Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
Lecture 15: Calling Things by Their Own Name: The Two Senses of 'One's Own'

Transcript
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Outside of the mind, everything is, what, singular, right? I never had man in general sitting in my class. I taught humanity. What? I taught humanity. Yeah, yeah. I never danced with woman in general. It's always this particular woman. What a scholar does is to distinguish, you know, I might say the basic meanings of these words, right? You can attach sometimes to each meaning in a number of meanings that are very close. So that's below the notice of the letters. The closest to what I do is simply take it out of the warrior, but he doesn't succeed in doing something. Well, I say, look, go back to the Greeks. So the Greeks thought you had to stop and talk about these things. You'll notice when you get into that thing about calling a thing by its own name, that expression, its own, one's own, my own, your own, that phrase is what I'm going to leave. They can sound bites. Yeah. If I speak of my own watch, right, then I can speak of my own mother. A sense of my own the same there? You possess your mother. I'm not thinking that so much, see. But nobody uses a watch but me. Or take my own head. Nobody else has this head. Okay? And my own mother. Is she only my mother? I can speak of my own country, my own city, my own state, right? Same sense? This is a very important distinction, right? The meanings of my own. It's going to be very important for logic. But it's also very important for practical philosophy. My own life. My own country. By this meaning particular to your own country. Yeah, my own planet, though. Right? Can I speak of my own God? What do you think? Is Jesus Christ my own Savior? What would you say? I don't see the Deion my own teacher. My own teacher in January too has been Euclid. Well, some of my brother Mark too, but maybe Euclid's been my own teacher. For certain sake, well, I'm going to get Euclid and buy it and study it. I see my own teacher. He's your teacher too, isn't he? My own head. Anybody else's head is this? Anybody else's head? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Huh? It's becoming our head. It's very important, yeah. I can say to these guys, everyone has his own head. Yeah, but I... Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. I have two different senses here on the phrase, my own... If I speak of my own wife, there's nobody else's wife, huh? Right. Now, I might speak of my own daughter. Some people say, well, you shouldn't say that. You should say, you know, our daughter. Right. I say, well, it's men now. Can't I speak of my own daughter? My own mother? And when I say that Rosalie is my own wife, she's nobody else's wife. Okay? When I say my own mother, she's somebody else's mother besides mine, right? And yet she's my own mother, right? My own daughter, right? She's somebody else's daughter besides mine. But still, is it correct to say that she's my own daughter? This is my own child. I have to say she's our child. That's true too, right? But I can still say she's my own daughter. My own flesh. I'm not. But it's my own being the same instead of my daughter instead of my wife. Because my own wife is nobody else's wife. My own head is nobody else's head. Right? But my own mother and my own daughter is somebody else's mother and somebody else's daughter. Somebody else's country. My own president. That's to be correct, isn't it? But it's a different meaning, right? I think the first meaning of my own is what belongs to me alone. But then there's a second sense of my own, right? What belongs to me, but not only to me, right? My own daughter, my own mother, my own country. Can I speak of my own God? God, yeah. At first sight, you might think I'm using it in the wrong, you know, in a false sense, right? My own God, right? Yeah, yeah. He's mine. He's my God. He's not my God in the sense that he's what? Truth is my own good. What sense of this should be my own good? Truth. Second sense, yeah. So do we define something by its own name or the name of another thing? Well, if you're stuck in that first being of its own, then you'd be trying to define dog by dog, cat by cat, and that would, obviously, you know, not get you anywhere. Okay. Oh. But when I call a dog, let's say, an animal, am I calling a dog by its own name? Yeah. Yeah. When I call a square parallelogram, am I calling it by its own name? What's the name of this? Is that its own name? Any other glasses around there? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's very important to make that distinction, right? Because for logic, if you don't see that distinction, then there's no name you can define a thing by. You can't define a thing by its own name, and you can't define it by the name of another thing. So you're out of line. But you actually define a thing by its own name in the second sense. But see, it's very important for practical philosophy, right? Because in some sense, you've got to see the common good as your own good, right? In some sense, right? Not in the perverse sense that you make it your own private good, but you've got to see it as your own good. Now, if I remember the basketball team, right? Is victory my good? Or is it the good of the team? Both. Yeah, yeah. But if you call it my good, right? It should be in that second sense, right? But I should really see that as my good, right? In some sense, the victory of the team, right? As a philosopher, I should see truth as my good. That's what I meant to do. That's my good. But not my good in the sense that listen to the private good of playing breakfast, the truth, right? I was saying you have to love wisdom as a common good, right? You have to love truth as a common good, you know? You have to love God as a common good, right? But in the second sense, he's my good. He's my chief good. And he's my greater good than the good which is mine alone, right? Dambling the true or the false, and then reasoning, huh? And the first act is presupposed to the second, and the second is presupposed to the third. I couldn't understand that it's true that man is an animal or that man is not a stone, unless you had first understood in some way what a man is or what an animal is or what a stone is. And I couldn't reason until I had some statements to reason from. Now, how are these three acts directed or ordered or perfected? Well, chiefly, they're perfected by three speeches, meaning by speech as we've defined it, vocal sound, signifying by custom or by agreement, human agreement, having parts that signify by themselves. So the three chief speeches that perfect these three acts of reason are definition, which perfects understanding what a thing is, statement, which is necessary for understanding the true or the false, and syllogism, huh? And other kinds of argument that perfect reasoning. So definition is speech signifying what a thing is, or speech making known what a thing is. Sometimes I say it makes known or signifies distinctly what a thing is, and more so than a name could ever do, because a name doesn't have any parts that signify separate things. But the definition is a speech, and therefore has parts that signify separately. So it breaks up and makes more distinct what the thing is. Statement is speech signifying the true or the false. Or you could say it's a sentence signifying the true or the false. You don't find the true or the false except in statements. So unless you form a statement, you can't understand the true or the false. Now the third act, reasoning, is perfected by syllogism or some other kind of argument. And syllogism is speech in which some statements lay it down, and usually just two of them, right? Another follows necessarily because of those laid down. So if I lay it down, for example, that no speech is a name, and every definition is a speech, it follows necessarily that no definition is a what? Name, right? Or if I lay it down that no speech is a name, and every statement is a speech, then no statement is a what? Name. Okay? And likewise, if syllogism is a speech, and no speech is a name, no syllogism is a name. Okay? So these three speeches are three tools by which the aforesaid three acts are directed or ordered or perfected. So we can say that logic is about those three acts, or it's about these three speeches, which are the tools for perfecting those acts. Now perhaps there is a multiplicity of meaning there in the phrase about something. I think you could say that logic is about these three acts more as its end or purpose. Logic is for the sake of perfecting, directing, ordering these three acts. But it's about those three tools, those three speeches, more as its subject or matter. So, you could say the logic of the first act is really about definition, chiefly. And the logic of the second act is chiefly about statement. And the logic of the third act is chiefly about the syllogism. Some other kinds of argument, but chiefly about the syllogism. Okay? Is that clear? Any question about that? Can you see how you phrase reasoning as a speech? Well, reasoning is the name of an act. In syllogism. Yes, syllogism is speech in which some statements laid down. Another follows necessarily because of those laid down. We'll be coming back to these definitions as we take up each of these. Okay? So we're now in the logic of the first act, which is the logic of definition. Now, I try, when I do this text here, you can notice I have a lot of little titles there, sometimes two or three on a page. That kind of gives you the topic being discussed, right? And as I tell students sometimes, you know, when you're studying for this, look at the title and see if you can recall without reading the text again and then come back and read the text again, right? Okay? Okay? Why should name be considered before definition? We gave three reasons there. And the first reason was that we name a thing before we define it. And this goes back to the natural road because we know things in a confused or indistinct way before we know them distinctly. And so, you don't have to have as distinct a knowledge to name a thing as you have to to define it then. So it's natural in that sense for us to name things before we define them. And that's what we usually do. But secondly, when we seek a definition, when we ask for a definition, like Socrates is doing all the time in the dialogues, we use the name of the thing to be defined. So Socrates asks, you know, what is virtue, right? Or he asks Euthyphro, what is piety, right? Or he asks Theotetus, what is episteme? And he's always asking that question, huh? Okay? So if you don't understand names a bit, you don't understand the question, right? It's not that you're thinking a definition of the name so much, you're thinking a definition of the thing, right? But you have to... to name the thing you want to have somebody to find. But the third and the most important reason why we have to talk about a name before a definition is that a definition is composed of names, put together from names. And every speech is ultimately put together from names. As you recall, the definition of name is the same in four parts, in its first four parts, as a definition of speech. They're both a sound. They're both a vocal sound. They're both vocal sounds that signify and signify by human agreement or custom rather than by nature. But the speech has parts that signify by themselves. And the name has no parts that signify by themselves. So every speech is composed of two or more, what, names. Now notice the word name there, as I explained it around here, is a little bit broader in meaning than sometimes in daily speech, where we think mainly of name and noun as being the same thing. But notice the definition of name here could apply to what? The verb or the adjective as well, right? So colored or just, right, fits the definition of what? Name, right? And walks or runs does, right? But white man or man walks, that's already a speech, huh? Would it be more narrow than... Yeah, somewhat, huh? Because you might even call an article maybe a word, right? There's a little ambiguity there in English, right? Sometimes word and name are used almost synonymously, right? But if anyone's a little bit broader, perhaps word is. Incidentally, when you get into Greek or Latin there, they have the same word for name and for noun, huh? And so when you read the Periharmeneus of Aristotle and you read the Greek commentators and so on, they're always explaining, you know, when he's using the word onoma as common to noun and verb and when he's using it as noun as opposed to verb, right? In Latin you have, you know, nomen and verbum, right? Nomen also means noun, huh? But in English we are a little richer than it. It's a name. But we tend, even in English, to sometimes identify name with, what, noun, right? But name is a little bit broader. Now the next thing to be considered is what should you consider about name, right? Okay. And obviously we want to define name and we want to distinguish between the name of the thing being defined and the names, what, used in the definition. And you learned a rule of logic, it seems, in grade school or high school that the name of the thing being defined should not be one of the names in the, what, definition. And certainly not with the same meaning, right? Okay. So we have to, in order to understand name and definition, we have to distinguish between the name of the thing being defined and the names that are actually found in the definition. And since there's going to be more than one name in the definition, it's a speech, right? We have to see what difference here is among those names. And as we'll see, there's not only a difference there, but an order among the names that are in the definition and so on. Okay? Now the next thing is the definition of name and logic, and we've touched upon that here a number of times. The first word in the definition of name is sound. And the logician leads to the natural philosopher to consider the nature of sound. He takes the notion we all have of sound. Now the second part of the definition of name is that it's a vocal sound. And again, the logician leads to the natural philosopher the question of how these sounds, these vocal sounds, are produced. Now the third part of the definition is signifies, huh? And perhaps when I clear my throat, that's a vocal sound, but it's not intended to signify something. The definition of sign that is traditional is the one from St. Augustine, right? Which I translate a bit freely as that which strikes the senses and brings to mind something other than itself. So it's first meaning, at least. A sign is always something sensible, right? But apart from, as Augustine says, the species or form that it imprints upon the senses, it brings to mind something else, right? Okay? So in the automobile there, you give a signal, right? You better turn left or right, huh? The press says the traffic experts tell you when you see that blinking light to the right, what does that signify? The only thing you'd be sure about is that the guy's system works, right? Because sometimes he doesn't know it's on, right? But, you know, the red light, huh? The sign, right? To stop. And the green light to go. And so on, right? But words are sound. When you hear them, something else, what, comes to mind. The fourth part of the definition of name is that it signifies by custom, or we could say by human agreement, huh? And this is to distinguish it from vocal sounds that signify by nature, like a baby's cry. So it's natural for the baby to cry when they're hungry or they're in pain or something of this sort, right? And if someone kicks you in the stomach or punches you in the stomach, you naturally get something of a groan, right? And that's why these sounds like a baby's cry or a man's groan or a woman's scream when she's attacked on the street or something are known and understood around the world, right? Because they're naturally signifying them. But if I say something in a language that you're not accustomed to, then you'll understand what I'm saying, right? So I end up in a hospital in some foreign country and either doctor or I speak each other's language, right? We can understand my groaning. That's an actual sound, right? But my words, he maybe wouldn't understand or basically sound, okay? And the last part of the definition of name is no part of which signifies by itself, right? And so even if a word was made up of other words, right, when it's functioning as a name, the individual parts don't, what? Yeah. So if you call me Berqvist, which comes from the Swedish word berg, originally berg meaning mountain, and quist meaning branch, right? Well, you're not really signifying what? Mountain, branch, are you? You're signifying this man, right? We had friends whose name was Johnson, right, huh? Okay. And the John and son in the name Johnson, right, don't signify anything. And so even the woman could be called Johnson, even though she's not a son and maybe her father's not even named John, right? Okay. Does the parts here even just refer to the letters, individual letters instead of... It can be the syllables, the letters, right? Okay. Okay. And notice, as we mentioned before, the grammarian, in his analysis of language, he goes down to the letters, right? When I learn Greek, whatever Greek I know, first thing you learn is the alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, you learn the letters, right, huh? And then you talk about syllables and so on, right? And likewise, the poetic signs, and even to some extent's rhetoric, then they want to talk about the syllables, right? Because the poet especially wants to write things in maybe meter, and that's meaning long and short syllables or accented and unaccented syllables and order those things. He wants to maybe rhyme or alliterate them. And so the last letter or the first letter, right? But the magician, he doesn't care about such things, right? His analysis goes down as far as the name, which is, you might say, the smallest unit that signifies, right? But Shakespeare would say, full fathom by thy father lies. And all those words begin with the letter F. right huh full fathom five like father lives and therefore you can see why you can't translate the poet because the words that would mean full and fathom and father and five in say french wouldn't begin with the same what letter right okay or in shakespeare there they're always i think juliet for example but very commonly they're they're rhyming love and dove right huh the dove of course is the animal symbol of love right so it's very appropriate in english that love and dove rhyme and the dove already has that connection with with love but maybe the word for love and for dove in another language would not what rhyme right and they might have you know amor might have two syllables instead of one syllable so the task of translating is almost what impossible really to you know you really lose the uh the the flavor you might say right okay but uh you have the same problem exactly in philosophy because you're not concerned with alliterating or rhyming or uh putting things in meteorite the tradition is a clot in that sense right you couldn't care plus the words rhyme or you know whatever right now um in the next section here at the bottom of page two we're talking about um calling a thing by some name right huh and we're talking a little bit about now the name of the thing you're going to be what defining right huh but in general we're saying that you can call something by its own name or by the name of another thing okay no part one here is about names and then part two will be about definition itself okay or on page two is what i said okay um so uh romeo can call julietta he can call her by her own name which is juliet or he can call her by the name of another thing right now if he slips up and calls a rosalind who he's in love with as you know before he could be in trouble right he made a mistake right okay um if a child calls a cat a dog or vice versa sometimes you see a little child do right um he's not calling it by its own name but by the name of another thing and he's mistaken right but there's another way in which you can call something by the name of another thing and not be mistaken right so when romeo calls juliet honey or sweet or something of this sort he's not calling juliet by her own name but by the name of a what another thing but he's not mistaken as if he called a rosalind or something right okay that's a mistake you ought to avoid now this is an example of what they call a figure of speech right and the greatest figure of speech perhaps the metaphor okay and um thomas in his commentary on one of saint paul's epistles where saint paul uses irony and thomas wants to explain that saint paul is not saying something false he's speaking ironically right okay uh he gives a good explanation of what figurative speech is uh and he says that um in figurative speech the meaning of the word is not the meaning of the speaker so when uh romeo calls juliet honey he doesn't mean that she's that yellow substance produced by the bees right okay um when saint paul you know uh uses irony right um you know if i come in and i find one of my students drunk under the table and i say what a fine example of such a college student he knows i don't mean what my words say right okay but there's a connection between the meaning of the word and the meaning of the speaker and in the case of metaphor the connection is one of some likeness as honey is sweet and pleasant right so juliet is is pleasant right okay and irony you're saying the opposite right okay okay james fawn movie one time where he knocks the guy over into the bathtub right and he grabs electrical wire and the guy i heard somebody say you know around me in the theater You mean something like what the word means. In irony, you mean the opposite. I can find it for you, but it might be the Galatians, you know. But Snekdiki is another example, right? Where you call something by the name of the whole you give to the part or vice versa. He's a brain, right? No, he's a human being. But he's a human being in which that part stands out for some reason or another, right? Okay, as Aristotle says in the 10th book of Nicomarckian Ethics, that reason more than anything else is man, right? That's kind of synecdoche. Or the word was made flesh, right? Likewise, when I say somebody is a Romeo, what do I mean? This is now what? In Tone of Masia, okay? He's a Romeo. I don't mean he's a citizen of Verona. I ended up, unfortunately, right? I mean, he's a, what? A lover, right? But everybody recognizes Romeo as a famous example of a lover, right? If I say he's a Don Juan or a Casanova or something, right? If I say about my students, he's another Einstein, right? He's an Einstein. That'd be quite a compliment, right? Now, there's a reason why we call a thing by the name of another thing figuratively. Especially, this most famous one, like metaphor, it's especially to express emotion or to arouse emotion, but also appeals to the, what? Imagination, huh? There's a likeness there that appeals to imagination. And Thomas, incidentally, in these commentary and the sentences there, he points out that one reason why we have metaphors in Scripture, there are many, many reasons, huh? But one reason is that the imagination, like every other part of us, should be subject to God. And so, by using metaphors, we bring in the, what, imagination. It's like when we genuify, we bring in our knees and our legs, right? But the imagination is a higher and more noble faculty than the legs, right? And that's much more dangerous, in a sense, as far as leading us astray. So it's necessary to subject the imagination even to, what, God, right? And the metaphor brings imagination into the service of God. That's only one reason, many other reasons, or use metaphors. So it's very common among lovers and so on that they will use metaphors to, part, to express their emotion, but also to arouse emotion, right? Okay? But likewise, if I come home and I'm hoping to have another piece of pie or something, and you eat a whole pie by yourself, and I say, you pig, you know? I don't mean that you're a four-footed animal with a tail and a snout, which is something like that. And this, in a sense, expresses my emotion better than saying you're a glutton, right? And it also maybe arouses you, you know, you kind of press up a bit being called a pig, than if you're called a glutton, say. But now, if you want to define something, should you call it by its own name or by the name of another thing? Why that? You want to know it for a reason. Okay? And it's not so clear when I say, what is a pig, right? What am I asking for? It's not so clear, right? And obviously, if I use the incorrect name, if I say, what is a cat, and I'm asking about what is a dog. That's entirely misleading, right? But even if I'm using the figurative thing, right? What is a pig? Okay, you know, it's not as clear as the question, what is a glutton, right? Okay? So the logician, then, when he names a thing and uses a name to ask for a definition, he wants to use the thing's own name, right? And not the name of another thing. Not even the figurative name, okay? That's clear enough, huh? Now, having seen a distinction here between calling a thing by its own name and by the name of another thing, then on page four, we can raise a little question, right? Okay? Are we going to define a thing by its own name or by the name of another thing? It seems like you've got a division there, right? And every name is either the name of the thing or it's the name of another thing, right? Okay? The purpose of my name and all the other names are names of other persons or other things, okay? Now, if you were to define a thing by its own name, then you'd be violating that rule of logic you learned in grade school and high school, right? Because you do not use the name of the thing being defined, right? But you can also see the reason for that rule, right? If you ask me, what is a dog? And I say, well, a dog is a dog. That's a true statement, but I don't make dog any more known than it was to begin with. A rose is a rose, a rose is the poet is supposed to have said, right? But if you call it by the name of another thing, right? Well, either use an incorrect name, so if I was to define dog by, let's say, cat, right? Or define dog by triangle. That would be obviously more than useless, right? But can you really define a thing by metaphor? A wife or a lover is a honey. Can we tell you what they are? A glutton is a what? Pig. Well, pig means a four-footed animal with a tail and a snout. Is that what a glutton is? No. So it doesn't really tell you what it is, the figurative name, huh? And incidentally, you can't use metaphors to say what a metaphor is. You can use metaphors to exemplify a metaphor, but you can't use metaphors to say what a metaphor is. And when you explain what figurative speech is, you don't use figurative speech, except a way of example, but not to say what it is. So you seem to be kind of a dilemma here, right? Either use the thing's own name to define it, or use the name of another thing. And there's an objection to both what? Alternatives, right? So how do we get out of that little dilemma? But what distinction do we come to, which is the untying of this dilemma? Yeah. The expression, its own, or my own, your own, his own, her own, right? Our own, even. That expression has actually, what? Two meanings, right? And the first meaning of my own, it's what belongs to me alone, right? Like my own head, right? My own nose. No one else breathes through the snow. I don't even breathe too well. Myself. Okay? My own teeth, right? Okay? It's always telling me the importance of keeping your own teeth, right? Okay? Uh, what's the second sense of one's own, his own, her own, your own? Yeah. Like that, it's also your country. So I would speak of my own mother, even though she's not my mother alone, right? She's a bad brother or son. And I could speak of my own daughter, even though she's not my daughter alone, she's my wife's daughter too. Okay? And, um, you know, we say to the kids in the neighborhood, or, you know, you hear this, you know, go home to your own house. Okay? Why don't you, you know, mess up your own house? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You hear these things all the time, right? But that child is not only his house, it's his mother and father's house, and he's got brothers and sisters, it's their house, right? Okay? Now this is a distinction that we can, um, make not only in logic, but we can make it in, what, practical philosophy, huh? It's very important. It's very important.