Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Dashed Off

imaginative dissociation & its principles
-> certainly 'ideas' do dissociate, just as they associate

certitude, belief, opinion, surmise, conjecture, suspicion, doubt, toleration, rejection, denunciation

myth as arche kai psyche of tragedy

Athena Tritogenia: thought, speech, action

the golden chain & the prime mover (Aristotle, Movement of Animals 4, 699b32-700a6)

philosophy as death in the realm of opinion and rebirth in the realm of knowledge, as death in the realm of the sensible and rebirth in the realm of the intelligible

"Myths, if they are to serve their purpose, must necessarily import time distinctions into their subject and will often present as separate entities powers that exist in unity but differ in rank and faculty." Plotinus Enn 3.5[50] 9.24-26

poetic modes
(1) imaginative (mode of appearance)
(2) imitative (reproductive)
(3) educative (didactic)
(4) participative (mode of inspiration)
- (1) & (2) mimetic broadly speaking

mythical concrescence (Cassirer)
- coincidence in unity of feeling that is the feeling of the unity of life

"The three marks of insight are breadth of range, coherence and unity of view, and closeness of personal touch." Royce

"The Ideal, the Need, the Deliverer -- these are the three objects which the individual experience, as a source of religious insight, has always undertaken to reveal." Royce

development of doctrine
(1) on analogy with extensions of logical propositions
(2) on analogy with unfolding of patterns from mathematical formulae
(3) on analogy with germination of organisms
-> actually, we find cases like each of these three: unexpected logical results, unexpected patterns arising from consistent application of doctrine, and organic development according to inner principle in response to environment. All three are distinct from articulation as such (although they may feed into it).

"To see a friend and feast with him is most pleasant." Aquinas In Job 96

3 impediments to finding truth in debate
(1) refusal to listen
(2) contentious response
(3) vicotry -seeking (failure to aim at truth)

"justice and truth are manifested by mutual discussion." Aquinas In Job 165

The three elements of intelligence are caliber, brace, and aim.

Rivendell & Lorien as two kinds of memory-preservation (recalled in lore, retained in life)

ethics: theurgy :: poetics & rhetoric : thaumaturgy

While it is a submetaphysical point itself, the single most important discovery for metaphysics is that we can know things on the basis of sensible experience that we cannot perceive by direct sensation. And it remains something to which we must repeatedly return: the most plausible responses to Humeanism, for instance, or to external world skepticism, are attempts to re-convey this discovery.

The Kantian church cannot meddle with the world; this is a fatal flaw in Kant's account.

Prehension is shared content with active direction.

LOTR Bks I & II both end with the flight fo the Ringbearer from the Enemy
They likewise end with a failure connected to the flight: Frodo's use of the Ring in I, & Boromir's attempt to take the Ring in II

Rivendell & Lorien punctuate the string of failures in LOTR II: Caradhras, Moria, Boromir, & the Fellowship itself.
Note, too, the parallel structure of Galadriel's & Boromir's temptation -- the difference being that Galadriel sees it for what it is while being tempted. Note also the parallels of vision for Frodo associated with each: the Mirror and Amon Hen.

Weathertop & Amon Hen: note Frodo puts on the Ring in each case

NB the discovery that Gandalf protected Frodo at Amon Hen

wise, ordered, measured, strong

kosher laws as fasting practices

Some 'refutations' are merely infrastructure problems -- the opposed party simply does not have the resources to devote to adequate defense and counter-refutation.

Who has ever felt true gratitude knows by experience that there are things beyond words.

letting ideas jostle

The participation of an effect in its cause is injective.
Causal participation, when we are considering per se causes, is associative, because it admits of map-composition.

contradiction removal strategies
(1) assumption reduction
(2) restriction of universe
(3) reduplication

Saruman uses language like a machine, a tool to be manipulated, for exertion and application of power; thus it is really tonalities, etc., the voice, that interests him. It is a lever, nothing more.

Hypotheses are selected on the basis of a cultivated taste.

logic as exploring the limit conditions of the authoritative

tria munera: to teach, to govern, to sanctify

pride is immunity to improvement
Logic is a poetry of modes of relevance.

scholastic etymologies as translative definitions

The doctrine of the mean, or something like it, is necessary to the coherence of natural law theory in its actual applications.

Since the most obvious thing about reason is its motion, which is problem-solving, it is unsurprising that we have much in common with general problem-solving animals like ravens, dolphins, and chimpanzees. But the most obvious thing about reason is not the most distinctive thing about it.

The decline of Gondor is from something loosely approaching a kallipolis to something more purely a timarchy. We see this in the contrast between Faramir and Boromir.

We can continue to struggle through the darkness only because we remember the light.

As a symbolon the Creed designates the underlying principles or internal form of the faith; it is, in its proper sense as a Creed professed, both outward sign and inward mystery.

Military tactics is the efficient navigation of the geometry of difficulty-of-lines-of-attack.

Most of the time when we are determining probabilities we are really considering what kind of inference we are supposed to be making.

The patristic attraction to the idea that Plato learned from the tradition of Moses is in fact a standard kind of Neoplatonist move, and is parallel to, and arguably linked with, Neoplatonist attempts to link Plato with Egyptian hieratic tradition. (Note also Moses/Egypt link.)

Wisdom is greater than folly because wisdom can think folly through from both the inside and the outside.

Icons in their own ways display the creed.

Resemblance and contiguity are both field concepts.

The genuinely independent mind is not the one that is unguided but the one that is deliberate.