Logic (2016)
Lecture 8: Aristotle's Four Causes and the Ten Predicaments

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Because he recalls Aristotle's distinction of the, what, four kinds of cause, yeah. Aristotle's the only guy who distinguished these four kinds of causes, as far as I know. Those who followed Aristotle, right? What do you mean by cause in general? What do you mean by cause? You see, that which something depends upon, right? For being or for coming to be, right? Now, when I try to explain the cause or the distinction of the causes, I try to force people, right? Necessity, right? And so, I ask my students, you see that word on the board there? Yeah. What does that depend upon for being young? Just in there. What is the most undeniable thing that it depends upon? This is now. If you say it doesn't depend upon C and A and T, let's take away C, it doesn't depend upon that, and take away A and A and A and that, and take away that. This? Yeah. Now, we call that kind of dependence, huh? That kind of cause, that the letters C, A and T are, we call that matter, if I want a better name, right? Matter has a definition, this kind of cause, huh? Matter is that from which something comes to be and is in it, huh? Okay? Part of the definition, huh? So, the word cat comes from the letters C, A and T, and is what? They are in it, right? Okay? You take all the wood out of this table, right? Table, right? Yeah, same thing, right, huh? The wooden table comes to be from wood, and wood is in the table, right? You might say the wood table comes from the carpenter, but he's, to the best of my knowledge, not in the table. Okay? Okay? So, he's not a clause. If he's a clause, it's in some other way. It's about, not as matter, right? They say matter, in Latin, the word here, material, that comes from what? Mother, right? I always tell the story. This is a true story. One time when my lieutenant colonel's son was a very little boy, he's trying to get things, you know, straight out of his mind and understand things, and Al the Gulley comes to me and he says, Did I come from Mama? I said, Yes, you did come from Mama. And then he said, Did Ria, that's his sister, did Ria come from Mama? And I said, Yes, Ria came from Mama. And then he says, Marcus, that's his younger brother, did Marcus come from Mama? And I said, Yes, Marcus came from Mama. And then he said to me, Did you come from Mama? And I said, I said, No. He says, Well, then you already belong, he said. But you can stay, he said. He said, you know. Well, it shows that this kind of clause is most known, right? Mother Earth, right? It's like the poet said, you can go to the philosophers, right? The philosophy took, you know, water, air, fire, but... You know, the poets come first, you know? Infimale doctrina, right? They come first. And they said, Mother Earth, right? It's the source of all. Now, I force you to admit that kind of clause, it doesn't matter, right? But now, same word, back in the same letters, right? You've got a table here, right? Made out of wood. This is made out of wood. So this is a table too. The book may have the same kind of idea. You've been forced by the truth itself. They say that the word cat depends upon something in addition to those three letters. That these letters are the same three, huh? I'm talking to a graduate of Thomas Aquinas College, you know. They said, oh yeah, I'm a graduate of TAC. T-C-A. Thomas Aquinas. T-A-C. Thomas Aquinas College, right? They refer to it as T-A-C, right? I hear them say it all the time. So, this is nothing, right? They say, what does it depend upon? The C is before or after the A, right? Depends upon the order of the letters, huh? This is the second kind of clause, huh? Which we call, what? Form, right? What competes the nature of what it is, huh? So, you're forced to be hit with two kinds of clauses, right? But now, how do the letters get in this order? Or this order, huh? Do they automatically arrange themselves in that order? So, now you've got the third kind of clause, the mover or maker, huh? And it's first there. Now, is that enough to explain everything? Well, why did the mover or maker, namely Berkwist, right? In this case, huh? He's seemingly unresponsible for this case. Why did I put the letters in this order? Well, I'm one of those hundred-nine cattle owners, or I was a cat when I was a little boy. My daughter was a cat. I was talking about these cats. I wanted to talk about my favorite animal, right? Cats and dogs, and what's wrong with you? Of course, he gets so attached to the dog. He had a dog in the way, he gets so attached to the dog. They're much more friendly. I've got a couple of mazes of dogs' friendship for me, aren't you? It's kind of, you know, they're kind of a unusual thing, right? So, I put it in this order because I wanted to talk about, right? My favorite animal, right? Now, why did I put it in this order? I'm a philosopher. I like to talk about act and ability, right? Because I want to teach the ninth book of wisdom, right? So, that's my purpose, right? I want to teach metaphysics, or I want to talk about my favorite animal. So, my end or purpose is another cause, now, right? So, I force you to admit there's four kinds of causes, right? Which doesn't mean that everybody, that every place, you should look for all four kinds of causes, right? Aristotle explains that, right? So, in mathematics, right, we don't, we talk about the mover or the end, right? Or even matter in your own sense, right? Before, my friend Warren Murray was at the University of Minnesota for a while, as they're saying, Aristotle has the same, the four causes, and look, the four causes everywhere. I thought through it all, and I'm quite clear about that. So, Thomas is recalling this distinction of the four causes, but these two causes are interior, right? These two causes are exterior, right? And how do you denominate something from something exterior, right? Okay, he's going to say, sweet, cut out this third cause, right? So, he says, since there are four genera of causes, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem Thomas learned this from his master Aristotle, right? Whom he calls by Antoine Masia, the what? Philosopher, yeah. Two of these are on the side of the what? Essence or nature of the thing. Oh, that's terrible word, essence. I kind of used to make fun of that, huh? I guess in French, essence is for gasoline, right? So that was part of his joke about the word. Two of these are on the part of the nature of the thing, right? Yes, it's what it is. To it, matter, and what? Form. Whence the predication which comes about according to these two pertain to the predicament of what? Substance, huh? If, for example, we say that man is rational and man is what? Bodily, right? So the genus is taken from what is like matter and the difference from what form, huh? So those aren't going to come under this third division, right? Or you're being denominated from something outside of you, right? This is pertaining to your very nature, right? But the final cause does not cause anything apart from the, what? Agent. It's because the agent is acting for an end, huh? That it's got a cause. For to that extent, the end has a notion of a cause insofar as it moves the agent, huh? It remains, therefore, only the agent cause, which is the name of the third kind of cause, the mover, from which something can be denominated as from something, what? Outside of it, right? If, therefore, according as something is denominated from an agent cause, there is a predicament of passion or undergoing, as I call it in English, which is nothing other than to receive something from the agent or the mover or the maker. But according as a converso, the agent cause denominated from his effect, there is the predicamentum of what? Acting upon or action. For the action is the act from the agent to another, as has been said above, huh? So, if I go over and give you guys a good kick, right, I've got to have something outside of me that I'm kicking, right? You. Okay? And so, this is something from me in towards you, right? Okay? And you are being, on the other side, you're being kicked by something outside of you, right? Okay? So, you're being denominated from something outside of you, right, and it's either the cause of you or the effect of this. How would that, how would opzio be related or opzio? How would it be related to motion? Well, motion is from the mover into the move, right? So, insofar as motion is from the mover, right? Yeah. I'm being moved by another, right? So, if something's being said to me, the reason is something outside of me, right? I'm said to be moved by the mover, right? I'm receiving it from it. And vice versa, the agent is, what? Communicating or bestowing or giving motion to, what? Something outside of it, right? So, if I push this thing here, right, huh? This thing is, what? Being moved by something outside of it. My hand is not part of the glass, see? So, it's being moved by my hand, and my hand is moving something, what? Outside of it, right, huh? So, you can say that the glass is being moved, and I am, what? Moving it, right? So, you have to bring in something outside of me, right, to say that I'm acting upon something, or that I'm being acted upon, or I'm undergoing something from another. Could the axiom be in different categories? In other words, could the axiom belong to the category of quantity or quality? Well, this is something that will come up later on, huh? Because Aristotle will say that motion, right, is in the categories of quantity, like growth, right, is the kind of change in quantity, and alteration, right, is in the category of quality, and locomotion or change of places is in the category of wear, right? But acting upon and undergoing are said by reason of something outside of you, right, then? Okay, so, acting upon would differ from the motion itself by the fact that it's from me to you, right? Undergoing it's in me from you, right? Okay? Notice the difference here between, I put water on in the morning there, and it comes out of the faucet there cold, right? Okay, and they're going to heat up the water and make tea. So, warm is a, or hot is a quality of, what, water, right? A natural thing, maybe. It's induced, right? And so, where would you put becoming warm or becoming hot? In what category would you put that? Yeah, yeah. It's something imperfect in the category of quality, right? Okay, so it's reduced, right, to the genus of quality, not because it's a quality fully, right, then? But it's because it's the, what, imperfect, you know, becoming of that quality, right? Okay. So, the becoming hot would be put in quality, right, then? Becoming 5'10", wherever I am, right, would be put in the category of quantity, right, then? Growing, right, then? Growing is acquiring a certain quantity, and therefore we'd put it in quantity, but it's something imperfect, right? But now, what about, I might say the stove, that the stove is heating my water. Yeah, the acupun, yeah. And if I say that the water is being heated by the stove, right, that would be, it's undergoing something from the stove, right? But just becoming hot, right, if you just, if you abstract from the fact that there's something outside me, right, that's responsible for my becoming hot, and you just say, what is becoming hot? Well, it's, you know, I'm perfectly acquiring this, what, quality, right? So it's put in quality as something imperfect or incomplete or, just like you might say, you know, learning, right? Are you learning logic now? Yeah. But you're acquiring, right, a quality, which you put in the first species of quality, their habit or disposition, right, huh? It's going to leave your mind disposed in a certain way, right, huh? We hold better disposed. Yeah, it's going to be a virtue of your mind, yeah, your reason, huh? But is it an impassio, impassio in quantity or quality or... Yeah, well, that's just the thing she makes, right? If you're considering merely the fact that the water is becoming hot, right, and this is something in the water, right, becoming hot is in the, what, the water itself, right? But you're not taking anything outside the water when you just speak of becoming hot, see? But if you say that you are being heated, see, there's a difference there, right, huh? In the same way, if you say that the stove is hot, that's a quality in the stove, right, huh? Okay, good. But if you're saying the stove is heating the water, right, then you have to bring in something outside it, right, and therefore it's being, because there's something outside of it that's being heated by it, right, that you could say that the stove is heating my water for my tea. So you can't make a cup of tea without logic, right? No, you can't understand making a cup of tea. Very good. See, see how, how's mine is sharpening up now? No, no, no, no, no. And I can testify that Dr. Wilco's experience is kind of a subtle distinction. I know, I know, it is, but it's a real distinction, right? See, your mind is going from confusion to distinction now. Your mind is confused and now it's more distinct, right? So distinction, division, definition, right? The difference between becoming health and being needed. Is there something different between becoming health? It is, yeah. Yeah. You say becoming hot, this is something going on in the water that's being prepared from IT, right? You can set up water by itself. But when you say it's being heated, when you say it's being heated, you're bringing in something outside of it, right, that is acting upon it, right? When you say that the fire is hot, that's the quality of the fire, right? When I say that the fire is burning the paper or something, right? I used to see the same magician there who said the disparate of the thing. He'd go out there for the exam after, you know, thing and he'd be burning the exams. So I'd see him doing that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is the two ways in which you can be denominated from something outside you that is a cause or an effect, right? I can't be kicking you without you. I can't be beating you without you, right? I can't have you there to beat you, right? To whip you. I can't spank the kid without it. My father come back from work, you know, and I haven't been to good, you know. He'd sit there and tell me to sit there. He never hit me. I just, I would just, yeah. Actually with the kids I'd take the belt off and I'd whack the table, you know. That was enough. I had to whack me up. Just whack the table. Boy, did they silver up. The sound of the idea of the table that they built. Daddy's going to take his belt off. Wham! I had to have to put the poor table down. Now the other way you can be denominated from something, you know, commonly, is measure, right? And so, you know, sometimes I make rice. Well, then it says, I don't know, a cup of rice and how many cups of water? Two cups of water, I guess. I always say, Rosie, what is that? So, but, you know, I take this cup measurement. So now I've got a, what, cup of rice, right? All those things the logic taught me to do. I was going to use an exterior measure, right? And sometimes, you know, you used to, you know, take the kid's height, you know, and get to the wall there, you know. And you see, oh, yeah, this is it. This is it. And so on, right? And every time I go to the doctor for the checkup, you know, they split in a damn machine. And it's like, oh, I'm going to buy this thing. I've shrunk or something. It's just, you know, it must have shrunken, you know. Maybe and so on, right? So you're measured by something outside of you, right? And, you know, when they get the March for Life there, you know, the guards, they try to do what? You might measure how many people, you know, occupy such an area and they try to estimate the size of the crowd, right? Because he's been trying to count everybody, right? You know, they say, okay, they carry the whole such and such thing, you know. Well, it's about so many people, right? Now, of course, Thomas has studied Aristotle in the fourth book of Natural Hearing. He takes a place in, what, time, right? So you get the idea of place and time being tied up with measure of things, right? So what did that guy get? Stranded in an island there? What's his name? Arms and Crusoe, that's it? Yeah. Want to keep track of time so he's marking the sunrises, you know. And that's the way we, you know, when the sun comes around, you know. So you're being measured by something outside of you, right? How many years have I been on the side of you? How many days have I been on the side of you? How many days have I been on the side of you? How many days have I been on the side of you? How many days have I been on the side of you? How many days have I been on the side of you? How many days have I been on the side of you? How many days have I been on the side of you? How many days have I been on the side of you, right? How many days have I been on the side of you, right? So place is something outside of you, right? So if you take place in itself, you know, we go by bottle size, right? And sometimes you get one bottle size of the wine, you know, and you get a, you know, one and a half liter or something, and you get a three quarters of a liter, whatever it is. So if you take the inner surface of the bottle, right, which contains the wine, contained within the inner surface of the wine, that's a quantity, right? It's, we put in the category of quantity, right? But the wine is, what, being contained by the surface of something outside of it, right? That's good, right? It's a measure of how much the wine is, right? So if the wine is in this bottle, I know it's that much of a wine, it's got this bottle, I get twice as much. I'm having a bottle at Thanksgiving dinner at my brother-in-law, so I'm going to have this bottle and this bottle. I'm going to bottle with little bottles, right? Well, Thomas points out that the extrinsic measure is one thing and the intrinsic measure is another thing, right? The intrinsic measure is the proper length of something and its length and width and depth and so on. And from these, one is denominated by something intrinsic, right? Inhering, right? So that's a large mountain, right? Or a small hill or something. Once it pertains to the predicamentum, the category of what? What? Quantity. But the exterior measures are time and what? Place, huh? And according to something that's denominated from time, it's the predicament of when? Quando. According to something that's denominated from place, it's the predicament of ubi, right? But then he adds, and situs, right? Which adds above, in addition to ubi, in order of one's parts in place. Okay? So if you say I'm in this room, right? That's ubi. Where? Where am I in this room? But I could be sitting in this room, as I guess I am now, or I could be standing as I was a few minutes ago. I probably want to lay down in this room. But if the weather gets me a little bad, I'm going to have to lay down in this room, right? And so there's an arrangement of parts in what? Place, huh? Now, you might want to distinguish between being positioned, is what you call this category, and shape, or something intrinsic, right? An example is to always give the students, and I'd say, notice the way my parts are arranged. One is above or below the other, kind of in a straight line, huh? Okay? Now, if I jumped out of an airplane, my body could be in that same, you know, with respect to each other. But would I be standing as I came down the sky, right? No, no. In order for me to be standing, I have to have something outside of me to stand on. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. And there's nothing to stand on when I jump out of the airplane, right? Do you see the idea? So that's the difference between just looking at the order of the parts of my thing is the same, right? But it would not be called standing, you see? And if someone knocks me and I go like this, I'm like a man sitting or laying down, right? But I'm not really laying down. You've got to have a bed or something or a sofa or something, right, to lay on, right? Or else the floor, the floor. You've got to have something outside of you, right, okay? And in order for me to sit, right, I need something outside that I can share that I can do this, right, huh? The example I used to get in class where I said, you know, suppose someone, I don't know, to your house and you say, well, sit down, and he did like this, you know? Is this sitting down? Am I sitting down now? I have the same position as a man sitting down, right? You see? But you're talking about the intrinsic thing. And I'm not sitting down because I've got to have something, I'm crouching, really, you'd say, right, huh? See? I need, you know, something like a chair, right? I can, what? Yeah. And then, you know? So that's why I'm being denominated from something outside of me that I'm sitting on. Even standing, I depend upon the floor or something below me. Now, Thomas explains, huh, that you don't have something that is to quando, like situs is to ubi, like being position. Because situs means the, what, the order of parts in place, right? Okay? Which is not in the notion of where, right? You say, where am I? I'm in this room, right? He doesn't say what my position is, does it? But time has in the very definition the idea of position or order, right? Because time is the, what, the number of the before and after in motion. In fact, you gentlemen know in the post predicaments that the first meaning of before and after is in time, yeah. So you're not going to have another category there for that, right? That's very subtle, right? This, he says, is not necessary to add in the part of time. Because the order of the parts in time is implied in the very notion of time, right? It's a very sense of what order means what? Before and after, right? Okay? And that's the very notion of time. It's the number of the before and after in time. Where time, he quotes the definition of time. Where time is the number of motion according to the before and after. Poor Richard II saying in Shakespeare's play, now it's time-made meter, a number, and clock. He's probably, you know, top, top, top, top. Poor guy. Okay? Thus, therefore, something is said to be when and where through denomination from time or place. And then he takes up man's special category, right? There is something however special in man. That's why we call this man's category, right? Now, because Thomas talks about this last, some people arrange the categories putting this last. But Aristotle doesn't do that, does he? What does he give as the last categories? Inumerate. Because he just didn't, but he didn't knit with, you know, he didn't knit with philosophy or enumerate them. You wouldn't expect to see any order. But Aristotle put last, what, acting upon and undergoing, right? And he put where and when and position, right? And then this man's category in that order that just gave them before acting upon undergoing. Was there a reason why he gives them before acting upon undergoing? Well, that's another thing that's said later on, but where and when are kind of tied up with, what, quantity in some way, right? Although they have the exterior denomination from place and time and so on, right? By acting upon and undergoing are more tied up with, what, quality, aren't they? So just as quantity is before quality, right? So the categories that pertain to extrinsic measure, right, are put before those that pertain to acting upon undergoing. Just as quantity was before, what, quality. So Thomas is goofing it up here, right, a little bit, huh? Okay. But he's kind of safe, that's not kind of, he wants to have those things that are common to all of us, right? And then man's kind of special thing, right? So in some of the old things, like an ostrichological book they used in college, I think they would put hobby to a slash, you know, they're kind of influenced by Thomas' explanation of these things, right? But it makes some kind of sense to, you know, to explain the ones that have something in common before the one that has something kind of private, a man's oddball thing here, right? You know, if you think of a soldier or a fireman, you know, or a policeman, right, you know, or a bride, and so on, right, huh? You know, something special about these occupations or the occasion, right, huh? Requires a special kind of, what? Dress. I mean, the bride's going to work all by herself or with her father, you know, is going to give her away, you know? And I didn't want her to take her dress off, you know, her wedding dress, you know, keep her as long as it goes, you know? Beautiful, you know? So, I mean, there's something peculiar, really, about that now, you know, to man, right, huh? Woman, especially, you know? So, the other things, huh? Other animals, they have by nature, huh? Their fur grows thicker in the wintertime, and they shed fur, don't they, in the summer or something, you know? We take up, put away the big overcoat now, or take it off, take it out, you know, when the winter comes, right? Okay? And the same way with these things we need to protect ourselves, right, huh? So, I need a knife, a fork, and a spoon, and I need a hammer, and a saw, and a screwdriver, and all these other things, you know? Okay? So, when the other animals are said to be armed, or clothed, or shod, huh? In a way, they're not denominating from something extrinsic, but from some of their, what, parts, huh? You know, it's the cat there, they go into the bed there, and the dog try to, you know? And the cat. And the cat. Yeah. And one cat we had, when I was a little boy there, we'd be out raking the leaves, you know, in the winter, I mean, in the fall, and the leaves are all accumulating, you know? And the cat would jump inside the pile of leaves, and the dog comes to round the cat. The cat's kind of clever. Actually, Nirvan describes, you know, being at Sir Walter Scott's house, you know, he had dogs and cats, you know, but the cat would sit there and put her paw up on each animal going by, you know? Showing the, yeah, the king, you know, but Christ is called the lion in the tribe of Judah, right? He wants to call my dog, you know? So the lion, you know, the king, English king, right? Which is the lion-hearted, right? Not the dog-hearted. It says in the heart, but the dogs are outside the city. Yeah, yeah, the dogs are outside the city. Oh. Well, you had a guy on EWTN the night there, where people have converted, or this guy, he brought up in a Catholic, in grade school and everything, but he became some kind of psychologist, right? And here are all these stupid arguments that the moderns give against God, right? And he became kind of an atheist, right? And I guess in his 40s, you have to pick up a sum of theologics up, right? All of a sudden, these arguments that seem good to him, seem to be no longer good, right? And Thomas was, you know, straightening him out, you know, so he came back to the faith, you know? And then he'd written a book about the Dominican saints, right? And of course, you know, St. Dominic, his mother, had the great dream of a dog, you know, because they protect the church from the heretics, right? St. Dominic, his mother, had the great dream of a dog, you know, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the great dream of a dog, and the So it's a hound, everything in this book is the hounds of something, you know, they're talking about the Dominican saints, right? What? I remember what his name was. St. Thomas' name? No, no, the psychologist. Oh, I can't remember the name yet, but you can see it on the, you watch sometimes in his program there. Very interesting. I guess I would. Yeah, okay. We have to look at the other one, though, for the metaphysics, right? Okay. So when man is, these other animals, it's like you say, like a man is a hand or an arm or a leg, it's denominated from part of your body, right? But when a man is said to be armed or clothed or shot, right, he's denominated from something extrinsic, right? Which neither has the notion of a cause nor of a measure, right? Once it's a special predicament, then it's called habitus, right? That's what they get in some of the Latin logic books there. In other English ones, they use the word habit, you know, huh? But you've got to be careful, because the word habit is another sense, right? And the other animals, this thing is not attributed in their own life, but when they come to use of man, you know, so you put something on the horse, right? You're going to have a parade or something, right? Little girls try to dress the cat and so on. I see Bo walk around with their dog with a little bit of a little jacket over the dog, you know? Nice to have, you know, in English here. So maybe next time we'll look at the one from metaphysics, yeah. Let's see if you see any difference between that and the other one in the physics, right? Let's see if you see any difference between that and the other one in the physics, right? Let's see if you see any difference between that and the other one in the physics, right? Let's see if you see any difference between that and the other one in the physics, right? Let's see if you see any difference between that and the other one in the physics, right? Let's see if you see any difference between that and the other one in the physics, right?