that is already here, and reason of a prudent person (who is concerned with regulation according to due end, which Aquinas elsewhere calls regulation by reason); the mean relative to us as decided by such reason is Aristotle's way of talking about regulating our action toward good. Thus, there is a way to identify a correspondence between the two. 

Nonetheless, while St. Thomas doesn't think that Aristotle's definition is wrong, he thinks it has a serious limitation, one which comes up when he later discusses the mean of virtue. On Aquinas's account, all virtues can in some sense be said to involve a mean relative to us. Moral and intellectual virtues both essentially consist in a mean, and this is true whether they are acquired or infused. But theological virtues (faith, hope, charity) are more complicated because their proper rule and measure is God Himself, not us (even, as with the infused moral virtues, considering us as raised by grace to be members of the Kingdom of Heaven). This is not to say that they don't have a mean relative to us (they do because that's how we are structured); it's just that, since they are in fact ordered to God rather than us, that mean is incidental rather than essential to their nature, arising from our conditions rather than the conditions of the virtues themselves. What the theological virtues consist in by their own nature is not the mean of reason but the infinity of God.

The Feast of St. Agnes

Beside a Bright and Glassy Heaven-Sea

Beside a bright and glassy heaven-sea
One lights the lamps of truth, the One Alone,
the High Priest of all high eternity
who lifts all prayers up before the throne.
Remember now the Bridegroom, who still waits,
the Virgin standing near with Spirit's breath,
and walk with confidence through heaven's gates,
with roses prayed against the bonds of death.
Now rising to the milky river's washing-shore
the starry sheep from woolly folds all run.
The heavens open wide like swinging door,
and we like owls blink quickly in the sun. 

Thus cast aside the flashy lights of care;
take heart in heaven, young but ancient-old,
which casts a light unseen and scents the air
like beads of incense burning bright and bold.
Through hands then, by some channel, deep within
the prayers roll upon the blessed string
and one by one march out to conquer sin
in subtle ways that none can know or say,
so that a sabbath-rest wells up inside
on St. Agnes' day, the lamblike day
when Bridegroom bows to greet his glowing Bride.

A Poem of St. Agnes

The little lambs on heaven's field
remind me of a girl who fought
against the darkness, for the fair,
whose heart was free from trembling fear,
who would not falter, did not fail,
but held her ground against the foe.
"I faithful stay to Spouse and Friend,
my Jesus; I am truly free
with him," she said, her voice not faint.
And then she bent her head, with faith
exposed her neck. The death-stroke fell.

Links of Note

 * Tapio Korte, Ari Maunu, and Tuomo Aho, Modal logic from Kant to possible worlds semantics (PDF)

* Rob Alspaugh, Delectatio, Gaudium, Fruitio, at "Teaching Boys Badly"

* Adam Harmer, Leibniz on determinateness and possible worlds (PDF)

* Edward Feser, Church History Does Not Support Trump's Expansionism, at "First Things"

* Edward Feser, Socratic Politics: Lessons from the Gorgias

* Stephen Schmid, Suárez and the problem of final causation (PDF)

* John Psmith reviews George Polya's How to Solve It, at "Mr. and Mrs. Smith's Bookshelf"

* Matthew K. Minerd, The Metaphysics of Non-Being, at "The Journal of Absolute Truth"

* Markus E. Schlosser, Causal exclusion and overdetermination (PDF)

* Fulton Sheen is expected to be beatified soon.

* Emily Thomas, The shape of time, at "Aeon"

* Andrew Bacon, The Broadest Necessity (PDF)

* William Lambert, Iris Murdoch's Dog's Tooth, at "Short Views"

* João Marcos, Adam Přenosil, Paul Egré, Many-Valued Logic, at the SEP

* Aleksandra Gomułczak, Ingarden’s Criticism of Twardowski’s Philosophical Programme and the Reception of Phenomenology in the Lvov-Warsaw School (PDF)

* Flame & Light, Fictional Characters as Dependent Intentional Objects

I Made My Heart into a Sky

 Yesterday
by Nora May French 

Now all my thoughts were crisped and thinned
To elfin threads, to gleaming browns.
Like tawny grasses lean with wind
They drew your heart across the downs.
Your will of all the winds that blew
They drew across the world to me,
To thread my whimsey thoughts of you
Along the downs, above the sea.

Beneath a pool beyond the dune--
So green it was and amber-walled
A face would glimmer like a moon
Seen whitely through an emerald--
And there my mermaid fancy lay
And dreamed the light and you were one,
And flickered in her sea-weed’s sway
A broken largesse of the sun.

Above the world as evening fell
I made my heart into a sky,
And through a twilight like a shell
I saw the shining sea-gulls fly.
I found between the sea and land
And lost again, unwrit, unheard,
A song that fluttered in my hand
And vanished like a silver bird.

Habitude XX

 To the third one proceeds thus. It seems that it is not part of the notion of virtue to be good habitude. For sin is always drawn from bad. But there is also in sin some virtue; according to I Cor XV, the virtue of sin is law. Therefore virtue is not always good habitude.

Further, virtue relates to power. But power does not only have itself toward good, but also toward bad; according to Isaiah V, Woe to you who are powerful toward drinking wine, and strong men to mixing drunkenness. Therefore virtue also has itself toward good and toward bad.

Further, according to the Apostle, II Cor XII, virtue is completed in weakness. But weakness is a sort of badness. Therefore virtue does not have itself only toward good but also toward bad.

But contrariwise is what Augustine says, in the book on the customs of the Church, that no one doubts that virtue makes the soul optimal. And the Philosopher says, in Ethic. II, that virtue is what makes the one having it good and renders his work good.

I reply that it must be said that, as was said above, virtue implies completion of power, whence the virtue of anything is determined to the limit in which that thing is able to be, as is said in On the Heavens I. Now the limit in which whatsoever power is able to be needs to be good, for every bad implies a sort of defect; wherefore Dionysius in De Div. Nom. chap. IV says that every badness is weak. And according to this it is needful that virtue be said of whatever thing in terms of ordering to good. Thus human virtue, which is working habitude, is good habitude, and working of good [bonus habitus et boni operativus].

To the first therefore it must be said that, as complete, so also good is said metaphorically of bad things, as is said of a complete thief or robber and a good thief or robber, as is clear from the Philosopher in Metaphys. V. According to this, therefore, virtue is also said metaphorically of bad things. And thus the virtue of sin is called law inasmuch as sin is occasionally increased through law, and as it were comes to the maximum of its ability.

To the second it must be said that the badness of drunkenness and excessive drinking consists in a defect of rational ordering. But it happens, with defect of reason, that there is some inferior power complete as to its own kind, even with repugnance to or defect of reason. But completeness of such power, because it is with defect of reason, is not said to be human virtue.

To the third it must be said that reason is shown to be more complete the more it can overcome or endure the weakness of the body and the inferior parts. And therefore human virtue, which is attributed to reason, is said to be completed in weakness, but weakness of body and the inferior parts.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.55.3, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.]

All Pain and Peril of Seraphic Wars

 The Tides of Change
by George Sterling

Wherewith is Beauty fashioned? Canst thou deem
Her evanescent roses bourgeon save
Within the sunlight tender on her grave?
Awake no winds but bear her dust, a gleam
In morning’s prophecy or sunset’s dream;
And every cry that ever Sirens gave
From islands mournful with the quiring wave
Was echo of a music once supreme.
All æons, conquests, excellencies, stars,
All pain and peril of seraphic wars,
Were met to shape thy soul’s divinity.
Pause, for the breath of gods is on thy face!
The ghost of dawns forgotten and to be
Abides a moment in the twilight’s grace.

Dashed Off II

 People crave and seek for a kind of infinity in every aspect of their life -- in ability and in pleasure, in access and in reward, in sex and politics and entertainment and work. Unable actually to achieve it, we either roam restlessly from one thing to another, or try to find symbolic substitutes of the infinite, or ape the infinite by breaking boundaries and crossing lines as if doing so were itself infinity.

life as occurring within cycles: energy cycle, oxygen cycle, various material cycles, chronological cycles, ecosystemic cycles

All coherent and adequate theories of experimental inquiry require both free decision and free choice in the experiment inquirers.

Norton's "Causation as Folk Science" only establishes that 'cause' is not univocal, not that the world is not fundamentally causal.

To be usable in an ensemble, an experiment must be abstractible from its history.

sat (true) as mearked by being trikalaabaadhyam (available always) [cf. Shankara, Brahma Sutra Bhasya 1.1.2]

"That ominscient and omnipotent source must be Brahman from which occur the birth, continuance, and dissolution of this unvierse that is manifested through name and form, that is associated with diverse agents and experiences, that provides the support for actions and results, having well-regulated space, time, and causation, and that defies all thoughts about the real nature of its creation." Shankara

People regularly attribute to the state powers that it is difficult to see how it could have unless citizens were natural slaves, with the state as their master.

Many fine arts proceed by massive numbers of revisions of the same thing, which are made more manageable by (1) development of a planning process (2) ongoing anticipation of kinds of revision that will be needed (3) blocking and chunking and layering of revisions of specific kinds (4) condensation of multiple stages of revision into one by experience or ingenuity.

For a number of rights, we have both personal title (with respect to the community of persons) and human title (with respect to the human community specifically), just as we often give civil title for rights to which personal and human title already exist.

No legal system is hermetically sealed from all others.

change to a philosophical system by
(a) formal pressures (objections and replies)
(b) quasi-material pressures (changes in available archive of evidence, etc.)
(c) agential pressures (imposition from outside)
(d) final pressures (internal refinement and following of implications)
(e) accidental gain, loss, and drift

Exodus 9:16 and the Great Commission

substantial inexhaustibility of inquiry
(1) mathematical and logical infinity of domain
(2) indefinite artifactual expansion (cognitive & material)
(3) inexhaustibility of persons

Over time, human beings pull apart philosophical systems into aphorisms and then re-form and re-systematize them.

If there is error, there is omniscience in light of which it is genuinely error.

Freedom only becomes real to the extent one can answer the question, "Freedom for what?"

A person generally has reasons to favor her own reasons over those of others, namely, greater familiarity and more common understanding.

We accept things on memory not because we have experiences of confirmed memory but because memory is already on the premises: experiences of disconfirmed memory may qualify our acceptance, but even they cannot prevent memory often being a starting point. We accept memory because it is always already there.

The phenomena of archeology are detritus, artifacts, and other traces specifically insofar as they are associatable with a timeline.

central market, circuit market, and periodic market forms of intellection interaction

"...we are bound to be baptized in the terms we have received, and to profess belief in the terms in which we are baptized, and as we have professed belief in, so to give glory to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit..." Basil
"I, however, call on all who trust in Christ not to busy themselves in opposition to the ancient faith,b ut, as we believe, so to be baptized, and as we are baptized, so to offer the doxology."
"As we are baptized, so we profess our belief. As we profess our belief, so also we offer praise."

"History is largely meaning." Lonergan

To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see: none of the are the same as perceiving.

The interesting thing about Hume's 'when I enter most intimately into what I call *myself*' is the unexplained notion of 'entering', which is taken as already obvious in meaning.

Perceptions overlap with perceptions both as to act and as to object.

if we say 'X is predictable from Y', we must explicate this 'from Y'; people are not usually meaning that we treat Y as a divine omen or magical oracle, for instance.

unintentional humor vs wit

knowing how as a rationally selective tendency to hit a mark

'Intelligent action' involves not just acts from know-how but also acts to know-how.

We may know how to do something before we know what it is.

objecthood --> co-objecthood --> general objectivity

the use of non-insight in inquiry

Impressions only become ideas in relation.

Abilities have integral, subjective, and potential parts.

Given any experience, we form ideas of similarity, contiguity, and causality with respect to it.

In psychoanalysis, one reshapes oneself to the model of humanity used in that form of psychoanalysis, simulating it in oneself and attempting to instrumentalize that simulation to particular ends.

A continual temptation in academia is the temptation to treat scaffolding as substance.

"One promotes progress by being attentive, intelligent, reasonable, responsible not only in all one's cognitional operations but also in all one's speech and writing." Lonergan

Inquiry is only as authentic as the liberty by which it is done.

"A society which wants to preserve a fund of personal knowledge must submit to a tradition." Polanyi
"The large amount of time spent by students of chemistry, biology and medicine in their practical courses shows how greatly these sciences rely on the transmission of skills and connoisseurship from master to apprentice."

Sometimes inquiries just need a starting point, and any initial assumption will do; these cases seem to be when the inquiry is to find investigating material. In other cases, the assumptions structure the inquiry and its potential, and must be selected carefully.

Through the instrumentality of his humanity, Christ gives us grace not merely individually but also communally. There are specific graces for the Church as a social entity, a moral person.

Historically the creeds have not only settled doctrine but have been used by laity to hold bishops to account and as guides in the interpretation of common law.

How often do we think we are being just or kind when in reality we are just being silly? As with all things worth doing, developing the real quality involves much blundering. Thus we should also give some good will toward those we see blundering.

In matters of morality, we often confuse urgency and overall importance; the common morality of every age treats some things that are merely matters of urgent attention in a society as if they were definitive for all morality.

validity as obligation to conclude, invalidity as permissibility not to conclude

In matters involving the state, start with determination of authority, not the assumption of it.

We can only bind ourselves because we are already normatively bound.

What is known per se is necessary for theoretical reason and normative for practical reason.

It is easier to have a character arc for a shallow character than for a deep one; deep character is slow-changing.

Most character arcs involve no character development, just character adjustment to new situations.

The simplicity of notation of physical law is somewhat misleading because it hides (e.g.) the entire apparatus of real number arithmetic and analysis.

A notation distinguishes what can be taken for granted and what needs in the circumstances to be tracked.

-- Spinors involve rotations whose properties are path-dependent, such that these properties can be differentiated into classes that differ by sign.
-- Spinors seem to represent the spatial affordances of rotatable things -- the ability of things to rotate without their spatially structured relationships 'tangling' -- which seems to be why they can represent all known material particles.
-- Note that physicists often attempt to train intuition for spinors using orientation entanglement scenarios and the need to distinguish twisted and untwisted cases.

Andrew M. Steane, "An introduction to spinors": "One could say that a spinor is the most basic sort of mathematical object that can be Lorentz-transformed." "It [a rank-1 spinor] can be pictured as a vector with two further features: a 'flag' that picks out a plane in space containing the vector, and an overall sign." "The spinior has a direction in space (flagpole), an orientation about this axis ('flag'), and an overall sign...."

Three Poem Drafts

The Death of Turpin

The Archbishop on swooning Roland gazed
and to his quick he felt the pang of grief;
he seized a helmet close at hand; his mind
was all to aid the knights, lest death they meet.
Not far, he thought, a river runs its course;
it flows with healing water cold, clean, and clear;
and with the helmet from that crystal deep
perhaps he could retrieve a balming drink.
He rose, unsteady, legs in tumbling sway,
all airy felt his head, and near to swoon.
A sudden ache like lightning pierced his brow;
his hand to head, he felt the flowing blood.
With step by slowing step, he walked, but faint
he felt, and might like shadows fled,
and forward down he went, in dreadful pain,
as, deathful, thus found Turpin paradise.

Early Night Scene 

The cricket-sounds are dawning, bright with cheer,
as moths like dust in flurries float away;
the leaves are swaying softly there and here
as evening casts aside the dizzy day.
The grass is wet, as wind in breathing coolly sighs,
and little evening primrose, pink and fair,
in swaying dance like maiden fresh but wise
gives heed to cricket-courtiers gathered there.
Above, the sky with countless seeing gleams
looks down untroubled with its purple face
and, tearful, drops down misty bits of dreams
that settle on my head, and every place.

Wandering

Oh, I
am the fool who wanders lost
through the pain and bitter cost
as I search in hope
for you,
the sad sorrow in my sighs,
the truth amidst the lies,
my Muse who never dies,
till justice renders due,
and I,
though I weep for moments gone,
old remembrances of the dawn,
yet still I seek
for you,
who, a sun in heaven's sky,
my polestar and my why,
can give me wings to fly
with rightful heart and true.

My Face Turned Upward to Pale Gleams that Stray

 By Moonlight
by Nora May French

Is this the world I knew? Beneath the day
It glowed with golden heat, with vivid hues --
Mountains and sky that merged in melting blues
And hazy air that shimmered far away.

This world is white beneath a silver sky --
White with pale brightness, luminously chill.
The moon reigns queen, but faintly shining still
The dim stars glimmer on the hilltops high. 

Here, where long grasses touch across the stream
That threads with babbling laugh its narrow way,
My face turned upward to pale gleams that stray
Through whispering willow boughs ... I dream and dream.

Habitude XIX

 To the second one proceeds thus. It seems that it is not proper to the notion of human virtue that it be working habitude. For Tully says, in Tuscul. quest. IV, that as health and bodily beauty, so too virtue of the soul. But health and beauty are not working habitudes. Thus neither is virtue.

Further, in natural things virtue is found not only to be to act but also to being, as is obvious from the Philosopher in On the Heavens I, that some things have virtue so that they are always, but some not so that they are always, but for some determinate time. But as virtue has itself in natural things, so human virtue has itself in rational things. Therefore human virtue is also not only to act but to being.

Further, the Philosopher says in Physic. VII that virtue is the disposition of the complete to the optimal. But the optimal to which human beings should be disposed through virtue is God himself, as Augustine proves in book II of the customs of the Church; to whom the soul is disposed through likening to him. Therefore it seems that virtue names a sort of quality of soul in ordering to God to the extent of likening to him but not in ordering to operation. Therefore it is not a working habitude.

But contrariwise is what the Philosopher says in Ethic. II, that virtue in whatsoever thing is that which renders its work good. 

I reply that it must be said that virtue, from the very notion of the name, involves a sort of completion of power, as said above. Thus, as power is twofold, to wit, power to be and power to act, the completion of each being called virtue. But the power to be holds on the part of matter, which is potential being, but the power to act holds on the part of form, which is the source of acting, because each thing acts inasmuch as it is actual. But in human constitution, body has itself as matter but soul as form. And with respect to the body, the human being shares with other animals, and likewise with impulses common to soul and body, but those powers that only are proper to the soul, to wit, rational, are human as such. And thus human virtue, of which one speaks, is not able to pertain to the body, but pertains as such to what is proper to the soul. Thus human virtue does not involve ordering to being but rather to acting. And so it is in the notion of virtue that it is working habitude.

To the first, therefore, it must be said that the mode of action follows the disposition of the one acting, for each thing, in the way it is, works in such a way. And so, because virtue is the source of some working, it ought to be that in the one working there pre-exists according to some virtue some corresponding [conformis] disposition. Now virtue makes an ordered working. And so virtue itself is a sort of ordered disposition in the soul, to wit, inasmuch as powers of the soul are ordered to one another somehow, and to what is outside them. And so, virtue, inasmuch as it is fitting disposition of the soul, is likened to health and beauty, which are due dispositions of body. But this does not hinder virtue from being a source of working.

 To the second it must be said that virtue that is to being is not proper to the human being, but only virtue that is to rational works, which are proper to the human being.

To the third it must be said that, because the substance of God is his action, the highest likening of the human being to God is according to some working. Thus, as was said above, happiness or blessedness, through which the human being is most conformed to God, which is the end of human life, consists in working. 

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.55.2, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.]

In Habitude VIII, we completed a taxonomy of natural habitudes that looked like this:

NATURAL HABITUDES INSOFAR AS THEY ARE ORDERED TO NATURE 

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

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

NATURAL HABITUDES INSOFAR AS THEY ARE ORDERED TO OPERATION 

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

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

What this and the previous article are investigating is how virtues, as rational habitudes, relate to this taxonomy. They have established

(1) Virtues are rational habitudes;

(2) Rational habitudes are not natural habitudes, and therefore require their own compartment in the classification;

(3) The analogy between rational habitudes and natural habitudes is real but limited;

(4) All rational habitudes, as orderings of rational powers, are ordered to operation on the part of the soul.

Links of Note

 * Juan Carlos Gonzalez, Finding Aristotle: An Unspoken Debt in Kant's Teleology (PDF)

* The "Public Domain Review" discusses some of the things that became public domain in the United States on January 1.

* Chih-Wei Peng, Primal Wonder as a Sprout of Intellectual Virtue (PDF)

* James Chastek, Divine Permission of Evil, at "Just Thomism"

* Suki Finn, Deflating Fictionalism (PDF)

* William Friedman, Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality Is a Disney Movie About a Serial Killer, at "As Our Days"

* Esther Berry, Dependent Rational Animals, at "The Literate Woman"

* Elena Cagnoli Fiecconi, Enmattered Virtues (PDF)

* James Franklin's book, The Necessities Underlying Reality, is currently open access.

* Nik Prassas, The Break, on David Jones's Art and Sacrament, at "Nik's Substack"

Benevolence and Self-Love

 There is a natural principle of benevolence in man, which is in some degree to society, what self-love is to the individual. And if there be in mankind any disposition to friendship; if there be any such thing as compassion, for compassion is momentary love; if there be any such things as the paternal of filial affections; if there be any affection in human nature, the object and end of which is the good of another; this is itself benevolence, or the love of another. Be it even so short, be it in ever so low a degree, or ever so unhappily confined; it proves the assertion, and points out what we were designed for, as really as though it were in a higher degree and more extensive. I must however remind you, that though benevolence and self-love are different; though the former tends most directly to public good, and the latter private; yet there are so perfectly coincident, that the greatest satisfactions to ourselves depend: upon our having benevolence in a due degree; and that self-love is one chief security of our right behaviour towards society. It may be added, that their mutual coinciding, so that we can scarce promote one without the other, is equally a proof that we were made for both.

Joseph Butler, Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel, Sermon I: Upon the Social Nature of Man

Circumstantiae

 In Chapter XXXIIII ("The Spinster Loses Some Sleep") of Owen Wister's The Virginia, we find the narrator turns the narrative into a brief discussion of ethics. The Virginian has been involved in a lynching of cattle rustlers; Molly Wood is struggling with this as a matter of conscience. Judge Henry is attempting to think through what he should say to her about it; a former federal judge, he doesn't approve of vigilantism in general, but he's also a Wyoming man who knows that the standard mechanisms of law cannot keep up with cattle rustlers enough to prevent them from degrading the entire social order into what is effectively a system of organized crime -- he has seen it happen. At this point, the narrator himself voices an opinion:

I cannot say that I believe in doing evil that good may come. I do not. I think that any man who honestly justifies such course deceives himself. But this I can say: to call any act evil, instantly begs the question. Many an act that man does is right or wrong according to the time and place which form, so to speak, its context; strip it of its surrounding circumstances, and you tear away its meaning. Gentlemen reformers, beware of this common practice of yours! beware of calling an act evil on Tuesday because that same act was evil on Monday!

As a narrative device, this works quite well in context -- Wister is not just telling a tale of Wyoming cowboys but trying to portray their culture sympathetically to people who do not share it. Aware of his audience, he recognizes that he needs to give the reader, just like Molly Wood, an actual way to see The Virginian's integrity and honor despite the foreignness of his ways. From this point he therefore goes on to provide an actual philosophical argument for his exhortation:

 On Monday I walk over my neighbor's field; there is no wrong in such walking. By Tuesday he has put up a sign that trespassers will be prosecuted according to law. I walk again on Tuesday, and am a law-breaker. Do you begin to see my point? or are you inclined to object to the illustration because the walking on Tuesday was not WRONG, but merely ILLEGAL? Then here is another illustration which you will find it a trifle more embarrassing to answer. Consider carefully, let me beg you, the case of a young man and a young woman who walk out of a door on Tuesday, pronounced man and wife by a third party inside the door. It matters not that on Monday they were, in their own hearts, sacredly vowed to each other. If they had omitted stepping inside that door, if they had dispensed with that third party, and gone away on Monday sacredly vowed to each other in their own hearts, you would have scarcely found their conduct moral. Consider these things carefully,—the sign-post and the third party,—and the difference they make. And now, for a finish, we will return to the sign-post. 

 Suppose that I went over my neighbor's field on Tuesday, after the sign-post was put up, because I saw a murder about to be committed in the field, and therefore ran in and stopped it. Was I doing evil that good might come? Do you not think that to stay out and let the murder be done would have been the evil act in this case? To disobey the sign-post was RIGHT; and I trust that you now perceive the same act may wear as many different hues of right or wrong as the rainbow, according to the atmosphere in which it is done. It is not safe to say of any man, “He did evil that good might come.” Was the thing that he did, in the first place, evil? That is the question.

Thus the narrator's argument is that change of circumstances can change the nature of the act in such a way that our judgment of its morality reasonably changes. If I cross a field on Monday, when I have no reason to think there is legal reason for me not to do so, and if I cross a field on Tuesday when there is a posted No Trespassing sign, I am in some sense doing the same thing, but the character of the action has changed. The legal difference makes a difference to the moral assessment. Very often, whether an act is moral or immoral depends on whether certain conditions are met, but circumstances can change whether the conditions are met. They can also shift what conditions are met. Thus if I ignore a No Trespassing sign because I am preventing a murder, the narrator says, the action is right. And very importantly, it's not a wrong action done for good reason (evil that good may come), but simply a good action. 

In ST 2-1.18.10, St. Thomas Aquinas considers what is essentially this same question: Can circumstance place moral action in the class of good or evil? The superficial reason why not is that circumstances are accidental to the nature or substance of the act itself, but in natural things the accidents do not change the nature of that in which they inhere. But, says Aquinas, this is because natural things are determinate to one and always come down to an ultimate form, so there's no way for a circumstance to contribute to what the thing is. It is not so in human actions, because reason is not determinate to one and for any particular reason why you might do something the way you do, you could have an even more basic reason. In natural things, the starting point for everything is fixed; in rational matters, we can choose our starting point. The nature or substance of an action is what Aquinas calls the object; it is what you are actually choosing to do; if we add a circumstance to it, this can sometimes be added in such a way that it specifies a precondition of the object, without changing the object itself but in such a way that it changes whether the action should be classified as good or bad:

Thus to appropriate another's property is specified by reason of the property being "another's," and in this respect it is placed in the species of theft; and if we consider that action also in its bearing on place or time, then this will be an additional circumstance. But since the reason can direct as to place, time, and the like, it may happen that the condition as to place, in relation to the object, is considered as being in disaccord with reason: for instance, reason forbids damage to be done to a holy place. Consequently to steal from a holy place has an additional repugnance to the order of reason. And thus place, which was first of all considered as a circumstance, is considered here as the principal condition of the object, and as itself repugnant to reason.

In general, this circumstantial sensitivity occurs when the circumstance shifts whether the object is concordant or discordant with reason, since the morality of an action is fundamentally about how it relates to reason. This means, first, that shift in classification is not necessarily done by only one circumstance; it could happen by a combination of circumstances. It further means that, depending on how they relate to reason's direction of the act, circumstances may have no effect at all on whether an action is moral or immoral, or may make it better or worse without changing whether it is moral or immoral (obvious examples being when the circumstances provide some excuse for a wrong action without making it cease to be wrong, or when there are better or worse ways to do something like being honest with someone), or they could shift entirely whether it is right or wrong.

In Wister's sign-post example, the new legal circumstance created by the posted regulation affects how the action will be reasoned through in the reasoning of a sensible person. The example makes it sound like it's a difference of time, but in fact it's being Monday or Tuesday is not relevant to the rightness or wrongness of the action. Aquinas follows Aristotle and Cicero in identifying eight circumstances of an action: who, what, about what, where, by what aids, why, in what way (or how), when. When is not the relevant morality-shifting circumstance, although it could in a situation where a deadline of some sort were set. The circumstance here seems to be what; on Monday you were not doing something that could be itself classified as trespassing, but on Tuesday you are. In the wedding case, the circumstances that make the shift seem to be how and by what, although that might depend on the exact intention of the parties. Early in the book, we see a change of circumstances that matters; Steve, The Virginian's friend, calls him a 'son of a bitch', and Trampas, soon to be The Virginian's enemy, also calls him a 'son of a bitch'; this is certainly affected by the circumstance who (Steve is a longtime friend, and therefore has more leeway than Trampas), but in context the most important circumstance is how, which we see as the scene with Trampas results in one of the most famous lines in Western fiction: "When you call me that, smile." In Steve's case it was obviously done in a good-natured, affectionate way; Trampas was being mean. 

In the case of the lynching of the cattle rustlers, this is a much more complicated situation. The what is killing human beings, which makes it (everyone in the story rightly agrees) a very grave action. The who, the about what, and the why are all important here: this is an honest attempt to serve genuine justice by punishing thieves with respect to a serious crime for which justice is difficult to obtain. In all of these circumstances the action fares better than (to use the contrast that is explicitly used in The Virginian) the lynching of Southern blacks, whose who, why, what, and about what make the latter an unmitigated evil. 

However there are further complications in the cattle rustling case, which is why the narrator is sympathetic to Molly Wood's crisis of conscience and Judge Henry's reservations. The how is mixed. It is defective, since it is done extralegally, which is why Judge Henry would prefer another way if there were one, although in this particular case it was done very carefully and with due regard for certain crude basics -- for instance, they have made very sure that the people they will be hanging are indeed the cattle rustlers who have been causing problems throughout the area. But The Virginian himself struggles with the action because of other who circumstances -- his position means that he, himself, has a special obligation to protect his men from the problems caused by cattle rustlers, but one of the cattle rustlers he is going to have to hang is his friend Steve. The narrator effectively argues that the lynching is right; but we see that the circumstances complicate the matter by making it defective in various ways, even if the circumstances don't change the fact that it is right. Other circumstances, like when and by what aids play no significant role in the moral decisionmaking itself, although under the circumstances, where perhaps does play an indirect role in how we assess whether the reasoning is appropriate (the same actions done for the same reasons would be more of a problem in the East than they are in the West).

On Aquinas's account, why and what are always the most important circumstances, so while they are not always determinative for morality in themselves (they could just shift how well or badly the action is done), they are the circumstances most likely to shift an action between being good and being bad. What should be distinguished from the object, i.e., what you are choosing to do, which is not a circumstance but the substance of the action; rather, it's more like the classification of the object in light of its context. Why is so important because it is the way the object of the action relates to things more important than itself. What is more, how important the other circumstances are almost always depends on their relation to why and what, and how they interact with those. This is also seen in the cattle rustler case, in which it matters very much why The Virginian and his fellow cowboys are hanging the cattle rustlers, and what the action means in the context of the budding and as-yet unstable civilization of Wyoming; it is these that give us the reason to recognize that, however short of the ideal the action itself might be, the action is nonetheless an expression of integrity and honor and justice. The justice is circumstantially defective, but genuinely just.

All of this is quite interesting, both Wister's basic argument and the fact that it fits so well with St. Thomas's account, in part because people do not always do well in taking circumstances into account. We tend to see this kind of reasoning as making the world 'shades of gray' and contrast it with 'black and white', which people often prefer. This is highly misleading. The fact that circumstances can shift an action back and forth over the border between good and bad does not make the distinction between good and bad any less sharp. The fact that our actions are complicated increases what we have to consider to assess their goodness or badness, but good and evil are not affected by our complicated relationship to each. There's a danger that one might read Wister's argument, or St. Thomas's, as a sort of relativism; but neither is claiming that good and bad are relative but that our actions are to be assessed by what is relevant to our reasons for them. If you take bread that is not yours, it matters whether you are doing so maliciously or to feed your family. If you tell the truth to someone, it matters whether you are doing so to hurt them or because you believe they have a right to know. If you try to help someone, it matters how you go about doing it. Whether or not you are breaking the law depends on where and when in the world you are. You have different obligations to different people, so to whom you do things can matter. The categories of good and bad are not complicated by this; what is complicated is how our actions are classified in those terms.

Actions are good and bad in terms of how they fit with reason, and circumstances are how even actions the same in themselves can be differently related to reason. The circumstances are not the only thing that affect the morality of the action (obviously the object of the action is the starting point), but they do affect it.

Dashed Off I

 As always, dashed off thoughts; these continue from the notebook begun at the end of July 2024.

***

Nehemiah & the role of the laity

The first principle of all scholarship is extensive acquaintance.

We want not the satisfaction of our preferences, but *no worse* than the satisfaction of our preferences, for we all recognize that there are cognitive and appetitive limits to our ability to prefer.

We have inclinations more foundational than preference.

literature as a study of basic forms of goods (and challenges and temptations related to them): life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, sociability/friendship, practical reasonableness, religion

objectivity as usefulness across perspectives

The role of the external world as intersubjective medium rquires that it have both purposiveness and expressiveness.

How a society organizes sport tells you a great deal about the society. Sports teams as big business do not exist in little village games; leagues in highly organized societies do not have the flexibility of those that have often improvised local organization.

Repentance is a cousin of humor.

Much of the attraction people have toward sex has less to do with physical desire or pleasure than with the fleshly sublimity of the experience of overwhelming and being overwhelmed, our own animal natures experienced as sublime.

"There are, in the final analysis, only two ways of making a choice between alternative ways of co-ordinating action to the common purpose or common good of any group. There must be either unanimity, or authority. There are no other possibilities.' Finnis

Every legal system creates a band or region of the semi-legal, in which things fall under the law in uncertain or confused ways that heavily depend on things that are not laws, or eve clearly recognized by laws, and in which things that are not laws are inconsistently and confusedly treated as if they were.

cGh cube
Special relativity reduces to Newtonian mechanics as c approaches infinity; quantum mechanics reduces to classical mechanics as h-bar approaches 0; general relativity reduces to special relativity as G approaches 0. Classical mechanics: (0,0,0); relativistic quantum gravity: (c, G, h) = (with relevant choice of units) (1,1,1).

In changing things, the actual cannot exceed the potential actualized. The 'exceeds' needs clarification.

Flashback, in medias res, and flashforward are relations between plot and narrative.

We are forgivable because we are mortal.

high philosophy, low philosophy, wild philosophy

the periodic table as a system of confirmed analogical inferences

analogical inferences using plausible, probable, or proven connections (ordered similarities)

Not bare similarity but ordered similarity is usually the foundation of analogical inferences.

All human beings are at the same time both human and also inhuman expressions of the natural world.

"Intermediate causes extend the reach of the ultimate cause by their nature, and so also contribute their natures to its causal action." Chastek

The diversity of artificial classifications is sometimes based on diversity of natural classifications; that is to say, a set of related artificial classifications does not always converge on one natural classification but on a set of related natural classifications.

the multiplication of perspectives in the Church as the material of Christian culture

Reason according to those principles that could be true without qualification.
-- Reason according to those principles that could be applied to the entire system of things.
-- Reason according to those principles consistent with the existence and nature of reason.
-- Reason according to those principles that could consistently be used by the entire community of rational inquirers.

In matters of skill, act in such a way as allows skill and virtue to be consistent with each other.
-- In matters of skill, act in such a way as allows practices of skill to be consistent with friendships of excellence.

If we are not morally responsible for our actions, we are not intellectually responsible for our conclusions, and for similar reasons.

fas : religio :: ius : iustitia

You cannot have good statistics with sloppy classifications.

Sorrow is beautiful when it enriches.

endearments as negotiating conditions of vulnerability

Most of the benefits of intelligence arise from social cooperation.

"When the fear of the Lord breathes upon a person, that person begins to fear God and wisely advances towards the perfection of good and upright works." Hildegard von Bingen

viriditas as the opposite of ariditas (Hildegar)

People have a bad habit of treating evidence of complexity as if it were evidential ambiguity.

A single glance may give good evidence of existence; the conditions must be very tightly constrained for a single glance to give good evidence of nonexistence.

civil friendship as an end of civil disobedience

Every sacrament involves an implicit theology of salvation, as captured in symbol, in Scriptural association, and in functional role within the sacramental economy.

Hos 6:1-3 and the Resurrection

The act of explaining something posits sufficient reason for it.

punishment and correction as jural good

rule of law as based on the principle of legal order as neither optional, nor arbitrary, nor infeasible, and on opposition to attempts to treat it as one of these

reason, authority, and tradition as the sources of legal order

Signs are often nested in signs.

-esque aesthetic concepts and found art

Thomas Wilson's description of accident (The Rule of Reason (1551)): ' the thing chauncing or cleving to the substance'

Wolff's universal rule for free actions (see Walschots): do that which makes you and your state or that of another more perfect, omit that which makes it more imperfect. 
--perfection is "consensum in varietate" (thus he thinks of it as integration or unification of one's life)
Crusius's "highest foundation of natural law": do that which is in accordance with the perfection of God and your relation to him, and furthermore what is in accordance with the essential perfection of human nature, and omit the opposite.
Crusius's "complete concept of divine natural law": do everything that is in accordance with the perfection of God, the essential perfection of your own nature and that all other creatures, and finally also the relations of things to each other that he has established, and omit the opposite, out of obedience to the command of your creator, as your natural and necessary sovereign.
Mendelssohn's "first law of nature": make your intrinsic and extrinsic condition and that of your fellow human being, in the proper proportion, as perfect as you can.
Tittel's "principle of happiness": act in such a way that through your action and disposition the common world, the well-being of sensing and thinking natures -- thus also your own happiness -- is best preserved and promoted.
(Kant's categorical imperative is an attempt to improve on these kinds of principles.)

ostension as the root of pronominality; pronouns are signs of particular ostensions
-- note that we can and do supplement and even at times substitute actual ostension for pronouns (co-speech and pro-speech ostensions)

Pantomime tends to have an SOV order even when the pantomimers speak a language with a different order (See Goldin-Meadow et al, "The Natural Order of Events: How Speakers of Different Languages Represent Events Nonverbally".)

Discussions of social ontology often confuse
(1) treating X as Y
(2) intending to treat X as Y
(3) intending that X be treated as Y
(4) acting as if X were Y
(5) making X Y
(6) X being Y in a classification in use.
These can overlap, but are not the same, and make reference to different kinds of act.

The Son is that of which it may be said that it is always false that there was when He was not.

Jesus Christ is the Son of God in the most perfect sense of sonship, being of the Father, both naturally and by adoption, both as proceeding and as received and acclaimed; Son both literally and figuratively, both ontically and morally, both by inheritance and by merit. He is thus Son truly and preeminently, unique and firstborn with respect to all creation.

Box formation
(1) Rule of Necessitation
(2) exceptionlessness with respect to simple enumeration
(3) derivation from Box at least as strong
(4) Rule of General / Conditional Necessitation
(5) self-evidence
-- Even in the same domain, these cannot always be assumed to deliver the same kind of Box; this requires further assumptions to coordinate them.

Necessitation is a problem for doxastic logics because we assume one belief-track per believer and the same axioms across belief-tracks. That is, we assume that believing is neither chunky nor fragmentary.

provability logics as strong, idealized doxastic logics

Our beliefs seem to cluster around pramanas and to require construction.

It is a common experience to discover that we were already committed to something before anyone, including ourselves, took us to be, because commitment is just part of rational living, i.e., living as a rational animal. It is also a common experience to find that people are trying to commit us to things to which we are not in fact committed.

nBP (n Believes p) -> p if True is taken not as real but as projected. If T is projected it seems plausible that nBp -> nB(nBp), unless one has an account of 'projected as true' that makes it independent of belief.

rigor as express layout and examination of possible points of error

"Such is the nature of novelty, that, where any thing pleases, it becomes doubly agreeable, if new; but if it displeases, it is doubly displeasing upon that very account." Hume

fluvial vs pluvial inspiration

adhesive vs inhesive personal relationships

The history of Arianism shows the Church trying out many alternatives but repeatedly finding only the homoousios adequate.
anhomoian -- homoian -- homoiousian -- homoosuian; three of the four were systematically eliminated in a multi-century disjunctive syllogism.

Job 38:17 -- 'doorkeepers of the underworld trembled' and the descent of hell

We come to believe by practicing believing, across all the fields with respect to which we form beliefs.

Everyone interprets the physical world allegorically; we see this even in atheists who take the vastness or regularity or materiality of the universe as implying a moral view of one kind or another.

Many deteriorations are clearly caused by chance events, and thus arise insofar as the deteriorating thing's actions and passions do not have a final cause. We preserve things by preventing such chance events (or reducing their likeliness).

Habitude XVIII

 After this must be considered specific habitudes. And because habitudes, as was said, are distinguished through good and bad, first one must speak of good habitudes, which are virtues and other things adjoined to them, namely, gifts, beatitudes, and fruits; second, of bad habitudes, namely vices and sins. Now, about virtues, five things must be considered: first, the essence of virtue, second, its subject; third, the division of virtue; fourth, the cause of virtue; five, certain properties of virtue. About the first, four things must be asked. First, whether human virtue is habitude. Second, whether it is working habitude [habitus operativa]. Third, whether it is good habitude. Fourth, the definition of virtue.

To the first one proceeds thus. It seems that human virtue is not habitude. For virtue is the limit of power [ultimus potentiae], as is said in De Caelo I. But the limit of each thing is traced back to the genus of which it is the limit, as the point to the genus of the line. Therefore virtue is traced back to the genus of power, and not to the genus of habitude.

Further, Augustine says, in De Libero Arbit. II, that virtue is good use of free choice. But use of free choice is act. Therefore virtue is not habitude but act.

Further, we do not merit by habitudes but by acts; otherwise a human being would continuously merit, even sleeping. But we merit by virtues. Therefore virtues are not habitudes but acts.

Further, Augustine says, in the book De moribus Eccles., that virtue is order of love. And in the book of eighty-three quest. he says that ordering that is called virtue is enjoying what is to be enjoyed and using what is to be used. But order, or ordering, names either act or relatedness. Therefore virtue is not habitude, but act or relatedness.

Further, just as there are human virtues, there are natural virtues. But natural virtues are not habitudes, but sorts of powers. Therefore neither are human virtues. 

But contrariwise is that the Philosopher, in the book Predicament., posits kind of knowledge and virtue to be habitude.

I reply that it must be said that virtue names a kind of completion of power. But the completion of anything is considered chiefly in ordering to its end. But the end of power is act. Wherefore power is said to be complete according as it is determined to its act. But there are sorts of powers that are according to themselves determined to their acts, like active natural powers, and therefore such natural powers according to themselves are called virtues. But rational powers, which are proper to human beings, are not determined to one but have themselves indeterminate to many, are determined to act through habitude, as is obvious from what was said above. And therefore human virtues are habitudes.

Therefore to the first it must be said that sometimes virtue is said of that to which virtue is, to wit, either the object of virtue or its act, just as faith is sometimes called that which is believed, sometimes the believing itself, and sometimes the habitude itself by which one believes. Thus when it is said that virtue is the limit of power, 'virtue' is taken for the object of virtue. For that limit in which the power is able to be is that which is named the virtue of the thing, just as, if someone can carry a hundred pounds and no more, his power is considered according to a hundred pounds and not sixty. But the objection proceeded as if virtue were the limit of power essentially.

To the second it must be said that good use of free choice is said to be virtue according to the same reason, to wit, because it is that to which virtue is directed as its proper act. For the act of virtue is nothing other than good use of free choice.

To the third it must be said that we are said to merit something in two ways: (1) in one way, as by merit itself, in the way we are said to run by running, and in this way we merit by acts; (2) in another way, we are said to merit something as the principle of merit, and in this way we are said to run by moving power, and thus we are said to merit by virtues and habitudes.

To the fourth it must be said that virtue is called order or ordering of love as that to which it is virtue, for love in us is ordered through virtue.

To the fifth it must be said that natural powers are determined of themselves to one, but not rational powers. And therefore it is not similar, as was said.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.55.prol & 2-1.55.1, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.]

Virtue, of course, while not by any means the only kind of habitude, is the summit of them all, so it is essential for any serious study of habitude, and foundational for any study of human society and civilization. A key concept that is clearly in play here is that habitude is a principle of ordering and determination for actions that can in some way be otherwise (and thus for what is in some way fitting or appropriate rather than necessary), and in the case of virtue, for free actions.