Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
Lecture 24: Equivocation, Metaphor, and Figures of Speech

Transcript
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I mean, it goes all, this is the most interesting in some ways. It goes all the way back to that first we talked about, which is almost like univocal, right? And so at the end, we want to admit that as being equivocal, you know? But in some way, it seems to be, right? Because in some sense, you can say, I'm an animal, and in other sense, I'm not an animal, right? There's got to be some equivocation there, it seems, huh? But it's very close to univocal, right? This here is so far away, it's sometimes hard to tell this apart from what we call metaphor, right? If you go to a physical conference now, people don't understand very much. They often call this metaphor, and they can't make the distinction between the two, right? It's hard to. A good example here of this is, if you take the word to see and the word I, right? When we use the word to see, to imagine, and even to understand, I think this is equivocal by reason, right? It's a likeness of rationalism. But I think when, let's say, Gregory the Great says that anger disturbs the eye of the soul, I think that's a, what, more like a metaphor, huh? But sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between the two, right? But seeing is a more immaterial sort of thing, right? And more lends itself to coming to mean, to understand, right? Why I is, you know, the physical structure, that's in no way like reason, which is not bodily at all. So the same thing, it's hard to tell them apart, right? Because here you're stretching it, you know, see? And the word metaphor itself is a Greek word for what? Carry over. One thing that's kind of curious, you know, if you look at the Greek word and the Latin word for carry over, we take it both of over in English, metaphor and translation. See, latio and fora mean, what, carry, and meta, over, right? Trans, over. So Thomas will talk about, you know, the translaxio, nomini, the carry over of a name, right? But notice what's happened in English, right? Metaphor in English, and translation, although there's no reason why they had to be done this, huh? But translation, you're not carrying over the name, you're carrying over the, what? The meaning, yeah. Metaphor, you're carrying over the name, but not the meaning. I mean, ethnologically speaking, they're exactly the same, right? But, you know, if the meaning gets very distant, and you're carrying over tremendous distance, then we start to speak of a metaphor, right? Then with a name, equivocal by reason, right? Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, so do our men taste unto their end. That's a beautiful proportion there, right, that Shakespeare has on the metaphor, simile. I don't think we'd start calling it a, what, men's waves, would we? Okay, I've got five waves, and I've got to go. Ran the mile, and six ways. The likeness is just, what, too distant, right? In theology, you know, Thomas, well, I asked, should sacred scripture use metaphors, right? And of course, one of the objections is, you know, he always objects to himself, right? One of the objections is that, to use metaphors is appropriate to the poet, right? Which is the lowest, as far as the mind is concerned, parts, right? And why should the highest use the, what? The lowest, right? And Thomas' answer, if you've seen the text there, right? He says, well, in a way, it's for the same reason that theology uses it, the poet does. But in other ways, for exactly the reverse reason, huh? In the case of the poet, he's trying to take something that, in itself, is not understandable, and he's trying to bring it up and make it more understandable than it really is. The scripture is trying to take something that's above our mind, very understandable, but above our mind, and trying to, what, bring it down to our mind, right? So what's common to the use of metaphor in scripture and in fiction or in poetry is that it's something that's not proportioned to our mind, right? But the reason why it's not proportioned to our mind is, in one case, because it's below our mind, in the other case, it's too bright for our mind, it's too understandable, you know? So in a sense, it's just the reverse, right? And so, you know, you can see that something like Dante's Divine Comedy is not really what's characteristic of fiction. He's trying to take something that's above us, right? Like in the Tardiesel, right? And bring it down, right? To our level. In the way, scripture is the metaphor, right? You know, this is a common metaphor for the beauty of vision. That's a banquet, right? You see that a lot in the Psalms and other places. And Christ says, you know, I'm going to eat at my Father's table, right? Same thing I eat. That's speaking metaphorically, right? And notice how in daily life we'll speak, that that's food for thought, right? So maybe it's an object to think about. So maybe it's an object to think about, right? So food is the object that we first talk about in the soul, right? Talk about the plant power and its object is food, right? It's metaphorically called the object of what? The mind, food for thought, right? The beauty of vision is called, what? A banquet, right? And so the banquet has everything, right? You know, it's like the phase that they have, you know, where you have so much variety, you know? That you can't do justice to it, huh? Well, in a sense, this is the way, you know, the bond is even spoken of, right? Only it's like the mental, see how mental. So, but those are what? Something that's above our mind, trying to bring it down to our level, right? You know, when Shakespeare says, like as the waves make towards the pelvic shore, so do our men say since they're in. He's giving the waves, he's giving the minutes of our time, more existence than they have. Because if you're down by the ocean, you're watching the waves come in. It's not only the wave that's crashing against the shore, but there's maybe two or three other waves you can see. Here's a big one coming, you know? You're getting ready for it. And they already exist some of the other ways, right? But the next two or three minutes don't exist yet, see? So you're giving these things more being than they have, see? My God is I am who I am, right? He has more being and more reality. So you're bringing it down, huh? So essentially you're doing just the contrary thing, right? And you compare, as I say, the Divine Comedy, say, with the Iliad, right? The original of the Iliad might have been a pirate raid, you know? The coast of Asia Minor, right? When Homer gets through with it, it'll say, what? It's an image of human life, right? It's tremendous that he does, huh? So he's giving something insignificant, right? Great significance, you know? He's giving it more meaning. And this is what the great poet does, huh? It's like, you know, what a great portrait painter does, right? The portrait painter, if you get, you know, Titian is probably the master, right? And Titian tries to capture the whole character of a man in one expression in that painting, right? And you know in real life how most people don't like photographs, you know, of themselves, right? You know, and you get your photograph on the license, license, and so on. Doesn't look, you know. But no one expression of your friend's face captures his or her whole, what, character, right, huh? In other words, it doesn't have that much meaning. No. And you kind of need many, many expressions of that person, right? You have kind of an idea of the way they laugh, the way they react to different things said, and different things that happen, right? And you start to, you know, see the character, right, in these different expressions. But no one expression captures the whole of what this person means to you, right? But the portrait painter seems to be doing that, right? With one, huh? There's a kind of concentration there. So you're giving more meaning, right? These things really have, huh? I was reading Father Philip Hughes there, you know, the history historian, right? I was reading his little popular history of the Reformation, very, very well, right? But he's talking about how the historian tries to, you know, speak in a somewhat orally way, you know, about the events, right? But, you know, you've got to be warned that they didn't really, at the time, see the significance of these events, right? He's talking about this. this interim thing there in 1955 in Germany, you know. This would be the end of the Reformation now. It's being established then, you know. But they didn't know it at the time, right? The historian sees this is the end of this age almost, and I know the age is beginning, right? You know? So in a sense, he's seeing an order that the characters themselves did have done. I mean, when the poet puts the events, you know, in a plot with the beginning, middle, and end, is that where our life is? Well, we don't see it anyway. Topped up thing, right? They have no connection, right? You know, or juxtaposed, right? But the poet, he, what, puts the events together, right? So it forms a beginning, middle, and end. So he's giving things in order and intelligibility that we don't really have. And one thing that strikes us, you know, too, people have often said this, you know, with Shakespeare, that these characters in Shakespeare like Hamlet and King Lear and all these other characters, they're much more sharply drawn in our memory and imagination than people who are known in daily life, right? Right. You know? King Lear and Hamlet are much more different to me than you two guys are. You know? You know what I mean? And there's a kind of an intelligibility about these characters that there aren't about people in daily life. And then, you know, we're kind of, we're more amorphous than Lear or Hamlet seems to be, right? So you're making these things more intelligible than they really are. But it's actually what's appropriate to these things, huh? The same way, you know, if you get, you know, Mozart, who's the musician, right? He'll take, you know, the actors, these very commonplace, almost ridiculous situations, right? And he raises them up, you know? And all of a sudden they seem to be filled with what? Meaning and mystery. You can't quite say what the meaning is, but I mean, they seem much more meaningful than any such thing, you know, it could be a domestic squabble, you know, when it comes to the music, you know, and take some of that sound, you know? It's amazing the way he does that, huh? But that's what the great painter and the great poet, the great musician does. They do things that are commonplace, right? And they break them up and they have much more meaning now than they really have in themselves. But scripture is doing just the reverse, right? So, but the philosopher doesn't really use metaphor much, right? It's more to the theologian or the scripture or to the poets, right? Or to the rhetorician. The rhetorician uses it less than the poet, but to some extent he uses these metaphors of the figures of speech. I have this one professor, you know, who's the English Department and all kinds of interesting things. And so they went in to give a talk on John Dewey, see, so they went over to the other college where they had a high opinion on John Dewey and he gave a speech that talked where he seemed to be praising John Dewey, right? But there or so after he left he realized that he had been tearing him apart. And you see that sometimes in the office, you know, someone would come in and ask about somebody and you think he's praising the guy, right? And of course he's really taking him apart. And that's kind of puzzle there, you know? You know? I mean, this is not very effective, right? So the rhetorically in the case of this talking at the college they're kind of getting mad at him now, you know? But name equivocal by reason, that's something that the philosopher is very much concerned with, huh? Especially in wisdom you distinguish these words, right? But in logic he does something like the word before was taken from the categories, huh? So remember going to National Review years ago. Stormy weather ahead, right? You can hear it out there, you know? Stormy weather ahead. That's a metaphor, right? Troublesome period coming up in the country, right? Stormy weather ahead. But it appeals to the imagination, see? The philosophers don't appeal to the imagination, huh? But some of these remarks, you know, about the modern philosophers tend to give an example, you know, that appeals to the imagination, right? Why the Greek philosophers tend to use an example that makes the thing clear. Because they're using the example there to help you understand something. They tend to get carried away. Of course, a student would do that anyway, you know? Well, a teacher Preserve used to say, you know, that tells a joke illustrates something or, you know, something. They'll remember the story, where it was, but not the point of trying to illustrate that. That's because our senses are kind of singular, right? Notice, our words, parables, are kind of like a parable is like an extended metaphor, right? Expanded metaphor, right? That basically it's like teaching by metaphor. Many reasons for doing that, huh? So, that concludes the first part of the art of definition about names, right? Okay, for the goodness of the teaching, we've talked a little bit about name equivocal by reason, huh? When you get into the Periharmonaeus of Aristotle, you have a good example of one of these equivocal ways of naming. Like I mentioned before, Aristotle divides a statement into noun and verb, right? Both of these are names as we, what, define it, right? But in Greek and Latin, you don't have a different word for name and for noun. In Latin, you have nomina, and for verb, you have verbum, okay? In Greek, you have what, it's rhema, and you have onema, right? Here is onema, right? Okay? Now, you read the great Ammonius Hermaeus, right? Who we think might have been a teacher at one time of Boethius, right? Ammonius Hermaeus wrote this great commentary of the Periharmonaeus of Aristotle, and Thomas seems to have followed it very closely, right? Usually he disputes with these guys, but to some extent it's subtle things, even Boethius, but he follows Ammonius very carefully and even uses Ammonius' examples, right? And I guess the scholars say that where Thomas' commentary breaks off is where one of the medieval translations of Ammonius breaks off. Very interesting, right? But anyway, Ammonius is always explaining, when he was saying the word onema, whether he's using it in this sense as opposed to a verbum, right? Or as commentable, right? Because in one sense you can say the verbum, the rhema is an onema, in another sense you divide the meanings there, right? Okay? And in English though we can to some extent call this a noun and not a name, right? Although even in English there's a tendency to think of a name as being a noun, right? Or a verb, right? We do have a separate word in English, so we're a little richer there in that one sense, huh? But now, why is it that in Greek and in Latin there, why do you just keep the common name and just get a new name? Yeah, yeah. You see, both of them are a vocal sound, right? That signifies by human agreement, part of it signifies by itself, right? But the verb signifies with time, a noun signifies without time, right? So the verb adds something, right? Or the noun is negative, right? It doesn't seem to add anything to the common meaning, right? So this gets the new name and this keeps the old name. That's an example from the logic of the second act, this kind of what? Interesting example of that, huh? Just like the categories, they have the word disposition, right? Where disposition is divided sometimes into disposition and habit, huh? Okay? And this adds that, right? You'll find Aristotle sometimes in the foster distinguishing between doing and making. Okay? And this is a very important distinction, extremely important. And you'll see it used, you know, in, it's called up in metaphysics, but it's in ethics, right? We'll say, for example, that there are two virtues of practical reason, foresight or prudence, and art. And art is right reason about making. Foresight or prudence is right reason about doing. So the distinction between doing and making is important for the distinction of the virtues art. But when you're making something, are you doing something? Yeah. So doing is divided into what? Doing and making, which sounds illogical and would be if doing meant the same thing here, right? But why does making get the new name, and this other doing just keep the name doing? Why? Yeah. In the case of making, there's a product in addition to whatever you're doing, right? So if I'm seeing you, there's nothing besides the same, right? But if I'm making a chair, apart from making, at the end, there's going to be a chair. When I'm no longer making, so you'll be a chair, right? Okay? So there's something, you know, in addition, right? And this here, of course, is not something, doesn't make it more perfect. In fact, this would be more perfect activity than this here. But this here kind of stands out because it has that exterior product, right? So that's a very important example, you see? With habit and disposition, is the thing added to firmness? Yeah, the firmness, yeah. The habit is a firm disposition, but a disposition that is not firm just keeps the word disposition, right? And you'll dispose to it, right? And I think, you know, what we call mood in English, you know, it's a good example of the disposition that's imposed to have... And firmness is in the sense of constant? What? Firmness is in the sense of constant? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's stable, it's stable. Stable. Not easily lost, right? Because if I'm a just man today, I'm not going to easily become a thief today, right? If I'm a criminal and they put me in jail today, I'm not going to turn around tomorrow and all of a sudden it's just man, right? So it takes some time if I change at all, right? But if I'm in this mood or that mood, you know, the day, you know how you say you start on the day, you're in the dumps or you're... or vice versa, right? And you change during the day, right? You know, you change something quickly, someone tells a joke and you laugh and kind of the movie, this is God, right? So that's a disposition, right? Yeah. So you see it in yourself and your friends and your family and so on. People are assuming he changes, right? He used to have these, you know, these cocktail hours and they call them attitude readjustment. But what they're talking about is changing the person's mood after being in the office for eight hours and like that, you know, he's also for a happy hour or wherever he is and now his mood has changed, right? So that's something called disposition. So you've got to find this as you go through, right? But as soon as you get to the third act, you have the other one, for example, syllogism, right? Where syllogism is sometimes divided into syllogism and anthony. And sometimes you call that thing the syllogism, sometimes you call it rhetorical syllogism, right? But sometimes you'll say you'll distinguish between the syllogism and the anthony. The syllogism is like, you know, the boy is the man, right? It's something of the syllogism but not the fool. In the syllogism, you require complete diversality in one of the premises, right? Universal affirmative, universal negative. The anthony is used more in rhetoric, in human action, where it's difficult to find things that are without exception, right? You can say, boys will be boys, right? That's what anthony would proceed from, things like that. But sometimes a boy acts like a man, right? Sometimes, through their exceptions, it doesn't fall necessarily that if he's a boy, he's going to act like a boy. It's likely. Boys will be boys, you see. But the anthony is from likelihood, and likelihood lacks that complete universality, you know? Politicians say what they do to get elected, right? Everybody thinks that, right? Okay. But Masa do Pinio, or Tura Dictat says Cicero, right? Okay. But is that true, or is there no exception to that? I was talking to a historian one time, and he said, who's that guy who said he'd rather be right than president? And the historian says, probably some guy didn't have a chance. But I think some days you do have people who do say the truth, right? They get elected, right? So, the anthony is based upon likelihood, which lacks a complete universality, like no odd number is even, right? Every mother is a woman, right? There's no exception, right? And in fact, a complete universality for the syllogism, the anthony has something like that, right? Or it's some signs, and most signs are more universal than what they're signifying. Like stagger out of the bar, right? He's drunk, right? A man might stagger because, you know, he has a leg problem, right? Or he's old, or he's tired, right? But we jump like that, we still play out a bar, right? He's had too much, right? He didn't waste keys, so I'm dry, right? So, not everybody who staggers out of a bar is drunk, right? My wife works with these brain engine people, you know? And, you know, some of them seem like they're, what, drunk. And sometimes a policeman would think that they're drunk, right? Or something, you know? But it's just a little bit, you know. So, I mean, there are exceptions, so. The anthony has something of the syllogism that falls short, so it gets its own name, huh? The syllogism keeps a common name, huh? In the same way you're saying an induction. How did the poet get his name? Do you know? Yeah. The poet means the Greeks are the maker. Poion is the common word to make. So, among all those who make, he is called, what, the maker, huh? And Aristotle, when he speaks at home, he calls him the poet. The devil told me to see that. Now, sometimes you have two of these figures of speech in one. I'll give you an example here. Suppose you turn the radio on to get the news, and the announcer says, the White House announced today that there will be da-da-da-da-da. How many figures of speech are there? The White House announced today? Yeah. What are the two figures of speech there? The White House. The White House. Yeah. It's Antonio Messia. And then, was it the White House that announced, or was it the man in the White House that announced? Metonome. Yeah, Metonome, yeah. Yeah, it's the Metonome, right? So, White House there, among all the White Houses in the country. I live in the White House, by the way. When you say the White House, everybody understands the President's house. So, that is the White House by Antonio Messia. But, when you say the White House announced today, then you mean the man, the spokesman, or whoever it is, right? The man in the house. So, you're giving the name of the, what, container for the contained. In a way, it's almost like this when I say I'm drinking a glass of water, right? Am I drinking a glass, or am I drinking what's contained in the glass? I'm drinking a cup of tea. What is a cup? Is it the tea, or is it the container? It contains the tea that's served me. It's like a Metonome, isn't it, huh? I drank a cup of tea. I drank a glass. Not literally. Figuratively. But the figure of speech is a Metonome, huh? It's very natural to use these things, huh? My Lord said, like this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But in a sense, he says, this is my body, right? And then he says, what, consecration for me. You know, this is the cup of tea. Yeah. Yeah. So, what else? I mean, to analyze what that is, in terms of this, you have to see, there's two figures of speech there. And yet, that's very common, huh? I think I read somewhere that the word Pharaoh, I think, originally meant the, what, the palace or what it was where the man lived, right, you know? That's not unusual, right? We often refer to the Pentagon nowadays, right? The Pentagon's working on this, right? Well, the Pentagon is really the building, isn't it? The men are not in the shape of a Pentagon, right? It's the building that's been in the shape of a Pentagon, right? The Pentagon is named that building, right? But instead of saying, you know, the men in the Pentagon, we say, the Pentagon's working on this now. The Pentagon recommends. Yeah. Rome has spoken, right? Case is closed. And the Pope's message is called, what, Herbie and Orbie, I guess, huh? It means to the city and to the world, right? What the city means, what? Rome, you know, it's called the city, right? When I was in Northern California and I taught St. Mary's, you know, you would refer to San Francisco as the city, right? The city, San Francisco, right? I mean, anything else, what else would it be, you know? But, I mean, that's Antonin Messiah, right? It's not the only city, but it is the city, right? So... Suppose I jumped out of an airplane and went there without a parachute, but I'm going down with my parachute, right, like this. My body would be in the same, you know, intrinsically, inwardly, right, as it is now, right, or could be, right? But am I standing? No. In order to be standing, I have to have something outside of me, and my parts are, what, arranged in a kind of perpendicular way down to that outside thing, the floor, right? If I were to lie down on the floor, which I'm not going to do here, but that would be a done position, right, lying down, and then my parts would be, you know, what, ordered to the floor in a different way than they are when I'm standing up, right? Okay? If I stood on that chair, we do sometimes to reach something, right, I'm not sitting, right, huh, but I'm standing, huh, okay? Now, Thomas points out that in the idea of time, you'll find it out when we take up time, it already includes the idea of before and after in order, so you don't have a special, what, another category corresponding to time, like this does here, huh? So when I say I'm in this room, that says nothing about the way my parts are arranged, am I standing in this room, am I sitting in this room, am I lying down in this room, right? But time itself already involves the idea of before and after, you'll see that in the definition of time, it's the number of motion according to before and after's motion. But that's perhaps the reason why when Aristotle gives the central meanings of the word before, the first meaning is before in what, time, rather than before in place. Before in place is led back to that, because it's a similarity to before in time, but it's more explicit in time than you have before and after. Now, with cause or effect, he has two of them, acting upon and undergoing. Easily they use the Latin words, action, action, but I like to use the word acting upon, undergoing, or being acted upon. So I am what? Kicking you, or I am being kicked, right? Or the fire is heating the water, the water is being heated, right? Now notice the difference between saying that the fire is hot and the fire is what? Heating, huh? The water. The fire is said to be hot in itself. That would be put in quality, the sensible quality. The fire is hot, right? But say the fire is heating something, right? You've got to bring in something outside of it that it is acted upon, right? And likewise, when the water is there on the stove, say the water is hot or it's warm, it's talking about the quality that it has now, right? But when you say the water is being heated, then you bring in something outside of it, huh? So, you always divide it into two or three, right? Two or three matters. You have the famous example of Christianity in ten, the ten commandments, right? But already, you know, the two tablets, you have three and what? Seven, yeah. The seven are divided into what? Well, the affirmative and the negative commandments, right? So, you're dividing by two or three when you try to explain those, huh? And then you start to divide them into what? Deeds and words and desires, right, huh? Don't kill, don't commit adultery, steal, right? Those are deeds, right? They don't bear false testimony, that's words. They don't covet your neighbor's wife, don't covet your neighbor's oxen, so, right? That's desire, right? Yeah, it's a division to three, yeah. We use them in confession sometimes, sir, in the thought, word, and deed, right? Desire, word, deed. So, you divide them into two or three to eventually get... The Son, the Holy Spirit, the Amen. God, our might, and that. Guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds. Order and illumine our images. And arouse us to consider much. So, today we're going to talk about the second part of the art of definition. But we also talk about division, huh? The definition is the chief tool there for understanding what a thing is. And division is a secondary tool. And division is also partly a way of arriving at definitions, too. So, we call this whole thing the art of definition, but we talk mainly about definition. Just like in the logic of the third act, we often say the chief subject is the syllogism. But the syllogism is not the only kind of argument. There are other kinds of argument that are considered there as well, okay? Now, we mentioned two things here in the low premium there. The definition and division are two ways our reason goes to make infuse to a distinct knowledge, huh? And two ways we do so in every form of reasoned-out knowledge. So, you gentlemen have considered a little bit of Euclid, for example, right? And you must have seen that he began with a number of definitions, right? And with a number of, what? Divisions, right? And every reasoned-out knowledge does that, huh? So, Aristotle, in the second book of the Nicomachean Ethics, he's going to define moral virtue, right? And then he's going to eventually divide moral virtue, right? So, we saw also in the natural road that one before and after along the natural road is that we know things in a, what? Confused way before we know them distinctly. And the classical text for that is in the beginning of Aristotle's eight books of natural hearing, the so-called physics, huh? And when we do a little natural philosophy, we'll go more deeply into the fact that we know things in a confused way before distinctly. But every student's experience of studying should tell them that that is, in fact, the truth, huh? And so these are two ways that reason uses to go from the confused to the distinct, huh? What? Definition and, what? Division, huh? And he says also in the premium, we must think out definitions and divisions before we reason out conclusions, huh? I think I've talked here before a bit about those key words, thinking out, right? And reasoning out is one form of thinking out, right? Reasoning out is thinking out a conclusion, huh? But there's maybe at least seven different senses of thinking out corresponding to seven different senses of the word out, corresponding to seven senses of the word in, right? Actually, there's eight senses, but maybe there are eight senses of thinking out, huh? But clearly, in reason out now, you're going to find at least these seven different senses of thinking out. And the definition, of course, is especially important for what we call the syllogism later on. Most people don't see that connection. It's interesting, when Aristotle was remarking there, I think it's in the metaphysics, he's remarking that Socrates was trying to syllogize him. And he gives us a sign that Socrates was trying to syllogize the fact that he was always trying to define him, because definition is the beginning of a syllogism. Now, in the first section here, the two kinds of definition, we distinguish between the definition of a thing and the definition of a, what, name. And what we're chiefly concerned with is the definition of a thing. Yeah, but sometimes you have to define a name, huh? You have to use some words to make known what the word or name means, huh? But that's not the main kind of definition. It's a very strange statement there, I guess, and John Stewart knows it. He says, all definitions are of names that are names only. I can't imagine where they get this idea. What we're chiefly interested in is the knowing things, right? And not the meaning of names, huh? It's important to know the meanings of names. You're going to use names. You've got to use names. You've got to use names.