0215 Chapter 20 raises a question.

What do the Irish, dwelling in their huge ethnic neighborhoods in Boston, New York and Philadelphia, think of the slavery going on in the southern states?

The answer?

They don’t have a dog in that fight.

Fight?

Some call it “the War of Northern Aggression”.  Others call it “the War of Southern Rebellion”.

0216 But, what about the American Identity?

Can Thoreau’s option be framed in abolitionist terms?

Here is my guess.

Freedom_3b becomes righteousness_3b.  Political action_1b infiltrates practical reason_1b.

0217 What Irishman in America would want to side with the abolitionists, who are Protestants clothed with the garments of innocence_1a… er… lack of guilt_1a, because (for the most part) they disdain guns_1a (since carrying a gun implies something wrong)?

So, if the Irishman refuses to support the abolitionists, and if the Irishman refuses to take up arms in a war that the Irish have nothing to do with, then he must be on the side of the English-descended slaveholders.

Correct?

0218 According to their moral superiors (the Protestants who are no longer Calvinists and have taken up the mantle of righteousness, just like the Calvinists once did), the Irish are damned if they do (join their cause and enter into the War of Northern Aggression) and damned if they don’t (secretly side with the racist English Virginia plantation owners who are conducting the War of Southern Rebellion).

This is only appropriate, since the moral superiors of America secretly detest the Irish, because… well… everyone (in the 1860s) knows that an Englishman is human and an Irishman is a slackard, a drinker, a womanizer, an unrepentant Catholic, a singer of ballads, a partier and otherwise worthless.

0219 In Chapter 21, the author, E. Michael Jones, flashes forward to relatively recent times, referencing the author, Theodore Allen (1919-2005), who writes the two volume Invention of the White Race (1994, 1997), and Noel Ignatiev (1940-2019), who writes How the Irish Became White (1995).  These two authors are Marxist.  The Marxist thing (see points 0018-0019) is {material arrangements [substantiate] human conditions}.

What material arrangements?

Well, the word “race” once referred to ethnicity.  The Irish and the Germans and the English were once labeled different “races”.  In order to match the Marxist thing, “race” now refers to phenotypic differences, particularly in regards to northern Europeans and Africans.  Phenotypic differences constitute material conditions.  The human condition? The Irish (of the 1840s through the 1860s) are racists because they refuse to side with the Catholic-repudiating Northern abolitionists and therefore, secretly side with Southern racist institutions of slavery.

Does that sound familiar?

0220 Do Allen and Ignatiev constellate a version of Thoreau’s option for the American Identity?

I suspect so.

Here are my associations.

According to pure Marxist reason_1a, the Irish and the English fall under the label, “white”.

According to Marxist practical reason_1b, the “white” is a racist who hates “blacks”.

0221 Both Allen and Ignatiev are Marxist scholars.  Their righteousness_3b is founded in academic expertise_3b, rather than grace_3b.  Also, their freedom_3b to ignore religion (because religion cannot be regarded as a material arrangement) allows them to define the human condition_2bf (where the proletarians are victims of racism) as a product of material arrangements (where the “whites” – both Englishman and Irishman – arrange materials according to race).

0222 Read that last sentence while ignoring what is in parentheses.

Then read it again with the parenthesis as editorial comments.

0223 Naturally, these authors_2bm (as Marxists_2bm) stand for the people_2bf because their expertise_3b… er… righteousness_3b operates on the potential of ‘practical reason’_1b (that is, ‘political action’_1b).

0224 The power of ‘political action’_1b virtually situates the disposition to engage in ‘pure reason that emanates from our lack of guilt’_1a.

A lack of guilt_1a?

They don’t carry guns_1a.

Why don’t they need guns_1a?

Like the Quakers before them, they know that the gun_1a is a talisman to prevent something that could go… or maybe already has gone… horribly wrong_1a.

0225 Has something gone wrong?

The righteousness of Marxism_3b virtually situates an ideated reality_3a which structures_3a its own expertise_3b.

Does that sound like the opening scene of Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Instead of “I will not serve.”, the words are “I will be my own expertise.”

0226 Chapter 36 discusses how confusing the American Identity may seem.

The two-level interscope of identity_3b and structure_3a remains the same.

Its applications shift radically from 1660 to 1760 to 1860 to 1960.

In 1760, Catholic immigrants make a few percent of the population of the colonies.  The remainder are Protestants.

By 1860, Catholics from Germany and Ireland push that percentage close to 50%, while Protestants remain a slim majority.

0227 The Germans and the Irish Catholics already have strong identities.  The Germans celebrate Saint Boniface.  The Catholics celebrate Saint Patrick.  They do not need to adopt the American Identity.

However, a power struggle between German and Irish clergy produces a weird twist.  The Irish bishops lock out the Germans, using the excuse that the Irish version of the Catholic Church is more American.  German clerics are driven out of American Catholic Universities.  Some of them find their way to Rome, where they warn the Vatican that the remaining Irish-favored academics are adopting identities similar to Thoreau’s (as well as Allen’s and Ignatiev’s) options.

0228 In 1897, an official Vatican newspaper publishes an article about the issue.

What does the article say?

The Catholic version of the Thoreau option (and, in the twentieth century, the Allen and Ignatiev option) praises the separation of church and state, tolerates secret societies, represses foreign languages, encourages public schools as acceptable alternatives to Catholic schools and desires to conform the Church to the spirit of the day.

In other words, the American Irish clergy are interested in going along in order to get along, as far as their Calvinist, Half-Way Covenant, Universalist, Transcendentalist and soon-to-be Marxist brethren are concerned.

0229 In the Thoreau option for the American identity, righteousness_3b is ‘the freedom to be inspired’_3b in the grace_3b that operates on the potential of ‘practical reason’_1b.

In the Allen and Ignatiev option for the American identity, righteousness_3b is ‘the freedom to exercise your expertise’_3b operating on the potential of ‘political action’_1b.

0230 In 1899, the pope issues an encyclical condemning “Americanism”, thereby officially blocking these options from union with Rome.

This is precisely what Calvin would have advocated, were he alive today.

“Americanism” claims the mantle of Protestantism.

0231 The student should read Chapters 22, 25, 26, 27 and 29.

0308 The stereotypes of race are “black” and “white”.

The stereotypes of sex are “victim” and “aggressor”.

The stereotypes of gender are “legion” and “straight”.

0309 One stereotype cannot be labeled.

Why?

It is not a stereotype at all.  It is as real as the people with money and power_3c, who can make influence_3a and impact_3a in order to sell a product_1a and an agenda_1a.  These are the hidden ones, who hire the psychologists and sociologists, to survey the people… or rather, their internet usage… in order to know how their interventions_2c shape attitudes_2af and appear relevant_2af.

Surely, they_3c are looking for opportunities_1c.

0310 These hidden ones are as real as Reverend Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.  They matter.

0311 They finance the types that come in “stereo”, as if there are two speakers, but one musical composition in the air.

Shall I play a game with metaphors?

Two speakers (Q and R) mirror one another.

The first speaker_3b (Q) constructs critical theory_2bf and occupies a position of academic renown, complete with a title such as Distinguished So-and-So Chair of the Institute for the Investigation of Whatever Stereotype Needs to Be Promoted.  This expertise_3b virtually situates making influence_3a.

The second speaker_3b (R) sets the warp and woof of critical theory.  Warp and woof?  Let’s not get into the looming machinations in which the actions of academic employment are affirmed.  These are the speakers_3b who, by their very presence in academic institutions, constitute a system of surveillance as formidable as any… well… “clerical” apparatus.  This expertise_3b makes an impact_3a.

0312 Here is the diagram for the identity_3b and structure_3a of critical theory as nemesis of what it means to be an American (Q).  This is the sensible construction of the first speaker_3b.

0313 To me, this big noumenon corresponds to experts_3b that propose valuations_2b that engender opportunities_1c for the Relativist One_3c, as discussed in a separate three-part e-book by Razie Mah, titled Original Sin and the Post-Truth Condition,

This examiner suggests that the literature_2bf of critical theory is a novel genre of American fiction.

Jones’s application of existence (the content level) and essence (the situation level) tells me that making influence_3a is like walking_3a, the actuality of {stereotypes [hidden grammar] our attitudes}_2a is like {the Bible [unifies] us}_2a, and the potential of ‘guiltlessly selling product’_1a is like the potential of ‘whatever carrying a gun intends to defend against’_1a.

0314 Imagine carrying a metaphysical gun_1a that would shoot Cupid before he could wound you with one of his self-annihilating arrows of desire_1a.

This would be the same metaphysical gun_1a that may be used against a critical theorist_2b.

0315 But, what about the people who are peirced_1b by the arrows of critical theories_2bf and then fall in love with the promulgated stereotypes_2am, whose hidden grammar makes the critical fictional forms so relevant_2af (R)?

It is as if they are trapped in the mirror of nemesis.

0316 Here is a picture of the sensible construction of the second speaker_3b (R).

0317 It is as if the believers_3b are like guns_1a.

They_3b are tools that the ones who work the system_3b use to promulgate their self-promoting_2bm literature_2bf.

Believers_3b spout the literature_2bf of the ones with self-regard_2am as if they are legal decrees_2bm, demanding sovereign enforcement_2bf.  These legal decrees_2bm pretend that stereotypical fictional matter_2am is relevant_2af enough to make an impact_3a arising from the potential of ‘their adopted agenda’_1a.

0318 Believers vicariously share the working experts’ lack of guilt_1a.

They don’t need to carry guns_1a.

They carry a political agenda_1a.

That agenda_1a makes an impact_3a because operators_3c in the hidden perspective level are flush with money and power_2c and looking for opportunities_1c.

0319 The two diagrams portrayed above constitute America’s contemporary wilderness.

0320 The student should read chapters 50, 51, 52 and 53.

0278 At the end of the previous section, Santner mentions a possible alternative source of biopower, one that both exploits and supplants citizen^regular.  One source is… um… public debt.  Can I think of another?

If not, then public debt will do.

0279 Citizen^regular goes with the content level of the society tier.

Citizen^regular is an institution whose organizational objectives may yield biopower for citizen^Marat.

At the same time, the regular citizen’s spirit of rational expectations, industriousness and sanity points to the organization tier in its entirety, but most especially, its content level.

The content level of the organization tier houses its own interscope of management, production and services.

Corporations strive to minimize debt.  Debt reduces surplus value.

In contrast, the party strives to increase debt, knowing that it increases the authority of citizen^Marat over citizen^regular.

But, what type of debt am I talking about?  How is debt related to fetish?

0280 Disavowal is at the heart of a fetish.

The theory of the sublime body of the king contains a fetish.

The kingly values that inform the king’s mortal body are fetishes.  The king carries himself in a certain – regal – manner.  He wears a crown.  His clothing is adorned with furs.  These displays disavow the necessity that the king must ruthlessly deal with bandits, marauders, stupid peasants and sly priests.

0281 All the regalia of the sovereign office are pieces of the Real, saying, “Here is your king.”

The little objects say, “This is how you (the subject) will recognize the potential for order.”

0282 These petit objets a also disavow the anarchic potential of royalty.

The sovereign may be nothing like Christ the King.  The sovereign may mercilessly eliminate contenders for the throne.  He may steal.  He may use his authority to access both spiritual and carnal pleasures.

The actual flesh of the mortal body of the king may not subscribe to its inscription by royal regalia.

0283 To me, the term “flesh” fits into all three categories of the late medieval and early modern nested form.

0284 The flesh is exemplary₃, substantial₂ and empowering₁.

The word “flesh” is normative, somatic and entangling.

0285 Humans are creatures, but their environment (biologically speaking) is not an Umwelt, but a Lebenswelt.

In the animal world, the exemplar is maintained by eliminating the unfit.  The somatic is maintained as status, not glory.  Finally, empowerment assumes that the animal survives on whatever is at hand.

0286 How on earth did these get transubstantiated into a category-based relation that describes our thrown-ness?

0287 Let me say that an answer is assumed in Santner’s inquiries.

0288 To me, this assumption fits into Santner’s general formula.

0289 Our ancestors evolved the milieu of culture.  However, our current Lebenswelt is not the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

0290 Santner sees, in the sublime body of the king, an incarnation and representation of the historical and ontological vulnerabilities of the subjects.  The king’s glorious body puts the subjects’ expectations of kingliness into context.  The king’s mortal body situates the subject’s expectations for protection and social stability.  The subject is indebted to the king for this.

0291 Here is how this looks:

0292 Is the political theology of the dual-body of the king a fetish?

0293 If so, then the fetish situates the one who holds it.  The fetish puts the holder into debt.

The fetish applies to the situation-level.  The debt is felt on the content-level.

0294 Does this arrangement parallel the commodity fetish in the organization tier?

0295 The situation level contains the commodity fetish.  

0296 The commodity fetish consists of this: The perceived value of a commodity does not consider how the commodity came to be.  It disavows the labor value provided by the content level of the organization tier.

In fact, a corporation may conceal the integration of all the costs of production so that such knowledge does not interfere with the perceived value of the commodity.

0297 Perceived value increases the price above the integrated costs because it fixates on what the commodity means for me, rather than its constituent labor value.

Indeed, the price reflects the way that the commodity glorifies me.

Price increases with glory.

0298 This precisely correlates to Santner’s intuition that the subject is “in debt” to the king.

For the organization tier, management, production and service are in “debt” to the commodity fetish.

The corporation_aB is “in debt” to an illusion of perceived value [informs] price_2bB.

0299 What about this technical term: petit objet a?

0300 Slavoj Zizek is both master thinker and brainy celebrity.  In many ways, he and Santner take a similar tack.  Both present their literary works as material subject to psychoanalytic reading.  In other words, the reader is expected tointerpret their texts within the Freudian (and by extension, the Lacanian) tradition.

0020 How do thought experiments work?

Typically, when reason is applied to the world of actuality, then the inquirer strives to eliminate contradictions.  This is the modern way.  This is the way of actuality.  As soon as one poses, in reason, a scenario that does not exist (or a nonbeing) and could be regarded in the manner of actuality (or existence, being), then the logic changes from eliminating contradictions to excluding whatever makes the scenario less real.

0021 In this way, a thought experiment can find a truth within fiction.

0022 Suarez sets up what moderns call “a thought experiment”.

Allow me to go through the specifics of this thought experiment.

To start, Suarez attaches a novel normal context to the word “being”.  He defines ‘a being of reason’ or being^in_reason.  This being^in_reason is a nonbeing.  It cannot exist.  It is not a being^itself.

But, what does the word “existence” indicate?

It indicates actuality, the realm of actuality that corresponds to Peirce’s secondness.

0023 Suarez uses language to project a nonbeing into the realm of actuality.  This being^in_reason is inherently a contradiction.  So, reason cannot be used to eliminate contradictions.  Reason must be used to explore the scenario.

0024 What is the prime motivation for doing this?

Suarez’s thought experiment allows inquiry into nonbeing.  But, this is not an ordinary nonbeing, it is a nonbeing regarded in the manner of being.  It does not simply not exist.  It is thought of as if it does exist (as a being^itself), even though it does not.

0025 I can put this into a category-based nested form in the following manner.  Reason₃ is the normal context.  Being^in_reason₂ is the actuality.  Knowing this particular character of nonbeing₁ is the inherent possibility.

0026 How relevant is this nonbeing stuff?

Needless to say, I personally think that there are more reasons for asking about beings^in_reason than nonbeing, comparison, and holding contradictions in thought.

One motivation concerns — what I call — implicit and explicit abstraction.  The idea comes from An Archaeology of the Fall. 

In the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, our genus and our species practiced hand talk.  Hand talk favors implicit (or intuitive) abstraction.

In contrast, in our current Lebenswelt, speech-alone talk permits explicit (or symbolic) abstraction.

0027 In order to get a picture of the difference between hand talk and our current way of talking, speech-alone talk, consider the following associations:

0028 I ask, “Which row goes with hand talk?  Which row goes with speech-alone talk?”

Let me give you a hint.

In hand talk (and in its more developed hybrid, hand-speech talk), words consist of what could be imaged or pointed to.  Manual-brachial word gestures are ideal for picturing and indicating things and states of things.

In speech-alone talk, word-sounds do not image or point to anything.  Spoken words are placeholders in two arbitrarily related systems of differences.  A word-sound is a placeholder linked, by convention, to a place-holding word-mental act.  One symbol links to another.  One symbolic order evokes the other.

0156 The second version of Disputation 19 appeared a little less than a decade after the first.  It is two and one half times longer.  The word “fact” appears occasionally in Novotny’s summary.  It also looms in the background, like some ship-destroying aquatic monster just offshore.

0157 Hurtado focuses on what produces fictions.  Mental objects and propositions that represent mind-independent facts are ruled out.

‘Beings of reason’ are mental objects and propositions that do not represent mind-independent facts.  They go with fictions, not facts.

0158 Beings^{in reason} appear in speech-alone statements.  Statements are decoded and situated as fact or fiction.  Reckonings based on fictions are misleading.  These go with beings of reason.  Reckonings based on facts do not involve beings of reason.

Misleading ‘beings of reason’ do not produce properly defined words.  They give rise to false or self-contradictory statements.  Facts produce properly defined words.  They give rise to true and consistent statements.

0159 To me, the following interscope models what Hurtado is labeling ‘a being of reason’.

0160 The ‘being of reason_2a’ is a fiction that is reckoned_2b as a fact.

0161 What are the natures of this being of reason_2a?

H2N1: The expression ‘being of reason’ may be used in more than one sense.  These senses include (1) effective and subjective_2b, (2) denominative_2a, (3) foundational_{3a(_(1a))} and (4) proper_2c.

To me, these so-called senses correspond to various structures within the interscope.  The effective and subjective sense goes with the intellect initiating the second element in the dyad of actuality_2a.  The denominative sense goes with the presence of the statement_2a and the logic of decoding.  The foundational sense goes with the content-level nested form.  This form_3a((1a)) accompanies the decoded statement_2a.  As such, it is foundational. Finally, the proper sense goes with judgment_2c.

0162 Hurtado’s perspective differs from Suarez’s.

For Suarez, the perspective is not well defined.  It is exploratory.  It sets up the thought experiment.  It asks: What is happening on the content and situation levels?

For Hurtado, the perspective_2c defines ‘being of reason’ as decoded statements that are fiction, but may be reckoned as fact_2b.

0163 This fits Hurtado’s other claims:

H2N2: ‘Beings of reason’ are unreal in the proper sense.

H2N3: Extrinsic denomination is not sufficient for explaining the ‘being of reason’ in the proper sense.

H2N4: A being of reason is what posits nothing intrinsic to any one thing.

H2N5: Beings of reason are not founded in reality.

H2N6: Real beings are not analogous to beings of reason.

0164 The nature of the real encounter_2a has changed from an encountered real being_2a and truly referential (iconic and indexal) hand and hand-speech talk_2a to purely symbolic speech-alone talk_2a.  The content-level normal context has gone from what is happening? to what does the statement say?  Does the statement say something about mind-independent existence (ens reale)?  Or does the statement say something that is purely mind-dependent (ens rationis)?

0165 The concept of mind-dependent beings fits the following causes:

H2C1: ‘Beings of reason’ have no physical causes.

H2C2: ‘Beings of reason’ may have material and formal causes in the fictitious sense.

H2C3: The intellect is the intentional efficient cause of ‘beings of reason’.

H2C4: The final cause of ‘beings of reason’ is not direct.

0166 These mind-dependent beings should be recognized as fiction.

H2C5: ‘Beings of reason’ consist of false acts, by which we claim that something exists. or can exist, that in fact cannot.

H2C6: ‘Beings of reason’ are necessarily made up of false mental acts.

0167 H2C7: Sometimes the false judgment is due to contingency.  So, the label may not apply to these cases.

Clearly, these mind-dependent beings associate to fiction as it is and fiction that is mistaken as fact.  Plus, they are generated spontaneously by the efficient intellect.

H2C8: ‘Beings of reason’ are not made by abstraction.

H2C9: ‘Beings of reason’ can be made through the simple apprehension of unity between incompatible items.

0168 Curiously, the last two causes expand the concept of mind-dependent being.  A ‘being of reason’ may be more than mere fiction.  A mind-dependent being may also be the simple (without abstraction) apprehension of unity between incompatible items.  This simple apprehension may be true in a way that a fact is not.

0169 The fusion of two actualities into one is discussed in the chapter on message in How To Define the Word “Religion”.  Two nested forms may intersect in the realm of actuality, yielding a single actuality.  This single actuality can only be placed in the content level of an interscope.  Thus, it could occupy the slot designated 2a (the decoded statement).  More on that later.

0170 Finally, my discussion on Hurtado is not complete without mentioning the single claim about the nature of ‘beings of reason’ that I did not mention.  This claim is strangely ethereal, given that his perspective grounds facts as true and fictions as false.  ‘The very idea that speech-alone statements must be reckoned as fact or fiction’ suggests that the sorting itself involves truth.  Thus, the following claim stands out:

H1N10: True judgment can destroy ‘beings of reason’.

0171 Perhaps, there are two axes to consider.  These are true as opposed to false and true as opposed to deception.

0182 In Chapter 7; Section A; Part 1, Novotny uses the word “real” for “fact”.  This is curious.  In Hurtado’s (explicitly abstract) model, situational potential is fact versus fiction_1b.  In contrast, the situational potential in implicit abstraction is realness_1b.

0183 Even more revealing is the terminus of the reflective act_2c.

For Hurtado, the reflective act arrives at true, as opposed to false, premises.  This includes the identification of a statement as fiction.  The identification must be regarded as true, even though the statement itself is fiction.

0184 How does this work?

An encountered explicit abstraction_2a triggers action by the efficient intellect_2b.  I suppose that one could say that the being of reason_2a arises from the potential of whatever processes a speech-alone statement_1a.  It could be the potential of automatic decoding_1a.  Or it could exist as an object_2a that necessarily fits the normal context of ‘this must be a proposition’_3a.

0185 I suggest that the encountered explicit abstraction_2a could also be called “an extrinsic denomination_2a”.  Originally, the latter term suggests that all beings of reason_2a are somehow pegged to encountered real beings_2a.  This accords to that intuition.

0186 However, look at the term closely.  “Extrinsic” means from outside the intellect of the subject.  It could also mean from outside the subject.  “Denomination” means to apply a name or value to this or that.  A spoken proposition_2acould fit the bill.

0187 So the idea of extrinsic denomination could shift, from an image where beings of reason are tags on encountered forms_2a or acts of reason_2a to a picture where beings of reason are decoded versions of propositions that are spoken to me_2a.

With that shift, spoken statements_2a (one element in the content-level actuality) may trigger the efficient intellect_2b to produce a being of reason_2a (the other element of the dyad) that is virtually proper (truly defined)_2c and appropriate(factually reckoned)_2b.  Such objects must already reside in the vocabularies of the efficient_2b and formal_2c intellects, even though only the occasion of the encountered speech-alone statements_2a makes them actual.

0188 This scenario matches Mastri’s and Belluto’s fourth claim:

MBN4: Before they are actual objects of the intellect, beings of reason exist as virtual and potential objects.

Yet, they do not exist as actual or possible real beings.

MBN5: Beings of reason cannot exist in actual reality.

However, they fill a slot in the realm of actuality.  Consequently…

MBN6: Beings of reason are not pure nothingness.

0189 By filling in the empty slot of the dyad of actuality_2a, the efficient intellect_2b imposes a being of reason_2a into the content-level nested form.   This being of reason_2a will get classified as fact or fiction_1b, depending on the situation_3b. However, the default situation is real, so:

0190 MBN7: Beings of reason are thought of in the manner of facts (true and real beings), even though they may be fiction.

This implies that facts are not beings of reason.  Beings of reason are fictional, even though they may be regarded as facts.  Once the formal intellect ascertains that a being^in_reason_2a is fiction, then the situation changes, and the efficient intellect may now grasp the being of reason_2a as fiction_1b.

(Perhaps, this goes with the fact that Cervantes published Don Quixote, the first fictional novel of the Age of Ideas, in Spanish in 1607 AD.)

0191 MBN8: The formal intellect may reflexively (or reflectively) think of ‘beings of reason’ as ‘fictions’.

The formal intellect_2c does this through analogy: Beings of reason are to thought as beings are to existence.

MBN9: Beings of reason exist (are beings) in an analogical sense of existence (being).

0192 What does this imply?

Novotny sums it up.  Mastri’s and Belluto’s treatment is more mature than Suarez’s set up.

0193 The question is: Why?

Mastri and Belluto run Suarez’s thought experiment.  They take Hurtado’s perspective, valuing true over false, and arrive at a similar entanglement with fact and fiction.  Yet, Mastri and Belluto re-work Hurtado’s jarring change of perspective and re-establish the importance of the ‘being of reason’:

The being^in_reason is important because it allows the formal intellect to identify it as fiction, thereby arriving at a truth. That truth is not available to fact, which is already true.

0194 In their narrative arc, the being of reason_2a is transcribed into a type of decoded statement_2a.  The being^in_reason_2ais a decoded statement that will be classified as fiction, even though, at first, the efficient intellect_2b grasps it as fact.  When the formal intellect_2c discerns the decoded statement_2a as false, it_2c arrives at a truth: This reckoning_2b is false_2c, so it must situate_2b a fiction_1b.

The situation changes.  Once the decoded statement_2a is labeled a ‘being of reason_2a’, the efficient intellect may grasp the decoded statement_2a as fiction and truthfully entertain its falsehood.

0195 Mastri’s and Belluto’s perspective_2c looks like this:

0196 Amazingly, the Baroque scholastics arrive at a counterpoint to the emerging Age of Ideas.  The Age of Ideastheorizes how facts produce true definitions.  The Baroque scholastics discover how fictions are false, until the moment that the formal intellect recognizes them as false.  Then, that recognition introduces truth.  So, now a being^in_reason may be regarded as fact in a situation conditioned by a truthful acknowledgment of fiction.

As such, Mastri and Belluto (as well as other Baroque scholastics) justify modern literature as written words that are false unless regarded as fiction.  They do so before modern literature is written.  Who could anticipate that?  Is the Age of Ideas also the Age of Fiction?