Logic (2016)
Lecture 36: Definition, Statement, and the Structure of Reasoning

Transcript
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But now, is an argument the same thing as reasoning? Some people kind of mix them up over there. An argument is something, what? It's not an accurate reason, but it's a what? An ordering of statements, right? It enables you to reason well, right? Now, is it something that is to understand the truth of the false as definition as to what a thing is, or argument as to reasoning? Yeah, a statement, yeah. Now, we've got to think that out a little more, right? Okay. So, we want to think out what a definition is, and what a statement is, right? There's a beautiful distinction that we've met before in logic, and the distinction between, what the? The distinction of name and speech, huh? Nomen and oratio, right? Oratio, of course. The distinction of name and speech, huh? They both have something in common, right? What is the distinction of name and speech, huh? I don't expect you to spell things very quick. Distinction of name and speech. Well, they're both what? Sound, right, huh? Okay. So, this is the sound, isn't it? Is that a name and our speech? What's the difference between this and a name and our speech? Yeah. It's produced by the vocal cords, right, huh? But this is produced by my, you know, thumb here in the wood, right, huh? Okay. So, a name and a speech are a vocal sound, right? And not following the grammatic order and following, you know, the logical order, right? It's a sound that is, what? Produced by the vocal cords, right, huh? Well, it's usually, you know, it's just difficult to talk about how you produce the sound of the vocal cords. I believe that there's some other signs, but logic, right, huh? Okay. Now, what's the other thing I want to say about this vocal sound that is a name or speech? And I may just be nervous, you know. It takes up our heads. Can't pay attention or something, right? So, the name of the speech, the vocal sound, a little bit, what? Signifies the sign, right? Vocal sound signifies. Great adjustment defines what a sign is. I don't know what that is. You have to think out the definition of sign, right? You saw the thing? What do you do, right? Now, what's the definition of sign that the great adjustment brings to mind something other than itself, yeah? I like that. It would strike as an example that, you know, you're under going, right, huh? Yeah. I'm kind of classic to myself. Yeah. How? What's it? It's a vocal sound signifying, right, huh? The grammatic order is somewhat different, right? Yeah. Grammar and logic are two different liberal arts, right? That's right. Yeah. That's the sound, right? You've been on a baby since you've heard that sound. And it's a vocal sound, right, huh? And does it signify something? Yeah. Maybe the baby's hungry. Maybe they've got a pin sticking in or something. But there's some kind of bodily need, a little one, you know? And, um, is there a difference between the cry of the baby and the name of the speech? What do they signify? Yeah. You can kind of see what nature gave this to the baby, right, huh? It would come running, right, huh? So if the baby, you know, is playing and whacks into something, you know? Whack! And there may be an emotional exam. It doesn't see how much damage it's done, right, huh? The baby, you know, first of all, turns all red. She says to the kids, you know, oh, you can see this. It's like, like, I've lost my heart. I love this. You know? You know? They say sometimes it signifies by custom or by, you didn't say by choice in some cases. Maybe you choose it, but by custom or choice, right? But, um, describe these, uh, it's more by custom than by choice, though, right, huh? It's scientists and they name, you know? It's Google L at Berkeley. It's the University of California at Berkeley. It's kind of a cheesy thing, right? But, as opposed to something that signifies by what? Nature, yeah. Now, this is common to both name and speech, right? Now we've come to the differences between name and speech, right? And what is the difference between name and speech? Now, they're both a sound. There's this vocal sound that is signifying and signifying by custom. But what's the difference between name and speech? Yeah. And not just parts. I think they both have parts, right? But, in the name, so, the speech is having parts. And that means at least two. I can't even more than two, but having parts that signify something by themselves. Right? The name is the negation then, right? No parts signify, right? By themselves, right? Now, we always, you know, deal with these, you know, objections, like you're saying, well, when we were young there at the, uh, we had a few people called what his name was Johnson, right? I don't think they had any sons, but at least they had a daughter, you know? And, uh, you say, well, Johnson, John means something, right? And son means something, right? But, insofar as Johnson functions as a name, the last name in this case, or the family name, does John and son mean something? Because the girl is not a son, and I don't think her father is John, right? You see? So, Johnson, insofar as it functions as a name, either what happens to be named on him, right? It doesn't signify John and son, something separate about him, right? Um, so the speech has parts signifying by themselves, at least two parts, and the name does not, right? Uh-huh. And therefore, Thomas points out the distinction between the etymology of the name and the meaning of the name. Sometimes you're confusing the truth. So you see, the etymology in Johnson might be, you know, someone was the son of John. But that's not what it signifies anymore. My name, my last name was originally Bergkriston. My father got the G out. Berg means mountain in Swedish and krist means branch. So am I a mountain branch? Is that what it means? No. So it's only the whole sound of Bergkriston signifies me, right? Cows are calling Berk, you know. My mother's maiden name was Berk and B-R-K-E. So she joked and she just slinked in her name. She was the father of Bergkriston now, huh? That's right, Dr. G out. How much you have to put in a K, it isn't really there, right? I don't know. My son was at West Point there. His nickname was B-Q. Yeah, I was trying to say Bergkrist, you know. Well, you got B and Q there, right? So Bergkrist, you know, B-Q. So they, you know. The two would call him Thomas Bergkriston. So you see them name and speech, right, huh? Now, if you go to the great tradition of Ligert there, because I can read. The first two books of logic are, of course, the Esagogia of Aristotle and then the famous book of Porphyry, which is the introduction to the categories, right? But they used to refer to these as the book of the five names, genus, difference, species, property, accident, and the book of the ten, substance, climate. But definition is not a name. Definition is a what? Speech, huh? Aristotle was talking about pointfully confused and distinct, right? He says, we name a thing before we can, what? Define a thing. And so the definition is you are more distinct now, right? And so I used to take their experience and say, you probably went to your father or mother when you were reading something and you didn't know what the word meant. They kind of know what it means, but when they're asked to define a thing, they hesitate, you know. It's kind of hard to define something. You know what love means? Well, define it. I'm trying to define it. Okay. So a definition is speech and a statement is speech, right? But what would be the natural way to distinguish these two? If they're both speeches, how would you distinguish them? Or by what they signify, right? Okay. So you could say a definition is speech signifying, what a thing is. Sometimes I define the definition as speech making know what a thing is, right? Because I could tell you something about it, right? But you could say basically the definition is speech signifying what a thing is. Because it's a speech, because it's a speech you can think out that it's like making know distinctly, right? But you could also say speech making know what a thing is. My students didn't know what a perfect number is, right? The definition, for example, right? The definition, for example, right? The definition, for example, right? May know, right? To some extent, what a perfect number is, right? Sometimes I say it's speech bringing out what a thing is. But what is the statement, then? Not speech signifying what a thing is, that's the definition, but speech signifying the true and false, right? I'm trying to think out the definition of what truth and falsity means, right? Serious computer problems helping those all. So, definition is sometimes talked about in connection with understanding what a thing is, and statement with understanding the true and false, right? Now, Thomas is, you know, bad custom there. Some days use the word proposition, you know, for a statement, right? But proposition, phenomenologically, comes from pro bono, right? The place before. So proposition is maybe more what? Yeah, yeah. Now, they call it even theory to nucleus sometimes. They call it proposition, right? That's because he states beforehand what he proposes to prove, right? The proposal, right? And propose to show that progress in theory is a true and false. I mean, you make it like the word for proposal, right? And that's when I get the word proposition, right? You know, proposition of hope. You know what that means, right? And it's close to that as I tell the students in premise or something like that. I like the word statement, right, huh? Let's talk a little bit about the statement and say why that is important, right? What Aristotle himself points out, where do you find truth and false? You find it in things. You find it in the mind, right? But in the second act, right? So if I say, if I say, um, dog, right? True or false? You've got to say something of dog, right? You've got to say a dog is a cat. That's false. A dog is a cat. A dog is an animal. That's true, right? That's a ferocious tongue. Right? We have an exception. So, sometimes I distinguish between a statement or a simple statement, you'd call it, right? And a compound statement, right? Let's take the simple statement first. We say, well, what does truth and falsity mean, right? So, if I say that a, um, easy example, a square is a quadrilateral. A square is a, what? Circle. A square is not a quadrilateral. And a square is a, what? This is not a circle. So, then a square is a circle, right? Well, we say these first two statements are true, right? And the second two statements are false. So, when you say that what is, is, you're being what? True. And when you say what is not, is not, you're being what? True. And you're being false when you say that what is not, is, or what is, is not, rather. Or when you say what is not, is, right? That's fairly easy to say, right? But it means, right, huh? Okay. But maybe, you know, it comes down a little bit better, you want to think out the division of a statement, right, or a simple statement, right? Now, let's go back to, say it's the rule of 2 or 3, but sometimes in more distinct, they say 2 or 3, or both, right? Here's an example, Aristotle divides the plot in both 3 and 2, right? Now, you can divide a statement, and it seems natural in some cases, to divide it into 2, right? And then you divide the statement into mainly a noun and a, what, a verb, okay? Now, this is sticking out the division of a statement into its composing parts, right? A statement is a speech, right? And it's composed at least of a noun and a verb, right? So we can say, Socrates sits, Socrates eats, Socrates thinks, Socrates walks, and so on, right? Now, both the noun and the verb are a name or a speech. Well, they're both a, what, name, right? Okay, okay, but what's the difference between a noun and a verb, and about that? Now, I notice in Latin and in Greek, I guess, they tend to use the same word for noun and for name, onomat or something like that, right? Greek, yeah, or nomen, right? Well, in English, we have a different word for name and noun, right? So, it's interesting, though, right, that if you call both noun and verb and name in Greek or in Latin, then noun would keep that name as its own, and the verb gets, say, what? A new name, right? Why? Because it adds something, it's noteworthy, that it signifies with time, right? It both signifies something, like the name does, but one has something in addition, that it signifies with time, right? That's very striking, right? That, grammatically, you can't make a statement without something like an noun and a verb. And a verb signifies with time, so it's been very, very hard to talk about the opposite, not with time, right? And I'm reminded of the Greek, you know, inability to go beyond imagination, right? The Greek said, you know, whatever it is must be somewhere, but it isn't somewhere, it doesn't exist. They'd think, naturally, whatever it is must be in, what? Time, right, you know? So it's very hard for us to escape from time. Though our knowledge and our meaning starts from the, what, continuous, right? A place and time, which are species of the continuous, as you know, from the categories, right? It also strikes me in on the fact that, as we learned in our study of the word before, right? What's the first meaning of before? That's where we began it. We can't get beyond this, here's the thing, right? Christ, you know, since there is no memory, he says, before Abraham was, I am. It's just that was, right? But he's trying to express that God is divine nature. He's not in what? He's not before Abraham in time. It's the iteration, since the church is before, but the eternal now, right? Remember how Thomas talked about the eight senses that Aristotle distinguishes, you know, right? He said, hey, you left out one, right? And in time, right? And Thomas said, well, that stayed alongside in place, because they're both similar, right? The external measurements, you see that, right? And that's just what Thomas began to teach me to know that I don't put all the senses of a word equivocal, for a reason, together in one line, right? But you put the central or chief senses, right, in a straight line, and then you attach other ones, and that's an affinity for one of the other ones. So to be in time, you've got one of the central senses, but it's attached to being in place, right? Which have a real similarity between these two, but it's very hard for us to transcend that, right? So someone would say, well, where is God? Is he up in heaven, he's there? Astronauts there, you know, out there, you know. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, It seems more natural to divide it into three, doesn't it, now? See? And we call the, what? The square in that example, the subject, and what's being said of it or not said of it, we call that the predicate, and then the sign of is or is not, we call that the, what? They tend to divide them into those three, right? And that second division is important to get to reasoning, right? Because you get the famous principles of the set of all and the set of none, right? If A is set of all B, then A is set of all B is set of. The set of none, A is set of none of these, then B is set of, right? So it's kind of natural to divide them into these three, and the subject and the predicate and then either say they is the same or they is not, you know? So this is a good example, I think, of... So I divided two or three into both, right? You divide the plot into two or three parts. When you're getting them in, it's very important, right? Aristotle says that Homer taught all the other poets how to make a good plot. It's not about what happened, you know, or it may happen to some man that had no connection. It's kind of the course of action is the beginning and the middle end. You're studying the great Homer, right? But it's also, you could make sense and say that you're tying knots and then what? You get in philosophy, you can see tying knots and untying knots. More untying. Right. Yeah. An article in the Summa is divided into how many parts? See the objections, right? Then what they call the corpus of the body of the article and then the reply, right? And then actually divided into three, right? So you have this... You can divide a statement though into both of these, right? You're talking about what you could call the simple statement because there's going to be another kind of statement, right? The compound statement, right? Now there's three compound statements that are fairly common, right? And one we call the disjunctive, right? I call it the either or statement, right? You can state this fully or you can state it... You can say... Let's say a number... Either a number is odd or a number is... You can say a number is either odd. It's one or the other, right? What's important is that you exhaust the possibilities, right? It's not hard to see with the idea, but... It's not hard to see with the idea, but... Aristotle says that... The virtues and looking reason are either natural understanding or epistame... Reason, knowledge, or wisdom. It's hard to see, right? So... You can say the either or statement depends upon... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... is a perfect number, then it is, what, a primary constant number? It's got to be a constant number, right? It's very rigorous, right? Now, I like the if-then statement, because right in the if-then statement, there's a, what, kind of an order there, right? Okay. Now, what's the odd thing about if-then statements? Could an if-then statement be true and yet be made out of two false simple statements? If I am a mother, then I am a woman. But it's false that I am a mother, it's false that I am a, what, woman, right? It shows you that it doesn't mean truth isn't the same thing, does it? What you're saying would be the if-then that if this simple statement, in the if-part, is true, right, and the way the simple statement is true, then this other, one that's in the them-part, will also be true. If you're not saying, in fact, that either one is true, in fact, that they will be false, right? So, now later on you'll meet in the logic of the third act, the, I call it the if-then syllogism, right? And sometimes they talk about the if-then syllogism in terms of using letters to show the form of it, right? And you say, if, that's your first statement, right? Then B is so. So, then B is so. If A is so. Now, sometimes you look at what? And you might find out that A is in fact so, right, huh? In the if-then statement, you're not saying that A is so, is in fact so, or that B is in fact so. You're going to say, if A is so, then B will be so, right? If I am a mother, then I am a woman, right? Now, if you find out that, in fact, A is so, will something follow necessarily about B? Then is so, right? This is kind of obvious that you stop and think about, right? In the first sentence here, you're not saying that A is in fact so, you're not saying that, in fact, B is so. But you are saying that if A is so, then B will be so, right? And since, in the second statement, you admit that A is in fact so, then you must admit that B is so, right, huh? Now, suppose you find out that A is not so. Is anything follow, then? Not necessarily what will it be, given that form. Does it not be so? I got you, I got you, I'm saying. If you think it follows, then it doesn't follow the form, right, huh? So, if I am a mother, then I am a woman, right, huh? Okay? I'm not a mother. Can I still be a woman without being a mother? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, that's what Shakespeare's arguing, right, huh? What is a man if it's cheap good in marketing's time but to be a beast no more, right, huh? Now, you may say, you know, that what is two of it B, what? Half of four, half of five, let's say, right, huh? Or half of six, right? Excuse me, what if three is half of four? Then three is what? Yeah, yeah. There are many cases where B might be something more, what, universal, right? If I am a dog, then I am an animal. I am not a dog, therefore, I am not an animal. Wouldn't follow those cases, would it, right? Or if you have a, what, an effect that could follow from any causes, right? If Berkowitz dropped in last night, then he would be absent from class today. But he did not drop in. That could happen, you know. Okay? So, when you have A being one possible cause of B, right? If it's not so, the effect could still be, right? If I drank this amount of beer, then I would be drunk, right? If I didn't, I would still be drunk, I wouldn't drink that much wine, I would say, for a whiskey. You see what I mean? So, we'll, in the likes of the third act, we'll say nothing follows necessarily in this form, right? Nothing follows something. Now, what about this down here? If A is so, then B is so. Suppose you find out that B is so. Do you think you can say necessarily about A? If Berkowitz died, dropped dead last night, then Berkowitz will be absent from class. Berkowitz is absent from class? You ever heard he must have dropped dead last night? If Berkowitz is a dog, then Berkowitz is an animal. Berkowitz is an animal? If Berkowitz is a dog? So, if you give me that, I'll find you guilty every time. If you are the man who robbed the bank last night, then you are a man. But you are a man. You have to be the man who robbed the bank last night. Oh, John, here's him, you know? It would be a pleasure, you know? You know what I mean? See? So, Berkowitz dropped dead last night, then B is so, huh? If Berkowitz was in class, because I was in class. Have you ever dropped dead last night? Yes. Wishful thinking, I said. But you're not logical thinking. It's always his example. Okay? So, nothing follows. Necessarily, right, huh? And notice, the weakness there in experimental science is a bit, right, huh? I've got a hypothesis, huh? If my hypothesis is correct, we'll be the Eclipse of the Sun tomorrow of 10.06. We'll wait for tomorrow of 10.06, and sure enough, the Eclipse of the Sun. Wow! The confirmation of your hypothesis proposed. Is it followed, necessarily? I'm writing in the form, right? If my hypothesis is so, right, huh? Then D would be so, right? B is so. Is it followed, necessarily? My hypothesis is correct? Your hypothesis doesn't cause an Eclipse. Yeah. Yeah. But at least for the form error itself, right? It doesn't follow, right? It doesn't follow. It doesn't follow. It doesn't follow.