Saturday, November 29, 2014

Dashed Off

Various scattered notes; I am still almost a year behind on uploading these.

per se (substance)
per accidens
-- simple
---- material (quantity)
---- formal (quality)
-- relative
---- principiated by substance
-------- material (passion)
-------- formal (action)
-------- composite (relation)
-------- part to whole (position
---- extrinsic to substance
-------- proximity (place)
-------- motion (time)
-------- addition (habitus)

category of habitus as being extrinsically affected without being measured (analogous to categories of time and place but involving no measure)

end, end salience, means restrictions, means availability conditions, circumstantial conditions, expressivity conditions, expressive salience

Note that Peirce argues that in an unlimited universe of discourse, every nontautologous universal proposition is false and every nonabsurd particular proposition is true.

Note that Peirce limits excluded middle to determinate individuals

the True modality as the Phemic Sheet

solicitude, rectitude, moderation, and constancy in inquiry

free indirect discourse as analogous to the voice of conscience

All genuine Christian reform is at least partly an improvement of catechesis.

Civility is always relative to a civilization.

confusions of tolerance and sloth

Law's foundation is in sacrament (=sign of allegiance).

"All the Commerce and Intercourse of the World is manag'd by Equivalents, conversation as well as Traffick." Astell
--> middle terms and their economy

incidental almsgiving vs solidarity-building almsgiving

The line between virtue and vice must always be drawn by virtue, not vice; by prudence, not by false simulacra.

Plato tends to attack not rhetorical acts but taking rhetoric to be a skill.

Envy is a narrative vice; it builds stories.

Gifts are not destroyed by recompense, or equivalence, or even the desire for it, but by demand rather than hope.

Nothing can be a genuine gift that is completely unopen to countergift; such unopenness is the mark of imposition rather than gift.

symmetries as ways of being selfsame (with respect to rotations, reflections, etc.)

Sameness always has a mode of sameness.

Aristotle's account of wealth defines it relative to the common good of a polis or a household.

'Limitless, yet utter limit; utter limit in activity generates yang, yet at the limit of activity is still; in stillness it generates yin, yet at the limit of stillness is active. Yin and yang are utter limit; utter limit is limitless.'

The end and structure of true teaching is love of the good.

Three Dialogues opens with Hylas and Philonous agreeing to take common sense as the standard.

Witness credibility in the context of courts is not just a matter of testimonial evidence but also of acts of cooperation with society, and courtesy to the court.

the object of a passion vs the target of a passion (we see in anger especially that they can come apart)

Music is the mathematics that touches the human heart.

Peirce's Thirdness as the category of narrative

the Gospels & Epistles as themselves first-century devotional practices

the account of exemplar causation implicit in Hume's discussions of testimony

exemplary causation in testimony, design, measurement

design arguments // testimonial arguments from miracles

resemblance and contiguity as causal notions

procession | solemn greeting | Christ's presence
Introit | Kyrie | in synaxis
Gospel | Alleluia | in word
Sanctus | Sanctus | in sacrament

'The path that can be laid out is not the ongoing path.'

Interrogations are structured by penalties.

self-correction, redundancy, cooperation, and continuity as intrinsic defenses of a tradition

the role of revisitation in argument

It makes no sense to talk about trade-offs unless you know why you are trading off in the first place.

There is no vocation without covenant.

Hume's general account of sympathy makes it so that it is not necessarily sympathy with anyone.
Humean sympathy works like a reverse copy principle, making impressions from ideas.

material culture as witness to oral tradition

pain as a warning of deprivation

The Paternoster makes explicit what is implicit in all genuine prayer.

Ridicule is the test of seriousness more than truth.

the history of philosophy as a source of seed crystals

A fundamental failing of much Biblical criticism is in positioning itself as giving True Scripture rather than what it could and should be: an accounting of tradition and traditions precisely insofar as Scripture, as writing is a testimony to or evidence of it.

No evangelization can really succeed unless it is true witness; and true witness is even unto death.
three models of evangelization: Stephen the Protomartyr, John the Evangelist, Holy Innocents

A significant portion of predictive competence is having a sense of natural process times.

swift-action arguments (like planes: probe, discover new issues, open lines, close options, support, etc.)
main-action arguments (like infantry, cavalry, light artillery: provide key refutations, key argumentative support and large-but-easy confirmation, occupation of main questions, etc.)
heavy-action arguments (like heavy artillery, bunker defenses, etc.: establish borders, provide fallback support, intimidate by setting high refutation standards, engage and refute other heavy-action arguments in a general way by position strategy, cover lighter arguments, etc.)
link-action arguments (like logistical transport, communications: connect issues and arguments, allow arguments for other positions to be modified for new service, etc.)

Sense and Sensibility chapter 33 & false simulacra of sense
-> related to the notion of real and intrinsic worth
-> the link to liberality and civility
-> also note link to improvement and the picturesque

Failure is the school of ingenuity.

language as the vestment of the mind

Good judgment is linked with dispassion -- we see good judgment in children, the simple, etc., linked with their lack of artificial incitements of passions, and in the prudent with their capacity to transcend passions.

In showing what one believes one already begins to show why one believes it.

As a rule, systems persuade more than isolated arguments, schools more than systems, and civilizations more than schools.

explanations for resemblance of ideas, positions, arguments, etc.
(1) artifact of presentation
(2) chance
(3) similar structural constraints
(4) independent development from shared source
(5) one influencing the other

God does not deny grace to those who do what is in themselves, for what is in themselves is also of God.

dharma as that which uplifts and sustains life

The real question of skepticism is not 'Can we know truth?' but 'Can we rest with what is called truth?' (Rosmini)

first principles as the common good of intellectual society

translation of text as exemplar causation
defective causation in translation

The nature of freedom depends on the mode of cognition.

Gifts are for use or enjoyment; the use or enjoyment of some gifts involves or suggests return, with new gifts, so that gifts may multiply.

Giving is self-diffusing; for gift is itself a diffusion of good, and good is self-diffusing.

the doctrine of justification as an implicit ecclesiology

To take dikaioun as merely 'declare righteous' seems to require a very positivistic view of law. Look into this.

The divine court is not merely exterior but even more than that interior.

Any epistemology worth having will be an account of virtuous trust, whatever else it may be.

assents as resistances to cascades; inferences as cascade channels

Hume's Dialogue and Cheyne's Philosophical Principles (note that Cheyne explicitly makes the analogy, takes the analogy to be the foundation of natural philosophy, considers the Epicurean hypothesis)

Top as nullary conjunction

A just society requires a free citizenry that respects what has been handed down to them.

forms of negotiation: philosophical (reason-based); honor-based; profit-based; passion-based (rhetorical)

Everyone must go back to basics often.

Scripture is Scripture even in translation because Scripture has the function of Scripture as preached, practiced, and prayed by the Church.

authority as sign of the good (e.g., common good, or true under aspect of good for intellect)

wisdom literature as concerned with interior culture

It is a bizarre feature of the history of form criticism that so many of its proponents dismissed allegorization of the parables while so many (on occasion the same ones) allegorized the miracles.

the anagnorisis or perpeteia of a parable is that of the hearer of the parable; and thus in some ways very different from that of drama

The right to private property is not merely an individual right but a familial one.

'viewiness' as a feature of the post-medieval epoch; everyone has to have their view

In every field there is knowledge of facts, knowledge of signs, knowledge of relations and laws, and knowledge of the material factors in the relevant judgments of good taste.

an argument from Hume ECHU IX for a very non-Humean claim: while animals learn many parts of their knowledge from observation, there are many parts that they derive from the original hand of nature; this we share in common with beasts because we share experimental (empirical) reasoning with them; thus there are parts of our knowledge derived from the original hand of nature; thus there are innate ideas of some kind, without which experimental reasoning is impossible

music and architecture as intrinsically suggesting the supermaterial
-> note relation of each to sublimity
-> also to pure mathematics

As everyone is ignorant of some things, criticizing someone for ignorance can only be justified in terms of a prior moral evaluation indicating negligence.

The mind is enlarged not by passive reception but by active reflection.

Every uncertainty is with respect to a certainty.

the role of narrative voice in Luke/Acts (the first-personal character is surely significant)

Austen's use of block characterization

Liturgical law is the translation of dogmatic truths into practical norms of worship.

"An instrument is that with which the active agent is active and the passive patient is passive." Llull

The institution of a sacrament is the consecration of its signs.

The sacraments by grace illuminate the hidden possibilities of the ordinary and quotidian.

"The drama, in its very idea, is poetry in persons." Newman

Persuasion may be an end of communicating an argument, but never directly an end of the argument itself.

Nature does not tend toward change as such.

patristics as the civil theology of the liturgical commonwealth

free citizens in thriving families, befriending each other

conscience : natural religion :: magisterium : revealed religion

A significant part of Newman's argument in DD is an extension of Butler: natural religion // revealed religion in principle // revealed religion in development. A similar line of analogical reasoning seems implicit in EM: phenomena of nature // Scriptural miracles // ecclesiastical miracles.

Newman's seven notes of development are intended to indicate seven ways a doctrine and its issue may be regarded as the same.

the seven notes of development as corresponding to notes of apostolic succession

the Holy Innocents as martyrs, as showing infant baptism

Purgatory is for those who have not yet achieved the spirit of the martyrs.

the pilgrimage system as one of the channels of life for the Church

the implicit networks in the Pauline epistles: correspondence, donation, missionary, etc.

One of the features of the true virginal life is that it exalts rather than denigrates matrimony.

Deflationary approaches to Scriptural interpretation one and all require taking Scripture piecemeal; start putting those piecemeal scraps together again, bringing out structural tendencies, juxtapositions, parallels, intertextual allusions, variations on themes, and the deflation turns out to be for nothing, for all that you can accept each deflated interpretation of each fragment -- the interpretations interlinking again become more and more robust the more you put them together, not just Mark and Q, but Four Gospel, not just Genesis, but also Revelation, not just Old Testament, but also New.

the development of the liturgical commonwealth and its infrastructure as the temporal prosperity of the Church

an issue Hume's essay does not consider -- the tendency to see regularities even when they are not there, prejudices in favor of the familiar, fear of the unknown, etc.

the system of miracles (it is a system of signs)

Deterrence does not strictly require that the potential offender know (directly or indirectly) of the deterring factor, although this is obviously the most probable channel; for instance, it may deter the potential offender by affecting his environment, e.g., changing the behavior of people who are not likely to offend, in ways reducing the probability of offense (it might, for instance, raise public consciousness of the possibility of the offense, thus leading to more security, leading to a deterrent effect).
Deterrence does not require that the potential offender bring knowledge of the deterring factor to bear on immediate context -- e.g., there is habit formation.
Deterrence does not require that the potential offender compare expected costs and expected benefits of the offense, again because of habit formation.

The best arguments take centuries to build.