Recent posts

#1

General Discussion / Re: New Members

Last post by justjeff - March 27, 2025, 04:09:20 PM

Not sure if this is a dead thread, but howdy y'all!
I'm Tony, a Catholic seminarian. Been using Calibre and helping out others at the seminary I go to with ebooks and stuff for our classes.
Thank all y'all that have helped us learn more.
Sancta Dei Genitrix - Ora Pro Nobis

Welcome Tony and thank you for the uplifting post. I sometimes get discouraged at what is going on in the Church and seeing young people, especially seminarians who are still enthusiastic in their faith is heartwarming indeed. We are blessed with some good priests in the St. Louis archdiocese, many/most of whom are younger, but unfortunately the spiritual battle seems to be claiming many victims.

#2

General Discussion / Copyright reform is necessary ...

Last post by Geremia - March 26, 2025, 05:28:08 PM

Copyright reform is necessary for national security

annas-archive.li/blog, 2025-01-31 — companion articles by TorrentFreak: first, second

TL;DR: Chinese LLMs (including DeepSeek) are trained on my illegal archive of books and papers — the largest in the world. The West needs to overhaul copyright law as a matter of national security.

Not too long ago, "shadow-libraries" were dying. Sci-Hub, the massive illegal archive of academic papers, had stopped taking in new works, due to lawsuits. "Z-Library", the largest illegal library of books, saw its alleged creators arrested on criminal copyright charges. They incredibly managed to escape their arrest, but their library is no less under threat.

When Z-Library faced shutdown, I had already backed up its entire library and was searching for a platform to house it. That was my motivation for starting Anna's Archive: a continuation of the mission behind those earlier initiatives. We've since grown to be the largest shadow library in the world, hosting more than 140 million copyrighted texts across numerous formats — books, academic papers, magazines, newspapers, and beyond.

Me and my team are ideologues. We believe that preserving and hosting these files is morally right. Libraries around the world are seeing funding cuts, and we can't trust humanity's heritage to corporations either.

Then came AI. Virtually all major companies building LLMs contacted us to train on our data. Most (but not all!) US-based companies reconsidered once they realized the illegal nature of our work. By contrast, Chinese firms have enthusiastically embraced our collection, apparently untroubled by its legality. This is notable given China's role as a signatory to nearly all major international copyright treaties.

We have given high-speed access to about 30 companies. Most of them are LLM companies, and some are data brokers, who will resell our collection. Most are Chinese, though we've also worked with companies from the US, Europe, Russia, South Korea, and Japan. DeepSeek admitted that an earlier version was trained on part of our collection, though they're tight-lipped about their latest model (probably also trained on our data though).

If the West wants to stay ahead in the race of LLMs, and ultimately, AGI, it needs to reconsider its position on copyright, and soon. Whether you agree with us or not on our moral case, this is now becoming a case of economics, and even of national security. All power blocs are building artificial super-scientists, super-hackers, and super-militaries. Freedom of information is becoming a matter of survival for these countries — even a matter of national security.

Our team is from all over the world, and we don't have a particular alignment. But we'd encourage countries with strong copyright laws to use this existential threat to reform them. So what to do?

Our first recommendation is straightforward: shorten the copyright term. In the US, copyright is granted for 70 years after the author's death. This is absurd. We can bring this in line with patents, which are granted for 20 years after filing. This should be more than enough time for authors of books, papers, music, art, and other creative works, to get fully compensated for their efforts (including longer-term projects such as movie adaptations).

Then, at a minimum, policymakers should include carve-outs for the mass-preservation and dissemination of texts. If lost revenue from individual customers is the main worry, personal-level distribution could remain prohibited. In turn, those capable of managing vast repositories — companies training LLMs, along with libraries and other archives — would be covered by these exceptions.

Some countries are already doing a version of this. TorrentFreak reported that China and Japan have introduced AI exceptions to their copyright laws. It is unclear to us how this interacts with international treaties, but it certainly gives cover to their domestic companies, which explains what we've been seeing.

As for Anna's Archive — we will continue our underground work rooted in moral conviction. Yet our greatest wish is to enter the light, and amplify our impact legally. Please reform copyright.

- Anna and the team (Reddit, Telegram)

Read the companion articles by TorrentFreak: first, second

[Potency mixed with Act]

#3

Philosophy / Re: Real Distinction question

Last post by Geremia - March 25, 2025, 08:54:24 PM

You seem to think that for something to be real, it has to be pure actuality (Actus Purus, God); you seem to think there cannot be degrees of reality. But for finite beings, there is always some degree of potentiality mixed in.

Your argument reminds me of Parmenides's for the impossibility of change. It's not that there is simply being (act) and non-being, but there are degrees of being in between (potentiality).

Thomistic Thesis #1 covers this:

Potency and Act so divide being that whatsoever exists either is a Pure Act, or is necessarily composed of Potency and Act, as to its primordial and intrinsic principles.

Lumbreras, O.P., commentates:

Every actual subsisting being—inanimate bodies and animals, men and angels, creatures and Creator—must be either Pure Act—a perfection which is neither the complement of Potency, nor the Potency which lacks further complement—or Potency mixed with Act—something capable of perfection and some perfection fulfilling this capacity. This statement is true both in the existential and in the essential order. In each of these orders the composition of Act and Potency is that of two real, really distinct principles, as Being itself; intrinsic to the existing being or to its essence; into which, finally, all other principles can be resolved, while they cannot be resolved into any other.

#4

Philosophy / Real Distinction question

Last post by Geremia - March 24, 2025, 08:58:43 PM

Someone asked me:

Hello there, how have you been. A random thought came to mind when pondering the real distinction and wondered if you had any helpful reference. If we are to treat existence and essence as completely distinct, then how exactly do we consider essences to be real if they are not to be conflated with existence? For instance, if I stated that an essence exists then would that not immediately remove the distinction between existence and essence? How else are we to say that an essence is real if it is not identical to existence? 

[Thomas Aquinas and the Subjective Theory of Value]

#5

Philosophy / Thomas Aquinas and the Subject...

Last post by Geremia - March 17, 2025, 07:48:34 PM

Thomas Aquinas and the Subjective Theory of Value

Tags: History of the Austrian School of Economics, Subjectivism, Value and Exchange

03/17/2025 • Mises Wire • Federico Silva

Thomas Aquinas is, without doubt, the greatest Roman Catholic philosopher and theologian when it comes to the depth of his thought and the degree of his influence. Although this is the case, it might seem strange at first to see him mentioned in relation to the history of the subjective theory of value. It was Rothbard nonetheless who first pointed out that the direct ancestor of the Austrian School is the Salamanca School, a Roman Catholic school of Scholastic philosophy and theology, rooted in and deeply indebted to Aquinas.

It is necessary to keep in mind that Aquinas was not doing legal theory, nor economics (which did not even exist as separate disciplines by then), but rather moral theology and theory of justice. Under that light, commerce only appears as a subordinate topic to justice. In spite of this fact, I shall prove that we can extract some valuable insights regarding the history of the theory of value from the Thomistic theory of right.

It is also somewhat useful, for the sake of the following discussion, to remember that the first Austrian. Carl Menger, was a lawyer, not a mathematician. The Austrians never forgot that the normative and positive aspects of our economic reality are deeply intertwined, although it was still necessary to distinguish between them. Normative disciplines, such as ethics or law, presuppose the validity of praxeological claims. Praxeology, as the general theory of human action, is therefore the real missing link between economics and law. This is my personal assessment that underlies everything I have to say about the relationship between Aquinas and praxeology.

The Thomistic Theory of Right and Praxeology

Aquinas definitely understood "right" as involving some kind of human action. Some even argue, like the Thomistic philosopher Massini Correas, that "right" belongs to the metaphysical category of action. Laws are not "right" proper, but are a certain "definition" of right (aliqualis ratio iuris), meaning that they establish certain rights and obligations, commands and prohibitions, to all the subjects involved, and therefore, they are a rule and measure of human acts.

In his theory of right (ius), Aquinas takes "right" as being synonymous to "what is just" (iustum), and defines it as "certain action (opus) adequate to another according to a certain mode of equality." He then differentiates between natural right and positive right. In another place, Aquinas explains that some positive laws are a direct application of natural law principles by way of mere logical deduction (per modum conclusionis), which is beyond the scope of this article. What I do want to focus on instead is his conception of "positive right" as the regulatory domain that natural law leaves human freedom to determine (per modum determinationis), which is by far the biggest area to explore.

Contrary to what some might expect, for Aquinas it is crystal clear that there is a positive right when "somebody considers himself satisfied if he receives a certain amount" (aliquis reputat se contentum, si tantum accipiat). In other words, the primordial criterion to determine the "fairness" of such commercial transactions, besides natural law itself, is the satisfaction of individual subjective preferences. This can be divided into two categories. There can be private right by private agreements (privatum condictum), when a contract is signed between private parties to have something "adequate" and "commensurate" to one another, or by public agreement (ex condicto publico), when all the people consents to having something adequate and commensurate to one another, or what the king (princeps) mandates.

I do not believe it is forcing the interpretation if we assert that there is a praxeological truth implicit in his notion of contracts. He says that there is a private right if A considers himself satisfied with what he receives from B and B considers himself satisfied with what he receives from A. This does not simply point to the subjective theory of value, but also to the ordinality of subjective preferences. Both give up something to receive another thing that is subjectively more valuable according to their individual preferences. They give up a good that they value less for something that they value more. There is a mutual consent in giving up something in order to go from a less satisfactory situation to a more satisfactory one.

Praxeological Aspects of "Fair Price"

When discussing "fair price" (iustum pretium), Aquinas even goes on to say, following Aristotle's Politics, that essentially "buying and selling seem to have been introduced for the common benefit (communi utilitate) of both [parties], namely when one desires [indiget] the thing of the other, and vice versa." Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, he is completely blind to the law of supply and demand, not only because it was not yet discovered at the time, but because what he strives to prove in the referred section is that selling overpriced goods is a violation of "commutative justice" (i.e., commercial fairness). The praxeological element to "fair price" is mainly that price in general, and fair price in particular, is always established by the common utility of market participants.

Exchanges, Aquinas argues, "should not be more of a burden to one party than to another," because there should always be a "proportion" (aequalitas, lit. "equality") between the quantity of the thing offered and its respective price. This might seem strange for people coming from a common law context, where freedom of contract reigns everywhere (at least in theory), and judges usually do not interfere with the content of contracts, even when one of the parties evidently made a "bad deal."

In the civil law tradition, nevertheless, it is customary for judges to consider "inequality of consideration" in contract law, especially when the initial conditions were unilaterally modified, making the contract disproportionately more burdensome for the party considered "weak." With this fact in mind, we have to distinguish what an exchange is, economically speaking, from what it should be from a moral or legal criterion. In other words, fair price for Aquinas is related not only to subjective preferences but to justice and common good as well. But the fact stands that the "common utility" in the exchange is defined mostly by the subjective preferences of each party, as we have seen above. This is an important praxeological precedent found in proto-market thought.

The Bottom Line

The important takeaway here is that Aquinas says that I have a right to some other good when I agree with someone else to exchange some good of mine for some good of theirs, but only if both of us feel satisfied by the exchange, which matches the Austrian definition of market exchange almost verbatim. It is remarkable to go back to a 13th-century thinker and find insights reminiscent of modern praxeology.

Image Source: Adobe Stock

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

#6

Dogma & Doctrine / Re: «Correctio filialis de hae...

Last post by Geremia - March 11, 2025, 09:29:15 PM

John S. Daly wrote an article titled "Heresy, Schism and their Effects (revised)".

I'm not sure, but he did write a "The Principal Heresies and Other Errors of Vatican II".

#7

Theology / Happy feast of the Angelic Doc...

Last post by Geremia - March 07, 2025, 10:12:20 AM

Happy feast of the Angelic Doctor today, whose angelic intellect no machine could ever mimic, but who gave us solid principles upon which to build!

#8

Fides et Ratio / Biggest ☢️ of all Time

Last post by Geremia - February 23, 2025, 03:31:58 PM

Proof of the consequences of Original Sin:

animations rendered with open-source Blender

#9

Theology / Re: Ecclesiastical Law

Last post by Geremia - February 11, 2025, 10:33:29 AM

Some authors appear to consider ecclesiastical law and canon law to be the same, but others draw a distinction.

Which authors are these? Can you provide some citations? Thanks.

#10

Theology / Ecclesiastical Law

Last post by ptlopes - January 05, 2025, 09:31:32 PM

Hello, my friends.

First of all, have a blessed new year!

I'm sorry to bother you once again.

According to Callan and McHugh's "Moral Theology" laws are divine or human, if the immediate lawgiver is God or man. Divine law includes eternal law, natural law and divine positive law. Human law includes ecclesiastical and civil laws.

What are the divisions and subdivisions of ecclesiastical law? I looked it up, but the answer is not clear. Some authors appear to consider ecclesiastical law and canon law to be the same, but others draw a distinction.

I'm asking because I want to have a systematic understanding of all laws. I know what eternal, natural, divine positive and civil laws are, but I'm a bit lost about ecclesiastical.

Can you help me?

Best regards,
Pedro