Sunday, October 09, 2016

Dashed Off XXIII

And this is the last from the notebook that takes me up to May 10, 2015.

Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days encapsulates the insight that transportation is formally structured by calculation.

Since the expression of sexuality along lines of excellence rather than disorder is chastity, sexuality is expressed in restraint and courtesy as well as, indeed more than, physical sexual acts. The primary expression of sexuality of man to woman (e.g.) is courteous respect and self-restraint; not to rape is a greater expression of sexuality than to rape, even though it is the latter that is a physical sexual act. And, indeed, we see quite clearly taht much of sexual expression between man and woman clearly does not involve any sexual act.

The problem with making consent a keystone of one's sexual ethics is that in every field the bounds of consensual behavior are determined by convention. There is a core of obviously consensual behavior within each field (widespread agreement) surrounded by endless rippling variations that are less and less obvious to any public eye, and, eventually, even to the participants themselves. Thus we set bounds not by anything intrinsic to consent but by other things entirely, and this is unavoidable.

As reason's goods encompass the goods of physical desire, and as reason is integral to all that is human, the proper and appropriate expression and fulfillment of any human physical desire is virtue.

integrity of consent (e.g., consent not just to this, but to the kind of life to which it tends, the principles it represents, etc.)

We have rights to those things required for virtuous behavior.

docilitas : Magisterium :: studiositas : Tradition

the analogues of the parts of prudence in the healthiness of a tradition (the 'prudence' of a community)

the magisterial, civil, local, and apologetic traditions of the Church

participation in healthy tradition as a necessitas humanae vitae in light of which the pursuit of pleasure should be restricted

A postulate must be apt to the problem-solving context.

bribery by compliment

Humility requires that we delight in our smallness.

Hume's insistence that cause and effect be contiguous in space and time is complicated by the fact that Hume argues that things may have neither location nor temporal measure. (Cp. also his allowance that ideas may possibly exist independent of a mind.) In effect, Hume's account of causation identifies it with change qua capable of being ordered by the human mind.

If Beattie is right that curiosity is causal in character, this would give a different color to the Humean account of curiosity.

the principle of infantry as terrain control

On Hume's account of identity, identity of human nature through generations cannot be ruled out.

three effects of the divine image
(1) dominion over theearth and lower animals (Gn 1:28)
(2) knowledge of God's works in creation, expressible in language (Gn 2:19)
(3) intercourse with God (Gn 2:16)
(Cf. R. I. Wilberforce)

image of God after Fall: Gn 9:6; Jas 3;9; 1 Cor. 11:7

'It is true that X' and 'It ought to be judged true that X'

"The world was created for the sake of the Church." Shepherd of Hermas Vision 2.4.1

signs as micronarratives

loyalty : community sharing :: deference : authority ranking :: fairness : equality matching

vestiges or analogies providing a deeper unity to a philosophical system
-- these vestiges and analogies linked to the 'spirit' of the system
-- developers build on these and try to extend them

the Topics as principles of colloquy

modal logic as logic with respect to reference poitn
non-participating reference point: K, D
participating reference point: M/T, S4, S5
fixed (non-arbitrary) reference point
floating (arbitrary) reference point
-- floating non-participating is an interesting idea. Would require multiple independent reference points, none of which regard each other.

Is Kaplan's account of the relation between indexicals/demonstratives and context backwards? It seems to be so.

Most arguments against free will turn out on closer examination to be arguments against goal-directed behavior.

the Church Fathers as propounders of doctrine vs. the Church Fathers as witnesses to facts (the two modes of patristics)

Real Presence
(1) suggested as possible by words of institution
(2) shown by John 6
(3) implied by nature as sacrifice
(4) confirmed by consensus of Church Fathers
(5) reflected in other doctrines (e.g., the Church as body of Christ; marriage as sacrament; theosis)
(6) expressed in liturgical character of the book of Revelation (Lamb on Throne)
(7) indicated by effects of the Eucharist

infants & invincible ignorance

faith, hope, and love as the structure of filial trust

baptismal regeneration, infant baptism, and the Spirit moving on the face of the deep in creation

To be baptized in God's name is to be baptized by God.

Intellectual systems will tend to rely most on the simplest routes to a conclusion.

Marriage is more properly a matter of allegiance than consent; which is not to say, of course, that consent has nothing to do with it.

the right to reasonable proxy (i.e., the right, in matters of need, to be represented by others working our behalf -- a right of children, of the dying, etc.)

logical relations as causal relations pertaining to reason, considered abstractly

"It greatly concerns the public welfare that the sanctity of marriage, which is the source of all its well-being, be preserved inviolated." (Francis de Sales)

Most social problems require combinations of inefficient and efficient means to solve.

fidelity itself as part of the communication properly underlying marital friendship

regeneration // real presence // overflow

the 'plot' of a sign as a transition of mind

the tablets of law as icons of Christ, and thus their treatment as template for icongraphy and iconodulia (Abu Qurrah)

look at the pathway: Cambridge Platonism to Coleridge's ecclesiology to Newman's account of development

Scientific inquiry, done well, draws out the beauty of the true.

metric mereology & mapping of part to part (intersubstitutability of parts)

aspectual overlap
overlap in aspect vs overlap, in an aspect

It is a notable fact that people will treat moral matters as both lucidly obvious and infinitely obscure, sometimes in quick succession.

Hume's causation as narrative: the habit of telling a kind of story

matrimony as making the Church to be a society, a communal project, rather than merely a society in which one can privately participate.

since and until and subarguments involving hypotheses

marriage as active cooperation with divine providence (genealogy as a symbol of providence)

Note that Descartes actually puts quite a bit of emphasis on the order rule (DM 72).

DM Part VI as a presentiment of academia

reciprocal demonstration DM 76
Note his handling of the circle, and the resulting duality of proof and explanation.
Look at original French and compare to demonstrative regress

unction and Gethsemane

aspiration to better as part of true contrition

the importance of the use of reason for receiving the eucharist

Tobit 12;8 and penitential practice

the seven virtues opposed to the capital vices as especially important for marriage: humility, liberality, chastity, kindness, temperance, patience, devotion.

the problematics of talking about 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' marriage: the marriage is already in hand; it is other things at which one may be successful or not.

prayer, restraint, and mercy as the threefold day-to-day work of marriage

the key sign of Modernism: treating self-identity as constituted by self-identification

Titus 3 and baptismal regeneration

Aspiration makes for poor mediation.

Covering laws as requiring some kind of Box-modality to be explanatory.

promulgation of the principles of the sacraments through type, prophecy, institution, insinuation, and tradition

The elements of the Eucharist are set apart as Body and Blood by one who is set apart by Orders to consecrate them so, and given to those who are set apart by Baptism to receive them.

reality of consecration as the first basic principle of sacramental theology

the Zwinglian theory as bad Trinitarianism: treating the Second and Third Person as merely successive modifications of one Divine (R. I. Wilberforce)

filioquism of institution and invocation/epiclesis

Calvin as a theologian of Christ's humanity

Calvin takes our relation to Christ in communion to be like that of Stephen in martyrdom.

miracle as overflow of providence

St. Paul himself as a moral miracle

extended mind vs. occasional causation

sedevacantism as Catholic conspiracy theory

Each sacrament creates a reverberation of sacramentals through the Church.

Mary as an icon of the Incarnation

charity: "divine love giving us the power to do good" (Francis de Sales)

Are there any bare n-lemmas? (Most dilemmas can be represented as inconsistent triads with one member assumed; such aporetic triads can themselves be taken as trilemmas and represented as aporetic tetrads with assumed member; etc. This is due to context-sensitivity. are there cases for which this higher-number representation is not possible? Hume's account of analogy would suggest that being/nonbeing would be one. See also Scotus on primary differentiae for another line that might be relevant.)

Lewis's Preface to Paradise Lost as an attack on encyclopedic (rather than traditional) approaches to literature

didactic enchantment

Chronicles of Narnia
writing order: LWW -- PC -- DT -- HB -- SC -- LB -- MN
publish order: LWW -- PC -- DT -- SC -- HB -- MN -- LB
internal order: MN -- LWW -- HB -- PC -- DT -- SC -- LB

supposal vs allegory

Societies cohere through selective inclusions and exclusions.

pity and fear as social motivators

central market, circuit market, and periodic market forms of religious devotion