Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
Lecture 12: The Three Acts of Reason and Logic's Structure

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And I understand what a stone is, I might separate them in a negative statement and say, man is not a stone, right? And I'd be understanding something, what, true, right? I could also understand the false, opposed to that, right? Man is not an animal, or a man is a stone, right? Okay? So, you can see how this first act is presupposed to the second, then. If I didn't understand in some way what a man is, and I didn't understand in some way what a stone is, I wouldn't understand the true statement that man is not a, what, stone, right? Now, the third act, presuppose the second act. If you understand at least two statements that are, what, might be true, might be false, right? You can put them together sometimes, and reason out, or reason to, in that statement. And this is the third act now, which could be called reasonation. Thomas is going to mention other names of these acts, some of them, but this is why I usually name the three acts, right? So, if I understand the statement that every mother is a, what, woman, right? And I understand that no man is a woman, I could reason, with those two statements, right? To the conclusion that no man is a mother, right? Okay? Or if I understood that no animal is a stone, and every man is an animal, I could reason to no man is a, what, stone, right then? So, this obviously presupposes, at least a couple of statements in which you reason, huh? So, that's the third act, right, huh? Now, in both premia here, he will distinguish these same three acts. Look at the premium there from what in the perihermeneus. He goes back to what Aristotle talks about in the third book on the soul, where he talks about these first two acts, huh? As the philosopher says in the third book on the soul, the operation of the understanding is twofold, huh? He calls these first two acts both a kind of understanding, right? And the third, he calls reasoning. One which is called the understanding of indivisibles, huh? Understanding, in other words, man or animal or stone, rather than man is an animal, which is a complex or composed thing, by which the understanding grasps the nature of each thing in itself, huh? So, sometimes they call this first act simple grasping, huh? But grasping is another word almost for understanding, huh? But it's a very suggestive word. I can't grasp the center of this table. Why not? I can grasp this glass, because I can separate the glass from the air around it. But I can't grasp the center of this table, because I can't separate the center of this table here from the rest of the table. So, I took out my saw and sawed out that piece, then I could grasp it, right? You'll see that's important in grasping what something is. You have to be able to separate it from everything else, huh? Okay? So, it's an interesting word, huh? That we borrow the word for the, what, act of the hand, grasping, and then we apply it to the mind, huh? And the other, he says, is the operation of the understanding, putting together, and dividing, huh? Here he's thinking now of an affirmative statement, or a negative statement, right? And the affirmative statement you put together, like, say, man and animal, and say, man is an animal, right? And the negative statement, the way you separate things, and you say, man is not a, what, stone, right? So, Thomas usually refers to that second act as, the way Aristotle speaks of it in the third book of the soul, putting together or separating, right? I like to call it understanding the truth or false, because the words putting together and separating have other meanings besides this, right? But this here means it very accurately, understanding the truth or false. And then there's added, however, a third operation of reasoning, by which reason proceeds from the known to investigation of the unknown. And that's very characteristic of reasoning, huh? And that's, later on, look at that text of Aristotle, where he talks about that in the premium to the posterior analytics. Okay? Let's go on to the second paragraph there in the Peri-Hermeneus. He says, the first of these operations is ordered to the second because there cannot be a putting together and division except as simple as grasp, huh? Unless I've grasped in some way what a man is, right? Unless I've understood in some way what a man is, and I've grasped also in some way what an animal is, right? And understood in some way what an animal is. Unless I've done that first, I couldn't really, what? Put them together and understand what it means to say man is a, what? Animal, right? Okay? If I tell my students that a perfect number is a composite number, they don't understand that very much. That they don't know what a perfect number is, right? They don't even know, some of them, what a composite number is, right? See? So I'd have to grasp, I'd have to understand what a composite number is and what a perfect number is, and then I could see that a perfect number is a composite number. So that first act, in a way, is ordered to the second act. The second, however, is ordered to the third because it is necessary that from some known truth to which the understanding is sin, one proceeds to get incertitude about something unknown. As Thomas says more explicitly elsewhere, you need at least two statements, right? In order to get a, what? Third statement, huh? Just like in calculating to add, subtract, multiply, or divide, to any of these two numbers, to get a third number. Since, he says, however, logic is called the science of reason, it is necessary that its consideration be about those things which pertain to the aforesaid three operations of reason. And now he divides Aristotle's books, but not as completely as he does in the commentary on apostolic analytics. Aristotle, therefore, determines in the book of the categories about those things which pertain to the first operation of the understanding. That is about those things which are conceived by a simple understanding. So that's the first book in logic that's come down to us from Aristotle. If you get the so-called basic books of Aristotle, like in Random House, the one that McKeon edited, right? The very first group of books are gathered together. They're called the organon, right? And organon is a Greek word, or we get our word organ, by the way, huh? Organon, organon is simply the Greek word for tool, okay? And logic is called the tool of philosophy, huh? So they put Aristotle's logical works together with the title organon, meaning the tool, and the first book you'd see in the basic books of Aristotle would be a book called the categories, and that pertains to the logic of the first act, okay? The second book you'd find is this book called the Peri Hermeneus, which is in Latin, the Interpretatione, so it's really about the statement. That corresponds to the second act, right? Now, all of the rest of the books that Aristotle wrote in Logic, even the title of the Father of Logic, are dealing with the third act, right? But Thomas doesn't subdivide those books in the premium to the Peri Hermeneus, because he's going to explain the Peri Hermeneus, right? So he's just supposed to go so far as to separate these three, right? But in the Postuletics, he's explaining one of the books down here, so he subdivides these, right? And so we'll be looking at that subdivision a moment, huh? But the first book in this third group is called the Prior Analytics, huh? And the books following that, as Thomas says, right? And they all pertain to the art of, what, reasoning, right? Okay? So there's many more books to go into the third act there than to the first and the second act, then. We'll meet the subdivision of those other works, huh? Okay. The philosopher determines about those things which pertain to the second operation, namely about affirmative and negative statements in the book called Perihemeneus. He determines about those things which pertain to the third operation, the book of the prior analytics, and the books following it, which are taken up to syllogism simply and the diverse species of syllogism and argument. And therefore, by the four said order, the three operations, the book of the categories, is order to the book Perihemeneus, which is order to the book of the prior analytics and the ones following it. Okay? Clear enough? Now let's go over to the major premium here, which is going to go more into the third act. So he says, towards next to the bottom paragraph of the first page of the premium, It is necessary, therefore, to take the parts of logic according to the diversity of the acts of reason. There are, however, three acts of reason of which the first two are of reason according as it is a certain understanding. It's a barter with understanding of the first two acts. A one act of understanding, he says, is the understanding of the indivisible or the incomplex by which it conceives what a thing is. Notice the word conceive there. It's taken from the woman, right? And concept, right? And you may know that Socrates' mother was a midwife. And so Socrates described himself as an intellectual midwife. And this operation is called by some the forming of the understanding or imagination through the understanding. Now, you don't want to confuse imagining with thinking or the image with the thought. But there's a certain likeness between them. When I imagine something, I can do so in the absence of the object, right? So in order to imagine something that's absent, I have to form an image of that. Well, thinking is like that, huh? I can think about something in its absence. But when I think about it, I have to do something like the imagination does. I have to form a thought of it, okay? And that's very important later on when you try to understand the Trinity, right? Okay? And we sometimes, you know, start with our own mind to kind of approach and understand the Trinity. Well, if our reason understood itself, right, there would proceed from our reason a thought about what reason is. And so when God understands himself, there proceeds from God a thought, right, of what God is, right? But since in God, to be and to understand are the same thing, that thought is God. Okay? In the beginning was the Word, right? Okay? So there's a certain comparison here, huh? See, when I see you, you have to be present for me to see you. I can't see if you're not here, right? See? But if I remember you and I go home tonight, right, then my seeing can't go to you because you're not there. But I form a, what? An image of you. In memory, right? In imagination. I picture you again, right? Okay? We'll come back to that because that's going to be very important, I think, in seeing what logic is about. We're going to look again at the preeminenticomachian ethics for a big hint here, huh? Now, page three here. The second operation of understanding is the composition or division of the understanding. Again, he uses those words there which have more than one meaning in logic and elsewhere, but to refer to what reason does when it makes a affirmative statement, right? And what it does when it makes a negative statement. And when I say man is an animal, I mean, as we're putting together man and animal. He calls that composition. How we know a stable there, right? And when I separate man and stone and say man is not a stone, it's like I'm separating the two, right? Dividing the two, right? Okay? So Thomas usually calls that second act, following Aristotle in the third book on the soul, composition and division. But you could also call it understanding the true or the false, huh? Okay? And for this act of reason, and this, yeah, and for this act of reason, serves the teaching which Aristotle gives in the book the periharmoneus. Now, the third act of reason is according to that which is characteristic of reason. And we saw in Shakespeare that, what, reason is the ability for discourse, right? And discourse is coming to know what you don't know and what you do know. So this is what, see, the characterized reason, huh? So he says the third act of reason is according to that which is characteristic of reason, namely to go from one thing to another so that through what is known it might come to a knowledge of the unknown. And sometimes you'll find the medieval magicians calling that third act discursos, almost like a synonym for reasoning, okay? And the rest of the books of logic that have come down to us in Maristabu serve this act, huh? Okay? But now, in the rest of this, this page, the next page, Thomas is going to subdivide, right, the books in this third, what, act, right, huh? And he's commenting on one of them, the postuletics. But how does it fit in among all the other books there are, right? Now, basically, into how many parts does Thomas divide the books of the third act, huh? Into three, huh? Again, the rule of two or three there, right, huh? But if you read Plato's dialogue, the Phaedoan, and if you ever had a chance to read the Phaedoan, but in the Phaedo, the longest sociological conversation is about the immortality of the human soul, right? And Socrates gives about three arguments in favor of the immortality of the human soul. And everybody there seems to be more or less satisfied with the three arguments of Socrates, except Simeas and Sibes, and we're kind of, you know, whispering to each other there in the corner. And Socrates says, are you still thinking about, you know, the question, or are you going on to something else, right? And they say, we're still thinking about it. Well, they'll share with us your thoughts, right? And then Simeas comes in as an objection to something Socrates has said, to the arguments of Socrates. And Simeas comes in with another objection to one of Socrates' arguments. And all of a sudden the arguments of Socrates that seem good to just about everybody there no longer seem to be any good. And they fall into a kind of what? Despair, right? And the young man to whom Phaedo was narrating these things, right, has that same sinking feeling that they had, right? How are we going to trust these arguments, right? Well, Socrates did something, Phaedo says, and never admired him more for it. He leads them out with despair, right? But he makes a very interesting comparison. He says, you might end up being a hater of arguments because you trusted an argument you shouldn't trust, right? But maybe you shouldn't blame the arguments, right? Maybe you should blame yourself for not knowing the difference between a good and a bad argument. And among good arguments between one that is necessary and one that's only probable, right? And in order to make this more known, Socrates goes back and talks about how someone becomes a misanthrope, a hater of mankind. And he points out that men start to hate others because they trust somebody who lets them down, right? So the woman marries a no-good bum, and she begins to hate men, right? Okay. And most people can see there's something mistaken about hating everybody and that you ought to have some smarts in order to tell the difference between those you should trust and those you shouldn't, right? But Socrates goes on and he says, there's really three kinds of men. There are very few men you can trust completely. Men who will never let you down will stick with you no matter what happens. There are some men that you can't put. Trust us. Well, most men are in between, you can trust them up to a point, but not completely, okay? And Socrates is pointing out, but it's obvious to most people from their experience, that there are these three, right? Okay? In the same way with a woman and a man, right? There's some, you know, men you can trust a woman completely, like John Paul II, okay? Some men you can't trust a woman with at all, like Don Giovanni, you don't trust your wife, your daughter with Don Giovanni at all, right? Or Casanova, whatever these guys, right? Most men in between, you can trust them up to a certain point, but you've got to know how far you can trust them at, right? And a woman would be kind of naive if she didn't know this, right? The priest that officiated at our wedding, he was on the marriage tribunal for a long time here in Worcester. He's dead now, but he was on the tribunal a long time. And some of these cases are so ridiculous, right? It could help but say, you know, why in the hell did you marry her in the first place? You know, you shouldn't see me with a no good, you know, bum, you know? I mean, some, you know, most of them would have more smarts than that, right? So Socrates is saying, if you can't distinguish between the person you can trust completely, the person you can't trust at all, the person you can trust up to a certain point, you've got to trust someone you shouldn't trust, or trust somebody more than you should, you'll be let But then when he falls into financial need, he thinks he can, you know, obviously borrow some money because he has all kinds of friends, and they keep on putting them off, right? But even his stewards knew that they were just, what, using him, right? Their affair with their friends and so on. So in a sense, Timon could blame himself, right? For not knowing who a true friend is and so on. So Socrates says, don't blame arguments as if no arguments are trustworthy, but arguments are like people. There are few arguments you can trust, what, completely. There are some arguments you can't trust at all. Most arguments are in between. They can be trusted up to a point, some more and some less, right? But not completely. And Socrates says, we need an art about arguments, and that is, to my knowledge, the first time someone has explicitly said, we need the art that we now call, what, magia. What's interesting in that comparison between the two is that he's going to anticipate the very way that we divide Aristotle's books about arguments, because the prior and the posterior analytics, these first two books that Thomas is going to talk about, the prior and the posterior analytics are about arguments you can trust completely. And these arguments are called demonstrations in logic, from the Latin word, the Greek word is apodetsis, but it has a sitting root, right? And it comes in the word to show, the old license plate there from Missouri, I'm from Missouri, you've got to show me. Okay? But you'll notice, as you go through Euclid now, that at the end it'll say QED, which is kind of a Latin for what was to be demonstrated. Okay? So the prior and posterior analytics are about arguments you can trust completely. The book called Sophistical Refutations are about arguments you can't trust at all. Okay? Simply bad arguments, huh? Now the books in between, that Thomas is going to subdivide, huh, are about the arguments you can trust up to a point, right, but not completely. Okay? Arguments that produce something like opinion or suspicion, right, but not certitude like these two here. Okay? And so Aristotle, or Thomas, will mention the books there, the topics is mainly, whether you translate it in English, and then the rhetoric, like poetics to a certain extent. Sometimes they don't put rhetoric and poetics and logic in the strict sense, but in the broad way Thomas is looking at it, he includes that, right? We'll say a few more words about these when you get it. So these arguments produce something like opinion or suspicion. We use opinion more for this and suspicion down here, the rhetoric. But they're really, you might say, ways of making a, what, reasonable guess, right? Okay, we'll talk about those more particularly as we go on, these different texts. But in the third paragraph here, Thomas goes back to the fundamental thing here, that reason imitates nature, right, so far as possible. So, and you have the same thing in nature, huh? There's some things that nature produces always unnecessarily, like the rising of the sun, it seems, huh? Other things it produces most of the time, but not always, like a healthy human baby or something, right? But sometimes nature, it fails and produces something bad, right, huh? Okay? So he compares reason in that respect to nature, huh? And that these three are also found in the acts of reason. For there, in the fourth paragraph, for there is a proceeding of reason, bringing a necessity in which a defect of truth is not possible. And through such a proceeding of reason is acquired the certitude of knowledge, huh? There is another, however, proceeding of reason, in which the true is for the most part concluded, not, however, having necessity. And the third proceeding of reason is that in which reason departs from the true, because the defect of some principle that should have been observed in reasoning. Okay? Now, why are the two books devoted to this first part here, right? Well, in order to be sure of the conclusion, two things are necessary. One is that the conclusion follows necessarily from the other statements, and the other is that the other statements are necessarily true. So, in the prior analytics, huh, he teaches us how to take apart this kind of an argument that we call demonstration, to see if the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. In the posterior analytics, he shows you how to examine the premises to see if they have what's required to be necessarily true, huh? Okay? So those two things are necessary. And it's a bit like calculating in that respect, right? To be sure of the number I get by adding, I have to, what, add correctly, right? And I have to have the correct numbers to add. So if I get the wrong number in my checkbook, right, as often happens, I go back and I check it over, and I see that I didn't add or correct or subtract correctly, right? That's one kind of mistake. Or, maybe I wrote the number in, wrong decimal point or something, right? Or, my seven didn't look like a seven, but like a one or something. And I had the wrong number, right? Okay? So, the demonstration has those two things to be considered in, right? And that's why he had the two books, the prior and the posterior analytics, huh? So he says, the part of logic which serves the first proceeding, the demonstration, is called the judging part, in that judgment is with the certitude of knowledge. And because a certain judgment cannot be had about effects except by resolving the first principles, therefore this part is called analytic, that is, resolving or taking a part, huh? The certitude of judgment of her, which has had the resolution, is either from the very form of the syllogism only, and that's referring now to whether the conclusion follows the premises necessarily. The certitude of judgment of her, which has had the resolution of her, which has had the resolution of her, which has had the resolution of her, which has had the resolution of her, which has had the resolution of her, which has had the resolution of her, which has had the resolution which has had the resolution of her, which has had the resolution of her, which has had the resolution of her, which has had the resolution of her, which has had the resolution of her. Thank you. Thank you. And to this is ordered the book of the prior analytics, or also with this from the matter, because per se and necessary propositions are taken. And to this is ordered the book of the posterior analytics, which is about the demonstrative syllogism. Now the second part here, where you have arguments now that are not giving a suititude, but you might say they give you what you might call a reasonable guess, right? But the reasonable guess here is stronger. You might call it opinion, right? And the reasonable guess here are weaker. You might call it suspicion. So the book called the topics, and the book called the rhetoric, insofar as it deals with what one kind of argument, right? It's dealing with these arguments that don't produce. We're going to talk about those kinds of arguments when you get down to that text from Aristotle there in the beginning of the posterior analytics. So I won't go into detail of all those arguments right now. But it puts the poetics in there, too, because sometimes a man reaches a conclusion by what? Representation. Representation, right? Okay. So, you know, the town's cabin, I guess, was what persuaded a lot of people against, what, slavery, right, huh? Interesting example of this, huh? I have two brothers, right? And when we were living in the same house every 20, over 20 years, next door they had one son. His name was Kenneth, huh? Well, Kenneth's mother died, huh? Okay. And Kenneth's father remarried, right? Okay. And so we were told about this, you know, and that he's going to have a stepmother now, right? Well, my mother overheard us talking at the table how we're going to protect Kenneth from the stepmother. Now, where do you get this bad idea that stepmothers are cruel and they never even met them, right? Right? Yeah. You see? In the fairy tales, right, the stepmother, as opposed to the natural mother, right, they treat the child very bad. And it's not what you saw. You see? So my mother quickly, you know, stopped her even doing it and explained to us, right? And if anybody needed protection, it was the stepmother from Kenneth, because Kenneth was kind of a joker, joker, joker. And he'd go to the window, you know, and yell, Help! No! Stop meeting me! And the mother would get, you know, it's all fierce, because she tried to do everything right, of course. But she was the nicest woman in the whole neighborhood, you know, and we literally loved her, you know. But that's an example of them, you see? We're influenced by the way these things are presented, huh? Okay. Warren Radler wrote a book, I mean, movie made, you know, how young people get the idea of how they should act, you know. They're persuaded to act this way from the way it's represented in the movies, huh? They're kind of dangerous in that sense. So, let's look at the way Thomas separates these here. Another part of logic, which is called the finding part, sir is the second proceeding of reason, for finding is not always with certitude. Another word you could use there is guessing, right? Guessing is not always with certitude, right? But a reasonable guess is more apt to be so than not. Whence judgment is required about those things which have been found, in order that certitude may be had. Moreover, just as in natural things, which are done for the most part, a certain gradation can be noted, because the stronger the power of nature, the more rarely it fails in effect. So also in the proceeding of reason, which is not with complete certitude, some gradation is found, as it approaches more and less to perfect certitude. For sometimes, though a process of this kind, although knowledge in the strict sense, meaning something certain, does not come to be, nevertheless belief or opinion comes to be, because of the probability of the propositions which it precedes. For reason wholly turns to one part of a contradiction, although with fear of the other, and to this is ordered the topical or dialectical, for the dialectical syllogism is from probable opinions, which Aristotle considers in the book for the topics. And Aristotle defines a probable opinion as the opinion of all men, or most men, or the most famous men in some art of science. Sometimes belief or opinion does not come to be completely, but a suspicion, because reason does not wholly turn to one part of a contradiction, although it is more inclined to this part than to that. And to this is ordered the arguments considered in the rhetoric. Now, Aristotle, when he takes up rhetoric there, he has a book called The Rhetoric, he points out that rhetoric is really an offshoot of logic, in a way an offshoot of dialectic, and an offshoot of political philosophy. Because rhetoric is the art of persuasion, and you persuade people not only by the arguments you give, but also by the image you project to yourself, and by the way you move their emotions and prejudices. And so political philosophy, ethics and so on, they help rhetoric in that regard to projecting the right image, right? And they study the emotions, and rhetoric makes use of the emotions. So it's kind of an offshoot of political studies and ethical studies, but also of logic, right? So we don't classify sometimes the book of the rhetoric simply as purely logic, right? Aristotle uses that word in Greek there. The Greek word is parafues. He says that rhetoric is a parafues, which could be translated as an offshoot. And it's not simply or purely a part of logic, right? It's an offshoot of some part of logic that uses some kind of arguments, right? And it's an offshoot of ethical or political studies. If you go back to Thomas' distinction of the four orders, right? In the commentary to the premium to Nicomagnetics, it's an offshoot of the second and the what? Third, huh? Do you remember the order that reason considers does not make? Then the order that reason considers in its own acts? The order considers in the voluntary acts, and then the exterior matter. Well, it's an offshoot of the second and the what? Modern experimental science is an offshoot of the first and the fourth. It's a union of natural science and technical sciences, as Heisenberg says in his Gifford Lectures, right? That's why the oldest part of modern science is called physics, and in particular, but mechanics. Physics comes from the Greek word for nature, mechanics comes from the mechanical arts that Thomas does. So it's an offshoot of the two, huh? It involves a kind of union of natural and technical science. So modern experimental science is not a purely natural science. And rhetoric is not a purely, what, logical science. That's why divisions are interesting, you know, to understand rhetoric and modern science, because they don't come purely under one of those four, right? But they involve, what, taking something from a couple of them, right? I kind of suspect that modern mathematical logic is not purely, what, the art of calculation, or the art of logic. It takes something from both, but it's not the same as either one, huh? It's interesting, huh, that rhetoric dominated the ancient world, and even the great Christians, like St. Ambrose and St. Augustine were very much into the art of rhetoric, huh? Christ is supposed to have appeared, you know, to Jerome and said, are you a Christian or a Ciceronian, huh? And, but the modern world is dominated by the other off-sheet, experimental science, huh? Factors and fluency in the modern world. And the poetics, of course, is even less purely a part of logic, huh? So if you look at what they call the ordinon there, the basic works, you have prior and post-analytics, the topics and emphasis on refutations, rhetoric and poetics are put separately, right? Thomas was looking at this in a very broad way, so in a broad sense we can say that rhetoric and poetics has something to do with making people with conclusions. So sometimes belief or opinion does not come to be completely, but a suspicion. Because reason does not wholly turn to one part of a contradiction. It definitely is so, or it definitely is not so, right? Peace. incline to one than the other. Sometimes only evaluation inclines to some part of a contradiction because of some representation. In the way in which detesting of some food comes to a man, if it is represented to him under the likeness of something detestable. And to this is or the poetics, for it belongs to the poet to lead it to something virtuous through a pseudo-representation. Did you ever read the illustrissime there by John Paul I? You know, it's written in the form of what? Letters to Famous Men, right? And it's so much appropriate to write about about some particular matter. Well, anyway, he writes about the music or the film festival, I guess it was, in Europe, to Goethe, the German poet. And he's talking about how a work of art should be moral from, what? Intrinsically, from the beginning to the end. And it shouldn't be something attached on to the end. What is an immoral play, right? And he's writing it to Goethe, because Goethe wrote the, what? Sorrow's a Young Werther, which led to suicides all over Europe. He began to realize his responsibility in a way, right? It's a story of hopeless lovers and so on, and other people saw themselves in this play, so they commit suicide like the actors in the play, right? And so it's appropriate that he writes to him about it, huh? But he says, he gives the example of Oedipus Rex, right? And he says, marvelous understatement, though, but a perfect example. He says, after reading or seeing Oedipus Rex, one is hardly enthusiastic about incest. You know, the play, right? It's a perfect example, huh? So all of these, he says, in some sense, pertain to reasonable philosophy or rational philosophy, for it belongs to reason to lead from one thing to another. Now, the part of logic which is called sophistic, serves the third procedure of reason, which Aristotle considers in the book of the Sophisticated Refutations. So, in the prior and posterior analytics, you're considering an argument by which reason is led necessarily to certain conclusions, right? In the topics, in the rhetoric, and so on, in the politics, where reason is not led with necessity, but with probability, or at least estimation, or an estimation is so. But here you're going to be led astray, right? But the magician studies these things to avoid being deceived and to avoid being led astray. So the question about this, this is very... Is it interesting that rhetoric is an offshoot of, from where? From dialectic, huh? Which is... And we'll see that when we get to the text of Maristava. In dialectic, you have the syllogism and induction, the dialectical syllogism and induction. You have something like the syllogism in rhetoric, the anthony, something like induction, the argument called example. We'll see the details that we get, right, huh? But it's also an offshoot of that end of ethical and political studies. Because as a speaker, I want to make it appear as if I'm a knowledgeable man, right? And I'm your friend, you know? I think you're good in mind, you know? And of course, I have to talk in a way that's appropriate to, what, my audience, huh? You know, if you go back and read Demosthenes' speeches, one of the speeches there, he's making fun of the opponent, because he scrubbed benches when he was young. I said to myself, that'd be very bad rhetoric today, right? See? But the fact that this man scrubbed benches when he was young meant that he's a nobody in that Greek society, right? He doesn't come from a noble family, huh? See? So this is more aristocratic, huh? Custom, see? But today, it would be exactly the wrong rhetoric, because we're democratic, huh? And we admire the self-made man, and the man who's born wealth we don't admire so much, right? It's almost, you know, signs of reason for attacking him that he was born with. You know, gold spoon in his mouth, or whatever they say. See? But if a guy came up, you know, the hard way, right? And scrubbed benches and did menial things and worked his way up, then the way what? Yeah, see? So you have to know the different kinds of government, right? Which belongs to political philosophy, and there are precedents of those ones. And then you can be more persuasive, huh? Okay? And of course, you know, you go around and you talk to different groups. You're talking to businessmen, and you're talking maybe to labor union people. You don't talk the same way, you know? And some people make a business and go around and record the guy's speech to each group, you know, to see how it changes, huh? Okay? But it's ethics and political philosophy that studies customs and different kinds of government and the virtues and the vices, right? And so you're trying to, you know, appear to be a man who's your friend, right? I used to say about the two politicians in my home state there, Hubert Humphrey, right, who was senator and went for president one time, and Freedman, who was governor, right? Humphrey really did like people. He was a friendly guy. Freedman didn't mean like people, but outwardly he was friendly, right? So you have to project a certain image of yourself, right? And you want to project an image of someone who's, what, knowledgeable, right? Someone who's careful, someone who has your good in mind, right? And these are things, qualities that are studied in ethics and political philosophy. So the art of persuasion takes... ...emotions, and then the arguments you get. If you want to see a beautiful example of the art of rhetoric there in the work, it's when Iago persuades Othello that his wife is unfaithful. There's absolutely no real basis for that at all, right? But Iago projects the image of himself as he's really the friend of Othello, right? He projects the image of a man who is very observant and sees into people, right? But a man who doesn't state his, what, suspicions lightly. So you have every reason to trust this man, right? Here's a man who's really your friend, right? A man who understands people much better than you do, right? A man who's very hesitant, you know, to state what he... His suspicions, right? There's some basis for it. You're already disposed to believe this man when he starts, right? But then he starts to work on the emotions. He starts to arouse the jealousy of what? Othello. And then as he says in one of his soliloquies, to a man who's in this state of mind now, this jealousy, even a flimsy proof will seem like sacred scripture to him. And of course, the proof he gives, the handkerchief of here, is a very weak argument, right? Of infidelity, but it's very convincing. That's all he needs, right? To a man who's already to jealousy, huh? So sometimes we don't consider rhetoric a part of logic, but an offshoot of one part of logic and an offshoot of ethical and political studies, huh? Aristotle talks about that, right? In the book called The Rhetoric, right? But in the broad sense, you can say it has something at the aspect of argument, right? And therefore, Tom's looking at it in a very broad way, would include that. And even the poetics, right? Which is a study of the imitative arts, huh? But because men are led to certain conclusions by imitation, right? Then you can, in a broad sense, say that pertains to logic. Okay? Okay, now let's look at some of these short texts on logic here. This is page five of your book, or so. And this is taken from Thomas' commentary where he says work on the Trinity. Thomas says, Looking sciences, as is clear in the beginning of the metaphysics, are about things the knowledge of which is sought for its own sake, huh? So the word looking means trying to see, trying to understand, right? So looking sciences, which are reading mathematics and natural philosophy and first philosophy or wisdom, they're pursued for their own sake, huh? This is not true about logic, okay? The things however which logic is about are not sought to be known for themselves, but as a help to the other sciences, huh? And therefore logic is not contained under looking philosophy as a principal part, but as something reduced to it. In a way, it's the, what, tool of looking philosophy and in general philosophy. But now Thomas adds something here that's a little more new to us here. In so far as it provides looking with its tools, namely syllogisms and definitions and others of this kind which we need in the looking sciences. Once, according to Boethius and his commentary on Porphyry, it's not so much a science as a tool of science, huh? Porphy wrote a famous book called The Isagoge, the Introduction to Aristotle's Categories, and that became a standard text all the way through the Middle Ages. So Everett the Great has a commentary on it, huh? Cajetan has a commentary on it, huh? Boethius has a commentary on it, and so on. Notice what Thomas is saying here, that logic is more the tool philosophy, right? Than a chief part of it, right? But also that logic, in a way, is about tools, right? Okay? Now, how does that compare with the basic thing we've seen up to this point, huh? Let's go back to the starting point here. We said that logic is about three acts of our reason, right? It's going to direct or order three acts of our reason, huh? And those three acts, let's put them on board again, understanding what a thing is, two, understanding the true or the false, and three, reasoning. Okay? Now, what are these tools he's talking about, like definition and syllogism and other things of this sort, right? How are they related to these three acts? Well, suppose a student doesn't understand what a perfect number is. How would I help him to understand what a perfect number is? Yeah. Yeah. So a perfect number is a number equal, right, to the sum of everything that measures it. So the first perfect number is six, huh? Six is measured by one, it's measured by two, it's measured by three, but not by four or five. And one plus two plus three equals, like, six. Four is not a perfect number, it's measured by one and by two, not by three, and one plus two does equal four. Now notice, I was using examples there to kind of illustrate the definition, right? But it's through the definition that one is able to understand what a perfect number is, huh? It's a number equal to the sum of everything that measures it, okay? What's a composite number? Some students don't know what a composite number is. What's a number that's measured not only by the one, but by some other number, right? So four is a composite number, but three is not, huh? Five is not, huh? Okay, and that's what a prime number is, right? A number that's measured only by the one, not by any other number, right? Okay? If you didn't know what blank verse is, I would give you the definition, right? It's unrhymed, dynamic, metameter. If you didn't understand what an IM is, I would give you the definition. It's two syllables with the accent on the same line, okay? So definition is a tool, as Thomas says, huh? A tool that is necessary, often, for this first act, right? I can't understand what a perfect number is without the definition of perfect number, right? I can't understand what blank verse is without the definition of blank verse, huh? I can't even understand clearly what a square is without the definition of square, an equilateral, right angle, quadrilateral, okay? Is there a tool corresponding to understanding the true or the false? There's a reason to have to make something. Just like here, it has to make the definition, often, to understand what something is. What does it have to make before you can understand the true or the false? Statement. Statement, yeah. Because, really, where do you find truth or falsity? Is there any truth or falsity in this room, outside of us here, huh? Any truth in the ground? A falsity in the ground? I can dig in there, everybody wants to find some things, and you can't buy any rocks, and roots, and, you know, just one hole, you know, that's what you do as a hole, but you get to rocks like this, you know? You know, you have to throw out four or five rocks out of one hole, and then she wanted another thing, so I dug there, and they had rocks and so on, and had roots, you know, with the big, much bigger than this, the roots, like that, you know? It's like chopping with some blunt ax, and so on. So, I never found any piece of truth in the ground. I swam in the ocean, and lakes, and never granted any truth or falsity there in the water. I walked through the air every day, truth or falsity there, right? and I swam in the ocean, and I swam in the ocean, and I swam in the ocean, where do you find truth or false things yeah but not in the first act here because man true or false animal true or false stone true or false i put that in a true or false exam you don't know what to do but when i put these together in an affirmative negative statement i say man is an animal or man is not an animal it's either true or false right man is a stone or man is not a stone right okay so in order to understand the true or the false i have to make a statement so in a way statement is to the second act what definition is to the first act now what true corresponds to the third act syllogism is the most perfect but in general you could say an argument right okay an argument will be distinguishing the syllogism and induction which are two main kinds of arguments on it and you have to be an example or a week or about like those two i know it's uh and you make these yeah that's not the second can you also say that second part of understanding would be a combination and division or that well how much does that stay in the act in the act right you're putting things together in your affirmative statement or separate them okay so notice these are not the same thing right now sometimes they compare this a little bit to see uh the telescope let's say in the microscope and these things my nose is holding up right you see this is not an act of the eye is it this thing here okay it's not it's not a scene is it and a telescope and a microscope are not a scene either right but are they related to see yeah there are things i can see or see better because i have these on right and things i can see or the microscope that i can't see without the microscope right and things at a distance that i can see the telescope that i couldn't see otherwise right okay so you can see that the my glasses or the microscope or the telescope are tools that enable us to see some things we couldn't see without them right or to see those things at least better than we can see them without them right don't you yeah okay so in a way these are like that in the sense that they're tools that are necessary to uh complete or perfect these what acts right okay and you could say that logic is about these tools in a way uh when you say it's about these three acts you're thinking more about the uh end or purpose of logic right it's to perfect these three acts it's to order these three acts this is what logic is about in the sense of an end or purpose right but these are the tools necessary right to perfect and order these acts okay so when i talk about glasses or microscope or telescope they're for the sake of seeing right for the sake of an act of the eye right but you can really see the definition and statement argument are more what the subject of logic is right okay but you got to see them as related to the end or purpose which is to perfect and direct these acts now notice that making a statement as they say is necessary to understand the true or the false because you find truth and false are the only in statements sometimes i ask is where is truth you know i don't know what to say first right i say one generous in the same place that falsity is in statements right okay um but notice making a statement doesn't tell you whether the statement is true or false does it now sometimes we know that a statement is true or false through our senses right so if you take these two statements burquist is standing now right burquist is not standing now one of those statements is true and that is false right and in this case how do you know which is true which is false yeah yeah yeah yeah now sometimes you know that a statement is true or false for the first act right if i define for example um triangle and i define square i could see that no triangle is a what square right or if i define square and i define quadrilateral i could see that the square is a quadrilateral so sometimes you know that a statement is true or false to understanding the parts okay sometimes by the senses sometimes to understand parts right but if you don't see it through your senses or to understand the parts then you have to go to what reasoning to decide what is true or false okay so you could say for example that uh the in a triangle these three angles will add up to two right angles always well even if i know what a triangle is and what right angles are i don't see that these have to add up to two right angles do i just by looking at it i have to reason it out right i have to use the number of what arguments right but obviously you must know some statements without having to what reason to them otherwise you'd have no statements to reason from okay so they don't either by sense or by understanding the parts of them okay so it's interesting that logic is called the organon of philosophy the tool philosophy but as thomas points out here you could say also that in a way it's about the tools right but tools for the sake of perfecting those three acts tools for the sake of directing or ordering those three acts now the original meaning of art as we said before is that an art um is right reason about making right but making in the in some kind of matter right but then we carry the word art over and apply it to what they call the liberal arts well there's a kind of making but it's not in matter but kind of a mental making and this is what thomas points out here in coming on the boethius the seven liberal arts now you know what the seven liberal arts are they go back to uh pythagoras and plato right the seven liberal arts were divided later on in the middle ages into the trivium which was grammar rhetoric and logic they are the distinguished rhetoric and logic and then the quadrivium goes back to pythagoras and that was uh arithmetic geometry music and astronomy uh plato in the uh karmidesi talks about the liberal arts right of course it is time they're just starting to anticipate logic right rhetoric had been developed a little bit earlier and then running around teaching rhetoric and they're starting to understand grammar right a learning grammarian told me that the greeks understood their language they figured it out they figured out the grammar of the greek language but then the romans came along and they were too stupid to figure out the grammar of the latin language so they imitated the grammar of the greeks and that's why they got their cases all screwed up and they had to you know tack on whatever it was in the greek you know added on and then we imitated the latin grammarians and followed up our understanding of our own native language they had to admire the greeks right they're the fathers of everything even of grammar and then you know they developed rhetoric right of course cicero said that aristotle's rhetoric was a gold river right you know he's invented the art of rhetoric they're the fathers of logic right and the more more difficult to understand things in logic the romans didn't even have a name for it like syllogism that's a greek word induction is a black word huh but the more difficult things they didn't even have anthony and syllogism okay