Saturday, June 11, 2016

Dashed Off XII

Ethics is necessarily a conversation; not a negotiation, at least not always, but certainly discussion and social interaction.

classification, observation, and manipulation as the three moments of scientific thought
- these are, in fact, moments of experience in general, scientific inquiry being reflected-upon systematic experience

Theoretical truth is practical constraint.

Scientific inquiry is itself a social context.

To say that something is true by definition implies that it ought to be taken as given in some relevant system of thought.

The conventional, under appropriate rational conditions, converges on the natural.

A natural classification is that to which artificial classifications ought to tend.

In the Eucharist we (1) are transformed into what we consume; (2) are made sharers of Christ's divine nature; (3) are prepared for external gifts; (4) celebrate in sign that which will one day be perfected in us in truth.

Compatibilism in its more popular forms involves a confusion between determinateness and determination.

We should only appear at the banquet of the Lamb in the wedding garment of repentance.

locative affinity

classification as structuring inductions

the implicit ampliative character of truth itself

the deontic structure of induction

Calvin's commentary on Malachi is a criticism of Catholic conceptions of priesthood.

Simple enumeration, merely as such, does not reach a proper universal.

Representative samples are built by systematicity, not randomization; the latter is merely one thing that can rule out some biases that may interfere with systematicity. The link between representative sample and systematic sampling follows from the notion of representativeness itself.

probability as possibility plus degree of relevance

Probabilities, being measurements, are relative to the method of measurement used.

Endeavoring peace requires hope.

pacifism // passive obedience

A species has, beyond its members, its history and capacity to project itself forward.

Perversions of views of marriage have backed and germinated heresy for literally the entire history of the Church.

Scripture is the instrumental cause of sacred doctrine.

accessibility relations as forms of overlap

gifts as instruments

the grace of marriage as a tending to right representation

Mary as co-predestined with Christ
Christ predestined as | Mary predestined as
Incarnate Son | Mater Dei
fullness of grace appropriate to Incarnate Son | fullness of grace appropriate to Mother of God
meriting our grace de condigno | meriting our grace de congruo

A theory of sacrament is a theory of sacrifice.

clarity, coherence, necessity
clarity/splendor, integrity, proportion

layering of kinds of analogy as increasing probability of inference

bias removal as practical reasoning about structure of inquiry

three moments of angelic life: creation, merit/demerit, beatitude/reprobation

inquiry as dawning, knowledge as noon

the need for a symbolic economy appropriate to moral life

It is clear that God must be:
(1) first principle of our free will as a power
(2) first principle of the actuality of our free choice
(3) first principle of all goodness in the power and the act
and that He must be original, sustaining, and final cause in each case.

creativity in mathematics: a sense of the territory (to reduce wrong steps & establish priorities) + obsessiveness in rigor (to rule tihngs out or in definitively) + rapid thought (to avoid being bogged down or stuck too long exploring dead end routes)

Providence works both superordinately and coordinately with creatures.

"If God moved bodies by particular volitions, it would be a crime to avoid by flight the ruin of a collapsing building; for one cannot, without injustice, refuse to return to God the life He has given us, if He demands it." Malebranche
- Thus Malebranche holds that God's work through general laws allows us to correct nature without correcting God, to resist nature without resisting God, etc.

Doubt by its nature posits an end or satisfaction of doubt.
Doubt presupposes the possibility of knowledge. There is reason to think the reverse is not.

That something could be false is not the same as its being possible that it is false.

We come to understand the principle of noncontradiction by actually reasoning.

Any question of reliability is a teleological question.

Confidence does not come with percentages.

The post-medieval world is an age of theft: nations rise by plundering the Church and other nations, positions rise by plundering the cultural heritage of others, money is made by plundering time and effort. To plunder occurs always; making it the center of everything, however, is another thing entirely. It's the brazenness of it that is remarkable.

Mendelssohn's definition of 'church' -- 'public institution for the cultivation of man, concerning his relations with God' -- includes much more than what we usually think of as a church.

"civilisation is founded on abstractions" Chesterton

unfitness and the horror genre

Note that Vatican I explicitly says that following are acts of definition in which the Pope exercises infallible teaching authority: summoning an ecumenical council to define a doctrine, consulting the opinion of churches throughout the world to define a doctrine, calling a special synod to define a doctrine. (There is also the miscellaneous category, 'taking advantage of other useful means afforded by divine providence'.)
Papal teaching authority is exercised with and for the Church.

Marriage cannot exist in a way that is inconsistent as a general condition with rational and virtuous family life, for it is itself and by nature familial.

natural classification
(1) affinities determined by whole
(2) arrangements are of greatest degree of relation
(3) the imperfectly known may be determined from the known

the importance of there being a romantic love that is not sexual in its goals

quantification as scope of inquiry

systematic vs nonsystematic intellectual inquiry

"We know with much greater clarity that our will is free than that everything that happens must have a cause." Lichtenberg

(1) The will is not necessitated in its choices by any prior cause.
(2) Our choices are attributable to us and are not beyond our control.
(3) We have a will naturally not determined to one.

'Life' admits of more and less.

Necessary regulative principles of empirical inquiry imply general constitutive theses about sensible nature and sensible phenomena. So also with the intelligible, mutatis mutandis.

What is always and necessarily *as if* is certainly *so*.

sublimity as a background for friendship

In marriage, love of self, love of neighbor, and love of God begin to overlap in sometimes obvious ways.

Loving is to goodness as dwelling or resting is to beauty.

prudence as the structure of good parenting

The sensible is always explained by the intelligible.

To defeat demons requires setting aside all pretense at being wholly in control.

We learn restraint by precept and example.

Prediction and retrodiction are the standard modes of exegetical confirmation.

(1) What is intelligible is not in itself sensible; therefore what knows the intelligible is not in itself sensible.
(2) What knows has the intelligible form of something, but not in the way the material thing has it; therefore what knows is not, as such, material.

The problem of evil requires that the moral principles used be precisely defined and either self-evident or demonstrable.

"The devil has his contemplatives even as God has his." Cloud of Unknowing XLV

(1) There is nonsensible but intelligible agency.
(2) Sensible phenomena are explained by intelligible agency.

Ontologies and epistemologies mutually suggest each other.

nonextrinsic similarity as suggesting shared causal history

tendency to end, intrinsic order, limitation, form of persistence
(four ways of thinking of natures)

When we assert, we often do so on another person's authority.
assertion-for-the-nonce, assertion-from-a-perspective

Truth sometimes sets us free by killing us.

reasonable hope as the key to double effect

coherence : truth :: integrity : good :: harmony : beauty

Truly to know that one has sinned against love is painful, and it is a pain that endures even if one fails to repents of the sin itself.

implicature of behavior in the virtue of temperance (substance, quality, quantity, relation) -- quality is the tricky one
the appearance of condoning
our behavior as communicating values
the casuistry of temperance-related implicature
what one's actions communicate to oneself
integritas, claritas, and proportionalitas in temperance

We should tend to avoid actions that could be confused with serious evils, if they became known.
We should tend to avoid actions that could be seen as condoning serious evils, if they became known.
We should tend to avoid actions that are very similar to serious evils.
We should tend toward actions that would communicate respect for persons, if the actions were known.
We should tend toward actions that would communicate the importance of virtuous disciplines if the actions were known.

postulates of communicative reason

infrastructural tracks for intellectual alliances

felicity conditions for sacraments

the authorities of the Holy See
(1) intrinsic
(2) by long possession
(3) by (non-intrinsic) succession
(4) by positive law
(5) by interest of the Church

evaluation of argument in terms of
(1) appropriateness to rational ends
(2) rigor and requirement
(3) durability in the face of objection-candidates
(4) simplicity and elegance

Genuine inquiry requires standards that do not create unworkable argumentative costs.

Ayn Rand's theory of measurement omission underestimates the difficulty of measuring in the first place.

tradition and the parable of the talents

classification and helpful adjacency in research

Royce's paradox of revelation & human nature as itself a revelation or (at least) preparatory thereto

reasoning at others vs reasoning with others

the intrinsic curatorial authority of the Church

When the very wealthy lends to the very poor, steps must be taken to guarantee that they enter the contract as equals and can both expect genuine benefit from it.

imitation of saints 1 Thess 1:5-10

the Ascension as promise of deliverance

In Purgatory, souls finally bear the weight of the martyrs' faith.

The nature of a rational creature being oriented to virtue, the true orientation of any human sexuality is to temperate action.

Measurements are of signs, by signs.

layers of marriage: sacrament, virtue, honor, profit, pleasure

sense organs as interpretants
classifiers as interpretants

contingent identity in the structure of desire (the object of desire)

testimony as vicarious experience

Marriage by nature has reference to common good.

natural light as inner affinity to truth

Every proposition is a seminal inference.

Confidence is not organized in univocal units, but functionally.

the felicity conditions of jargon

Forgiveness is a pillar of genuine civilization; this necessarily requires that repentance be one, too.

Human persons are such great goods that even the risk of there being a hell is not sufficient reason not to create them.

the Manichaean character of anti-natalism

"There is no marriage where motherhood is not in view." Augustine

Nothing can be thwarted in doing X expect in that sense in which it has the potential for X.

cognitive identity as contingent identity

that there are needs of human life more important than pleasure that do not reduce to preferences

Little pains may more naturally stimulate or incite curiosity than fear or avoidance, given otherwise comfortable circumstances.

man as the called animal