De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 65: The Immateriality of Reason and Brain-Thought Relationship

Transcript
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Object of reason is the what it is, right, of something sensed or imagined. And the what it is, of something sensed or imagined, is something universal. Like what a dog is, right? Or what a cat is. I don't know what happened to... Cat we had their fur. And what a chair is, is something universal, right? Okay? So as Bhaiti says, the thing is singular when sensed, or imagined for that matter, and universal when understood. Now, what does that have to do with the reason being something immaterial? Well, what you find out when you study material things is that there can be many individuals of the same kind, right? So I could have, for example, two identical circles here on the board, right? Okay? Same shape, same size. I've been running too well, but you know what I mean. But how is it possible to have two circles of exactly the same kind? How do they differ? Well, they differ only by position. One is here, and one is there. Okay? But that's totally continuous, isn't it? Because continuous is that whose parts meet at a common boundary. And therefore, it has part outside of part, right? And so you can put one part, one circle, another part, another circle, right? Okay. Now, if I had a plate of glass, huh? You know, about the size of this window frame here, right? I had a pretty good cutting instrument, right? I could cut off, you know, a number of window panes here, right? But how can I do that? Because I have enough glass, right? If I had enough wood, I could make many cherries exactly the same way, right? So the source of many individuals and material things is that you have enough matter, you have enough wood or enough glass or, in geometry, enough of this kind of imaginable matter, okay? So, this chair is either here or there, right? And this circle is either here or there, right? But what a circle is neither here nor there, right? So, if it's received in reason in the form of universal, it's not received here or there in the continuous. If it was received, circle or chair or anything like this, in something continuous, it would be received as here or there in the continuous. And therefore, it would be received as, what? Singular or individual, see? Any circle that's here or there, right, in the continuous, is an individual circle, right? But what's interesting is that the reason, the understanding, the universal understanding, it receives these things as, what? In a universal way. It knows what a circle is or what a chair is, right? And that's neither here nor there in the continuous. You've left aside, in other words, right, what individuates these things. What individuates them is the continuous, whether it's part outside of part. So, they all reason from the fact that reason knows directly the universal, it knows these things universally, not directly in the, what, singular. It has to go back to the imagination, go back to the senses to know the singular in some way, right? But directly it knows the universal. It's receiving these things separated from what individuates them. And that's the continuous. So, it receives them not with the conditions of a body, not with the conditions of the, what, continuous, right? In other words, whatever is received in the continuous is received here or there, and therefore is singular. But these things are received in reason, and universally, huh? Therefore, it's not a body. It's not continuous. But the case of the senses and the imagination, they know only the singular. And that was the problem with John Locke there, right? I mentioned how Locke was saying the general idea of triangle is a very hard idea, but you know, because is the general idea of triangle scaling or isosceles or equilaterals at a right angle or up to the same one? You know what to say. It's all or none of these. But he's trying to imagine triangle in general. While you try to imagine triangle in general, you can't. You can only imagine an equilateral triangle or an isosceles triangle or a scaling triangle, and an individual of that kind, too. But you can understand what triangle is in general. But you can't imagine what triangle is in general. But reason does understand what's common to all triangles in separation from their differences. And if you have experience in geometry, you can see that, huh? If you demonstrate something about the triangle as triangle, right? And not as isosceles triangle, right? So, you know, the famous theorem that the interior angles of a triangle are to right angles. Where you draw a straight line that say, well, we can do it through one vertex parallel to the opposite sides, right? And then by the parallel theorems, you know the ultimate angles are equal and then you can see it goes to right angles. But you see this about the triangle as triangle, not about the triangle as equilateral or isosceles or scaling or whatever it might be, right? But the senses and the imagination being bodies, they know only the singular. So that's a problem with Locke there, right? He's not transcending his imagination in a sense. He's trying to imagine the universal. And Plato has a dialogue about that, right? The parmenides, right? Where Socrates is just a young man and he's trying to understand the universal and he imagines the universal to be like a big sail covering all of us, right? Mm-hmm. Well, of course, in that case, if man was just coming to all of us, was spread over us like a big blanket or something, right? You'd have only a part of what man is. Yeah. And another part of what man is would be on top of you. So one of us would be an animal, one of us would be rational, you know, but it'd be divided, huh? So Socrates' problem there in the parmenides is that he's trying to imagine the, what, universal. So these are some of the other ways there from the universal that you can, what? I mean, from the continuous, huh? You can reason that our understanding is not a body, right? Because it knows things universally, right? Or it knows them in the form of a definition, even continuous things. And sometimes you point to the fact that the understanding knows what truth is, huh? Things that don't seem to be a body at all, right? Or in a body, huh? And therefore, how can, how can it be a body, right? Okay. Let's see now the replies that Thomas has, the objections, and then we'll take a little break maybe for our second article. We didn't do the last couple sentences, okay, from Popper Quote. Yeah. In the body. Okay. On account of which, right, you explained that sentence there, huh? Yes. On account of which we do not say that heat heats, but the hot heats, right? Because heat doesn't exist by itself, right, huh? Okay. But it exists only in the hot, right? Oh, yeah. So he would say that the heat is doing this, but the hot is doing that, huh? It remains, therefore, that the human soul, which is called intellect or mind, is something incorporeal and, what, subsisting, right? Okay. Now, it's interesting, you know, going back to this, people who think of the soul, as you said last time, as being kind of an air-like substance, right? Uh-huh. In the shape of a man. Uh-huh. But in taking the word air, right, they're trying to understand the incorporeality of the soul. So they take something like air that seems almost, what, immaterial, right, huh? Yeah. And because the air is a substance that you can hardly sense, right, we've carried over the word air and applied it to those substances like even the angels or even to God. They say God is a spirit, huh? Christ says that, right? God is a spirit, must be worshipped in the spirit and so on. And the angels are spirit, right? And sometimes you even say the soul, its higher aspect is a spirit, right? But we've borrowed the word, what, for air, see? Because air is a material substance, right, that's barely, what, sensible. Hardly sensible, right? Kind of invisible almost, right? In a sense it is invisible, although you can be aware of it somehow by wind and so on. And so we want to give a name to a substance that is in no way sensible, an immaterial substance. We borrowed that word, right? And it has a new meaning now, but nevertheless there's some reason why we took that word, right? Why we took the word from air rather than the word from what? What? Earth or fire or something else that is not invisible, right? And notice how scripture speaks even there, right? You know, God, when he creates the soul of Adam there, right? He breathed into the what? That way of speaking, right? But you can see in a sense, in thinking of the soul as being an air-like substance, they're on the way, but can't quite transcend their imagination, huh? Now, the first objection, as I say, is based simply upon the somewhat equivocation of the phrase haq-aliquid, right? To the first, it should be said that haq-aliquid can be taken in two ways. In one way, for anything that is subsisting, right? Okay, this something. In that sense, the soul would be a haq-aliquid, right? In another way, for something subsisting that's complete in the nature of some, what, species, huh? And in the first way, it excludes the inheritance of accident, right? Which exists only, what, in substance, right? And of a material form, that's a form that has existence only in matter, even if it would be a substantial form, right? Okay. In the second way, it excludes even the, what, imperfection of being a part, huh? Whence the hand is able to be called haq-aliquid in the first way, but not in the second way, huh? Thus, therefore, since the human soul is a part of the human race or species, it can be called haq-aliquid in the first way because it subsists or has subsisting, but not in the second way as something, what, complete, right? And in the sense of complete individual, then it's the composite from the soul and the body that is called a, what, haq-aliquid, right? We don't have to worry too much about the objection because, as I said, it involves, how is that phrase to be understood, right? And Thomas is simply saying there are two ways you can understand it, right? When it talks about the second way, it excludes even the imperfection of being a part. Yeah, because in some way you could say that the human soul, as he gets in Article 4, which we will be seeing next time, where the soul is man, right, huh? Okay. Oh. Okay. Oh, yeah, okay. So is man just a soul? I see, yeah. Or just a body? Or is he something composed of soul and body, right? Okay. Well, the complete man is something composed of soul and body, huh? I see, yeah, okay. So the second way, that excludes it because it's subsistent, it's perfect, not, it can never be just a part. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Good. Now, the second one is also based upon what does Aristotle mean? Well, in the first book, he's proceeding dialectically, right, through the opinions of his predecessors, huh? And so Thomas solves it at first in that way, saying, to the second ought to be said that those words of Aristotle, that Aristotle says those words, not according to his own, what? Opinion. But according to the opinion of those who said that to understand is to be, what? Moved, right? As is clear from the things that are sent forth there, right? That he said before he got to that point. Now, Aristotle, sometimes you'll notice in the examples he gives, he'll give examples that he thinks are, what, false, right? Uh-huh. But they're according to the opinions of his contemporaries or his predecessors, right? Mm-hmm. Before he's determined the truth about that, huh? Right. Okay? Now, Thomas points this out in his commentaries, a very subtle thing, right? Yeah. But I remember the first place where I saw it was in the commentary on the Nicomachian ethics, huh? Uh-huh. And the beginning of the Nicomachian ethics, Aristotle's talking about how different arts aim at different, what? Goods, right? Okay. And so he gives a number of examples, right, of the arts, huh? And he also mentions the household art, right? Uh-huh. And he says the end of the household art is wealth. Mm-hmm. The end of the military art is victory, right? Okay. The end of the art of cooking is a good meal, and so on, right? Because people thought of the end of the household art as being, what? Wealth in those days, right? And all he's trying to do is, what? Give examples that are familiar to them, right? But then later on, when he gets to talk about the family, that's not the end of the family. Wealth. That's not the end, really, that you're ending at, huh? And then he corrects that opinion, right? Okay? So I've seen Aristotle do this in a number of places, huh? And sometimes he'll speak according to the opinions of his predecessors, right? Before he's determined the truth about the matter. So it's kind of a subtle thing that he does there, huh? Okay? And, you know, I'll sometimes, you know, I'm talking about the senses of before, right? And I'll say, now, if water is H2O, right? Which I know they all think, right? Well, then hydrogen can be without water, but water cannot be without hydrogen. Yeah, okay. They accept that, right? Now, I don't know if water is H2O. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, right? But if water is H2O, you know? So I'm just taking an example to illustrate this thing, not to prove it, right? But an example that they would, what? Have in mind, right, huh? Do you see the idea? Okay. Well, Aristotle does that, right, huh? Or he gives a second one here now. Another way of, perhaps, replying to the same objection, huh? Or it ought to be said that to, what, act or do something by oneself, right, belongs to something existing by itself, right? But to exist by oneself is sometimes said something if it does not exist in something as an accident, right? Or as a material form, even if it be a, what, part, right? But properly and subsisting by itself is said what neither in the foresaid way is inhering nor is a, what, part, right? According to which way the eye or the hand cannot be said to be per se, subsisting, right? And consequently not to be operating by itself. So you shouldn't say so much that the, you could say the eye sees in a way, right? But it'd be better to say that a man sees through his eyes, okay? Or a man hears through his ears, right? Okay? So when the soul is in the body and is therefore a part of the whole man, right, huh? It makes sense to say that the man understands through his soul, right, huh? Okay? And through his mind, right, huh? Rather than to say the soul by itself, because the body at this point is sharing in the existence of the soul, right? But the existence of the soul is not fully, what, grasped by the body, huh? And that's why the soul is an operation above the body. So Thomas often uses that phrase there, immersed, right? I think it's kind of interesting the use of the word there, huh? You've seen something immersed in the water, right, but it's entirely under the water. And you've seen something maybe floating, so it's partly submerged and partly above the water. So that way of speaking is borrowed there, right? That the soul's existence is not immersed in the body, right? That the body doesn't, what, contain the whole existence of the soul, right? But it partakes of it, right? Okay? Just as that body floating on top of the water is only partly immersed in the water, huh? So it has some part above the water, right? So the soul has some ability or some power above the body, and therefore it's said not to be immersed, right? Whence, he says, the operations of the parts are attributed to the whole through the parts. For we say that a man sees through the eye, huh? And he touches through the hand, right? And he touches through the eye, right? And he touches through the eye, right? And he touches through the eye, right? And he touches through the eye, right? And he touches through the eye, right? And he touches through the eye, right? And he touches through the eye, right? In another way, then the hot heats through what? Heat, right? Because heat in no way heats properly speaking, right? It's that by which you heat something, huh? It can be said, therefore, that the soul understands just as the eye sees, but more properly it is said that man understands, right, through his soul, right? Okay. Now the third objection, I think, is the most important one because it's not so much set up with the understanding of the use of certain words in Aristotle, right, like haq ali quid, this something, or this particular sentence, but it's based upon the fact that there seems to be some dependence, obviously, of reason upon the, what, brain, upon the body in our thinking. And I mentioned how, and I remember having a guy who was sort of a materialist in my class years ago, and he was making note of his opinion that the brain is the organ of thought, huh? And so I said, well, then, I suppose a good sign of that, I said, would be that blowing the brain refers to thinking. Yeah, that proves my point. Or alcohol going to the brain refers to thinking. Yeah, that proves my point. And so on, okay? And I think I showed you how I did it before, but I repeated here, huh? I said, okay, now, suppose you and I are in the same room with no windows, and there's a single light bulb in the center there with the light on, and you and I can see each other because of that, right? And all of a sudden I take a hammer and I wank the bulb, and that interferes with you seeing me, doesn't it? And therefore, the light bulb is the what? On your sight. Yeah. Well, you didn't admit that, right? See? Well, notice, huh? You can interfere with my seeing you by hitting the light bulb, or you can interfere with my seeing by hitting me in the eye here, right? Now, if you hit me in the eye, you'd be interfering with my seeing on the side of the organ, right? But when you interfere with the, when you knock the light bulb off, you're interfering with my seeing on the side of the what? Object, right? Okay? Okay? Now, take an even simpler example, right? I can see you over there now, huh? See? Now, if somebody hit my eye here, that would interfere with my seeing you, right? Because my eye is, after all, the organ of my sight, right? But if you left the room, don't interfere with my seeing too, you, seeing you, right? But is that interfering with my organ? No. It's interfering on the side of the object, right? Do you see the difference? Okay? Yeah. So, a blow in the brain interferes with thinking. Alcohol going to the brain interferes with thinking. Drugs going to the brain, etc. Clot in the brain interferes with thinking, and so on, right? Therefore, there's a connection between the brain and thinking, right? But that doesn't show you yet whether the connection is that on the side of an organ or on the side of the, what? Object, right? You can't syllogize on that, can you? No, so, we're down here in logic, right? Mm-hmm. In one of two ways here, right? Say, if a blow on the brain interferes with thinking, then the brain is the organ of thought. That shouldn't draw the line yet. But, a blow on the brain interferes with thinking. If you lay down those two statements, what statement follows necessarily from those two? If a blow on the brain interferes with thinking, then the brain is the organ of thought. But a blow on the brain does interfere with thinking. Okay? Therefore, The brain is the organ of thought. Yeah. Okay? Therefore, the brain is the organ of thought. Now, second way of syllogizing here. If the brain is the organ of thought, then a blow on the brain will interfere. But, a blow on the brain does interfere with thought. Therefore, the brain is the organ. If the brain is the organ of thought, then a blow on the brain will interfere with thought. But a blow on the brain does interfere with thought after the brain is the organ of thought. Now, both of these arguments have a defect. In one of them, the conclusion doesn't follow, although the premises are true. In the other one, the conclusion does follow, but one of the premises isn't true. Now, in order to have a demonstration of something, right, your conclusion must follow necessarily the premises, right? And the premises must be true. Yeah. But if the conclusion doesn't follow the premises, or if one of the premises is false, then you fail to demonstrate it, right? Now, down here, if the brain is the organ of thought, then a blow on the brain will interfere with thinking, that's true. And it is true that a blow on the brain interferes with what? Thought, huh? Does it follow therefore the brain is the organ of thought? You can't syllogize from the, what, affirmation of the consequence, remember that? I always give it to class that I say, if Berkis dropped dead last night, then he'll be absent from class today. But he is absent from class today, therefore he dropped dead last night. Well, if the only way, if the only possible reason I could have been absent from class was that, you could argue that way, right? But there could be some other reason why I'm absent from class, right? So I tell them, that's wishful thinking, but it's not logical thinking, right? You see? Okay? So, like I was showing with the example there of the light bulb, right, you see? The fact that a blow on something interferes with an operation, that's enough to see there's a connection between the two, right? But that doesn't tell you what the connection is, that of organ, or that of what? On the side of the object. Okay? A blow on my eye interfereth by seeing you, right? If they pulverize you there with a sledgehammer, it's going to interfere with my seeing you too. But it's on the side of the, what, object, not on the side of the organ, right? So, although this would follow from that, right, it could follow from other things too. And therefore, the fact that it is so, doesn't make that antecedent so. So, remember when we studied logic, right? This is in the form, if A is so, then B is so. And B is so. A is so. Is it foul, then, that A is so? Aristotle in the poetic says this is the way Homer taught all the other poets to tell a good lie. So, you say if A is so, then B is so. You're not saying that A is the only possible explanation of B, right? You're just saying that if A is so, then B is so, right? If I am a dog, right, then I am an animal. Ah, but I am an animal, therefore I am a dog, right? If I am a woman, then I am a human being, that's true, right? But I am a human being, that's true, therefore I am a woman. If I am a little boy, then I am a human being, right? But I am a human being, therefore I am a little boy. If I am a young man in this prime, then I am a human being, right? But I am a human being, therefore I must be a young man in his prime, then I don't think of a dog. That's wishful thinking. Yes, yes. But it's not logical thinking. You see the point? Yeah. So, down here, the argument, the form, is what? Bad. It doesn't follow. If A is so, then B is so, B is so, it doesn't follow that A is so, right? And I teach you some logic, you know, I get some students up at the board, and I'll put these forms on the board and I'll say, is something foul necessarily? And you always get somebody up there who says A is so, right? So people are very often deceived by that, huh? What's a reference to Homer on that one? What's a reference to Homer on that one? Do you know? Well, Homer would tell us something, you know, that if a man is this, then he would do such-and-such, right? So he does such-and-such, therefore he must be such a man, right? In other words, he has the characters talking, right? Well, yeah. We'll use it in that way. It's the way the poet would do it, right? It's the way you make—you kind of persuasive it that way, right? Well, I had a student one time, and he had the kind of long hair, you know? So, one day he comes up to the class, and his hair is all nicely cut, you know, and so I made some remark about his hair to him, and he said, well, let me tell you what happened to me, see? He got into some kind of traffic accident, see? And this is back before no-fault insurance and so on. He was going to, you know, manly defend his case in court, right? So he went down to the courthouse for some preliminary, you know, paper signing, you know? And the cop, when he saw the guy looking for the place, he says, well, this guy's in a drug charge, right? So, you know, that's where the people are, you know, in the drug charge, right? He said, well, he said, I'm going to show up in court with this hair and give that impression, right? See? So that's what the guy's saying. If you were in a drug charge, then you had this long hair, right? You know? Because apparently all these guys in a drug charge have this long stringy hair. This guy's not long stringy hair, therefore he's in a drug charge, yeah. It doesn't happen all the time, see? Or, you know, if you're drunk, then you don't walk too steady, right? He's not walking too steady, therefore he's, what, drunk, see? Well, like, my wife works with the, you know, the brain engine people, right? And they have certain speech impediments, right? Oh, okay. You know? And some people have a little difficulty walking, right? Okay. And sometimes it's embarrassing, because a cop or somebody will take this guy to be, what? Drunk, yeah. Drunk, right? So this guy can come out of a bar, right? And, you know, his words are kind of slurred, and he's kind of walking like that. And you would jump to the conclusion that he's, what? Drunk, yeah. Drunk, yeah. And it might be true in many cases. Most cases he will come out, right? But not necessarily, right? Some other cause of his, not seeing how to walk a straight line. Or he's not being able to speak his words too clearly sometimes, huh? Now, up here, here the form is good, huh? Here you say, if A is so, then B will be so. But A is so, therefore what? B is so, right? The form of the argument is good, right? The conclusion follows necessarily from those premises, right? But are the premises both true? Now, unless I reverse the thing here, I say, if a blow in the brain refers to thinking, then the brain is the organ of thought. Now it's become false, right? Because that doesn't follow necessarily. Because that's not the only way to interfere with what? An operation is to interfere with the organ. It interfere with the, what? Object, right? Do you see that? Okay. So, the proper object of our reason is the what it is, of something sensed or imagined, right? So, when the soul is in the body, when it's thinking of what a triangle is, right? It imagines a triangle, right? And what it's understanding is that what it is of what is imagined, right? See? Aristotle, as you remember in the Daniel, he compares that to the outward senses, right? I see the color of you. I see the color of the fireplace, right? So, the object of the eye is the color of something outside of me, okay? So, you take that something outside of me away, and I can't see the color of you when you get out of the room. You see? In the same way, the object of the reason there is the what it is of something sensed or imagined, huh? So, you naturally form an image, right, of what you're thinking about, huh? But you understand that what it is of that, huh? And you understand that what it is of that is not in the body, right? Okay? But in the same way, my seeing you is not in you either, right? See? But I can't see the color of you without you being there, right? And so, the soul doesn't understand what it is of a triangle without imagining a triangle there in imagination. And that's why blowing the brain interferes with thinking, or why alcohol is going to the brain, right? It interferes with the, what? Images, huh? But that's on the side of the object, huh? The object is the what it is of something sensed or imagined. Just as the object of the eye is the color of some exterior thing. So, you interfere with that exterior thing, you interfere with my seeing the color of that exterior thing. You interfere with the image, right? Yeah. You interfere with my thinking about the what it is of something imagined. But my thinking, or understanding the what it is of something imagined is not in imagination. Even more than my seeing the color of you is in you. Right? Yeah. Because then you'd be the organ of my sight, right? But you're not. Well, the brain interferes with the image then? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what the alcohol does and the drugs, huh? The image. You interfere with the images, yeah. Not with the organ, huh? No. I mean, it interferes with the organ of the imagination, yeah. But, notice, huh? By a separate argument, like the argument we saw in the body of the article, right? Or by the arguments I was giving here in terms of the continuous. By a separate argument we can show that understanding, the reason, is not a body, right? And therefore we say then, if a blow in the brain interferes with thinking, and the brain is a body, it can't be interfering with the organ, because it doesn't have an organ. Therefore it must be interfering with the, what? On the side of the object. And therefore, right? But if you go back to what Aristotle says, you can see the reason for that, right? That when the soul is in the body, its proper object is what it is of something sensed or imagined. Of a natural thing or a mathematical thing, yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay? But he makes a beautiful comparison there, right? Just as the object of the senses is the color or the sound or the flavor of something, right? Some exterior thing. Do you see that? Mm-hmm. Now you interfere with that exterior thing. You interfere with my seeing your color or your, you know? Um, but that doesn't mean that the exterior thing is the organ of my sight. Or my sense of smell, right? No. The sensing is inside the sense organs, yeah? Okay? Mm-hmm. And the understanding of reason is inside a reason, right? But when we examine the character of understanding. That you're understanding a continuous thing in an uncontinuous way, right? Or, like he argued there from Aristotle, that you're understanding all what? Bodies, right? Then you realize that the understanding is not taking place in a body. And then you realize that, you know, you really have an either-or statement here, right? Either, right? If a blow on the brain interferes with thinking, then either the brain is the organ of thought, right? Or it's on the side of the object of thought. But what it is, it doesn't tell you, see? If a blow on something interferes with my seeing, then that something is the organ of my sight? No. As I showed in that example, right? You can interfere with my seeing by blowing on the light bulb as well as by blowing on my eye. And one is on the side of the organ, the other is on the side of the, what? Object, huh? So, you see, if a blow on something interferes with my seeing, that something is the organ of sight. That's obviously a mistake, isn't it? All you can say on the basis of that is that if a blow on something interferes with my seeing, then that something is either the organ of sight or it's on the side of the, what? Object of sight, right? See? Do you see that? See? I'm listening to Mozart, right? That's, that's, that's my, this thing, okay? Now, what could interfere with my hearing, the beautiful music of Mozart? My wife could say, that's too loud! And turn it down and turn it down so far that I couldn't even hear it anymore, right? That would interfere with my hearing Mozart, right? The other way would be like poor Beethoven, I guess his father used to box him on the ears, right? That's how he eventually went deaf in one ear. You know, he had kind of a rough father, I guess, and, you know, you know, you know, he used to do that sometimes. You know, he'd do it like that, he'd read it. Oh, yeah, that's for sure, yeah. And sometimes you had these kind of tough teachers in high school that would, would do this, you know, and it really gives you a shock, wakes up the kid, right? Yeah. But apparently his father did this a little too much, and this is what led to his subsequent deafness. I don't know if there was something congenital, too, but I think it was, that's what they attributed to, but, but anyway, that's beside the point. You could interfere with my hearing Mozart by whacking me on the head, right? Whacking me on the ears, punching my eardrum or something, right? Or you could do, interfere with it by turning the volume down so I couldn't hear anymore. Interfering with the object, right? Or you could kick my, my, my speakers in or something, or my, and dear yourself to me, you see? So there's two ways of interfering with my, my hearing, huh? So if a blow on something interferes with my hearing Mozart, that something must be the organ of my hearing? No, it might be on the side of the object, right, huh? I got this new computer at home. I had to get a new computer because the other one was just, it wasn't functioning anymore, right? Well, of course, it has all these things that I don't really need, right? But when my son comes in, who's a little more computer-wise, and he says, he pulled this thing up, right? There's these little things down at the bottom, he pulled it up. And it says iTunes, right? And you can go and get all this music, you know? And most of it I wouldn't want to hear, of course, but they have a section called classical. So I open it up, you know, and you've got all these things. Always Mozart, always Mozart. Another one is go for Baroque, you know, it's always Baroque. There's a Beethoven one, and there's, you know, some general ones that say classical, right? And so I said, gee, that's something, you see? So I put down the Mozart, you know, and all this Mozart music is coming out. It's continuous Mozart, one piece after another being played. It's kind of nice, it's a little distracting in your computer. And you can actually, you know, do something on the computer, you know, type something out or something, or read something on it with this music playing, right? So it's going fine, and all of a sudden, the Mozart's gone. I don't know what happened to it. So that happens sometimes, they say, you know, it just, it goes out or something happens, you know. Well, finally, after Deer, so it came back to Mozart, so I don't know whether it's going to do that. But somebody's taught me, you guys, one of these, you know, that, you know, sometimes, it's somehow on the internet on this kind of like a, you know, station. I don't know. There's some question, a legal question about it, too, but it's kind of nice where I ask anyway. But there, nobody hit my ear, but something in these computers, they've got a mind of their own, and all of a sudden, it's gone. It didn't even appear on the screen anymore, right? Couldn't get it, right? Well, that was a blow somewhere out there on the internet or something, or a blow in my machine, right? Or something, right? But that was on the side of the object, right? It interferes with my hearing Mozart. Do you see the point? Yeah. So, a grunt, per se, is he can reason correctly if he could pull up the image or see. Yeah. That's the only thing that's... But you interfere with the images, you interfere with the thinking, but it's on the side of the object, right? Yeah. See? So you turn down the volume, it's like, I can't hear it, or you, you know, bring in all this, what, static, you know, the old radio sometimes, you know, you find you hear one station, and there are other stations coming in all the time. And that happens even on the car radios, you know, from time to time, you know, you're listening to something, all that static comes in, or you get some other voice, or you get the police talking or something. All these things interfere with you hearing something, but it's all on the side of the object, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So notice the way Thomas solves it here in the third one here. To the third, it should be said that a body is required for the action of understanding, right, or the understanding, not as an organ by which such an action is exercised, right, but by reason of the object, huh? You see, he's taking the distinction that I'm making here. For the phantasm, he uses the Greek word, the phantasm or the image is compared to the understanding as color to what? Sight. And that's the proportion that the great Aristotle used, huh? Thus, to need a body does not take away the understanding of being subsistent. Otherwise, the animal would not be something subsisting, because it needs exterior sensibles to sense, right? You see? So he's showing the defect in that argument of that student years ago. But this is what leads most people to, what, think that the brain is the organ of thought, huh? They don't see these two possible connections, right? Sure, yeah. They could be. And they don't know the arguments to show that the understanding is not a body, right? I mean, you've got an either-or syllogism here, huh? You can say, if a blow on the brain, or alcohol going to the brain, etc., interferes with thinking, then either, either the brain is the organ of thought, or it's on the side of the object, huh? Well, which of those two it is, you've got to have some reason to eliminate one. But by these arguments that we saw in the body of the article, or by the arguments I was developing on the board again, we show that the brain, or the understanding, doesn't understand in a body, right? It doesn't have a body organ. Therefore, it must be interfering on the side of the object, right? But if someone hasn't seen the arguments for the understanding being immaterial, and not seeing this either-or, right, they're going to jump to that conclusion, right? And most of them do, huh? And Aristotle gives, you know, the materialistic understanding of the understanding in the Greeks there. Homer describes that he gets hit on the head there, right, huh? In battle, right? And he lay there thinking other thoughts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's kind of a funny line in a sense, but it kind of illustrates their thinking, right? And my brother Mark, you know, he jokes about that because he and Brother Edmund there, the Christian brother taught philosophy at St. Mary's. They used to go, you know, mountain climbing sometimes. And they were up in the mountains, and the rocks gave way, and my brother fell, right? And he was temporarily knocked unconscious, you know? And Brother Edmund was trying to get down to my brother, right? And he almost fell, too, because it was a dangerous thing. And by the time he got down to my brother Mark, I guess my brother Mark had come, too, you know? But they had to fly him off eventually to the helicopter, you know, which led to all kinds of problems with the insurance. You know, the insurance paid for helicopters or not, because that's an expensive thing. But anyway, my brother Mark's joke, well, afterwards, when this incident was recuperated for a bit, if I had been quick enough thinking, he says, I would have pretended that my whole philosophy had changed, you know, from this blow that had received, you know? And Marcus Berkowitz lay there thinking, you know, like a Hegelian or a Cartesian or a Marxist or some Cartesian or some other guy. He, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he