Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
Lecture 29: Distinctions in Logic: Per Se, Equivocation, and Qualified Being

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But distinctions, there are distinctions that are not distinctions in the strict sense of parts of a whole. And I could perhaps just mention the three most important such distinctions. One that we've talked about is very important, is the distinction of the senses of a word. Strictly speaking, the word is not a whole, it's not put together from its part, right? Although it somewhat resembles the universal whole, because it's said of its parts, right? But if it has many meanings, it's not said with one meaning of them, like the genus is said with one meaning of its species. So the distinction of a word, or the distinction of the senses, you could say, or the meanings of a word, is one kind of distinction that's extremely important in philosophy. In this art about statements, you'll see, for example, that we are distinguishing three meanings of the word true, corresponding to three kinds of statements. When we talked about the categories, the word being, the word thing was distinguished into a number of meanings. Now there's two other kinds of distinction that are very common. And one is the distinction between the per se, the through itself, and the through another, right? Or the distinction between the through itself and the through happening, or by happening. That distinction comes up all the time. Very basic, huh? You think about the good, for example, right? When you first define the good, we say the good is what all desires, huh? And then people say, well, how can you say that? Sometimes people desire bad things, right? Okay? Like somebody wants to rob the bank, right? Okay? But does he desire the bad because it was bad? Because he desired to rob the bank because it's unjust to rob the bank? Because it's taking what is not your own? Is that why he robs the bank? No. He desires to rob the bank because it increases the money in his pocketbook, right? Because the kid who drives his car, you know, too fast, does he want to, what, wreck his car or something, right? But this appears to be a way of having a good time, right? It's actually the way to have a bad time, right? When someone says to you at the party, do you want another drink? And you say yes. And after you consume this last drink, you don't feel too good. And you have to excuse yourself. Did you want to drink something that's going to make you sick to your stomach? No. But that drink seemed to be, what, a way of continuing the good time or increasing the good time. It was actually a way of ending the good time. So you didn't desire it insofar as it was, what, bad. But you desire the good, as such, and not the bad, as such. So that distinction can be very important, say, in that example you can say. If the house builder plays the piano in his spare time, you can say a pianist built my house, right? But the pianist, who being a pianist, built my house? No. That was accidental, right? It wasn't as such. It wasn't as pianist. He built the house. But as house builder, he did. Can the sick become healthy? Can the sick be healthy? That would be a contradiction, right? So if the sick cannot be healthy, they can't come to be healthy, can they? So if you're sick, you're always going to be sick, right? Well, it's not really the sick as sick that can be healthy, right? It's that to which sickness happens, namely the body, that can be, what, healthy, huh? So it's the body, as such, that becomes, what, healthy. And when the body becomes healthy, there's still a body, right? But if the sick becomes healthy, it's not healthy. talked about property and accident, right? It belongs to two as such to be half a four, right? It doesn't belong to a triangle as such to be green, no? It's not through being a triangle that it's green. You see that? So that's a very important kind of distinction. Distinction between the through itself and the through happening. Sometimes you see the Latin, per se, and progenite, right? Ka-auto in Greek, right? Ka-auto in Greek, right? But sometimes we translate it as as such instead of through itself, right? There's a similar distinction. It's not exactly the same. What is through itself and what is through another, right? And we're speaking about how some statements are known through themselves and other statements are known through other things, right? We say some things are good through themselves like the end and other things are good as a means to something else. The goodness of medicine in a sense is through the goodness of health, right? The medicine itself is good unless it tastes good. Now the other distinction is the distinction between what is so simply and what is so in some qualified, diminished way. Again, we give a couple examples of that distinction. We have one example there in the Mino, a very difficult example, right? Can you know what you don't know? When someone says, I don't know the cause of cancer, does he know what he doesn't know? Huh? What does he say? But in some way, he must know it, right? If a man is being paid to find the cause of cancer, right, to look for the cause of cancer, right, does he know what he's looking for? Yeah, yeah. In some very perfect way, right, he knows what he doesn't know, right? And that's the problem, you know, the Mino raises, right? How can you and I, Socrates, go looking for what we don't know? We don't know what we're looking for. But in some way, you'd have to know that, right? It's kind of an exchange between Kant and Hegel, right? Kant says, we can't know things in themselves, and Hegel's saying, well, why are you talking about them then? Fuck. Okay? If your little nephew asked you, is it good to drink this delicious poison? Well, just tell him. No. Delicious poison is bad to drink, right? But in some very diminished sense, it is good, right? It's good tasting, right? Okay? Robbing the bank, in some way, is good, right? Although, simply speaking, it's bad. They tell the students, most every day, we're doing something bad because in some diminished sense, it is good. Or we're not doing what is good because in some way, it's bad, right? No matter how good something is, if you're going to do something else, then it's good, right? So in some sense, it can be considered as bad, right? Now, usually, I've done both. Sometimes I've talked about those three main kinds of distinctions that are not divisions of the logic of the first act. But sometimes, I leave them for the logic of the third act because there's three most common kinds of mistakes that are made in reasoning. and one comes in mixing up the senses of a word and another comes in mixing up per se and the crotchet ends, the as such and accidental. And the third one is for mixing up what is so simply and what is so in some respect. Mino would actually make that mistake in the dialogue. And when Socrates tries to answer him, he makes the same kind of mistake. So it's very striking, huh, that both of them make the same kind of mistake, one in trying to answer the other guy's mistake. Because Mino's saying you can't know what you don't know anyway, right? And therefore, you can't be looking for it. Not realizing that what you don't know, you can know in some respect, right? An example, I always give a class there, but there's a larger class than this. I'll say, how many students are in class today? I don't know, right? But I could direct myself to knowing the number of students in class who are the greatest of ease. I know exactly how to get there. And the way I get there is by what? Counting, right? Okay? So then I count the students in class. Let's say I get 27. Now, I got to 27 with the greatest of ease, didn't I? In exactly how to get there. How do I know how to get to 27 if I didn't know I was looking for 27? Well, in some way, I knew 27, right? Because 27 is the number of students in class today. And I knew I was looking for the number of students in class. So in some way, I did know 27, didn't I? You see? So there's a kind of mistake that's based on mixing up or not seeing the distinction between what is so simply and what is so in some respect. I usually pick out a girl student and I'll say to her, Do you know my brother Mark? And she'll say, No. She'll say, Now, you all heard what she said. She's going to contract herself a little bit. And I say, Now, do you know what a man is? She says, Yes. What's my brother Mark? Yes. Well, in some way, you do know every man in the world if you know what a man is, don't you? You know every brother in the world in some way if you know what a brother is, right? Yes. Someone asked you, you know, you've never met this person, right? I haven't heard about them maybe, right? You know so-and-so, they'd answer, Simply, no. And yet, in some way, they do know that person in some extremely qualified and perfect way, right? Knowing what a man is in some way in every man in the world. So it's hard sometimes that distinction to understand even the kind of distinction it is, right? And sometimes I don't take up those three kinds of distinction until I take up the three kinds of mistakes that are based on those, overlooking those three kinds of distinctions and not seeing those three kinds of mistakes. But sometimes I do it in the logic of the first act, right? So you could say the logic of the first act is about definition most of all, but also about division, right? And those divisions that are not definitions because definition is only a division. And it's also about distinction, right? And those distinctions that are not divisions in the strict sense. We don't have a whole and parts, right? Now one place where you can see in Thomas Aquinas the strict use of the word division, right? A lot of times Thomas, like we all do, we use the word division in a loose sense or any kind of distinction. But sometimes you'll use the word in the strict sense where it's a distinction of a whole and its parts, right? Like he's talking about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There's a real distinction between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. But Thomas will always deny that you should speak of a, what, division, right? Because that will imply that the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit are in some sense parts, you know? And part always has the idea of something, like, incomplete, imperfect, and so on, right? So, shouldn't we speak of the division of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit? I mean, apart from the other connotations, the division might have, but there could be conflict or something, but I mean, simply the idea that there are parts, right? You know, that's the entirely false understanding of Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. But nevertheless, there is a distinction between them, right? So, let's pass now to the logic of the second act, which is the art about statement. Now, the genus in the definition of statement is the same as the genus in the definition of what? Definition, right? Definition was speech signifying what a thing is. But a statement is speech signifying the, what? True or the false, right? Okay? Now, why do we use the word or there instead of the word and? What is that? Emphasis there upon that. Yeah, yeah. It's going to signify one or the other, right? As I mentioned in the text there, there are some statements that are always true. Like two is half a four, take a very obvious example, right? Man is an animal, it's always true. There are some statements that are always false, like two is a color. Two is four, it's always false, right? But then there are some statements that are what? Yeah, like Berquist is sitting, right? Sometimes that's true, and sometimes it's what? False, right? But notice the statement, as far as its parts are concerned, is exactly the same when it's true and when it's false, right? Berquist is sitting. When it's true and when it's false, it still has the same parts. It's measured by what? It's agreement with things. Okay? Now, sometimes we speak of the simple statement, and the compound statement, but if you wanted to, and perhaps it's more in a quarter than Aristotle does, you'll use the word statement, period, but simple statement, huh? Where you affirm or deny one thing of another, right? And then you'll speak of the compound statement, where you combine two and sometimes more than two of these, what, simple statements, huh? Okay? Now, the two that are mentioned here among the compound statements in this first paragraph and the second section here are the ones that are most important for reasoning, right? And they are called the hypothetical or conditional statement. I like to call the if-then statement because sometimes hypothetical has a sense of, what, hypothesis or something uncertain, and it doesn't have that meaning here at all. So, sometimes I like to call it simply the if-then statement, huh? Hyphenate if-then, right? Okay? So, it's going to combine two simple statements, right? Join them by if and what? Then, huh? Okay? And then you have what they call the disjunctive statement, right? And I like to call it the either-or statement. You may have just two members, right? Like every number is either odd or even, right? Okay? Or you may have three. Every triangle is the three-lateral. Our isosceles, our scaling, right? Or Thomas, you know, I was mentioning before. Every name is said unitively of anything. It's either a genus or a species or a difference or a property or an accident. There you have, what, five members, right? Okay? Incidentally, if you read Shakespeare, you'll find that instead of saying either-or, they say or-or. Now, use either, huh? Instead of saying neither-nor, they'll say nor-nor. So, when I call this a neither-or statement, I'm going to exclude Shakespeare's or-ors. Okay? But the word disjunction is a more technical term for it. Disjunction, right? Dis means what? Hard. Now, as I noticed in the second paragraph in that section, I'm going to find out that if you want to use the definition that we gave in the beginning, a statement as speech signifying the true or the false, you'll find out that the word true doesn't mean the same when it's said of the simple statement, or the statement period, if you want to call that, and when it's said of the, what, if-then statement, and it doesn't mean the same when it's said of the either-or statement, it's either one of those two, huh? But the fundamental meaning, we'll see, if true is the one found in the simple statement. And we'll see that when we find out what truth and falsity means, huh? So, in a way, you have, what, three definitions here. If true has three meanings, right? And false will have three meanings corresponding to the meanings of true, huh? So, when you get later on, we'll see what those differences are, right, huh? Okay? It's not until the bottom of page two, I get into those subtle things, huh? Okay? Aristotle's book that he wrote in the logic of the second act is about the simple statement, or about the statement period, huh? Called the peri-hermeneus, right? And there he divides the simple statement into its two main composing parts, which are the, what? Noun and the verb, right? Okay? Now, I think I mentioned before how in Greek and in Latin, we don't have a separate word for name and what we might call noun, right? Okay? So, in English, though, we can use the word name for something more general than noun or verb, huh? But in Greek, they'd have onama, for name, and for noun, they'd have onama. In Latin, they would have nomen for name and nomen for noun, right? So, if you look at the commentary of Thomas, or the famous commentary of Moria Sermaitis, who was the great teacher of the peri-hermeneus, he's always pointing out when Aristotle was using the word onama in the broad sense, and using it as opposed to verb, right? In Latin, you could have verbum and then rhema in Greek, right? Now, this is an example, then, in Greek and in Latin, but not in English, right? Of a name equivocal by reason, right? There's a reason why the noun keeps the poem, and the verb gets the name. Of course, you can see in English, there's a little tendency that we tend to think of a noun when we use the word name, though. Okay? But in logic here, we're using the word name here in a broader meaning than noun. The verb and even the adjective would be considered a, what? A name, huh? And we defined a name before, right? It's a, what, sound, huh? We used by the vocal cords, right? It's a vocal sound. And it's one of those vocal sounds that signifies something, right? And signifies not by nature like a cry or a groan, but by, what, custom or by an agreement. And no part of which, what, signifies by self. Well, if you say man walks, man is a vocal sound, right? Signifying by human agreement. No part of which signifies by self. And walks is also a vocal sound. Signifying by custom, right? No part of which signifies any by itself, huh? Okay? But what is the difference between the noun and the verb, huh? Well, the verb signifies with time, and the noun signifies without. Now, sometimes, you know, people when they talk about noun and verb, they'll say, you know, a noun is the name of a person, place, or thing. You've heard that? That's not really correct, huh? Because, take the word action, you see? Is that a verb or a noun? No. So, it's not being of a person, place, or thing, if you're thinking of an action or something different, right? So, although we do tend to think of the verb more with motion and action, because it signifies with time, and every motion and action takes some time, right? It's kind of correct to limit noun, right? When I say action, as opposed to acts or acted or will act or something like that, acts or acted or will act signifies with time, right? Either the present or the past or the future, but action, past, present, future, doesn't signify with time, right? Okay? A time itself would be a what? A noun, right? It doesn't signify with time, right? So you see the difference between a noun and a verb, right? But the verb is also a sign of something said of a what? Of another, right? And that's why we can sometimes want to divide the verb into what is and what is said of another, right? So instead of saying, man walks, you might say, man is a walker or something of this sort, right? Man is something that walks, right? And then we separate out what is being said of another, right? So sometimes they divide the statement into the subject and the predicate, which is merely the lacking word for said of, right? And then the sign join them, right? Or sometimes separate them, right? So you say, man is not, let's say, a stone. And you call this part here the copula, although that only fits more the affirmative than the negative, right? So sometimes they divide the statement into three parts of the subject and the predicate and the copula, or some form that are meant to be without the negation, right? But at first we divide it into the noun and the verb. Actually, we're very going to say, you know, that the separation here of the verb to be is one of the last things that comes in language. Distract. I can see the reason why the Greek or Latin verb gets the new name, right? Does it add something? It signifies with time, right? There's something added there, right? And we mentioned before how just like the thumb gets the new name, right? Among the fingers, right? Because it adds something to the common meaning, right? You might say both of these are vocal sounds signifying by custom, no part of it signifies by themselves. But the verb has, in addition to that, that it signifies with time, past, present, or future. And notice here you have the same thing divided sometimes into two and sometimes into three parts, right? And Aristotle takes a plot. He divides it into beginning, middle, and end. And then later on in the Poetics, he divides it into time and out and untime and out. So he divides it into three and divides it into what? Two, right? Sometimes when I divide the arfavi, divide the seven petitions into two, the four petitions for the, what, good things, three petitions against the bad. But then, like in the Summa Theologiae, Thomas divides it into two petitions about the end, the two petitions about the means to the end, and three petitions about the impediments to the end. Okay? But notice, now, the end and the means could also be put together, because they're all concerned with being quite good, right? Okay? And this here is something like that in the sense that you divide noun and verb, right? But then the verb is a sign of something said of another, right? And then you kind of break that apart to make it more explicit when you say, what it is that it's saying of something else, right? Or what it is that it's denying. Now, notice that this is a division of a composed whole. We use sometimes the language integral whole, but I think composed whole is a better way to name it. But composed whole, right, is put together from its parts, but it's not set of that. So a noun is not a what? A statement. A verb is not a statement, right? Man, true or false. Well, I put down the true or false exact. You have no idea how to answer it, right? Walks, true or false, right? But if you say man walks, that's either true or false, right? Man, true or false. Stone, true or false. But man is a stone. Or man is not a stone. When it's true, then it's false, right? So that's what a composed whole is. It's put together from its parts, but not set together. Let's go back to that first thing. I kind of overlooked something there that I should say. Go back to the definition of statement. Sometimes I find that students will identify the word statement with the word sentence. Now, does statement and sentence mean the same thing? But is there some connection between statement and sentence? And that is that every statement is a what? Sentence. But not every sentence is a what? Statement. Statement, yeah. So, you could define, if you wanted, a statement also as a sentence, right? Signifying the true or false, huh? Now, grammar, huh? The subject of grammar is the construction of the sentence, huh? Okay? The grammar is. So, English grammar is the art of constructing sentences in English, right? And Greek grammar is the art of constructing sentences in Greek, right? Of course, as you know, sometimes in one language, a noun might come before the adjective, right? In other cases, you've got to put the adjective before the noun, right? Okay? This is part of the grammar of how to make a sentence out of the words and adjectives and so on, okay? So, sentence is more universal than statement. What are the other species of sentence besides statement? That question would be one. And then you have the command, you have the prayer, and then what they sometimes call the exhortation. But, signifying the true or the false is going to separate the statement from all the other sentences, huh? So, I say, what time is it? Okay? Now, if I say Thomas is your name, that's either true or false, right? But, I say, what's your name? Is that true or false? So, a question is neither true. Of course, a question is asking for some kind of information, right? A logician is mainly considered the statement because that signifies the true or false. The question doesn't, right? Let me talk about questions a bit because they're on the way, right? Okay? Now, command and prayer and education are not as much considered all politicians because they're aiming at what? Not knowledge, but action at doing something, right? Command is aimed to a what? Inferior. To a what? Superior. Okay? I know we just pray to God, you know, but...