Logic (2016)
Lecture 1: Logos, the Three Acts of Reason, and the Division of Logic

Transcript
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logos now the word logos is a word equivocal it's a word equivocal by what reason now our purposes here what are the three main reasons main meanings of logos huh no not so much word yeah in the beginning of john's gospel right now second person of us the trinity is called what and they translate the word the beginning was the word the word was toward god and the word was god right and there's a little problem there because in english the word words kind of stops in that meaning right kind of sense that there's something behind this right there's a second meaning of word which is thought yeah thought that the the thought that the word signifies right so there's a connection between the first thing that logos is word and thought right two different meanings right there's a real distinction but the connection because the word signifies the what thought so i signify my thoughts the word right using what words right now okay both uh monsieur diane would say you know that creek is better than latin both for poetry and philosophy and both monsieur diane and father boulet were both either french speaking right he said that english both said that english is better than french for poetry and for philosophy that's interesting right if i said that you know you know you know you know more do i say to me you know why don't you know how to speak french do you know you know but here's the men whose native language is french right and they say that english is superior right i've heard this one story you know that the senior diana first came into contact with shakespeare you know through a french translation right and they kind of gave an english one right away and so one day i was in monseigneur's room in the seminary and i referred to something shakespeare he got a couple editions of shakespeare you know and one of them had a note there from the deconics i said there's some truth in that story but uh yeah i would come in with the both from shakespeare kind of fun to watch pronunciation too sometimes but uh i'm saying it was not too much at home in english right um i was introducing him to somebody from from from uh san francisco right once he said oh san francisco i've never been there twice he said we always joked about that you know you know because he may have been there once right and what's the third reason now again is that uh movement you know in the thomas he talks about these things he says we first place a name upon this right then we pick up the name and care of me um and there's a reason why words should come first right and thomas and he explains you know not the logos but he explains the words in the fifth book there of wisdom he says that we name things as we know they're right so that the order of your position the name follows the order in our knowing right so word is is sensible you can hear the original word right you can see right but you can't see hear smell taste or touch a thought you can't see here smell taste or touch reason right but the thought is more closely related to word right because the word signifies a thought right and then is there a connection here between these two or just by chance the word for thought came to need reason well it's the reason has thoughts right it's a reason that thinks now asked you in the gospel of saint john what meaning of logos really is is there which one is the closest to is the thought of god right and the thought proceeds from reason knowing itself on the thought of what reason is and the definition of reason and so when god thinks of himself or knows himself there proceeds a thought from him of himself right and that is the thought right right one of us here and why is it the thought well first of all because the thought of the best thing there is right which is god and then secondly because it's the only perfect thought of god the only thought of god expresses god perfectly right and even more than that it's the only thought that is a what person but it's a thought that is what god himself right and of course my thoughts remain in my mind so the son is in the father okay but logic is taken from what sense of of these three well in latin they call it rational philosophy right huh but it's from what reason right huh now thomas india's premium to to logic huh he has two premia right and one i call the short premia at the beginning of the commentary on the exposition of the peri hermeneus right of aristotle but the major premium i call it uh is the one at the beginning of the exposition of the posterior analytics right now perhaps he he uh wrote a exhibition of the posterior analytics right because of it being what the greatest book of logic you might say right uh the uh position of the peri hermeneus is because a student asked him to explain the book right and he didn't quite finish you know explaining it so that he put a gadget hand sort of thing there into it right now when thomas does this he goes back he goes back to uh aristotle in the theory book of the tiana because aristotle says that the powers of the soul as they call them sometimes or the abilities of the soul right are known through their what acts yeah and so the ability to see is known through what seeing right and you distinguish the ability to see from the ability to hear by the distinction of seeing and hearing right and then he goes and says that the seeing and hearing the acts are distinguished by their objects yeah yeah so if you go down to uh the third definition of reason right what's the second definition of reason what was hugo's definition of reason you Ability, there is an ability to what? What a definition, or the ability to understand reason and direct itself and others. Is that Dwayne's definition or Ego's? Okay, somebody's definition, right? Thomas goes back and he says that logic is the art that directs reason itself. It directs the active reason. And then he says, therefore the art of logic, in a way, is the art of arts. And go back to the definition, the ability to understand, to reason, and direct itself and others, right? Well, the other arts arise from a reason for me, I like how to use your hands, in some cases your feet, right? You can keep the wheel moving or something, with the feet or something, right? And so you're directing some other part of man, right? But it's reason and figures out the way you should use your other parts, you know, to make a chair or to make a car or whatever it may be. And, but logic directs the act of reason itself, right? And so all the other arts in some way proceed. So he calls it the art of arts, right? And the expression art of arts is almost like the king of kings, right? It's kind of a way of, it's almost like a figure of speech. Antonia Messia, you know, it's kind of the, you stand out, right? So, you know, in St. John's Gospel he's called, what, the word, right? The thought. But the Bible's called the book, right, huh? You could also say the Bible's the book of books, right? And you could say Christ is the king, right, or something like that, or God is the king. Or you could say he's the king of kings, right? It's almost, you know, it's like in front of a seal, right, huh? So he says that logic is the art of arts, right? It's like saying it is the art, right? But it shows the importance of that, huh? And it should get you benevolent, right? You know, in the, if you ever look at the premium to the three books on the soul, right, huh? Thomas has a beautiful division of the premium. And of course it's into three things. And he says, first, Aristotle renders the student benevolent, right? By showing the, what, desirability of this knowledge, right, huh? In itself, and it's being useful, too. Kind of interesting, huh? And Thomas will, of course, in the exposition there will elaborate there. But Aristotle says that the, you know, all knowledge is good, right? But some knowledge is better than others because it's about better things or because it's more certain. And in both these ways, this knowledge is most good, yeah. And then he goes on to say, and it's most useful. And Thomas will elaborate on that, you know, how we use this in ethics, right? Because in ethics, you're studying the human virtues, right? And some are in this power of the soul. And some are in that power of the soul. And some are in that power of the soul. And so on, right? And Thomas is going back here for logic, right? Because he talks about the acts of what? Reason there, Aristotle, right? Okay. So Thomas kind of expands on that. Now, is it Hugo who page your eyes, Thomas there? Yeah. He says the first act of reason is understanding. And that has, what, two meanings, right? Two kinds of understanding. Aristotle just talks about this in the, what, third book on the soul, right? But there's a third act, which is reasoning, right? It doesn't talk too much about, it talks about the moral logic, right? But it's still an act of reason, right? Now, what are these two kinds of understanding, right? Well, understanding what? A thing. Yeah, simple grasping is another name for it, yeah. The vacuum is intelligere, right? But the English word is understanding. So, as I say to the students, do you understand what a square is? Maybe you don't understand what a soul is, but you understand what a square is. Yeah. It's a kind of soul. And you understand what a circle is, right? What a triangle is. Understand what an odd number is? Understand what an even number is, yeah. So, there's some things at least you understand what they are, right? Understand what a dog is, yeah, but not as well, maybe, huh? What a cat is, right, huh? I can kind of tell. Sometimes you get a dog in the yard, sometimes you get a cat in the yard, I can kind of tell which is which, right? Okay. Aristotle will speak of this more, you know, completely, the proper object of our mind is what it is of a thing sensed or imagined, right? Or a cat or a circle, right? But then there's a second understanding. Understanding true or the false. If I'm understanding what a square is, and I'm understanding what a circle is, it may dawn upon me someday that a square is not a circle. That's something what? True. If I understand what a quadrilateral is, and what a, yeah, when a triangle is a square, it might dawn upon me that a square is a what? Yeah. And it's true, right? And so I understand that a square is a quadrilateral, I make the statement. But if I said a square is not a quadrilateral, then it would be, what, false, right? But if I said that the square is a circle, then the affirmative would be false, right? Or the negative, the square is not a circle, right? It would be, what? True. True, yeah. So here you have the second, what, action, understanding true or false. And sometimes Aristotle calls that composition and division because you're putting together or separating the things you understood by the first act. So you have to, yeah, so you have to understand what a square is and what a circle is to understand that a square is not a, what, circle. And you have to understand what a square is and what a quadrilateral is to understand that a square is a quadrilateral and so on, right? So this is obviously the first act and this is the second act. But they're both a kind of, what, understanding, right? The, what, reasoning, right? And reasoning, we put together two or more statements, right? And get another statement, what, from them, right? By some kind of argument, right? So you have these three acts there, right? A reason as far as what, knowing are concerned, right? So if logic is the art that directs the acts of reason and knowing, there should be three parts of what logic, right? See how important that is? Like guns. You might have been a fanatic, or at least you can say in the future, if you've just got a fanatic about this rule of two or three. I haven't taken it too seriously, you know, but it seems to have a lot of truth to it, nevertheless. You know, I don't think he's completely all wet. Do you think so? So in his framing to the posture analytics, right, Thomas wants to introduce us to logic, right here, and to the posture analytics in particular, but he divides, or he orders these three acts, distinguishes and orders these three acts of reason, right? Do you see the order there a little bit? And so he divides the logic into what? Three parts, right? And the book called the Caternaries, right? Pertains to this first act of reason, huh? The book called the Perihermeneus, De Interpretatione, I guess, in Latin, is concerned with the second act, right? And all the other books, right? Poster analytics and the book on places, right? Even sophisticated reputations and so on. And to some extent even rhetoric, right? And Thomas is a little way to say even fiction, right? Some kind of reasoning. They're all concerned with this third act, right? This is the way Thomas divides. Now, my other teacher in logic is Albert the Great, right? And he divides logic into what? Two parts, right? You mentioned those two parts before, right? He speaks of the art of what? Defining, right? And the art of what? Reasoning, right? But he goes back to the idea of what we call discourse, right? Now, my friend Shakespeare, right? He defined reason as ability for large discourse, right? And discourse can have a kind of a loose meaning, you know, of going from one thing to another, right? But the discourse that really defines reason as something much more than that. It could be defined as coming to know what you don't know through what you do know, right? And then my teacher, Albert the Great, divides that or distinguishes. He sees a distinction between the super unknown, like what is a reason or what is a square, right? And that's answered by a what? Definition, right? And then the complex unknown is a statement, right? That's unknown. And then you need some kind of an argument, reasoning, right? So in the famous book there of Osterly Wright, who studied under it, he was kind of a bestseller, you know, he was in college there. Osterly's logic is probably, I don't still have it in print, but you don't know the problem in print, but we have it. I'm sorry if I was a pretty good businessman, you know. But logically, there's some kind of the art of defining and reasoning, right? But you divide it to two, right? But then he puts together these two, in the art of reasoning, right? But Thomas defies them to three. Well, both divisions, I think, make sense, right? And that's why I give us the rule, sometimes, the rule of two or three, or both is something to add, right? Because you sometimes, you know, you can do both, right? And my third example there is, when Aristotle talks about what? The plot, right? He praises Homer for seeing the plot should have a course of action as a beginning, middle, and end. That's a division into three. But then he takes, in another place in the book on the point of art, and says that the plot consists of tying knots and then untying them. That's a division to two, right? So both make, what, sense, huh? And we've seen that same thing in the division of the Our Father, right, huh? It makes sense to divide them into the petition about the good, right? And then the bad, or to divide it right away into the, in the means and the impediments. You know? Tell me, what's the stop? I don't, I forget. Four-thirty, I guess. Four-thirty? Okay, we'll go on to four-thirty then? I can continue to torch you till four-thirty. But you can enjoy it. This distinction of these three and their order is very fundamental for logic, right? Now you've got to, obviously, have a distinction of two that's very important, too, then, right? Now, the distinction of two is very basic for logic, you know? Well, the distinction between the name and what they usually call ratio, or we can't say it as speech, right? So you hear the term in grammar, or parts of speech, right? Okay? Now, name and speech are both defined in general as vocal sound, right? And this vocal sound signifies something, right? Vocal sound signifies. And then signifying by what? Custom, right? And not by nature, right? So both name and speech are vocal sound. It's signified, but signified by custom or by institution, even institution. As opposed to by nature, right? So a baby's cry is what? A vocal sound that signifies some need, right? But it's by nature, right? You don't have to teach a baby to cry, right? As you may or may not know. Okay? So, let's put this down. Now, vocal says something about how the sound is produced, right? Focal sound signifies custom or agreement, right? As you hear people say agreement. But sometimes, you know, if they discover a new particle, they might call it Berklium, you know, because they discovered the first day of California at Berkland, right? So they agree to call it that, right? You know, sometimes scientists or people do that, right? They describe something new. So, it's a vocal sound signifying by custom or agreement. But it's distinguished from signifying by nature, right? But then, the distinction between name and speech. And this is the next part now. Having no part that signifies by itself. Or, having parts that signify by themselves, right? And the one is called the name and the other is called the what? Okay? Now, it doesn't mean that every part of the speech has to signify something, right? There's got to be at least two parts, right? So, if you take a name, like my first name is Duane, right? And that means me. Some people call me sometimes by my name. That's better than that. But there's Du and A, two parts, two syllables. Do they mean something different? One mean my head and the other my body? Or I mean my... No. It's just the whole sound Duane means me, right? But the Du doesn't mean something in A, right? Now, my last name is originally Bergquist, right? And my father dropped the G out, right? For some reason, one of his sisters did too, I think. So, they tend to put in a K that isn't really there in the name, right? Bergquist, you know? Tends to do that. But take the name Bergquist originally, right? Berg means mountain, I guess, in Swedish, like in German. And Quist means branch, right? So Berg and Quist both have a meaning, right? But if Bergquist is used as a name, does it mean mountain branch? Yeah. The bird and the quist don't signify separately when it functions as a name, right? Okay. Or I take the example, you know, when my little boy, he plays with a little girl next door, right? And her last name was Johnson. Now, was she the son of John? Did Johnson mean the son of John? No. Yeah. Yeah. And the etymology of a word is, as Thomas says, not the same as its meaning, right? You know, a lot of times people, you know, take the word philosophy to mean a love of wisdom. Well, the word philosopher does mean a love of wisdom, right? But Aristotle doesn't use the word philosophy to name the love of wisdom, but the knowledge that a lover of wisdom would pursue. So he doesn't define philosophy, or say philosophy is a love, a kind of love, a little wisdom, but he calls it a methodos usually, right? Knowledge over a road, right? So he uses, the meaning is not the same as the etymology, right? People look at the etymology and confuse it too, as Thomas says sometimes, right? Okay. So sometimes a name is, in etymology, comes from parts that mean something separately, right? But when it functions as a name, only the whole means something. But now if I say, you're a white man, that's an example of what? Speech, right? Because man means something, and white means something, right? You say black man, black means something, and white means something, and man means something, right? Okay. So, this is a very fundamental distinction for logic. Now, sometimes, they'll talk about the speech that is necessary to perfect each of the three acts of reason, right? So, understanding what a thing is, right? Understanding what a thing is, if you don't know what something is, you need a, what? Definition, right? So, Shakespeare's signs written in iambic and tamic, ooh, it's an iambic, you see? But iambic is two syllables, in English, with the accent on the second syllable, right? At the time of the year thou mayest in me behold, okay? The tamic, what does that mean? Well, there's five of those piens, huh? It's a five-footed line, right? Okay, okay. I ask my students, do you know what an odd number is, yeah? Do you know what an even number is? Yeah. Do you know what a perfect number is? Well, none of my students ever seem to know what a perfect number is, right? Well, a perfect number is a number equal to the sum of everything that measures it. Since I say measures evenly, you know, to confuse it at the bottom and stop using the word. Well, I say two is measured only by one. Does that add up to two? Three is measured only by one. Does that add up to three? Four is measured by one and two, by three. And one and two add up to only what? Yeah. Five is measured only by one. Now, what about six? It's measured by one, by two, by three. Not by four or five, though. So, one plus two plus three equals six, right? That is the perfect number, right? But you see, the 28th of this is the second perfect number, right? I told you my little mnemonic device there, right? Thomas talks about perfection of God in chapter 28, the Summa Kani Gentiles. Maybe by chance, but I always remember it was the second perfect number, right? What's the third number? I forgot. So, St. Augustine and Thomas talked about the significance of the number six being used in talking about God in the universe, right? And the things that measure, one, two, three, are perfectly ordered, too, right? So, it's the idea that there's something perfect about what God has made, right? So, definition is the speech that perfects understanding what something is. You can understand it distinctly, right? And if you don't know what it is, right? Okay. Now, if you want to understand the true or the false, what do you have to, what speech must you make? Statement, yeah. Now, people would say, sometimes they call it a proposition, but originally a proposition was a statement pro poni, at least before, for reasoning, but a statement is either true or false, huh? Statement can be affirmative or negative, right? If the affirmative is true, the negative opposed to it is false, and the false is true, the true, I mean, the affirmative statement is false, and so on. Now, what is the speech that perfects reasoning, syllogism, or if you say, in general, argument, right? Now, syllogism would be the main argument, right? Argument or syllogism, that's really one kind of argument, right? Basically, I would distinguish, you know, at least four kinds of arguments. So, but now, a speech, whether it be a definition or a statement or an argument, will be made up, eventually, of what? Of names, right? So, in the definition, you have the name called a genus, right? And then the name called a difference, right? And it's made up of those kind of names, right? In the book on statements, the Prairie Hermeneus, Aristotle will say that a statement is made of the noun, the verb, right? Okay? And syllogism is made up of a statement, so you're very much into sense. So, the definition is to the first act, what statement is to the second act, what argument is to the third act, is kind of a proportion there, right? But you have to go back to find out what the names are, eventually. So, this is a very important distinction to two, right? Name and speech, right? So, if you look at Aristotle's, say, Pary Analytics, he's talking about what the syllogism is, and when you have a syllogism, and don't have a syllogism, right? And this is the key argument there, right? He'll distinguish later on between the demonstrative syllogism and the dialectical syllogism, right? And the sophistical syllogism, which Berkowitz uses, and so on. He was deceiving us in class, even about the axioms. He was destroying the whole foundation of our thinking. It's a serious, serious thing, right? Now, we'll begin next time by recalling the brevity of Thomas's wisdom there in the physics there, his exposition, where he's contrasting logic and natural philosophy. And he says that logic proceeds by way of predication. A natural philosophy proceeds by way of motion. By way of motion. By motion. In fact, nature is defined, right? It's the beginning and cause of motion, the rest, and that which it is, as such, and not a vaccine. But you kind of get to know the natures of things, right? By what they do, right? And so you get to know, as Aristotle, as Thomas will point out, when Aristotle talks about matter, he knows matter through, what? Motion. So you study natural philosophy, you see that motion is central, right? And since things in motion sooner catch the agon, but not stir, it's kind of the starting point, right? So you see that motion is central, right? So you see that motion is central, right? So you see that motion is central, right? So you see that motion is central, right? So you see that motion is central, right? So you see that motion is central, right? So you see that motion is central, right? So you see that motion is central, right?