Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
Lecture 45: The Fallacy of the Accident and Its Deceptions

Transcript
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Again, there's maybe two meanings of the word confused, right? Aristotle doesn't mean confused in the sense of mistaken, but you're more sure when you're mistaken. But confused in the sense of what? Indistinct, right? But maybe Descartes said the opposite because he was a little bit confused with the words. We'll see there were other words in that first reading too, but anyway. Forewarned is forearmed, right? Now, I was noticing Shakespeare there in the Tempest there, right? The Greeks, I mean not the Greeks, but the English have a saying, you know, for somebody who's kind of a strange, odd person, you know, he's a natural, right? And so they're calling, I think it's Caliban, a natural, right? But he's a monster, right? So he's kind of punting, a natural monster. A monster means something unnatural. He's a natural monster. He's a natural, unnatural thing. It seems to be saying, right? But it's because of that strange use of natural, right? You know, Shakespeare in the science, he complains about simple truth, miscalled simplicity. And sometimes we use the word in English, don't we? A simple, simpleton. That's not probably what they call you. A simpleton, right? You see? So simple sometimes means kind of, what, foolish or something of this sort, right? But don't we say God is the most simple thing there is, right? Different meaning, right? Yeah. Here's a monster, a natural thing, being called a natural, right? So, it's one of the characters who kind of knows something kind of strange about saying that. He's a natural monster. And I mentioned the letter of Carol Lottia, right? Where he's at the Angelico, and he's writing to a friend, and he's discovering how profound Thomas is, but he's amazed that he can write so simply, and yet be so profound, right? You know, like he's kind of puzzled by that, right? But there's something about that, right? You know, why I guess they have a letter, you know, of Hegel, you know, where he's, on purpose, he's writing in obscure ways, because he writes in a way to be understood, nobody will admire him. And you kind of used to say, you know, in his public lectures, he'd sometimes stick in a sentence that had no meaning, even to himself. And people would go out to you afterwards and talk to you, and say, I used to let you talk. They'd say, well, that sentence, the one that made no sense even to you. Yeah, simplicity, huh? So, becoming aware of these kinds of distinctions, and the kind of distinction I want to emphasize here first, is the distinction of the senses of a word, right? Or the distinction of the meanings of a word, and the connection between that and this kind of mistake, right? Okay? And seeing this kind of mistake being made makes you more aware, more attentive to the fact that you have to be very careful with the senses of a word, right? Okay? But vice versa, right? Understand that kind of distinction helps you understand that kind of, what? Mistake, huh? And it's a very common, huh? Mistake, huh? Very common, huh? Okay? You know, that's how common I did first, huh? Now, we never thought it goes to the mistakes outside of language, huh? The first one is called the fallacy of the accident, huh? You could call it also, if you want it to, the mistake of mixing up the as such as you wish, huh? Or the through itself, and what happens, huh? But you often see the Latin word for happening accident, right? So you call it the mistake, or the fallacy of the accidental, huh? That's the one you see more in the fallacy of the accidental. Now, it's important to see that distinction between the through itself and what happens, and we've talked about it already in a lot of places, right? In a way, it comes up in the Ace of Golgi when you talk about the accident, right? Okay? And it comes up when we're talking about demonstration and so on, huh? Nurse Dollar makes the remark that this deceives even the, what, wise, which is as strong a way as you could possibly say it, right? I think the great mistakes of some of the ancients and the great mistakes of some of the moderns, maybe the most important ones, are often of this kind, huh? They're often of this kind, huh? Now, let's talk a little bit about this in a kind of larger context, huh? They used to think that marsh air caused malaria, right? That marsh air made you sick, that was unhealthy air. Now, is the marsh air as such bad for malaria-producing? Well, no one got malaria who's not spent some time in the marsh air, and those who've been exposed to the marsh air seem to be the ones who got malaria, or vice versa, okay? But is it really the marsh air as such that's causing this? Well, if a man slept in the marsh air but put a mosquito net over his bed, right, maybe he wouldn't get malaria, right? Maybe it's not the marsh air as such as you thought was causing this, right? But it's the, what, mosquitoes in the marsh air that are causing the malaria, right? See that? Because really only those bit by the mosquitoes get malaria, you see? But until you in some way separate the mosquito from the marsh air, you don't realize that it's a mosquito rather than the marsh air, right? Okay? Now, on second thought, maybe it's not even the mosquito as such that causes malaria, right? Because maybe it's something that infects the mosquito, right? And not all mosquitoes, right? But if you get bit with one of the mosquitoes that has that, then you get malaria, right? So maybe it's not even the mosquito as such that causes this, huh? Okay? Take another more homely example, huh? Did you ever hear the expression, I used to hear it from my mother, put on your thinking cap? Well, they say it goes back to the Middle Ages, huh? Where the professors, you know, would dress in something like we do on graduation day, right? And with these kind of fancy hats, right? And so they never saw anybody lecturing without wearing those hats on. So the ignorant peasants thought, gee, if I could come in those hats, I could lecture too. Because they happen to go together all the time, right? You think one is pertaining as such to the other, right? Okay? But it's actually what? Purely accidental, right? Take another example. When I was back in my hometown of St. Paul there, living, one relative lived in the state but not in the city, he comes down to St. Paul to visit and one of the relatives died, right? So he runs into this relative they hadn't seen for a while at the funeral home, right? And then a few weeks later, he comes down to visit again and the other relative dies. And I've had this... I went to him to another funeral home, and that's happened two or three times, and finally he says to me, I don't think I'll come down anymore. Somebody seems to die, right? Now, to the best of my knowledge, this was purely, what, accidental, right? But he's got a felt, but, you know? But suppose no one ever died until after this guy came to town, and then you might ask him to, what, stay away, right? And, you know, if there's never trouble in town until after Professor Moriarty, let's say, shows up, right, and has a great antagonist of Jean-Claude, they quite get suspicious of this guy, right? There's never, you know, maybe a clever terrorist attack until after so-and-so has been around, right? You might begin to suspect that he's in some way a cause, right? Okay. Now, I think where this becomes very difficult, and we'll see this in the first book of Natural Philosophy, Deceding Even the Wise, it's where the accidental is always found there, okay? In fact, where it's necessarily found there. That sounds like a paradox, doesn't it? How can the accidental be necessarily there, right? That sounds crazy, doesn't it, huh? But take the way that Barclay proceeds, huh? Everything I know is in my mind, right? You don't know something until you get into your mind, right? So everything I know is in my mind, therefore I don't know anything outside my mind. And everything you know is in your mind, right? So we really have nothing to say to each other, too. Now, can I know something without it being in my mind? Does it follow them and I know only what's in my mind? Here's something that's necessarily so, right? So when I talk about what a triangle is, right? Or what a square is, square is in my mind, right? But would I put square in my definition? Would I put in my mind in my definition of square? That a square is an equilado and right-angled quadrugado in the mind you're trying to work with? Right? If that's what I know, that whole thing, right? Then you know, right? Equilado and right-angled quadrugado in your mind, but not in my mind. We wouldn't even have the same definition of square, because in my mind would be in my notion of square, right? It wouldn't be in your notion of square, but in your mind, right? But when I define square, or you could do it, you could define square as an equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral. But he doesn't add in the mind you could. But when he knows what a square is, and he defines it, it must be in his mind, right? But in his mind is accidental to what a what? Square is, right? And so he leaves it out of the definition of square, thank God. You see? But this in a way is deceiving Barclay, right? He's saying we don't know anything outside of our mind, anything outside of our senses, in the same way, right? Because these things are known when they're in there, right? Now, we have other arguments that are like that, from the accidental, and this is kind of a stock example. Let's say, man is an animal. Animal is a genus. Therefore, man is a what? Genus, right? Said a dog. A dog, right? Animal said a dog. Man is an animal. Therefore, man said a dog. Cricket equals syllogism, right? Where Socrates is a man. Universal. You can say, there's a man, right? First house is a man, right? So man is something universal, right? But Socrates is a man. Man is universal. Therefore, Socrates is what? Universal. It's not individual. It's not individual. It's actually universal. Okay? These seem to be privity good syllogisms, right? The average person doesn't say, what's wrong with that, though? There's something wrong with it. But they observe the conclusion, right? What's wrong with it, right? You notice, if animal is said that man, it's said that man is a genus, isn't it, right? So it seems something necessary in that sense, right? Okay? And necessarily, a man is something universal, right? A man is something universal? Because the universe is something that can be said of many, right? And man is something that can be said of many, right? Okay? So what's wrong with those arguments? Genus, like the first one, is in the definition of animal, as said of man. Okay. So is animal being said of man because animal is a genus? Or is that something accidental to animal insofar as it's said of man? It just belongs to animal as a predicate or... Yeah. It's kind of hard to see that, you'll see. I know. Or take this example here, Socrates is a man. Well, man is something universal in reason, right? To be universal belongs to man insofar as man is in the, what? Reason, right? Okay. But is man being said of Socrates by reason of the existence that man has in the mind? Socrates is something in the mind. Nothing more, huh? Hmm? Socrates in reality. Yeah. It's being said of Socrates by reason of what Socrates is, right? Okay? He's an animal with reason, right? Okay? It's not being said of Socrates by reason of what happens to animal with reason in the mind where it becomes something, what? Universal and common to many, huh? So here you have an example of something that is necessary. Man is necessarily something universal, right? And man is a set of Socrates, right? Okay? But something that belongs necessarily... Something is accidental to it in some way when it's said it's something else. That's a very hard thing to express even in words, isn't it? So the accidental can deceive even the wise. We're going to see a very powerful example of that at the end of readings in Book 1, where Plato himself seems to be falling into the fallacy of the accident, so that Aristotle can say, well, that deceives even the wise. I'll give you an example from Shakespeare, maybe a little bit misquoted here, but anyway. And some by virtue fall, and others by sin arise. I used to put this on the board in one of my final exams. And some by virtue fall, and others by sin arise. Of course, what I had in mind was that some students who did well in the earlier exams got overconfident, right? And then they took a tumble in the final exam because they thought, oh, I got this thing sewed up, right? Others didn't do so well in the early exams, right? Coofed off, you might say. And they get kind of concerned, and they read the books, and they did well in the final exam, right? But the students probably thought, you know, those who don't cheat, some by virtue fall. And others by sin arise, those who cheat, right? So I used to put this on the board there when I was teaching at St. Mary's College. And I remember the dean used to, the academic dean used to have a policy of walking around doing final exam days, you know, to see that everything was proceeding orderly, you know, and so on. And I looked over and he, you see the doorway there, you know, look at that thing on the board. He just smiled and walked away. He said, what's the make of a hell thing? But let's look at that phrase, right? And some by virtue fall. Is that as such or by happening? Yeah. Does virtue as such make you fall in the moral order? No? Make you worse, huh? No. No. So it's not virtue as such that makes you fall, right? It's the pride you might have, right? Because of your virtue, right? That makes you fall, right? And is sin as such, sin through being, sin the way to rise in the moral order? Huh? No. As such or through itself, it's the way to fall, right? So when he says, and some by sin arise, he's speaking what? By happening, right? Right, huh? Okay? But the sin is an occasion to recognize one's, what? Weakness, right? And therefore an occasion for humility, right? And so on. And for being more cautious in the future, et cetera, et cetera, right? Okay? So it's not through the sin as such that you rise, but through the humility and the caution and the other things, right? See? But this is very common, the accidental, isn't it? And there's a passage in Augustine somewhere where he's talking about the virgins, right? The woman in the early church there who were virgins and who became proud, right? Because of this, right? Okay? And he says that it would be better if they fell in the sins of the flesh than to remain this kind of, what? Pride, right? Because they fell in the sins of the flesh, it's obvious that you sinned, right? And obviously she's fallen, and this would be an occasion for them to, what? Get the humility that they need, right? And that's the only, you know, solid foundation which to build, right, huh? See? But, uh, it's strange, huh, that the accidental in that sense, isn't it, huh? You see? Um, so we're going to see in the first book, huh, at the end, huh, Plato being deceived by the accidental, and, uh, we'll see some other things, just like Plato, huh, how we have the sarta, we're just deceived by the same kind of thing. It's not that he's like a kangaroo pig, right? But, yeah. And then Hegel, Hegel universalizes this deception. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha I love to hear my mistress's voice although I know that music hath a far more pleasant sound Oh Okay Now what is that touching upon? Yeah But does he love her voice as such? Just for what it means to him Yeah Yeah Because it's associated with something else, right? Yeah, okay Okay See Just like, you know, if the telephone rings and I answer the phone And I recognize the voice of a, what, friend, right? And I rejoice, right? It's because his voice is like Pavarotti or somebody, right? You know? Maybe not a very pleasant voice, right? It is actual sound, right? High-pitched or squeaky or, you know? But because, what, it's a sign to me that my friend is at the other end of the line, right? Then I have this, what, rejoicing, right, huh? Mm-hmm And sometimes something makes us happy because it reminds us of something else, right? So are we rejoicing in this thing as such? Sometimes a person hears a piece of music or they smell certain food or something like that It reminds me of So are we rejoicing in this thing as such? So are we rejoicing in this thing as such? So are we rejoicing in this thing as such? So are we rejoicing in this thing as such? Some event or something that they enjoyed a lot or something, right? Okay? So it's accidental, right? It's not that sound or smell as such that delights them, right? But something else, huh? Because you don't realize how much of the accidental there is in our life sometimes, right? But it's kind of association that we have with things, right? And it may be, you know, purely what? But accidental that we associate this with that, huh? But sometimes it causes pleasure or pain because of what we associate it with, right? But it's not the thing as such that is causing the pleasure or the, what? Pain, right? You see that? So the accidental plays an enormous role in our life that we're not going to be aware of, huh? But as far as addition is concerned, it plays an enormous role in deceiving us, right? And especially in deceiving even the wise, huh? We're going to see something that is necessarily there but isn't really responsible for something, right? And it tends to seem to be responsible for it because it's always there. It happens all the time. Yeah. I'd be reading something and I'd go, how do they start thinking about this? And then they'd come back and be worried. Oh, sure. Sure, sure. Okay. There would be a cause between a thing that's necessarily there. But take the example of Socrates, right? As we learn in the Apology, right, how did Socrates make so many enemies? We run around examining people, right, who thought they knew something and he showed them they were mistaken, like he showed the slave boy he was mistaken, right? Now, is that the way to make friends? Well, someone who thinks he knows something, right, and especially if he's admired for knowing what he thinks he knows, well, then he's going to get, what, angry maybe, right, when you show him and maybe others go around, he doesn't know what he claims to know, right? Okay. But, is Socrates as such helping the man or harming him by showing him that he's mistaken? When I show you that you're mistaken, I'm actually removing a mistake from your mind. You're helping to remove a mistake from your mind, right? I'm actually helping you, aren't I? I'm doing good to you. See? Now, is helping another and doing good to another, is that the way to make an enemy? I mean, that's accidental, right, that it makes an enemy, right, by doing good, huh? And yet you could almost say, you know, taking into account the way human beings are, right, that they're going to resent this. And therefore it almost seems to be, as such, the way to make enemies, right? And yet, in a certain way, it seems to be accidental, right? Because as such he's helping them in the life of their mind, huh? But you need the humility, let's say, of the slave boy, right? The philosopher needs, you know, you know how our Lord would, see, unless you become like a little child, you know, when the apostles are squabbling about who's the greatest among some, right? And then he says, you know, unless you become like a little child, you're going into the kingdom of heaven, and so on. But I could say, you know, unless you become like the slave boy, right, when your mistakes are pointed out, you'll never get very far in philosophy, see? But the slave boy is nobody in that society, right? He's got the reason to be proud, right? I mean, if they am, see? But if someone has a position, a reputation, all that sort of stuff, well, then he's not going to, what, accept this very well, right? But it's really his pride that is the cause of this, right? Rather than you're helping him, right? The pride of the man you're helping is something that happens to you're helping him, right? But notice how frequent that is in human life, huh? So Socrates has got more enemies than friends in the end. He's more concerned about, you know, people saying bad things about him because of this, right, than he is about any arguments they can, proof they can bring up in the court, huh? So it's a very important philosophy to distinguish between the as-such and the accidental, right? You know, sometimes, you know, priests, you know, in the parishes don't speak enough about, you know, abortion, contraception, all these things, right? They don't want to offend their congregations, right? And they will offend their congregations or a certain part of their congregations, right? But maybe they have a duty and obligation to do this, right? So, you know, there's no way to do it, it's better in other ways, right? But you're almost bound to offend some people if you, if they don't know all, they don't do it. Yeah, in a true way. But something that was brought up, which I find is very enlightening for myself, is the discussion or the presentation of, in this, speaking about how some lawyers or contemporaries will speak about, say, Aristotelian philosophy or Greek philosophy and say, well, that's a Greek thought. You know, that's just a Greek thought. And that's just so illuminating for me. To hear that just so many people that's a thousand is the thousand of the accident, which we maybe, maybe I don't remember everything I was saying in our discussion. Yeah, but it is actually, you know, the philosophy, be it in Greek or in English or some other language, right? Although you can say, you know, that one language is sometimes better than another language for a philosophy, right? Okay, but still, basically speaking, it's accidental, right? But Monsignor Dian and Fr. Bollet used to say that Greek is better for philosophy than Latin, and that English is better for philosophy than French, although French was their native language, right? You know, Purpose said that English was better than French. Well, Purpose doesn't know French very well. But his native language is French, but now he said English is superior, right? Monsignor Dian always said English is superior for poetry and for philosophy over French. And Greek is superior to Latin for both philosophy and for poetry. Interesting. And he used to point to André Gide there in his preface to the Playout Edition, you know, Shakespeare's plays in French. He talks about the difficulty of, of course, translating any poet into another language, but the peculiar difficulty of trying to translate Shakespeare into French, right? Yeah. And he calls the French language, of which he's supposed to be a master of French prose, I guess, and he calls the language presque-antipoetic, almost-antipoetic, to extract the French, huh? You have mentioned the Feuerbach earlier. Do you think that he was really mistaken or he knew that he syllogized wrongly and did it because maybe he had some agenda, maybe some... Well, I would suspect it's more pride, right? Pride is the chief cause of deception on the side of our will, right? So that the man who's proud will be more apt to accept and argue with the degrees of his pride, right? Oh, yeah. So if you want to be, put yourself in place of God, right? You're...