"Hall of mirrors"

     "If the right hemisphere delivers 'the Other' – experience of whatever it is that exists apart from ourselves – this is not the same as the world of concrete entities 'out there' (it is certainly more than that), but it does encompass most of what we would think of as actually existing things, at least before we come to think of them at all, as opposed to the concepts of them, the abstractions and constructions we inevitably make from them, in conscious reflection, which forms the contribution of the left hemisphere. But what if the left hemisphere were able to externalise and make concrete its own workings – so that the realm of actually existing things apart from the mind consisted to a large extent of its own projections? Then the ontological primacy of right-hemisphere experience would be outflanked, since it would be delivering – not 'the Other', but what was already the world as processed by the left hemisphere. It would make it hard, and perhaps in time impossible, for the right hemisphere to escape from the hall of mirrors, to reach out to something that was truly 'Other' than, beyond, the human mind.
     "In essence this was the [culminating] achievement of the Industrial Revolution."

     Iain McGilchrist, The master and his emissary:  the divided brain and the making of the Western world, new revised edition (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2019), 386.

"Receive us . . . not troubled, not shrinking back on that day of death or uprooted by force"

Index of Medieval Art, below

"O Lord and Maker of all, and especially of this body of ours! O God and Father and Pilot of mankind! O Master of life and death! O Guardian and Benefactor of our souls! O You who make and change all seasonably by Your creative Word, . . . receive us, ready and not troubled by fear of You, not turning away in our last days, nor forcibly drawn from things of earth, as is the misfortune of souls loving the world and the flesh, but eagerly drawn to the heavenly life, everlasting and blessed, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen."

     St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Funeral oration On his brother, St. Caesarius 24, trans. McCauley, FC 22 (Funeral orations (Washington, DC:  Catholic University of America Press, 1953)), 25.  Trans. Liturgy of the hours for Friday in the 31st week of Ordinary time:

"Lord and Creator of all, and especially of your creature man, you are the God and Father and ruler of your children; you are the Lord of life and death, you are the guardian and benefactor of our souls. You fashion and transform all things in their due season through your creative Word, as you know to be best in your deep wisdom and providence. Receive. . . . us too at the proper time, when you have guided us in our bodily life as long as may be for our profit. Receive us prepared indeed by fear of you, but not troubled, not shrinking back on that day of death or uprooted by force like those who are lovers of the world and the flesh. Instead, may we set out eagerly for that everlasting and blessed life which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen [(δέχοιο δὲ καὶ ἡμᾶς ὕστερον ἐν καιρῷ εὐθέτῳ, οἰκονομήσας ἐν τῇ σαρκὶ ἐφ' ὅσον ἂν ᾗ συμθέρον· καὶ δέχοιό γε διὰ τὸν σὸν φόβον ἑτοιμασθέντας, καὶ οὐ ταρασσομὲνους, οὐδὲ ὑποχωροῦντας ἐν ἡμέρᾳ τῇ τελευταίᾳ, καὶ βὶᾳ τῶν ἐντεῦθεν ἀποσπωμένους, ὃ τῶν φιλοκόσμων ψυχῶν πάθος καὶ φιλοσάρκων, αλλὰ προθύμος πρὸς τὴν αὐτόθεν ζωὴν τὴν μακραίωνά τε καὶ μακαρίαν, τὴν ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ τῷ Κυρίῳ ἡμῶν, ᾧ ἡ δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων. Ἀμήν.)]."

     Greek from SC 405 (1995), , and PG 35, col. 788B-C.  A lovely illustration of this (St. Caesarius interpreted by me as both returning home upon exile as mentioned in this funeral oration and welcoming his brother and mother to "that everlasting and blessed life which is in Jesus Christ our Lord") would be Index of Medieval Art no. 49875.

"being and being known as a Christian"

"Although he possessed many important honors, his own first claim to dignity consisted in being and being known as a Christian."

     St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Funeral oration On his brother, St. Caesarius 10, trans. McCauley, FC 22 (Funeral orations (Washington, DC:  Catholic University of America Press, 1953)), 12.  Cf. "Their sole enjoyment in their children was that they be known as Christ's and called His" (4, p. 7).  This is, if memory serves, a theme of St. Gregory's.

"Every new object, clearly seen, opens up a new organ [of perception] in us"

"the elements of the object, the perception of the object, flow into my thinking and are fully permeated by it. . . . my perception itself is a thinking, and my thinking a perception.  Man knows himself only to the extent that he knows the world; he becomes aware of himself only within the world, and aware of the world only within himself.  Every new object, clearly seen, opens up a new organ of perception in us."

"Hiebei bekenn' ich, daß mir von jeher die große und so bedeutend klingende Aufgabe: erkenne dich selbst, immer verdächtig vorkam, als eine List geheim verbündeter Priester, die den Menschen durch unerreichbare Forderungen verwirren und von der Thätigkeit gegen die Außenwelt zu einer innern falschen Beschaulichkeit verleiten wollten. Der Mensch kennt nur sich selbst, in sofern er die Welt kennt, die er nur in sich und sich nur in ihr gewahr wird. Jeder neue Gegenstand, wohl beschaut, schließt ein neues Organ in uns auf."

     Goethe,  "Bedeutende Förderniß durch ein einziges geistreiches Wort" (   ).  Goethes Werke: Herausgegeben im Auftrage der Großherzogin Sophie von Sachsen: II. Abtheilung: Goethes Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften: 11. Band: Zur Naturwissenschaft: Allgemeine Naturlehre: I. Theil,  58-64. Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 1893, p. 59, ll. 10-20.  I was put onto this by Iain McGilchrist, The master and his emissary, new expanded edition (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press), pp. 359-360.

AI singularity as fundamental bug, not ultimate feature

     "The singularity of each [and every] AI machine is to be contrasted with the universality of human reason.  Rational activity consists . . . in a knowledge of the universal forms to be equated with neither the abstract symbolism of traditional informatics nor any generalizations from the concrete [that] artificial intelligence [might be capable of confecting].  Because [(De sorte que)] rational logic is truly [(elle-même)] universal, it is found in every human individual who is thinking straight; is communicable from one human being to another; [and] can be understood and communicated, agreed with or refuted.  AI machines, by contrast, are not designed to communicate their logic; rather, their [quite alien] internal logic is what one does not wish to see in their responses inasmuch as it has meaning for that one machine and it alone.
     "Among the myths surrounding artificial intelligence is the notion that, by dint of [a supposed] perfectability, AI machines, [having] become superintelligent, will begin to develop a moral sense, a consciousness of themselves, and thus attain to a personal 'singularity.'  In reality, singularity is not a perfection of the AI machine, but the opposite.  [For an AI machine] is already singular by its very logic, and that singularity is the inevitable by-product [(rançon directe)] of its incapacity to accede to the universality of human reason.  The more an AI machine is perfected in the imitation of the products of human reason, the more its logic becomes incommunicable and [the more it] finds itself entrapped within its singularity."

     Fr. Emmanuel Perrier, O.P., "Que fait l’intelligence artificielle?," Revue thomiste website, October (?) 2025.

"the amplitude of the glory of [the Father's] inheritance in the saints"

ὁ πλοῦτος τῆς δόξης τῆς κληρονομίας αὐτοῦ ἐν τοῖς ἁγίοις 

     Eph 1:18 RSV:  "that you may know . . . what are the riches of his glorious inheritance [i.e. 'portion'] in the saints."  riches:  abundance, wealth, richness, plenitude, fulsomeness, plentifulness, plenteousness, sumptuosity, immensity, magnitude, clerete, lustre, dimensity, etc.
     "God seeks from our goods not profit, but glory, i.e., the manifestation of His goodness" ("Deus ex bonis nostris non quaerit utilitatem, sed gloriam, idest manifestationem suae bonitatis"; St. Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II.114.1 ("Whether a man may merit anything from God").ad 2).

Neither hero nor villain

"Thus Columbus-the-hero and Columbus-the-villain live on, mutually sustained by the passion which continuing controversy imparts to their supporters. No argument can dispel [either of] the[se two falsehoods], however convincing; no evidence, however compelling. They have eclipsed the real Columbus and, judged by their effects, have outstriped him in importance. For one of the sad lessons historians learn is that history is influenced less by the facts as they happen than by the falsehoods men believe."

     Felipe Fernández-Armesto, at the time Professor of Modern History, University of Oxford, and the author of an important Columbus biography published by Oxford University Press in 1991 ("arguably one of the best-written and most historically sensitive" available, according to Dr. Valerie I. J. Flint in the Encyclopaedia Britannica's Britannica Library), but now William P. Reynolds Professor of History, University of Notre Dame.  "Columbus - Hero or Villain?," History today 42, no. 5 (May 1992):  9 (4-9).
     And yet it seems clear that there are, in Fernández-Armesto's mind, respects in which Columbus was and remains the former at least, not (of course) to mention respects in which he was clearly a man of his own time, indeed more Genoese than Spanish, given that he "never understood [already contemporary] Spanish[/Castilian] scruples about slavery" (6).  And yet "Las Casas revered him, and pitied, rather than censured, the imperfections of his attitude to the natives."  (Though I suppose the question might be, Right up until his death in 1566, 61 years after Columbus'?)