De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 95: The Multiple Senses of 'Before' and Causation

Transcript
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An example I often give is that of the word cat. If I write or print the word cat, the letter C is before the word cat in time as well as in being. But if I have a stamp, you know, where I just stamp on the page and the whole word appears at once, then C is not before the word cat in time, is it? But it's still before it in being. So it's different senses. Then the third sense of before is in the discourse of reason. Now to each of these senses you can attach other senses by assuming proximity, like any before in our knowledge could be attached to that third sense. And then the fourth sense of before is much different. That's the sense of better. What is the third sense again? Before in the discourse of reason. Before, therefore, in our knowledge could be used to that, right? Just like the first sense of before in time, before in motion, or before in place. And Shakespeare, I can mention how he puns upon before in place and before in what? Goodness and being loved. Because in Oswald and Innswell, the countess forces the daughter there, the doctor, to profess her love for her son, the count, right? And she kind of kneels before the countess, huh? And then she says, and before you, in high heaven, huh? I say the dicks to heaven, and before you, I love your son. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is better? The goods of the body or the goods of the soul or the outside goods, huh? And I said, you know, reward here, reward here, the gold medal and the silver medal and the bronze medal, right, huh? Okay, but which gets the gold medal? Well, usually I take the outside goods and I oppose them to both the goods of the body and the goods of the soul, the outside goods compared to the what? Inside goods. Okay? And I say, now, we've already brought out earlier in the course that the end or purpose is always better than what is for the sake of the end. So then at this point I make an induction to show that the outside is for the sake of the inside. So my eyes and nose are not for the sake of my glasses, I think, but my glasses are for the sake of my eye, huh? And my body's not for the sake of my clothing, but my clothing is for the sake of my, what? Body. And I tell them, if your body was for the sake of your clothing, you'd be like one of those mannequins downtown in the department stores that are there to display the clothing, right? And I say, am I here for the sake of getting my automobile to school every day? Or is the automobile there for the sake of getting my body and me to school, huh? And so is your notebook, is your mind for the sake of your notebook? Or is your notebook in your book for the sake of your mind? Well, inductively, you can see that the outside is for the sake of the inside. And since the end is always better than what is for the sake of the end, then we're going to have to say the inside goods are better. And therefore, award the bronze medal to the outside goods. And then we say, which is better now? The goods of the body, the goods of the soul? Well, I say, if you knew enough about the body of the soul, you'd know the body's for the sake of the soul, but you don't know enough about that. So then I go back to what we learned in Socrates, or Shakespeare's education, right? They'll admit that man is better than a beast, right? Mm-hmm. Was man better than the beast by the goods he has in common with the beast? Obviously not. Therefore, he must be better than the beast by the goods he doesn't have in common with the soul. So he must be better goods. And then I say, which is better, man or God, right? Well, of course, they admit that God is better. Well, the goods of the soul are more the God-like goods, huh? Than the goods of the body, huh? And, of course, he's talking about the end or purpose of man, the act with reason, to human virtue, and so on. And the end is always better, and the goods of the soul are obviously closer to the end, huh? So finally you end up awarding the gold medal to the goods of the soul, and the silver medal to the goods of the body, huh? Well, I say then to them, what do the Athenians have to say from their position, see? Well, they can't really think of anything to say in defense of the Athenians, huh? And they admit the Americans think the way the Athenians do. So I say, your whole life is based on a mistake, see? So, I say, well, let me help you. I'll try to help the opposite side, see? I say, huh? So my standard question is, which is better, to philosophize or to breathe? I know what they're going to say, see? So everybody's saying to breathe, right? I say, okay, now, everybody who thinks to breathe is better than to philosophize, raise your hand. Every hand goes up in the class, at least this class. Okay? How many think that to philosophize is better than to breathe? Well, no hands are up, so I did this. All right. Now, there's one girl there who had been particularly quick to say, you know, breathing is better than philosophizing, right? So I said to her, now, why? Why do you say breathing is better than philosophizing? And she gives the reason I think we most have in mind that if you're not breathing, you won't be doing anything else. You'll be dead, right? Well, if you're not philosophizing, you'll still be living, right? Okay? Okay. See, now, what have you shown me? You've shown me that breathing is before philosophizing in the second sense of before. It's before in being, right? Yeah. But I didn't ask you whether it was before in the second sense. I asked you, was it before in the fourth sense? Is it better? And can you say, because it's before in the second sense of the word, therefore it's before in the fourth sense? Is that logical? I said, what if we said, you know, Chaucer is before Shakespeare in time, therefore he's better than Shakespeare. Is that a good argument? You can't reason because he's before in time, therefore he's before in goodness. You can't reason from one sense of before to another sense, can you? No. No. That's the most common mistake in thinking according to the father of logic. So the argument's no good, I said. And you're deceived by the most common kind of mistake. Even though we've talked to the senses of before, but you're still deceived, right? So now they're there kind of frustrated. What do you have to do, right? Well, let me try to strengthen your argument a little bit more, I said. Okay? I said, now, isn't the opposite of the worse better? I say, now, if someone says, for example, which is worse? If my cat gets killed or my son gets killed, which is worse? Son. Okay. So if it's worse that my son be killed than the cat be killed, then my son must be better than what? The cat. The cat, right? Huh? Okay. And what should be worse, to have my ballpoint pin stolen by one of you guys? Or to have my car stolen by one of you guys? Huh? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, it's worse to have your car stolen. The car must be more valuable than the ballpoint pin, right? So that's probable, right? That the opposite of the worse is better. Now, I said, what should be worse, for me to stop philosophizing for the next hour or to stop breathing for the next hour? Well, obviously it would be worse, right? To stop breathing, right? So now you have an argument of some probability that breathing is better than what's philosophizing, huh? They said that, however, I said, there's an important exception to the rule that the opposite of the worse is better. And what is that? Again, you've got to know the senses of before and after. When the lesser good is before the greater good in being, in the second sense of before. That is when the lesser good can be without the greater good. But the greater good cannot be without the lesser good. Then the loss of the lesser good is worse than the loss of the greater good. Because the loss of the lesser good will entail the loss of the greater good as well. While the loss of the greater good, in that case, would still leave you with the lesser good. It's something. You see the idea? We're being example, right? Well, example you just gave there, right? Breathing is before philosophizing, huh? Mm-hmm. In being, right? Mm-hmm. So if you stop breathing, you'll stop philosophizing as well. Right. But if you stop philosophizing, you won't stop breathing. Right. So the loss, therefore, of breathing is worse than the loss of philosophizing because breathing is before philosophizing and being. And therefore, the loss of breathing also will result in the loss of what? Philosophy. Of philosophizing, right? But the loss of philosophizing but still, indeed, you're breathing. You see? Now, you know, the theological example is that of faith, hope, and charity, right? And St. Paul is very clear. The Church is very clear that charity is the greatest of the three riches, right? Mm-hmm. So charity is better than hope and hope is better than what? Faith. Yeah. But which is worse? To lose charity or to lose hope? Which is worse? To lose charity or to lose faith? Well, if faith is before hope and charity and being, as it is, then the loss of faith will entail the loss of hope and charity, too. But the loss of charity would not entail the loss of hope or faith. So in that sense, the loss of the lesser good, faith, would be worse, huh? Than the loss of charity because it would involve, because it was being before and being, the loss of those as well. So it seems like the theological concept of faith, hope, and love where obviously charity is the greatest but faith in the other sense of time is... Yeah, but also in being, too, you see. But with breathing and philosophy, it's always breathing that's more important. There is no... No, no, no, no. Is it more important you mean more necessary or better? That's more necessary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's the second sense of before. That doesn't mean better, though. See, you're mixing up the second and the fourth sense of before. And as I say, you know, the proposition I developed with them before I get into this is that the end is always better than what is for the sake of the end. So medicine is better than health and knowing is better than studying and having money is better than making money and so on. And they kind of admit this inductively that the end is better, right? And then you can also show it by that very universal statement that when the same belongs to two things, right? But to one of them because of the other, it belongs more to the cause. You see that statement, haven't you, here? Usually when Aristotle or Thomas did it, when we say it very briefly, you know, that kind of looks more so. Popter quadum quadquedum magis, right? And if I always expand on that a little bit, huh? On account of which, more so. Okay? But more clearly, huh? This way. When the same belongs to two things, but to one of them because of the other, okay? It belongs more to the cause, the one that is the cause. Usually I illustrate that with something very simple at the beginning with. I say, suppose sweet belongs to sugar and to my coffee. But to my coffee, because of the sugar I put in it, which is sweeter? Sugar. Yeah. And the pot is said of the fire in the fireplace there, and of the air around the fireplace, but it's said of the air around the fireplace because of the fire, which is hot. The fireplace. Yeah. And a very obvious example. If wet is said of what? Water and the dishcloth. But the dishcloth is because of water, which is wetter. And salt is said of salt. And I have my french fries, but I have my french fries because of the salt, which is more salty. Okay? If the idea is basic principle. Okay. Now, when they apply it to every part of philosophy, like, for example, in logic, suppose in a socialism, the conclusion is known, right? And the premises are known. But the conclusion is known through the premises, right? Which is more known? Yeah. And of course, if the premises were not more known than the conclusion, you wouldn't use the premises to prove the conclusion. You see the idea? No, I'm sorry. Could you say that again, please? Yeah. If known is said of the premises of a syllogism, that's a perfect argument, and of the conclusion, okay, but it's said of the conclusion because of the premises, then the premises are more known than the conclusion. Always because? Yeah. Okay. And because it wouldn't make any sense to say the premises were not more known than the conclusion, because you wouldn't try to prove one thing to another, unless what you're using to prove the other was more known to you. More known, yeah. Okay. But if you prove it, aren't they all known the same? No. No. No? All right. Okay. That's a subtle thing about this, isn't it? Okay. And then when you're talking about a mover, right? And you say, who's moving this erasure? Me or the chalk? You. Yeah. But you could say that some way the chalk is moving too, right? Yeah. Right? But mover is said of me and the chalk, but of the chalk because of me, right? Right. So I'm more the mover than the chalk is, right? Yes. Let's take an example of this. You know, you're standing at the edge of the cliff, and I feel like I put a pole to your back, and chomp! Over you go, right? Yeah. Now, do you punish the pole, or do you punish me? Because it's crying. I didn't touch it. I didn't touch it. The pole did it, huh? But the pole pushed you over insofar as it's being moved by me, right? So I'm more the cause of your death than the poor pole. Pole, right? Okay. Well, then we apply this to the end and the means. You have two... Things that are good are desirable, right? But the means is desired for the sake of the end, huh? Like medicine says, desired for the sake of health. So good is said of health and of medicine, but of the medicine because of health, which is good-er, which is more good or better. Yeah, yeah. And if knowing, if good is said of knowing and of studying, it's good to know, right? It's good for you students to study. But if studying is good, because it leads to knowing, right? Which is good-er, better. Knowing. Knowing, yeah, yeah. So, going back to breathing then, see? Is breathing the end or purpose of life? See, I told them when I was a little boy, they used to see you eating a lot of candy or something, and they'd tell you to, you know, in grade school, do you eat to live or do you live to eat? And the answer is supposed to be that you eat to live, right? That's the correct answer. But some people get a little mixed up, right, about what this is all about, right? But does anybody think that his purpose of life is to breathe? Do you live to breathe? Or do you breathe to live? Now, nobody makes breathing their end, right? Even if they make eating their end, right? Eating would be the end, not the breathing. So, therefore, breathing is for the sake of something else, that something else has to be better, right? And so philosophizing is the end. Then breathing is not going to be as good as philosophizing. So, they're finished off now, so. There's nothing to say. But notice how important it is to see the different senses of before, right? Because, first of all, you point out to them that they're arguing that breathing is better than philosophizing because it can be without philosophizing and vice versa. So they're actually showing that breathing is before philosophizing in the second sense of before. Well, I didn't ask you what was before in the second sense. I asked you which was what? What? Before in the fourth sense. In the fourth sense, which is better. And the main reason for saying that something is better is that it's the end. The same way if I argued from some other sense of. I said, you know, I came before you in time, I say to the student. Therefore, I'm better than you. Well, no, you're better than you! I said, it's obviously a bad argument, isn't it, huh? You see? What comes before in time might be better or might not be. You see, you can't reason for one to the other, though, right? And, uh... But then when they try to, you know, I try to have to help them, you know? And then they try to help them with the idea that it's worse to stop breathing, you know? And there's some probability in saying the opposite of the worst is what? Well, it's better, right? That's true for the most part. But the exception is when the lesser good is, what? Before in being. Then the loss of the lesser good is worse than the loss of the greater good. I took a very obvious example of that. I said, which is better, just to live or to live well? Well, they all admit that to live well is, what, better than to just live. But you can live without living well. But you can't live well without living, no? So you're going to say that living is better than living well? It picks it up. Two different senses of before, huh? Now, one thing that you see is that sometimes this is before that in more than one sense of before. So Homer, for example, is before in time. You know, Aeschylus or Rippides and so on. He's also before in the sense of being better, huh? Okay? But when you see the order reversed, you're very clear the different senses. So Chaucer, you know, Chaucer comes before Shakespeare in English literature. But all the critics put Shakespeare before Chaucer. But two different senses of before, clearly there. Because it's just the reverse, huh? Chaucer is before Shakespeare in one sense. And in the reverse sense, Shakespeare is before Chaucer. Now, all that's to lead up to what Tom's going to say here, right? If that isn't bad enough, the five senses of before, when you talk about the cause being before the effect, there's more than one meaning of the word cause. And what's most essential here is to see the difference between a cause and the sense of matter or the subject of something. And a cause in the sense of of the mover or maker or the end of the purpose. And they're going to be before in two different ways, huh? Okay. Now let's read what he says here. I'll come back in a moment. Notice, huh? Notice the way Thomas has ordered the before and after here is Article 6 and 7. He had to see Article 6 first, how the powers of the soul flow from the, what? Soul itself, the essence of the nature of the soul, right? And then among these powers that are flowing from the soul, one flows from the soul before another one. Not before in time, right? But in the way that a cause is before, right? An effect, huh? And so he goes back to the way in which the soul or the nature of the soul, the essence of the soul, as he calls it in Latin, is a cause of the powers, right? And it's a cause of the powers in more than one way. He contrasts the way in which it's a cause that's more perfect than them. It's a before, according to a kind of cause, that's more perfect than its effect, right? And that's the mover or maker and the end, huh? And a cause that is not more perfect, namely the matter or the subject, which is going to be perfected by something better, right? But which would be before in the generation was it coming to be, huh? Okay? So if I talk in man, let's say, about the senses and the reason, huh? Well, the reason comes before the senses in terms of perfection, of being better, right? And in a way, it's the end or purpose, you might say, of sensing, huh? But in the order of, what, generation, the senses kind of dispose for reason. Okay? So he's got to point that out now, huh? And because the essence of the soul is compared to the powers as an active principle, like a mover and an end, and also as a principle that is receptive, huh? Either a part by itself as it's receptive of the ability to understand and the will, or together with the body, it's receptive of these other powers, like the powers of sensing and digesting and so on. The agent and the end is more perfect and the susceptive one, the beginning that is like matter, as such is, what, less perfect, huh? It follows that the powers of the soul which are before, and before always means some kind of order, right? But by the order of perfection and nature are beginnings of the other ones in the way in which an end or an active principle is a beginning. For we see that the sense is for the sake of the understanding and not the reverse. For the sense is a certain deficient partaking of the, what, what understanding is, huh? And you find sometimes even students will not want to say that seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting is knowing. One reserved the word knowing for what the reason does, right? But in some sense, you have to say that seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching is knowing, right? But sometimes the fact that they hesitate to call it knowing is that they see it as being a kind of imperfect knowing compared to the way the mind knows. Whence? By a natural origin, in some way, it is from the understanding, just as the imperfect comes from the what? Perfect. But according to the road of a receiving principle, it is the reverse, for the more imperfect powers are found to be beginnings with respect to the others. As the soul, according as it has the power of sensing, is considered as a subject in something like matter with respect to the what? Understanding, huh? An account of this, the more imperfect powers are before in the way of generation. For man is generated before what? Man, huh? Before an animal is generated before man? What did I say? Yeah, okay. Animals generated before man, huh? That's why when I explained the natural road there, and I say, well, because man is by nature an animal with reason, huh? An animal, by definition, has senses. Man has senses and reason. But what is generic, huh? Animal, comes before in generation, huh? So the natural road will be from the senses into what? Reason, huh? But in another way, you could say reason is before the senses. It's the end, huh? So he sees two different orders, huh? And in one order, reason is before the senses, for example, and in the other, senses are before what? Reason. And that corresponds to the fact that there's more than one meaning of the word cause. And therefore, the order that's based upon the beginning that is a cause will be of more than one meaning. And the fact that this can be before that, and that before the other, is a sign that you have more than one meaning there. It kind of used to say, every respectable word in philosophy is a word that's equivocal. But not by chance, equivocal by reason. And the first philosopher that I know of to really recognize that clearly was Aristotle. Although Plato's kind of on the way, huh? You can see Plato kind of hinting at this, huh? When Aristotle first went to the words we use everywhere, like whole and part, before and after, and he found that all of these words that we use everywhere, and that we especially use in the axioms, and especially use in wisdom, that these words are all equivocal by reason. And so you distinguish the central meanings of these words and show the order among them, huh? And that helped him to be much more clear in what he was saying and thinking, and enabled him to avoid the fallacy of what? Equivocation, huh? Mm-hmm. I told you at the time when I was a young professor there, before I had my doctorate out at St. Mary's in California, and this was a time when, you know, the evil empire was quite active, so I was going to teach a course on Marx, huh? Mm-hmm. Okay? And so in those days, you know, if you're going to use books that were really perverse, you had to get official permission from the diocese, huh? And this was done through the registrar. So I think I told you that story? No. I mentioned, I might use a little bit of The Essence of Christianity, which is this perverse little work by Vorabach, huh? And Vorabach was read enthusiastically by Karl Marx and Inglis. Right. And of course, in this perverse little work called The Essence of Christianity, Vorabach was claiming that Christianity is kind of a symbolic, poetic way of saying that man himself is God. So it's taking, you know, the mystery of incarnation, which is, along with the Trinity, the greatest mystery of the faith, the mystery today, right, of the enunciation, and blasphemously, right, saying that it means that, not that God became man, but that man himself is God, right? Well, what does he, how does he reason? Try to reason this, huh? Well, one of his socialisms is that man's mind's infinite, huh? Yeah. True. And there is some way in which man's mind's infinite. We can always learn something more, right? We know the universal. I know what an odd number is. And so I know in some way an infinity of things. Yeah. Because an odd number is said of the infinity of things, right? And then he quotes some theologian saying, the infinite is God. That's it. Well, this would be laughable to Aristotle and Thomas, because now do they know in general that the most common mistake in thinking is due to mixing up different senses of the same word, right? But if you look at the first book of natural hearing of Aristotle, this is one of the words that shows up there is having more than one meaning. So it's a common example of a word, right? That has more than one meaning, you know? Well, without trying to be too profound here, when you say that man's mind is infinite, among other things you mean is that he can always learn something more, so that his mind is always what? In some sense, incomplete or imperfect, right? So it's a kind of potential infinity, huh? And when you say the infinite is God, you mean that he's not lacking in any perfection, huh? He's universally perfect, huh? So Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and so on, they buy that right out, right? And so if you look at Karl Marx's doctoral thesis and the famous preface to it, you know, he's saying that we reject anyone and just don't admit the human mind is a high divinity. So in some sense, the Marxists claim we're atheists, right? We claim that man is God, huh? But I mean, that's kind of gross, but it's a common thing, this kind of mistake, huh? I told you, you know, how when I give the final exam of the philosophy of nature, and we spend a lot of time at the end of the course showing that nature acts for an end, huh? And by end, we mean purpose, not for the sake of it, you know, something good. And I told you how students, you know, well, say, well, nature can't be acting for an end because then all things would come to an end. And all things would not come to an end. But it makes you have two different senses of end. And Aristotle touches upon that in the beginning of Nicomaiic Ethics, you know? And someone said, you know, the end of man is, that happiness is the end of man, meaning the purpose of man, death, and sacrifice. But the end of man is death. Yeah. Better happiness is death, right? But Aristotle moves to the fact that the word end has got these two different meanings. And so when I say death is the end of life, I mean, it's the purpose of life. I'm going to say the writing is the end of the fault-like end. So, people mix up the word end and the word infinite, right? And it is again and again. John Locke, in the third book of this, In the Universe Standing, he has some awareness of the fact that there's all kinds of confusion in conversation because of words having more than one meaning. But he doesn't really go back then and let's think out the meanings, the basic meanings at least, the central meanings, right, of the words we use all the time. You don't do that. And the only guy that does it, you know, is Aristotle and a few of those who follow him. Maybe the only guy is, you know, Thomas, I think I mentioned how in his commentary in the fourth book of the Physics, Aristotle distinguishes the eight central senses of him, but he doesn't bother there to order them, right? Or, you know, he has a text of orderism, like he does in the fifth book of Wisdom. So Thomas says, we'll order them in the way we learn from the fifth book of the Physics. Thomas orders them perfectly. It's really, really marvelous what he does at them. I don't think anybody else can do it. It's incredible. But other people are being deceived all the time, right? So it's important here to realize that one power of the soul can be before another power of the soul in one sense of before, corresponding to one kind of cause. The kind of cause is more perfect than its effect, right? And then another kind of power can be before the former, right? The first order, according to another kind of what? Cause. In this sense, the matter, which is by its very nature, perfect compared to other causes, and it receives perfection to anything else. Dr. Yeah. As an example of showing something to be flawed, could you take, like, the arguments that were leading up to invading Iraq, you know, and so forth, Bush's arguments and saying, okay, here's his arguments. Can you show how his arguments are flawed, or would that be too complicated for the philosophy to be able to do? Well, notice, now, this is a question of, not a philosophy directly, but of the virtue of foresight, or prudencia, right? Okay? Now, if you go to the secunda secunde, right, where Thomas takes up the virtue of, in Latin it's called prudencia, right? But prudencia comes from the Latin word for foresight. So, the English word to really bring us out is foresight. And you can see very clearly when Thomas distinguishes the, the integral or composing parts of foresight, one of the objections is that providentia is not a part of, of prudencia, because it's the same thing. And Thomas says, well, yeah, it's the main part of prudencia, and therefore it gives its name to the whole. And actually, Thomas' etymology here is correct. If you go to the Latin dictionaries, prudencia is a contraction of providentia, between foresight, see? But you get a man like, you know, a man of foresight, like, say, Winston Churchill, the Second World War, right? I notice in his books, you know, I sometimes copy out the way he writes, he'll use the word foresight rather than the word prudence. Of course, the word prudence has lost, you know, its full meaning. So this is a matter of foresight, of political but also military foresight, huh? I think what's kind of interesting here is this, that one of the, the integral parts of foresight is called caution, right? Okay? And sometimes the intended result, something other than the intended result, that is bad is going to happen, right? Okay? And sometimes even the opposite of what you intend, right? And I was noticing that when I was teaching the apology there, because when Socrates is addressing those who have voted for his condemnation and for his sense of death, right? And why do they want to silence Socrates? Because he's going around pointing out that their life is unreasonable. Life is based on a mistake, right? They don't want to have their life examined, huh? They want to leave an unexamined life. And Socrates says, But you know, I'm 70 years old. In the course of nature, I won't be around much more, huh? But now by killing me, you'll make an example of me, a martyr of me, right? And now lots of other people will say, Why did the Athenians kill the wise man Socrates? Now the people will be looking into you. They wouldn't look into you. Otherwise, if you let me die in the course of nature, you could, you know, forget about me and go on your very unexamined life. And I told the students to say, This is the year 2003. And this trial took place in 399 BC. This is 2,400 years later. And we just got through examining, again, what was wrong with the way the Athenians were living, right? And I said, Plato never would have written this thing if, you know, Socrates had not been, you know, sentenced to death, right? Well, I think the best argument, in a sense, against the war would be to say that you're going to, unintendedly, in a sense, produce more terrorists, right? Yeah. Than less, see? Because Al-Qaeda and these other groups will be able to use the, um, uh, Asian America, right, in these, because of the war, as a way of recruiting more people, right? You see? Mm-hmm. See? Now, the reply to that, of course, would be to say that, well, okay, maybe you're right. Maybe, maybe this is going to result in more terrorists than less, huh? But maybe they'll be, the quality of terrorists, because they have equality, uh, their terribleness, right, huh? Will be less, right? Because if they got their hands on some of these chemicals and biological things, right? Uh, they would make 9-11 look like a minor incident, huh? And, uh, you know, the, the, the ricin that they discovered in, uh, one of the apartments there in London, right? And then they discovered ricin in, uh, in the, Ricin. It's one of those very, very dangerous, very deadly things, you know, a fish off right, you know, no known cure for it, right? Mm-hmm. And then they found ricin in, in, in some kind of container inside one of the, uh, uh, it was the railroad stations there in France, huh? And, undoubtedly, it'd been dropped off by somebody, to be picked up by somebody else, right? Well, you know, they had a terrible, you know, thing in Japan over there on the subways there, mm-hmm. Back a few years ago, right? Oh, yeah, sorry. See? So it might be that if we don't, um, go in and, and, uh, knock out these rogue governments, right? Like, they're, we're supplying the terrorists, um, the terrorists won't be as potent as what they can do, right? See, that's a very hard thing to, what? To bells, isn't it, huh? Mm-hmm. You see? So one's talking about quality, and one's talking about quantity. Yeah, yeah. That's what I'm saying, you know. I, I, I, that's my own language, see. But I think there's something to be said that this might, uh, anger many people in the Middle East, right? Whether right there wrongly, I think, you know. Some people will get angry about this, and that will make it more easier to recruit people to be terrorists, huh? So you can give, at least a probable case, it seems to me, that this might lead to, uh, more people being able to be recruited into terrorist, huh? You see? On the other hand, as I say, right? Mm-hmm. If there's a affiliation between the terrorists and these rogue nations that have the money to develop, right, everything from chemical, biological, even to atomic powers, right? And we're going to pass these on to the terrorists. The terrorists are much more potent in what they can do, right? You see? So that might be even a greater danger, huh? You see? So it's hard to balance these things, huh? You know? When MacArthur, you know, um, planned the Incheon Landing, I always talk about that here. We talked about that before, I mean, Jim. Mm-hmm. During the Korean War, right, we were being pushed into the ocean there, right? Mm-hmm. And MacArthur had a plan to land there at Incheon, which is a very dangerous place to land. And the tides, you know, don't be much window of opportunity there to land there. Mm-hmm. And MacArthur was convinced that they wouldn't expect him to land there. Mm-hmm. And therefore not be defended sufficiently, right? Mm-hmm. And that would be close enough that he could cut off the supplies, huh? And it worked just the way MacArthur said it was going to work, huh? Mm-hmm. You see? But, um, Washington was extremely nervous about this, and they sent the Chief of Staff, Lawton Collins, huh, and one of the top admirals, to see MacArthur, to convince him not to do this. Mm-hmm. And, uh, uh, MacArthur, uh, you know, they spoke first, you know, and everybody, I've written several descriptions of, you know, everybody there, tensing for MacArthur to speak, you know, and people are, you know, wrapping their pencils, like, but they're nervous. They're trying to start very, very slow, and he says, I want to do what, what Wolf did in Quebec, huh? Now, if you know, you know, I studied in Quebec, of course, Wolf came up the Hudson there, and the French defenses were very strong, where you'd expect the man to try to get up to the heights of Quebec. Mm-hmm. And Wolf went up further, where no one thought he could climb the thing, huh? Mm-hmm. And found a way up, huh? Mm-hmm. And surprised the French. And that led to the capture of Quebec, and really the British winning the, you know, the French and Indian War, of, uh, 1754 and 1763, huh? And MacArthur said he could do the same thing, right? You know? Mm-hmm. But now, was MacArthur sure that the Incheon landing would, you know? He had a contingency plan if, if, you know? Mm-hmm. Things went wrong, and he says, you know, he's going to get the men out, and nothing carried down a half except, you know, my reputation as a general. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And, uh, and the guy who was with MacArthur, when they went out, you know, the boat there to watch the landing, and MacArthur called him up, and he put over the whole plan.