Logic (2016)
Lecture 2: Logic, Predication, and the Three Acts of Reason

Transcript
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but logic precedes by way of predication now when i was first up in logic my teacher in logic i won't mention the one who was my teacher in logic but but the teacher you're reading was a guy named albert the great right he was the teacher of thomas but the first two books of albert there in logic are called the predicability books and the predicamentis and they're both taken from the word for predication yeah to being said and so it's interesting right then you get into talking about the syllogism you say well syllogism in the strict sense the word is based upon the set of all and the set of none instead of that's what predication means speaking english to be understood right okay so natural philosophy proceeds by way of what motion logic by way of what being set up by predication right just one word thomas uses to say how to proceed right you know how wise the guy is so the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. God our enlightenment, help us God to know and love you. Move us, God, to know and love you. Guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, or illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, help us to understand what you've written. I was laying in bed this morning and saying, why do I have two versions of that prayer, you know? Help us, God, to know and love you, and then move us to know and love you. I remember what Augustine says, right? God, who created you without you, you didn't help us, I didn't cooperate at all with this, you know, thing, will not save you without you. So you have to cooperate with God, right, with his grace, right? So when you say, help us, God, to know and love you, you're kind of implying that you're trying to know God, trying to love him, but you need some help, anything. When you say, move us, you're talking about him being the principal agent, right, huh? You know, let me move you in a way that's surprising to you. Okay. So, we talked about the word logos, right, and how it is used to name one part of philosophy called logic, right? And sometimes the Latin guys call logic, sofia rationalis, right? It's named from reason. We mentioned how the word logos first means what? Word in Greek, and then the thought, which the word signifies, huh? And then finally reason, which has thoughts, right? So it's a word that's equivocal, right? But equivocal by reason, huh? But there's nothing to be learned from that order, right? Because the word is first in the, what? Our knowledge, right? Because the word is something sensible. It's a sound, in fact, right? It'd be important when we get into logic, like we get into logic today. Okay? Now, Thomas, and there's one text there that's got the premia, you know, the major and the minor premia. That's something we can reproduce. But there, Thomas recalls what Aristotle says in the third book on the soul, that there are two kinds of understanding, right, and reason. Understanding what something is, and then understanding the true or the false, which they often speak of as composition division of the things understood in the first act. And then to this, you can see there's a third act called reasoning, right? So Thomas divides logic into what? Three parts, right? Not two parts, right? But Albert the Great, as I mentioned, another one of my teachers in logic, divides logic into two parts, huh? The act, the art of coming to know the simple unknown, the art of defining, and the art of coming to know the complex unknown, which is what? Reasoning. The art of reasoning, right? And then he puts the art about statements about the second act with that part of reasoning, right? Because you're putting together statements, right? And that makes some sense, right? Because you want to emphasize the fact that logic is not for its own sake, but for the sake of coming to know what you don't know. What is it you don't know? Well, sometimes it's the simple unknown, sometimes it's the what? Complex unknown. So it makes a lot of sense, this division, right? But Thomas divides it into three, right? According to these three acts of reason. And then as you can see, especially in the major premium of Thomas, he will divide the books of Aristotle according to Aristotle according to those three acts. Aristotle has the title in history of being, among other things, the father of logic, right? So the book called The Categories is in the logic of the first act. The whole father of the logic of the first act. And then the book called the Peri Hermioneus, the Interpretatione in Latin is about the second act, about statements. And then all the rest of which there are many books are about what? Reasoning, okay? You won't go into the subdivision of that, but he has the two analytics, right? Which is about the syllogism in general and demonstration, the syllogism that he defines as making you know the cause and that which is the cause. It cannot be otherwise. And then you have the book on dialectical syllogism and then the book on the sophistical ones. And then you go all the way down to the weak arguments and rhetoric and all the way down to the book on the poetic art because that's used to persuade people sometimes. Uncle Tom's cabin had a lot to do with getting people, you know, on the right side, I suppose you'd say, in the Civil War, right? Or before the Civil War, right? Okay. I'm going to ask you this. Can you please tell me what the three reasons of St. Thomas are in here? Okay? Three acts of reason. The first act being understanding what something is. Like you understand what a square is. You understand what a circle is, right? You understand what an odd number is, what an even number is. You understand that so well what a dog is, but you don't kind of know that's a dog. I know it's a dog around here. It's not a cat. Yeah. And that's the first act, understanding what something is, right? The second act is understanding the true or the false, which results from putting together an affirmative or negative statement, these things understood in the first act. So if I say a square is a quadrilateral or a square is not a circle, I'm understanding something what? True. If I say the square is not a quadrilateral or the square is a circle, I'm saying something what? False. Saying something modern. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something modern, yeah. But more precisely, something false. Here my brother Marcus got the, you know, kind of making fun of the moderns, you know, where Spinoza has philosophy, you know, geometrically demonstrated, right? Well, Marcus has the liberalism, you know, geometrically demonstrated. And a liberal's mind and reality, if they extend to infinity, whatever me. Like parallel lines, right? First theorem in geometry, right, is to construct a equilateral triangle, right? Marcus says, to construct a pyramid of absolute power and a flattened federal republic. That was his first theorem. So the second act you could call understanding the true or the false, right? Something, a statement is true when it says what is, is, and what is not, is not. It's false when it says what is, is not, and what is not, is, right? So if I say you're sitting now, I'm true, right? If I say you're not standing, I'm true. So I'm saying what is, is, and what is not, is not. You're standing, is not now. But if I say you're standing now, I'm saying what is not, is. And if I say you're not sitting, I'm saying what is, is not, so then I'm false, right? So that's the second act, understanding the true or the false. But they often call it, Thomas, composition, division, because you're composing things in an affirmative statement or dividing them in a negative statement. But I often call it, you know, understanding the true or the false. And then the third act is what? Reasoning, right? So who put this on the board? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Didn't we ask them? Now, the Bible is divided into two or three, two, but the New Testament is divided into two or three, three, the Gospel of Matthew is divided into three by Thomas John 2. Now, corresponding to each of these acts is a speech, right? That is sometimes or very often necessary to perfect it, right? And so, definition is a speech making known what something is, right? Or a speech signifying what something is, or speech bringing out what something is, and those are the definitions in there. I like to say, speech bringing out what something is, because nature likes to hide, as Heraclitus says, so you're bringing out, you're thinking out what it is, right? Now, we defined last time, if you remember, speech and what? Name, right? And the speech or name, both definitions have about five parts, right? And the first four parts of the definition are the same, but each. Both are what? Sound, right? Both are what? Vocal sound, right? Both are vocal sounds signifying something, but not by nature, like a baby's cry, but by human agreement. But then the last part, the name has no parts that signify by themselves. So my name is Duane, but the D-U doesn't mean anything. The A-M-E doesn't mean anything, but Duane means something, right? And even if your name happens to be put together in two names. Like if your name was Johnson, that's what the name means. Son of John. That's the etymology, right? You're confusing etymology with the meaning of the word, right? So don't be confused by the fact that some names are what? And their origin are resulting in two names. Like I mentioned, our name was originally Bergquist, and it meant mountain, Berg, and Quist branch, I guess. So, mountain branch. That's what it means. We're not a family of mountain branches. So definition is speech, right? But now, it's made up of names, right? And so when you study the definition, you've got to know and distinguish the kinds of names that you have in the definition. And distinguish them from the name of what is being defined, right? So when I say, what is a square, right? You say, well, it's a equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral. What kind of a name is quadrilateral? What kind of a name is equilateral and right-angled? What kind of a name is, what, square, right? They say, go get for free to find out the answer to that. Now, the statement that corresponds to the second act is statement. Now, some people like to use the word proposition, but proposition means pro-pono, things before. So proposition more names the, what, premise of the argument. Premise means sent before, right? Proposition. So I prefer to call it a statement. And statement can be defined as speech signifying the true or the, what, false. So I used to ask my students, where do you find truth and falsity? In the ocean? In the air? In the falsity? In the value? Or if you dig in the ground, you don't find some truth? There were truth in the ground. Here or there. You find it in statements, right? Same place you find falseness. A contradiction is, what, the affirmative and negative statement, one which is true, and then the other one is going to be, what, false, huh? Now, reasoning, we sometimes, I'll say, syllogism. I can say in general, though, argument. An argument is speech, right? Putting together statements and drawing the conclusion, right? But syllogism is the argument in which some statement is laid down, another statement follows necessarily, right? That's the culmination of argument. But there are other arguments where the conclusion doesn't follow necessarily, but your mind is inclined on this, right? So you can say logic is directing these three acts of reason. Because I'll say that logic is about definition and statement and argument, huh? Correspond to these acts. And you'll find a little difference, though, between Aristotle and the literary guys when they take up definition, right? The only book of Aristotle that's come down to us for the logic of the first act is what? Categories. That's not really about definition. Aristotle takes up definition as the beginning of demonstration, right? And how do you define? There's two ways of how you define, right? One is by dividing, right? The genus. And the other is by looking at many examples of the thing to be defined, suffering out there in common. But some of the later guys, in the logical first act, after the categories, something on division and there's something on definition, right? But many take it when it does. That's down here, right? But these three, the distinction of these three corresponds to the distinction of these three. And one helps you to understand the other, right? So, any question about this? There's a document there. It's got that in it again. It's called Perry about Hermioneus. Which I guess you can, in Latin, they interpret, they mean, they interpretatsionate, right? I think it would be simpler if it's called about statement, right? But the Greek query is a little difficult. That is so. The second book is about statement, right? We get the word statement. It's a crime. Should be locked up for that. Some Germans come up and stuff like that. Was there a handout from last week? No. No. I brought, you know, I gave Father some tapes there. We'll print out some stuff for you. Listen, first distinctions and definitions of logic, you know. You can reproduce that, right? And all of these speeches are composed of what? Names. So we've got to start from names, right? Okay, now. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. considered in logic, he says, is the universal. We'll go back to the definition of reason by our friend Shakespeare, right? He said it's the ability for large discourse, remember? Looking before and after. And the word large, we found six meanings, right? But the first two meanings of large discourse is a discourse about the large, right? What are those first two meanings, right? Well, about the larger, the sense of covering a large area, right? We'll go back to our senses. He discourses about the universal. Because universal is said of how many things. How many things is man said, right? Every day before being born, right? So, there's no end to how many things it's said, right? Or number instead of how many things. So, ooh, covers a large area. A discourse about the universal, right? A biographer, he's talking about one man, right? Maybe a famous man, Napoleon or something. But very loose in one sentence, huh? He makes fun with the historian, right? Heres Dahl says in the book of the Poetic Art, that the tragedy and so on is more philosophic than history, right? Because it's more about the universal. So, you know, Paul VI just had a kind of a hammer, you'd say, right? Because a hammer, you're just a type of man, right? That's hesitant to act and should act or something, right? Or sometimes they call somebody who's amorous or Romeo. He said, Romeo. But you see something kind of universal, right? So, they say that the poet presents universal singularized, right? Kind of a strange thing, right? It's universal. This character, right? I thought he was a jealous man, right? He was a man of the buttons getting pushed. I was teaching in California, there was somebody's wife there who thought her husband was getting, you know, kind of a slack in his attention to her, you know? So, she started to flirt a little bit with other men and some horrible things happened from this, right? You know? It was for real, you know? She was trying to arouse a little bit in an office. It's a horrible story. So, it makes sense with the great algorithm, huh? He's known now as Convertis Modulus, yeah. The universe is the first thing you talk about in logic, right? The first thing you talk about in the, you know, reason being about a large discourse, right? But you can't entirely overlook, huh? The natural road, you know? Even in logic, right? The natural road is the road from what? The senses into reason, right? Now, we call that the natural road because man is an animal that has reason, right? And every animal has senses, right? And what is generic in a thing, like animal, develops before, but is specific, huh? So, our knowledge begins with our senses, right? And goes into reason from our senses, huh? So, the natural road in our knowledge, the road from the senses into what? Reason, huh? That's following the use of the word road, isn't it? Now, this road, this natural road is followed most of all in natural philosophy and natural science. So, both Aristotle in ancient times, and Albert Einstein in the 20th century said that natural science begins and ends in the senses. You get your knowledge of the natural road from the senses, and when you form your universal ideas and your equations and so on, you test them by going back to the natural world and judge them by the senses. But even in logic, which is in some ways like logic, I mean like the wisdom being about immaterial things, right? Even there, you can't avoid using the natural road. And so, I am more sensible when I say that the first thing to be considered in logic is name said anythings, yeah. On the first two books, huh? They've come down to us from the Greek philosophical and logical tradition. Our Aristotle's book called The Categories, right? And I said, go get it, you know, what? Porphy, right? Which meant, originally, exegoga, introduction to the categories of our style. Because Chrysorius, some friend of his, said, I can't understand the categories. What do these words mean? Genius and difference and species and property or, you know, edus and so on, huh? What do these words mean? So, exegoga, I mean, what's his name? Porphy wrote the exegoga introduction to the categories of our style model to help all the Chrysorius, right? But it has a magnificent premium where he says it's necessary not only to understand the categories but to understand definition and to understand division and to understand demonstration. Very important, I suppose, huh? Not my colleagues are at, huh? But now, porphy, I mean, Albert the Great is a paraphrasis, huh? A paraphrase of the exegoga, and in Latin it's called the predicabilios, right? And then the categories, you know, in Latin they call it the predicamentes, right? And both predicabilios and predicamentes, they both are taken of the words that are being said up in Latin. And the word categories, I guess they say, comes from the Greek courts. It means, what, accusation, right? So my friend Warren Murray says we can translate the, if you get the title of the categories, the 10 Supreme Accusations. It's very striking, right, huh? But notice, when I accuse you, I can accuse you of something. You're a murderer, or you're a thief, or embezzler, or whatever you are. You know, I've got to say something of it. This is a very, very, very word. And when I read through the Gospels, when they're attacking Christ, he'd had the word temper there. That's a big word, yeah. He'd accuse him of something, right? And this fits in now what Thomas says, I'm going to go past it there in the metaphysics there. Thomas, where he says that natural philosophy proceeds by way of motion, per modemotis. I can't have to text him on those things. A natural logic proceeds by way of predication, he said. In natural philosophy, everything is known through motion. Even nature is defined by motion. He's getting the cause. Motion rests. And that which it is. That's such an unvaccinated. But you know the nature of things are what they do, right? The logic, everything goes back to the way something is said to something, right? But being sensible again, right? The way a name is said of many things. And so he used to call the book, and I said, okay, the book of the five names. And the categories, the book of the, what? Ten names, yeah. But they're kind of following the natural road there, right? Now, sometimes we distinguish names so that many things... into two, and sometimes we do it into three right away. But when we divide it into two, we subdivide one of the two into two to get three in case you have a three. Three is the first number about which you say. A name is said of many things. It can have just one meaning in mind when it's being said in these, right? It's saying exactly the same thing of all of them, right? Like the number is said of two, three, and four, right? It means a multitude composed of ones, or a multitude measured by one. When animals said of dog and cat, it's not bringing out the differences what they have in common, right? In quadrilateral, it's said of square, and oblong, and rhombus, and rhomboid, and trapexium. It's a figure contained by four straight lines. That's two of all of them, right? Okay? Now we use a lactone word here. It's being said, what? Univocally. It's a name said of many things with the same meaning in mind instead of each of them. Such a name is being said, what? Inivocally, right? Said inevitably, right? Not very many words around that are inimical. They have only one meaning. Or it's said of many things with, what? Many meanings, yeah. Not the same meaning instead of each. And then it's being said equivocally. This is with one meaning, same meaning, right? The same meaning, or with one meaning, said of each, right? Equivocally, it's said with what? It doesn't mean many as opposed to few. Many as opposed to one. So if it has just two meanings, right? It's equivocal, right? Now, an equivocal word is a word that has many meanings, right? But can an equivocal word be said uniquely? Well, I could say an equivocal word in words that has many meanings, a bunch of things having in mind just... So equivocal word doesn't mean the same thing as said equivocally doesn't. Yeah, yeah. But people have a hard time seeing it now. There's a distinction there. Now the said equivocally, it can be divided into two. By chance and by reason. By chance, it just happened, you could say, right? That these things have the same name, right? So I have a brother named Richard, my oldest brother. I have a student come into my house. His name is Richard. When I work part-time in the package store, the manager was named Richard. And why do these three guys have the same name, Richard? Did someone see the three of them and say, well, they've all got the same color or something? And we'll give them the same name to indicate that? There's something... His name is Judas there, there, in one of the apostles? You know, is that good? Good apostle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was nothing scary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they call him Jude now? But, you know, you don't want to call him Judas. What's we call Judas? The other guy is so famous, right? You know? So this is an example of a name equivocal by what? By chance, huh? The name is equivocal by reason. There's some reason why, right? The name is used for these different ways. There's some connection, some order, as Shakespeare would say, right? Before and after in those. And we have an example of that with the word logos, right? The word logos means first word. Then the thought that the word signifies has some connection between the two, right? And then reason that has thoughts, right? That produces thoughts, right? Brings forth thoughts, huh? We call sometimes a thought a concept, right? It's like the mind is conceiving, right? That's being... Yeah. That word is equivocal by what? Reason too, right? The concept of God is his son, right? I used to say to the people who support abortion, you know, that they can't be trusted to not be aborting the truth. Because it's perfectly okay for them to abort the human being. So why wouldn't they not hesitate to abort the truth about what they're doing, right? It's an identical position, right? They support aborting the truth. Here. I don't like to have, you know, let the woman see the baby, right? I was reading a review there of a book there, you know, one of the people who worked for Planned Parenthood left to actually realize what they're doing, right? And someone had been coming in. They told us different stories, you know, of things. And someone had been having a lot of abortions. Funny, she wanted to see the remains one time, you know. She went wild, you know. She realized what she had been doing, you know. I mean, there's arms, there's legs, there's a head there, you know. As I say, it's got the parts of human being. It's a human being, right? Sometimes you'll find Thomas will divide a main set of many things into three. How do you do that, right? We say, sometimes the meaning is entirely the same when said of these many, right? Some cases it's, like, entirely different, right? In some cases it's partly the same and partly different. And then the equivocal, by reason, is kind of in between the two, right? It makes a good sense, too, doesn't it? I usually divide into two and then subdivide this, right? So sometimes you'll see Thomas will use, they'll keep you nimble for this here. But here they'll use equivocal for this. And then they use the word analogous for this, right? You've got to be careful, I think, because the word analogous really has a sense of proportion, right? And proportion is only one way that the word becomes equivocal, right? There are many other ways that it becomes. People get kind of a more narrow understanding of this than they need to have, right? There are many other ways that the word analogous, right? There are many other ways that the word analogous, right? There are many other ways that the word analogous, right? There are many other ways that the word analogous, right? There are many other ways that the word analogous, right? There are many other ways that the word analogous, right?