Virtue

This blog post assumes that you have read my blog post on free will.

0. Contents

1. Virtue is knowledge
1.1. Videtur
1.2. Habit
1.2.1. Rational habit
1.2.2. Sensitive habit
1.3. Virtue
1.3.1. Virtue is knowledge
1.3.2. Vice is ignorance
1.3.3. New description
2. Cardinal virtues
3. Punishment

1. Virtue is knowledge

1.1. Videtur

I used to argue against the proposition that “virtue is knowledge” using this argument:

1. All virtue is habit
2. No habit is knowledge
3. Therefore, no virtue is knowledge

This is clearly valid; the first premise is common doctrine and never disputed. But thinking about the nature of habit, in light of my opinion on free will, has led me to deny the second, in a certain sense.

1.2. Habit

A habit is a permanent quality which disposes a man to perform definite types of human acts with ease, accuracy and consistency.

Now, the only thing which ever causes a man to act is his desire; specifically, it is a desire’s reaching the top of his ordinal value scale. So a habit may be defined generically as a tendency for a desire to reoccur, become foremost, and be acted upon. As such, habits may be divided according to my previous division of desires.

1.2.1. Rational habit

A rational habit, then, is a tendency for a rational desire to reoccur and become foremost, and be acted upon.

For a rational desire to reoccur, the actor must have knowledge of its object, and circumstances must reoccur so that, given his knowledge of circumstances, the actor will once again rationally desire to perform the action which aims at the object; at each reoccurrence, there must also be no disordered sensitive desires intervening.

Since the tendency to rationally desire the action in those circumstances remains regardless of whether the circumstances do in fact periodically reoccur without sensitive interference, it follows that it is sufficient for a rational habit that the actor have knowledge of the desire’s object; everything else merely pertains to the actual reoccurrence of the action. It is clear, then, that all rational habit is knowledge.

1.2.2. Sensitive habit

A sensitive habit, on the other hand, is a tendency for a sensitive desire to reoccur and become foremost, and be acted upon.

For a sensitive desire to reoccur, the actor’s body must have a propensity to desire its object, and circumstances must reoccur so that, given his body’s sensitive awareness of circumstances, the actor will once again sensitively desire to perform the action which aims at the object; at each reoccurrence, there must also be no intervention from the soul to prevent the desire’s becoming foremost.

For there to be no intervention from the soul, one of these things must be true. The desire may (a) remain unexamined in every case; the desire may (b) be examined and found to be in accordance with reason; or the desire may (c) be examined, be found not to be in accordance with reason, and not be brought into accordance with it.

The case (a) may be termed an unexamined sensitive habit. Besides the body’s propensity to desire the object, it requires the willpower’s culpable, reoccurring failure to bring the sensitive desire under rational examination; as such, unexamined sensitive habits are always vicious at least to the extent that they are unexamined.

The case (c) may be termed a known vice. Besides the body’s propensity to desire the object, it requires the willpower’s culpable, reoccurring failure to bring the examined desire into accordance with reason.

The case (b) was skipped because it may be excluded from consideration under this head. If a sensitive desire is brought into examination and found to be in accordance with reason, this means nothing other than that there is already a rational desire which is the true motive of the action. The concomitant sensitive desire may facilitate the knowledge of circumstances which is required for the rational desire, but it does not cause the action. At any rate, if a sensitive habit is concomitant with a rational one in this way, it may be termed a rational sensitive habit.

1.3. Virtue

A virtue is a good habit.

Having divided the kinds of habits metaphysically, we may rehearse some general considerations about their goodness and badness.

• All rational habits are virtues. This is because they are caused by rational knowledge of the good, as has been said.
• All known vices are vices. By definition, they operate strictly against the actor’s rational knowledge of the good.
• All unexamined sensitive habits are vicious to the extent that they are unexamined. They may exclusively inspire the performance of objectively good acts – meaning that, if they were successfully examined, they would become rational sensitive habits – but those acts are always subjectively bad. (Not because the acting subject considers them bad, but because the necessary reason they are bad is wholly intrinsic to the subject.)

1.3.1. Virtue is knowledge

Since all true virtues are rational habits, and all rational habits are virtues, and rational habits are knowledge (cf. §1.2.1), it follows that all virtue is knowledge; but given what was said so far, it does not follow that all vice is ignorance.

It may seem, after all, that known vices are clearly against knowledge – they may be said to always exist in opposition to (and prevalence over) an existing virtue regarding the same object in the same actor, but it may seem absurd to call them a kind of ignorance. At least unexamined sensitive habits are always done in the absence of relevant intellectual knowledge, which is much easier to call ignorance; a known vice seems rather like a disregard for the known truth than like ignorance.

1.3.2. Vice is ignorance

This is true if “knowledge” and “ignorance” are taken in their strict, intellectual sense. But we may use these words of bodily processes, in analogy to the soul; as before we had said that pleasure and pain are the bodily analogues of good and evil.

It may be thought, then, that a body’s having a propensity to desire an object is something analogous to having belief in the object’s goodness; that this propensity, if known to be in accordance with reason, is something analogous to knowledge of the object’s goodness.

If these things are said, then to bring a sensitive desire into accordance with reason may be said, in this analogical sense, to be teaching the body what is good and what is bad. When the willpower brings a sensitive desire into accordance with reason, it changes the strength of the sensitive desire so that it is brought into proper order; if this is done habitually, it can correct an erroneous bodily propensity to desire, either weakening or extinguishing a sensitive habit. The body, having its new inclinations in proper order, may be said analogously to have been brought to knowledge of the habit’s object’s goodness or badness.

Virtue, then, is knowledge – either purely intellectual, or both intellectual and bodily – and all vice is a kind of bodily error – which is to say, both ignorance and wrong belief. To reiterate, these words are said analogously of the body; for the body to be in error is for it to fail to have a correctly ordered propensity (analogous to ignorance), and instead to have a wrongly ordered propensity (analogous to wrong belief).

1.3.3. New description

With all these opinions laid down and kept in view, it is not too poetical to describe virtue, in analogy to human relationships, as the soul’s disposition to command, allied with the body’s disposition to obey. If a habit is rationally determined and the body does not interfere, it is a virtue; if a habit is sensitively determined and the soul does not approve, it is a vice.

The relation of a virtuous soul with the body is unequal; the body is in submission to it, and made to obey the dictates of reason. If the soul could bring all of the body’s desires into habitual accordance with reason, then they could have a virtuous friendship; but given the imperfection inherent to matter, this cannot be done except by the grace of God.

Barring this, friendship between body and soul is friendship between greater and lesser – it occurs only through corruption of the greater. The soul must consent, against its better judgment, to the body’s irrational designs. This is done in many who are carnal in this world.

2. Cardinal virtues

In view of the aspects of right and wrong action, the role of the cardinal virtues in human action may be divided as follows.

The virtue which causes the willpower’s ‘attention’ and ‘diligence’ in examining sensitive desires and bringing them into accordance with reason is called justice, as was said.

The virtue which causes the examination to be done correctly is prudence, which is nothing other than the unimpeded application of the natural operation of reason to the desire. This is the same operation which causes rational desires, and ensures perfect fitness of means to ends.

The virtue which causes sensitive desires to be correctly brought into accordance with reason is called temperance in the case of concupiscible desires and courage (or fortitude) in the case of irascible desires.

3. Punishment

Knowing what was said makes it clearer how punishment may be viewed as reforming a criminal. Since all vice consists in a disordered sensitive habit, which is a bodily evil, it may possibly be corrected by the application of a bodily remedy; a punishment may help weaken a propensity to disordered sensitive desire. In the illustrative terms, it may be possible to hurt or alter a man’s body in such a way as to make it more obedient to his soul.

While I have not changed my opinion about the justice of punishments, this helps make clearer my opinion about the conditions of exercising mercy. Plainly, the “knowledge condition” refers to intellectual knowledge of the disorderedness of the vice, which is a necessary condition of virtue; the “will condition” refers to the likelihood that the sensitive habit has been, or will be, corrected. If both of these conditions are met, we have (what seems to be) a virtuous man; no punishment could be required for his reformation, and any punishment is for the sake of something else.

Punishment cannot truly bend the will; it cannot make a man’s soul more willing to rule his body. It can only make it easier for her to do so, by weakening the body, as was said. So while it is plainly true that coercion can make a man more virtuous, against what liberals tend to think, it is nevertheless only from an animal consideration. It cannot create virtue; it can only weaken vice.

Introduction to Doge memes

Some people do not know the first thing about Doge memes. This is the first thing.

I would rather not explain this stuff because, given my reader base, it will at best just flood the Doge community with cringe leftists. But I have been convinced by a dear friend.

0. Contents

1. Material cause
1.1. Doge
1.2. Other Dog Characters (ODCs)
2. Formal cause
2.1. Character posts
2.2. Caption posts
2.3. Common features
3. Final cause
3.1. Common heritage
3.2. Reddit Doge
3.3. Facebook Doge
4. Efficient cause
4.1. Most Important Doge Page
4.2. Active OC pages
4.3. Pages that post regional content
4.4. Reposter pages
4.5. Inactive, beloved pages
4.6. Left pages
4.7. Doge groups
5. Notes

1. Material cause

1.1. Doge

Doge is based[1] primarily on the photographs of the Japanese, yellow[2] Shiba Inu dog Kabosu taken by her owner, Atsuko Satō, in 2010. This is stuff you can read about on Wikipedia, etc, but it is important, so it should be covered. What follows is the Original Photo of Doge.

Other photos were taken in the same shoot, and are also important. Here they are presented in an assorted collated arrangement.

Kabosu is very cute and lovely and everyone loves her. She is still alive as of this writing – do not believe any dumb rumors.[3] Please follow her official Facebook page and Instagram and Twitter for photos and updates (in Japanese, usually).

1.2. Other Dog Characters (ODCs)

Also common are photos of the dog known as Cheems (short for “cheemsburbger”, i.e., cheeseburger), whose real name is apparently “Ball Ball”, but he is also called simply Ball, or Balltze (after his Instagram name). That dog is an absolute celebrity, and was previously a minor meme called “Yos Doggo” independently of the Doge phenomenon. Many photos of him are often used; I will leave here only the one that, cropped and tinted, became Cheems. For more on Ball see his Instagram as well as his official page (formerly called Nom Nom Nom Club) and the official Yos Doggo page.

Other dogs are sometimes used; foremost, a pit bull called Walter, a German Shepherd named Caesar (a.k.a. “Doge 2”), and a Golden Retriever variously known as “Perro”, “Quieres”, or “eh mole kkkkk”. Doge also has a lot of connection with the fanbases of Big Floppa (a caracal) and Sogga (a serval), which are in turn connected to Bingus (a pink, hairless Sphynx cat). I do not find them worth covering in much depth, but they are all lovely animals.

2. Formal cause

There are two main kinds of Doge memes, which we might call the “character posts” and the “caption posts”. I am going to give an example of each and describe them.

2.1. Character posts

• Made from edits of Doge, or one of the Other Dog Characters, cropped and pasted over bespoke backgrounds in order to tell a short story.
• Relatively more common on Reddit (/r/dogelore); as such, besides commonly having Reddit’s sense of humor (see §3), character posts are more likely to be really tall, like the example, since Reddit allows for this more easily than the Facebook news feed.
• Often has multiple “panels”, and two different characters may speak in the same panel, which is distinguished by text color in this example, but may also be distinguished by text position.
• Main asset source: The Sacred Texts

2.2. Caption posts

source

• Made from uncropped edits of Doge, left in their original backgrounds. In these memes, as in the example, any yellow Shiba Inu may serve the role of Doge, not just Kabosu.
• Relatively more common on Facebook (see §4 for pages); as such, besides commonly having Facebook’s sense of humor (see §3), caption posts are more likely to have a squarish aspect ratio rather than anything really tall.
• Usually a single panel, and the text is read as spoken by the dog, which basically contributes edge and humor to the statement. (Text written on a yellow dog is instantly funny.)
• Main asset sources: edits of Doge can be found here and here, and if you have seen one you like, you can often ask a group for it. Photos of other Shiba Inus can be found in many pet pages

2.3. Common features

source

• Doge memes are made from photos of dogs and edits of them. The variety and ease of editing the photos makes them much more versatile in expression than either Wojak or Pepe, which require new original drawings to be constantly made.
• They are typically made with bold text with a thick border and/or shadow, commonly the classic meme Impact font, but often not. Archivo Black seems to be a common choice, which I believe may be influenced by how it is the first very bold font to appear in an alphabetical listing of free fonts.

3. Final cause

Doge is generally depicted in memes with a certain character; he is less of a blank slate than Wojak, or than Pepe was at its peak. Some traits are common, while others will really mark a meme as being from Reddit or from Facebook.

source

3.1. Common heritage

• Doge is generally presented as male, although Kabosu is female.
• Presenting Doge as hating women and minorities is part of the common heritage, though really de-emphasized by Reddit memes.
• It is also part of the common heritage that he has been in a divorce with some woman named Karen, who took the kids in the divorce. Simple joke memes about Karen have simply gone out of style in both platforms, but she became a specific character in dogelore reddit.

3.2. Reddit Doge

source

• Reddit, fitting to the “dogelore” name, has created a complex system of characters. It is meticulously documented in this wiki.
• Any idea of Doge being in a relationship with Isabelle from the Animal Crossing series is certainly from Reddit.
• Any idea of Doge having a particular family, with named relatives besides his ex-wife Karen, is certainly from Reddit. (This is not the same, of course, as merely using the “child Doge” templates to depict Doge as having children, for instance.)
• Doge is not always shown as bigoted even on Facebook, but any explicit acceptance of minorities will mark a meme as being from Reddit.
• When “Doge 2” came around, hostility to it generally came from Reddit, whereas Facebook pages tended to be more welcoming of it. (It has since simply faded away on both websites.)

3.3. Facebook Doge

source

• Doge’s hatred of women and minorities has been wonderfully kindled and developed by the Facebook environment. Doge memes are frequently (post-ironically) misogynistic, racist, homophobic, transphobic, and xenophobic; anything further than the mildest misogyny will certainly mark a meme as being from Facebook.
• Doge having a foot fetish seems to be more of a Facebook thing.
• Doge being wanted for war crimes (typically in the former Yugoslavia countries) is a Facebook thing.
• Doge being Christian is a Facebook thing.
• Dogeposters referring to each other as “kings” is a Facebook meme, though the classic “you dropped your crown” memes must surely have been popular on Reddit too.

4. Efficient cause

Reddit Doge is found entirely in /r/dogelore (maybe /r/dogecoin) and that is all there is to it. But Facebook Doge is found in a cluster of pages and groups, the extent of which is not realized by many people. What follows is a review of major Facebook sources.

4.1. Most Important Doge Page

The most important Doge page is Doge Collection (@DogeCollector). It is the most important page to the Doge community, and the most important to follow if you are getting into Doge. This is for the following reasons:

• It is the largest in absolute numbers, and very influential on the Doge community.
• It is very popular and respected, as well as very productive, so it has given birth to many popular templates.
• The content has basically set and maintained the voice of what Facebook Doge is. It is the perfect mix of right wing extremism, basic fun silliness, and genuine heartfelt appreciation of Kabosu and other Shiba Inus.
• In this last connection, it is worth noting that the admin regularly updates followers on the newest cute photos of celebrity dogs, and has actually been in friendly contact multiple times with Kabosu’s owner as well as Ball Ball’s owner. He had plans to go to Japan and meet Kabosu, although it is unclear how much those have been thrown off by the pandemic.
• A new follower will find that he often shares from other Doge pages, so it is a great page to start from, because you can discover other pages from it.

4.2. Active OC pages

• Cutting Edge Darkcel Quotes Over Stock Doge Images is what it says on the tin. Given the great availability of high-quality “stock Doge images” (premade templates with Doge on them), the content still looks pretty good æsthetically. The text is always great, and is the very archetype of edgy right wing Doge. I believe the admin took most of the phrases from his own Discord server, so they are often real quotes from real edgelords.
• Just some fresh Doge OC for my kings is also what it says on the tin; the content quality is often on par with Doge Collection himself, and his æsthetic is similar. Has a bit more toilet humor than average.
• Owlbear Doge is good and pretty eclectic.
• Doge Dad is a beloved page known for extended, narrative character posts. Not to be confused with Papa Doge, listed below.
• Bishop Dogeberg is the main poster at his own public group, Gospel of Doge. Makes many great character posts; some are explicitly Christian, but not as many of them as the name might have led you to think.
• Creationist Doge is a thematic page, around the theme of Doge being a creationist. Very good and funny.
• Depressed Doge is another one; what it says on the tin.
• Punk Doge is the longest-running thematic Doge page. Posts are Reddit-influenced character posts. Leftist-friendly; no edge.
• Your Friend Doge also makes Reddit-influenced character posts. Also has no edge, it’s really pretty “wholesome”; leftist-friendly.
• Stromk peeple memes is alright.

4.3. Pages that post regional content

Some pages bring their local character (and possibly language) to Doge content.

• Bangladeshi Dogeposting – the owner of this one is pretty explicitly libertarian. Posts are about halfway split between Bengali and English.
• Indoges = Indonesian Doges. Usually posts in the Indonesian language, and infrequently in English.
• Dogearia Dois Irmãos is a great Brazilian Doge page. Always posts in Portuguese and doesn’t seem to like gringos very much.

4.4. Reposter pages

Reposting is not frowned upon in the Doge community, and some pages are explicitly named after the fact that they do it. African Wild Doggo is an exception – being popular early on, he was much hated by the community, because he would put his own watermark on other people’s content.

• Random Stolen Doge Pictures Until I Find Purpose – I think it used to be named “Random Stolen Doge Pictures Until I Get a Girlfriend”, lol
• Doge memes I done stole

4.5. Inactive, beloved pages

• Dogesociative is the most worth mentioning in this connection. He made great-looking caption posts with a David Bowie æsthetic and a depressed, heartbroken vibe. He still shows clear signs of being alive, but has kinda lost the energy that he used to post with.
• Sprite Doge was a fun thematic page. I think the admin is not affiliated with the Sprite brand, he just likes Sprite. Similarly, 7UP Doge.
• I made this page to bully shitty doge pages was very useful to the community early on, when many shitty doge pages were cropping up. The bullying from this page and from independent actors helped keep memes at the right tone. Also had good, eclectic OC.
• Papa Doge has only been inactive for about a month, so he might still come back. A good and beloved page, he is actually a father in real life, and has blogged about his son on the page from time to time. You may remember him from his suicide attempt. Not to be confused with Doge Dad, listed above.
• There was a great page called Doge travels to various album covers; if you see an album cover with Doge edited onto it, that page probably made it. I don’t know what happened to it, but it cannot be found anymore.

4.6. Left pages

Making a left-of-center Doge page is frowned upon, please do not do it. The closest you get are the commie posts in the “doge supply” group, as well as the non-edgy pages listed near the end of §4.2. Political Doge, a liberal page, is generally thought to be cringe and was much bullied during its heyday. The (unofficial) Cheems page is also worth mentioning here because, besides being cringe, it has repeatedly expressed distaste for the usual edgy right-wing Doge memes; most of its content is reposted.

4.7. Doge groups

My doge supply is unlimited, and I have one for every situation is the most important group because it is the largest. Encourages members to dump all of their saved Doge memes upon entry, which was a great tactic. Recently has had some infighting due to a strange influx of communist dogeposters. I tend to refer to it as the “doge supply” group, because its name is so long.

I have no comments about other groups, which can easily be found through the Facebook search function because they all have “Doge” in the name.

5. Notes

[1] Doge is based, simpliciter, but also...

[2] Nowadays, in recent photos, you may find Kabosu to be less yellow than in the Original Photo. This is partly due to the fur on her face becoming whiter with age, but also because the lighting on the Original Photo was really yellowing everything out, including the white part of her fur. With white light, I think it would have looked something more like the following picture (which is this edit, but with more white balance).

[3] Such dumb rumors often exploit a photo of Kabosu when she was sick, and looking a bit ghastly, in order to say that she is going to die soon or something. Dogs don’t live forever, but such posts are misleading; see this linked explanation.

The rule of spirit

Having written its opposite, I write here my blog post on free will. As before, no one should read it.

0. Contents

1. Choice
1.1. Types of desire
1.2. Willpower
2. Sufficient reason
3. Burdened by flesh
4. Control over desire
5. Order

1. Choice

I believe that in human acts, we always do what we most desire to do. (Most, as in, we always have a range of concomitant desires, and we fulfill the foremost.) Plainly, “I did what I did not most want to do” is a description of an accident, not of a choice.

I also believe that we do not, ultimately, choose what it is that we desire (although, see §4).

In light of these facts, I have been asked, whence moral responsibility? Clearly, if we have no control over our desires, and no choice affecting which one will become foremost at any given time, then we never make any choice which affects the actions that we will take, which appears to be Trouble 4 Moral Responsibility.

The answer, in short, is that regardless of whether it really is so troublesome, I do not actually believe that we have no control at all over our desires – I believe that we have some ability to moderate our irrational desires. The same answer in slightly longer form is what follows.

1.1. Types of desire

I believe that desires can be divided into two main kinds – rational desires, caused by the soul, and sensitive desires, caused by the body. (And no more – see §2.)

Rational desires are caused by the operation of reason. Barring some interference with the natural operation of the rational faculty – which can only be caused by the body (see §3) – such desires always follow strictly from the known truth about things; they may be said to be deduced.

The way this works is that goodness, being really identical with being, can be known with as much certainty by reason as anything else. When reason knows an object to be good, the will desires it (with rational desire) in exact proportion to how good it is; nothing else can happen (although, see §5). Regarding those desires, “the will desires of necessity whatever it desires”, which is against what Thomas had said.

Sensitive desires, on the other hand, are caused by the operation of the body’s “power of sensuality”; this is further divided into irascible and concupiscible, but this is not relevant here. What is relevant is that sensitive desires, being caused by a non-rational power, can be either in accordance with reason or against it (cf. §3). We can know whether they are in accordance with reason (i.e., “properly ordered”, “correct”) by examining them with the rational faculty.

1.2. Willpower

Given those desires and their causes, this is what we can choose to do. We can either examine our sensitive desires or not; if upon examination we find them to be incorrect, we can either bring them into accordance with reason (see §4, §5) or not; if we do not do so, then they will be allowed to become our foremost desires for irrational reasons, and we can act upon them. This is always our fault, being a result of choice.

These choices are determined only by how just we are, i.e., how strongly we desire to “avoid evil and do good”. Which is to say, they are free. The power rightly to make these choices may be termed “willpower”, and may be construed as our “attention” and “diligence” in examining our desires and bringing them into accordance with reason. In connection with the latter operation, we may bring up another necessary to it, which is that of deriving the logical consequences of the principles of the natural law in application to each particular case. Defect of willpower is always fully our fault.

2. Sufficient reason

Rational and sensitive desires comprise an exhaustive division of desires. This means that we never desire anything without either a physical cause (sensitive desires) or a logical reason (rational desires), caused by the operation of our minds on our knowledge.

So, I do not believe, as some people think must be admitted to safeguard free will, that any action is ever done for no reason at all, and in that sense “undetermined”. I think that that is pretty much nonsense.

You have always had your body, and you have always had access to the floor. When have you last rolled on the floor? For most people, it has been some weeks, perhaps months – we simply lack any reason to roll on the floor most of the time. Every other action is like this – we never do things for no reason, but only when some reason comes up. How could it be otherwise?

3. Burdened by flesh

The will desires whatever appears to it under the aspect of good, in precise proportion to how good it appears. If, then, we ever desire anything out of proportion to how good it is, this must be because a false appearance has been admitted to be a reality.

There is no way for reason to create a false appearance; its natural operation is to deduce rightly from known premises. So if a false appearance has been admitted into the soul, it must be through the senses, whose natural operation is that of chaotic material causes, prone to lead us to error if we are not diligent.

It is always through defect of the will that we fail to act rightly. But it cannot happen without the senses as a motive. Without the body, we would have no disordered desires, and even the weakest willed man could be a saint.

4. Control over desire

To be clear – for willpower to bring a desire into accordance with reason amounts to making us desire it less. All of our desires are ordinally placed in a “value scale”, from foremost to hindmost, and we always act upon the most wanted one; for a sensitive desire to be disordered, or mistaken, is for it to be quite literally out of order on this scale, and what reason can do, through willpower, is to bring it into rational order, i.e., to lower it in the scale.

Our control over our desires, then, amounts to the fact that, at some given times, there are things which we can choose to desire less than we currently do.

We do not choose which things it is that we rationally desire, since this is a necessary rational deduction. And we do not ultimately choose which things it is that we desire with our senses, since we lack sufficient control over the external world to decide which things will even come before our eyes. (Although, of course, sometimes we know enough to avoid near occasions of sin.)

We do not, then, in any ultimate sense choose what it is that we desire; what we can do is to bring our irrational desires into line. This is what I had meant in §1.

(For now, I have nothing more to say on the idea of “second-order desires” – desires to have other desires – besides what was said in §1.1 of this other post.)

5. Order

Given the opinions above, it can technically be said that having a disordered sensitive desire is the same as having a disordered rational desire. For if a sensitive desire is above its proper place in the scale, and if it sometimes does (as it does) surpass for the time being the place of any rational desires, then those rational desires are, of course, below their proper place.

Here I would note that, yes, sometimes some rational desires are beneath their proper place with respect to some sensitive ones; but every rational desire is always in its proper place in relation to every other rational desire. It is only sensitive desires which can be out of order absolutely, i.e., in relation to every other desire of any kind. So it is more proper to speak of disordered sensitive desires than rational ones.

Paradoxes drowned

This is just a pious thought that I shared with my friends the other day. What follows after the message screenshot[1] is just some elaboration upon it that I thought to do, and which is the reason this is a blog post at all. If you thought that the image that I attached to my message is pretty, and would like to see other such images, please check the “Concerning Faith of Things Not Seen” Facebook page (named after Augustine’s work of the same name); I run it, though not alone.

The Stoics were fond of saying various shocking sentences,[2] which they did believe to be literally true within their philosophy. “By a paradox is meant that which runs counter to general opinion,” as St. George Stock[3] explains it to us; the word meant something strange or incredible, which is still a sense in use today (esp. in the adjective “paradoxical”), although it has often been contracted to refer only to self-contradictory statements.

“It is perhaps these very paradoxes which account for the puzzled fascination with which Stoicism affected the mind of antiquity, just as obscurity in a poet may prove a surer passport to fame than more strictly poetical merits.” Some examples that he gives are, “Virtue is the only good”, “All faults are equal”, “Every fool is mad”, “Only the sage is free and every fool is a slave”, “The sage alone is wealthy”, “Good men are always happy and bad men always miserable”, “All goods are equal”, “No one is wiser or happier than another”, “No wise man is unhappy”.

I note that it is the same genre of things that are said in the “Admonition 5”, of St Francis of Assisi – reproduced here below, from the OLL edition of his writings. Compare the incredulity and doubt of the Greek audience of such statements with the reaction of a Christian audience to these quotes, which in my experience is usually one of immediate admiration and assent. May not a miracle have happened here?

Consider, O man, how great the excellence in which the Lord has placed you because He has created and formed you to the image of His beloved Son according to the body and to His own likeness according to the spirit. And all the creatures that are under heaven serve and know and obey their Creator in their own way better than you And even the demons did not crucify Him, but you together with them crucified Him and still crucify Him by taking delight in vices and sins. Wherefore then can you glory? For if you were so clever and wise that you possessed all science, and if you knew how to interpret every form of language and to investigate heavenly things minutely, you could not glory in all this, because one demon has known more of heavenly things and still knows more of earthly things than all men, although there may be some man who has received from the Lord a special knowledge of sovereign wisdom. In like manner, if you were handsomer and richer than all others, and even if you could work wonders and put the demons to flight, all these things are hurtful to you and in nowise belong to you, and in them you cannot glory; that, however, in which we may glory is in our infirmities, and in bearing daily the holy cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

A similar, related writing was shared by Cal when I was talking about this, which I also reproduce here. Titled “True and Perfect Joy” (De vera et perfecta laetitia), I have copied it from this website without the philological information that was attached to it.

The same [Brother Leonard] related in the same place that one day at Saint Mary’s, blessed Francis called Brother Leo and said: “Brother Leo, write.” He responded: “Look, I’m ready!” “Write,” he said, “what true joy is.”

“A messenger arrives and says that all the Masters of Paris have entered the Order. Write: this isn’t true joy! Or, that all the prelates, archbishops and bishops beyond the mountains, as well as the King of France and the King of England [have entered the Order]. Write: this isn’t true joy! Again, that my brothers have gone to the non-believers and converted all of them to the faith; again, that I have so much grace from God that I heal the sick and perform many miracles. I tell you true joy doesn’t consist in any of these things.”

“Then what is true joy?”

“I return from Perugia and arrive here in the dead of night. It’s winter time, muddy, and so cold that icicles have formed on the edges of my habit and keep striking my legs and blood flows from such wounds. Freezing, covered with mud and ice, I come to the gate and, after I’ve knocked and called for some time, a brother comes and asks: ‘Who are you?’ ‘Brother Francis,’ I answer. ‘Go away!’ he says. ‘This is not a decent hour to be wandering about! You may not come in!’ When I insist, he replies: ‘Go away! You are simple and stupid! Don’t come back to us again! There are many of us here like you—we don’t need you!’ I stand again at the door and say: ‘For the love of God, take me in tonight!" And he replies: ‘I will not! Go to the Crosiers’ place and ask there!’

“I tell you this: If I had patience and did not become upset, true joy, as well as true virtue and the salvation of my soul, would consist in this.”

[1] I thought it fitting to include in the screenshot that it happened in a “Catholic Theology” group chat on Messenger, but please do not ask to be added to it. Do become Catholic, if you aren’t yet.

[2] In a famous sentence, the SEP tells us that “it seems clear that some Stoics took a kind of perverse joy in advocating views which seem so at odds with common sense”, although “they did not do so simply to shock”. It does seem clear.

[3] Not canonized; his first name was “St. George”. Full name “St. George William Joseph Stock”.

Titles to interest

This blog post is meant to define a new extrinsic title to legitimate taking of interest, in view of the Catholic doctrine on usury. I begin with some quotations that are helpful to my purpose. If you are not familiar enough with the doctrine to follow what is said, try checking the Catholic Encyclopedia on usury and interest.

6. Leo X, in the Fifth Council of Lateran, 1515, ruled that – “usury is properly interpreted to be the attempt to draw profit and increment, without labour, without cost, and without risk, out of the use of a thing that does not fructify.” In 1745, Benedict XIV wrote in the same sense to the Bishops of Italy: “That kind of sin which is called usury, and which has its proper seat and place in the contract of mutuum, consists in turning that contract, which of its own nature requires the amount returned exactly to balance the amount received, into a ground for demanding a return in excess of the amount received.” Mutuum, be it observed, is a loan for a definite period, of some article, the use of which lies in its consumption, as matches, fuel, food, and, in one respect, money. We shall prove this to be properly a gratuitous contract. (s. iv., n. 4, p. 254.)

7. Usury then is no mere taking of exorbitant interest. There is no question of more or less, but it is usury to take any interest at all upon the loan of a piece of property, which

(a) is of no use except to be used up, spent, consumed:

(b) is not wanted for the lender’s own consumption within the period of the loan:

(c) is lent upon security that obviates risk:

(d) is so lent that the lender foregoes no occasion of lawful gain by lending it.

8. When all these four conditions are fulfilled, and yet interest is exacted upon a loan, such interest is usurious and unjust. And why? Simply by reason of the principle that we laid down before, speaking of private exchange (n. 3), a principle that is thus stated by St. Thomas:

“If one party is much benefited by the commodity which he receives of the other, while the other, the seller, is not a loser by going without the article, no extra price must be put on. The reason is, because the benefit that accrues to one party is not from the seller, but from the condition of the buyer. Now no one ought to sell to another that which is not his, though he may sell the loss that he suffers. He, however, who is much benefited by the commodity he receives of another, may spontaneously bestow some extra recompense on the seller: that is the part of one who has the feelings of a gentleman.” (2a 2ae, q. 77, art. 1, in corp.)

— Joseph Rickaby, S.J., Moral Philosophy, 2.5, §5

It is in view of the conditions laid out by Leo and by Fr. Rickaby that moralists have often explicitly recognized certain legitimate “extrinsic titles” to interest, as explained below:

“Loss occurring (damnum emergens) and profit ceasing (lucrum cessans) are the two great titles to interest, as interest is understood today, a return owed without fault of the debtor.” If one could have made a profit with one’s money instead of loaning it (and can prove it!) then this becomes a legitimate title for interest. If I were going to purchase an orchard, but made the loan instead, the lender might also owe me the profit I lost from not owning the orchard. This title would become much more important as commercial centers and opportunities for investment became prevalent. Much later, it might even come to include the cost of one’s labor in making the loan (a just wage for bankers). “In the eyes of the Church, the most important and legitimate one [excuse], held that usury could be considered a salary, a remuneration for labor (stipendium laboris).”

— Fr. Gary L Coulter, The Church and Usury, ch. 3

Less commonly, some people have recognized inflation as a legitimate title to interest, so that a lender could lawfully charge an interest rate to cover the rate of inflation. Germain Grisez mentions this, in passing, in a passage quoted by Fr. Coulter:

Those who deposit or lend can fairly charge for various other factors: costs incurred in making and administering the loan, the risk of non-payment, probable inflation, taxes, the foregoing of other legitimate uses to which the money otherwise would be put, and so on.

— Germain Grisez, Living a Christian Life, vol. 2 of The Way of the Lord Jesus (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1993), 834

If someone were only familiar with the three titles just mentioned before – damnum emergens, lucrum cessans and stipendium laboris –, allowing for inflation could seem strange. It certainly did in the (rather extreme) opinion of the late Zippy Catholic. As my friend Calvin Engime once told me:

I used to accept inflation as a title to interest because Germain Grisez said it is one, but I don’t see the reason for this. It comes back to: what would have happened if you hadn’t made the loan? The money would still have declined in value while sitting in your pocket, and why should the borrower have to compensate you for that?

If someone were to object to Cal’s opinion by saying that the money could be invested to prevent its decline in value, Cal would certainly point out, correctly, that this fact could not be a reason for inflation as a title to interest, but only for lucrum cessans, which he does not dispute. So, is there any reason for Grisez’s statement?

I think there is, and I submit that it lies in the second condition laid out by Fr. Rickaby in the first quote from above, that the property loaned, being something consumed in use, “is not wanted for the lender’s own consumption within the period of the loan.” The difference between inflation, as a title to interest, and lucrum cessans, is that the inflation title represents foregone consumption, in an economic sense, as opposed to production, which is represented by lucrum cessans.

The inflation-title is the compensation for the decline in your power to consume, because you could have chosen to buy something instead of making the loan, and by making the loan you have delayed this consumption to a time when your money is worth less; it is only right that you be compensated for doing this, since it lowers your quality of life to some extent, and you do it only for the sake of making the loan.

This is fair enough, and certainly correct, but it is not usually seen because loans are usually made out of stored “savings”, which the lender did not mean to spend consumptively (as opposed to productively) any time soon. If the money was unlikely to be spent, anyway, why should there be compensation for the decline in value that it would have suffered while not being spent?

The answer is that, regardless of whether the money will be spent or not, it remains that, in a fundamentally uncertain world, there is always some usefulness to having cash holdings, because the probability that some desire to use it consumptively will arise is never zero. While holding cash, the saver enjoys the potential to consume whenever he wants, if he happens to want it, and this potential is itself useful. If it were not, then he would, of course, spend his cash instead of holding it, either productively or consumptively.

The service that money renders does not consist in its turnover. It consists in its being ready in cash holdings for any future use.

Money is never “idle.” It always renders to somebody the only service that it can render, namely being a part of a man’s cash holdings.

Cash holdings are sometimes greater and sometimes smaller with the same individual. But nobody ever has cash holdings greater than he wants to have. If he thinks that his cash holdings are excessive, he invests the surplus either by buying (producers’ or consumers’ goods) or by lending it. (Time deposits are one method of lending money.) [...]

— Ludwig von Mises, On the Velocity of Circulation

Now, once we acknowledge the usefulness of this potential to consume, which is undeniable, we have done more than explain the title of inflation. This is where my new legitimate title to interest comes in; I shall call it the potentiality title, or title of potentiality, after the potential to consume. I will explain it next.

There is no reason why only the decrease in the potential to consume due to inflation should be admitted as a legitimate title to interest. The potential itself, being useful, is of different usefulness to different persons, according to how they rate their probability of desiring to consume in the future. This can only be evaluated according to the lender’s foresight regarding opportunities to consume.

So, plainly, it is legitimate that the lender charge interest on a loan in order to be compensated for his loss of potential to consume, since this loss lowers his quality of life to some extent, and he incurs it only for the sake of making the loan. Because of the nature of the usefulness of the potential, the precise just rate of this interest can only be determined with knowledge of the lender’s mind. Which should allow almost any numerical rate to be justified, effectively; the exception would be when there are reasons to suspect the lender of allowing his estimation to be influenced by unjust motives.

To some people, this may seem like a rash conclusion. It may ease their minds to consider these facts which Cal told me about before, in an earlier conversation:

Up to the 19th Century, the burden was on anyone who had collected interest on a loan to affirmatively demonstrate that it was justified, or else he could not be absolved unless he made reparation of what he had taken. Then some theologians advanced the theory of “title of civil law,” according to which the fact that the civil law permitted a certain rate of interest was sufficient title to it, independent of any other claim. The Holy See ruled that, pending a definitive judgement on the legitimacy of this opinion, those who put it into practice were not to be disturbed, at least as long as the rate of interest is not flagrantly excessive, and there the matter has pretty much stood ever since.

Now, not only does this other theory also allow almost any effective rate of interest to be morally justified – at least in most countries, which tend to permit almost any interest – it is also much less reasonable. For it claims that a lawmaker can turn a natural injustice into a just act with the mere stroke of a pen; whereas my opinion of the title of potentiality does no such thing, but explains the justice of the act on the basis of the undeniable fact that it is useful to hold cash for the reason that it gives someone the potential to consume in the future. So, if the conclusion regarding the “title of civil law” was not too rash to be put into practice, then much less so is my conclusion, which is a much more reasonable one.

Addendum, 2023-11-05

I have recently been reading Rothbard’s Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, volume 1, where §4.8, on Lessius and de Lugo, points out that the former had a similar theory, the title which he called “carentia pecuniae” (charging for lack of money). As Rothbard describes it, having cited Lessius’s work De Justitia et Jure (1605) as his source:

But that is not all. For Leonard Lessius contributed his own, new and powerful, weapon against the usury ban: a new ‘title’ or justification for interest. The new justification – prefigured only by the neglected Summenhart – was carentia pecuniae: charging for lack of money. Lessius pointed out quite cogently that the lender suffers the lack of his money, the lack of his liquidity, during the term of the loan, and therefore he is entitled to charge interest for this economic loss. In short, Lessius saw perceptively that everyone derives utility from liquidity, from the possession of money, and that being deprived of this utility is a lack for which the lender may and will demand compensation. Lessius pointed out that unexpected situations can and do arise which could be met far more effectively if one's money were in one's possession and not absent for a period of time. Time, in short, can and should be charged for, for that reason, ‘for it can never be obtained that the merchants do not value a long-term concession higher than a short-term one’. And those who are deprived of their money ‘value more the lack of their money for five months than the lack of it for four, and the lack of it for four more than three, and this is partly because they lack the opportunity of gaining with that money, partly because their principle is longer in danger...’.

Furthermore, Lessius points out that bills of exchange, or rights to future money, are always at a discount compared to cash. This discount is, of course, the rate of interest. Lessius explains: ‘This is a matter of common experience in that money provides the means to a multitude of things which those rights do not provide. Therefore they may be bought at a lower price’. Lessius also notes that merchants and exchangers daily determine the ‘price of the lack of money’ on the Antwerp Bourse, averaging about 10 per cent; and foreign exchanges, of inestimable value to the economy, would perish if such prices could not be charged.

Thus, for Lessius, the price for a lack of money is established on organized loan markets. But to the extent that a loan market exists, there is no need to justify each merchant's loan on the basis of his particular opportunity cost or deprivation of funds. That price, which becomes the just price, is set on the loan market. As Lessius puts it:

Moreover, any merchant seems able to demand this price... even though there is no gain of his that stops because of his loan. This is the just price for the privation of money among merchants; for the just price of an article or obligation in any community is that which is put upon it by that community in good faith for the sake of the common good in view of all the circumstances... Therefore, even if through the privation of money for a year there is no gain of mine that stops and no risk of capital, because such a price for just causes has been put upon this privation, I may demand it just as the rest do.

With carentia pecuniae, therefore, Leonard Lessius delivered the final blow to smash the usury prohibition, while unfortunately still retaining the prohibition in a formal sense. It is no wonder that Professor Noonan, the great scholar of the scholastics on usury, holds Lessius to be ‘the theologian whose views on usury most decidedly mark the arrival of a new era. More than any predecessor he would probably have felt completely at ease in the modern financial world.’ [John T. Noonan, Jr, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957), p. 222.]

Bicodicism

This blog post has the aim of coining a word for a thing I have sometimes seen.

Some people, chiefly liberals and libertarians, will sometimes speak as though law and morality operate under entirely different principles. Not only is it different for something to be illegal and immoral, but these things are actually thought to be unrelated by nature, so that the disconnection between them is right and good, and would also exist in a more perfect legal system.

More specifically, they seem to think that some acts are intrinsically legally permissible or impermissible, and that these acts are different from the acts which are intrinsically morally permissible or impermissible. The legal code and the moral code may overlap, but there can be no general proposition about whether immoral things can or must be illegal, or vice-versa.

As this doctrine is believed, only the legal code may be enforced by the courts; the moral code, if the speaker is a Christian, is only enforced in the day of Judgment.

I have coined the term bicodicism for this idea; plainly, the name derives from the opinion’s belief in “two codes” or codices.

Bicodicism may be contrasted, for instance, with the opinion of Thomas Aquinas, who thought that all immoral acts could, in theory, be forbidden by law, but human law rightly allows some immoral acts because it is not possible for the majority to abstain from them; which is a practical reason, rather than a reason of principle.

A bicodicist might, instead, say that some acts are immoral but are legally permissible, because people have a legal right to do them. This is different from mere legal positivism because the bicodicist regards this as a correct state of the law, and may even find it to be immoral, or against ‘the principles of law’ (or some such phrase), to change the law to forbid the immoral act.

Lysander Spooner plainly stated a bicodicist doctrine in his famous pamphlet Vices are Not Crimes, where he defined some acts as vices and some as crimes, claiming that only the latter are passible of legal prohibition. Spooner’s definition of a crime has nothing to do with whether an act is in fact forbidden by the laws, so that his doctrine is not positivist.

I note that it is not necessary for someone to adopt bicodicism in order to be a liberal or a libertarian. For supposing that a man believed in Thomas’s doctrine as I have stated it, but also believed that acts which do not harm others are never possible for the majority to abstain from – or supposing that he thought that there are always overwhelming practical reasons for the sovereign not to forbid such acts – then he would certainly agree with the common liberal and libertarian doctrine, that acts which do not harm others should always be tolerated by law.

Follow-up on intellectual property, to Catholics

Since making my post on intellectual property, I have learned a couple of things. That post is still mostly accurate, so this post will assume you have read it and make a few short corrections.

Intellectual property as a natural right

Regarding the first part, I may have been too quick to suppose that the idea that there is a natural right to intellectual property, construed as being of the same kind as the right to private property, is innovative. I have spoken with Brian Besong about the post, and he told me that Francisco Suárez had developed similar ideas as part of his defense of probabilism; he also seemed quite sure that there must have been even earlier precedents in history. That may be; at the time of the post, it was hard for me to find research materials on the topic, and it still is. No concept of intellectual property was mentioned in connection with any ancient or medieval discussion of property that I have looked into, though. If there were examples, besides, I doubt that they had any more reason than Ayn Rand to affirm the doctrine.

On the other hand, back when I wrote the post, I had no opinion on the fundamental purpose of private property. Now, I am strongly convinced that individual appropriation only serves, fundamentally, the purpose of preventing action conflicts, which happen because one same material thing cannot be used for two different purposes at the same time. Now, since it is impossible for there to be an action conflict about ideas, it makes no sense for them to be individually appropriated – if they are property in any sense, they are, by right, common property, as all things, originally, are. I had also discussed this principle with Dr. Besong, but I do not find any of our discussion worth relaying here.

Intellectual property laws are not laws

Finally, I have an addition to the third part. There is another way in which intellectual property laws, taken as civil laws, may be thought to be null and void. It turns out that Thomas says that all laws, by nature, are intrinsically ordered to the common good. So, if intellectual property laws are not intrinsically so ordered – regardless of the intentions of the lawgivers – they do not have the nature of law. Which is to say, they are actually no laws at all, and cannot bind in conscience. I believe that this fact is demonstrable in two different ways.

First demonstration

Thomas says, regarding the effects of law:

The precepts of law are concerned with human acts, in which the law directs, as stated above. Again there are three kinds of human acts: for, as stated above, some acts are good generically, viz. acts of virtue; and in respect of these the act of the law is a precept or command, for “the law commands all acts of virtue” (Ethic. v, 1). Some acts are evil generically, viz. acts of vice, and in respect of these the law forbids. Some acts are generically indifferent, and in respect of these the law permits; and all acts that are either not distinctly good or not distinctly bad may be called indifferent. And it is the fear of punishment that law makes use of in order to ensure obedience: in which respect punishment is an effect of law.

In view of the nature of law, as explained before, it seems that a law must treat these kinds of acts in these ways in order to be law; a law which commanded evil, or forbade good, would not be law. Now, what intellectual property laws have in common with each other is, that they grant the IP rights-holder the authority to freely permit or proscribe (by means of licensing or not) the production of objects embodying the productive idea in question. But production is, generically, a good action. It follows that the enforcement of this authority is always calculated to forbid a good action, which is contrary to the nature of law.

Second demonstration

Just as goodness in general is rightly divided between the virtuous, the pleasant, and the useful – with this last one existing only for the sake of the other two – I believe that the common good is rightly divided into the achievement of virtue by the populace, as conceived of by the moralists, and the general welfare as conceived of by the economists.

Now, intellectual property laws do not promote virtue. There is no reason to think they do, unless one were to hold the implausible opinion that such laws protect a natural right.

Such laws are not conducive to the general welfare either, and are in fact deleterious to it. The argument from the first demonstration also holds in economics; furthermore, economists have developed their own proofs of this proposition. One is seen in this paper, written from an Austrian School perspective; a more elaborate argument is made by this book, which is written from a neoclassical point-of-view. For these reasons, we have scientific certainty that these laws are, on balance, destructive of welfare.

Since intellectual property laws are not ordered either to virtue or to the general welfare, which are the two parts of the common good, these so-called laws are not ordered to the common good at all. Which means that they lack the nature of law, and so cannot bind in conscience.