Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 15: Anaxagoras on Mind: Unlimited, Self-Ruling, and Unmixed

Transcript
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Or in Latin, they say ad aliquid, towards another, right? Okay. So to be double is something towards another, right? But is anything in itself double? No. So you shouldn't speak that way, should you? Okay. It's very important to understand the Trinity later on, right? Because in the Gospel of St. John there, we translate it. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, right? But the Greek says, and the Word was pros, towards God, right? So if you understand what relation is, pros-te, right? Towards another, then you can see the beginning there of what Augustine and Boethius and Thomas and so on see that distinction of persons is a relative distinction, right? Okay, now the next paragraph is, again, merely coming back upon things we've seen before, right? But notice, nor is it possible, he says, to exist apart from other things, but all things have a share of everything, huh? Okay. Well, in a way, that's true, as Aristotle would say, in ability, right? So there's something in me that's able to be a, what? A lion, right? Something in me that's able to be a shark. It's not that I have a little bit of lion and shark in me, but there is something in me that is able to be worms, right? To be dust, right? You see? Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return, huh? Well, maybe we're not dust actually, but we're able to be dust. But he's imagining these things to be actually in there, right? And, of course, our mind has a hard time understanding this ability of matter, or I should say this ability that is matter, right? And they tend to imagine what is their inability to be actually in there, and then they have problems about fitting it in, huh? That's a very common mistake in human thinking, but it's a good example of what we call false imagination. As Weitzhaker says, when you imagine something, you make it actual in your imagination. On the top of page 8, he's again emphasizing an idea. The things in the one world are not separated from each other, and are cut off with an axe. Neither the warm from the cold, nor the cold from the warm. He's almost back in an axe agress, saying hot and cold are the same, right? But you could say, right, that what is actually warm is able to be cold, right? And what is actually cold is able to be warm. In that sense, they're not cut off, right? But it's not as if they're actually both, right? So the multitude of things separated cannot be known in word or in deed, huh? Aristotle will give this as a sort of difficulty for axe agress, because to know something, you have to know what it's put together from, right? To know what a definition is, you've got to know what's put together from a genus in differences, right? And to know my name, you've got to know, what? The letters in my name, right? But now if a name or a word had an infinity of letters in it, would you ever know that name or a word? No. So he's saying that everything has within it an infinity of things, right? And therefore it seems you can't really know what anything really is. And yet, Anaxagros is giving his whole life to the study of the natural world, right? And they asked Anaxagros, why is it better to be born than not to have been born, right? So one could, you know, contemplate to know the universe, right? And yet his position making is somewhat difficult to know that, huh? I can't do that. Now, the next group of fragments is going to talk about how these things that are mixed together are, at least in part, separated, right? And in a kind of immediate way, he's going to have them being separated by a circular motion. But eventually he's going to see that the mover, or the cause of the circular motion, is some greater mind, huh? Okay? Now, it's kind of interesting that he should use a circular motion to separate things, because we do that too, don't we, huh? Yeah. You see? Um, if I want to put a stone through your window out here, right? Mm-hmm. You know? I could tie the stone in something, right? And then, what? Swirl around and shoot it, right? Mm-hmm. And break your window that way, right? Mm-hmm. And if, um, they want to spit the atom, they have this thing they call what? Mm-hmm. Cycle short. Yeah. Which means it runs in a circle, right? And they keep on accelerating it, and then finally shoot it, right? Mm-hmm. My friend Jim Fransack, the ex-Golden Gloves Boxer, you know, he's giving you a little lesson there on how to box. Mm-hmm. After he gets to be all wrapped up here in the gloves and so on, he says, the first thing he does, he says, you know, it's like this for a question, so you know, you stand like this, right? Mm-hmm. And then you catch him. He says, when you're sitting like this, you're, what, getting power out of a circular what? Motion, right? And you see these guys, you know, those kicking things, you know, they're sitting around and they whack you in the jaw with their foot, right? You know? See? That's a circular move. So, um, and a lot of our drills and things work in a circular way, right? Mm-hmm. So, these things thus revolve and are separated by force and speed, and the speed makes the force. The speed of these things is not like the speed of any of the things that are now among men, but altogether many times as fast. Now, when you look out in the universe, you can still kind of see the whole world apparently revolving around us, right? So, you can still see the remains of this circular motion, but it's not as violent as it might have been at one time, right? Okay? And the thick and the moist and the cold and the dark came together where now is the earth. And the thin and the warm and the dry went outwards to the further part of the ether. Well, I remember digging the altar boy picnic out at the amusement park, and with my brother Mark, and we're on these machines, you know, running around, and I had a little baseball hat on, you know, and that baseball hat was flying off, you know? Got ground up in the machinery, I think. But I didn't go flying off, fortunately, right? Because I was, what, thick and heavy and so on, right? Right, huh? See? But the light things go flying off, see? So, the earth kind of settles down towards the middle of things, and then towards the outer part, you have these, what? The air and the fire and so on, these light things are kind of spread out, right? So, some kind of evidence for this and what we see now, right? And the circular motion still going on, the light things up there, and the heavy things like water, and the earth especially, and air and fire, out towards the extremities, huh? And so, he talks about these things in DK16, how the heavy things were solidified and so on, huh? But now, in DK17, you have a very interesting fragment here, and here he seems to be expressing the same thought we saw earlier in the great Empedocles, and perhaps the thought in all of these men, that the only change in the world is change of, what? Place, huh? And so, there's no such thing as dying, you know, that's an emotionally charged word, but it's not scientific, right? There's no such thing as birth, right? That's implying there's something coming ready to be, right? That wasn't there before. All you do is, what? Separate things that are mixed together, right? The Greeks do not rightly take coming into being and perishing. Nothing comes to be or perishes. But it's mixed and separated from existing things, huh? So, all you're doing is moving these things around, right? And thus, they'll be right to call coming to be mixing and perishing, what? Separating, right? Again, there's something in our mind that when a child comes into the world, or a parent dies, or a friend dies, right? That this is more than just a change of, what? Place, right? Although we speak that way, right? He's gone. She's gone. He's coming to the world. He's coming to the world. He's here. Yeah. Yeah. But they can't really understand how this would be possible. How would it be possible that something comes? to be there wasn't before right and you've heard me say kind of right say well to students what's going on in learning right is there a change of place of knowledge from the professor's head to the student's head which case professor beginning what yeah yeah they should pay you less and less the longer you teach because you know that's just doesn't have it anymore yeah yeah and uh but i said you guys try to say well it's just a rearrangement of molecules in somebody's head right you know was that really your experience or are you really coming to know something is there really now some knowledge in your head it wasn't in your head before you you learned this right but you get that knowledge out of nothing then his professor knows just as much as he did before where did knowledge come from see coming to those who died or something or coming to our heads lots of things in our experience that contradict this but it's hard to understand how that takes place huh and dk5 which is linked to with that third from the bottom there these things having been thus separated is necessary to know that all things are neither more nor less because if there's ever more things in the universe than there are now you would have got something out of nothing right and if there's ever less things in the universe than there are now then something would have become nothing right something would have been cut up into nothing right so things are never more nor less right for it's not possible for more than all to be but all things are forever equal and so sometimes i say to students the whole modern physical science is based upon this statement isn't it well the customary way of expressing what we know about the world and the physical sciences is by what is called an equation right and as the word itself indicates it's about equality right and i always go back to a simple algebraic example here that we now look at this idea of equality and what he's saying there and you take something like two times x plus y and if i go over here and i say two x plus y you're going to mark me wrong isn't it okay what's wrong what's wrong what's wrong he says well purpose you see when you put this in parentheses and you put it two before it means you got two of those things in the parentheses so you got x and y you got another x and y because you got two of what's in the parentheses so how many x you got two and how many y's got two and you lost a y right what happened to that y that's not allowed in algebra that one of the y's has what become nothing right well no all things are forever equal okay now vice versa if i was given two x plus y to begin with right and i have gone to two times parentheses x plus y then he would have explained hey you've got a y on the left side that you didn't have on the right side right something has come into existence you got something out of nothing burquist you see so either way you'd be wrong right in one case something would have gone out of existence other case something would have come into existence out of nothing so all you can do is mix and separate these things and i can mix it like this right or i could say if i want to do x plus x plus y plus y right but i can't let anything go out of existence and they come into existence all you do is mix and separate them that's kind of in a nutshell there what he's saying right and so modern physics and saying physical science is saying that the world can be expressed in equations is saying that things are never more nor less but they're always what equal huh there's a similarity there between that thinking and now he's going to start to approach the mind which he's most famous for and most admired by socrates and plato and aristotle in everything there is a part of everything except mind and there are also other things in which there is mind and they make an exception about mind right now let's turn to the great fragment of the mind here on the page 9 dk12 now enix egress will be talking about a greater mind here but towards the end of this great fragment next to the last sentence there third line there every mind is similar both the greater and the lesser right now perhaps the way that enix egress arise after being a greater mind is by something we met before when we talked about pedicles that like effects like it seems reasonable right now if you look at the order in the parts of artificial things and the order in the parts of animals and even plants you see a likeness right that the parts of this chair are well what arranged right the parts of my briefcase are well arranged now the parts of the car are well arranged right and you find the parts of the animal or the plant are well arranged the teeth are where they should be and so on right and as I mentioned before if I lost my natural teeth right and the dentist made me a pair of of artificial or false teeth as we called them right he would put the biting teeth in front and the chewing teeth in what back not just for looks right but also so that I could bite and chew with my artificial teeth like I do with my natural teeth right so nature or art would do it in the same way nature did it now the cause of the order in the parts of artificial things is well known to us namely the human mind right all the cause of the order in the parts of animals and plants is unknown to us right but now if you add to what's here the likeness of the effects and the known cause in the case of one right if you add to that the general statement that like effects have like cause right then it's a reasonable guess right that the cause of the order in the parts of animals and plants would be something like the human mind but since it's responsible for much greater order right it would be some kind of what greater mind okay so this is a conclusion from three things right from seeing the likeness of the order in the parts of artificial things and the order of the parts of animals and plants that's one thing we all see right secondly from knowing what the cause is of the order in the artificial things right and then third that like effects have like causes and from those three you might conclude that there is a greater mind behind right now this likeness between the greater mind and the human mind likeness in the causes helps us to know something about the greater mind because of this likeness so what he says in this fragment Some of it will apply more to the greater mind than to our mind, but our mind is always the starting point for understanding the greater mind, so far as we can, right? So let's start to look at this fragment. Other things have a part of everything. He's going to exclude the greater mind from being mixed up with things, we'll see. But mind is unlimited. Statement number one, right? Okay, we're going to be stopping at each of the great statements he makes here. The first statement he's making is that mind is unlimited. Of course, we've met them calling things unlimited before, right? And sometimes they spoke of unlimited in terms of a multitude of things, right? Which wouldn't apply it to the mind if you're talking about one mind. Sometimes they spoke of the unlimited in the sense of going on forever, in the continuous quantity, like air is unlimited, as Maximinez might have thought. But you'll notice later on, he'll say that the mind is the thinnest of all things. So it's not unlimited in the way that air was thought to be unlimited. That goes on forever, right? So in what sense is the mind said to be unlimited? Not in the sense that one mind is an infinity of things, or that it goes on forever. In what sense is the mind unlimited? Yeah, in its ability, right? The mind is unlimited, it seems, in its ability to know, and consequently to make them so on, right? Now, starting from what's more known to us, obviously, or the only mind known to us in the beginning, our own mind, is there any evidence that our mind even is in some way unlimited? It doesn't seem to be in the end. The things you can learn is always in the end. Okay, we always seem to be able to learn more, right? So our ability to know in that way seems to be unlimited. We're always making something that hasn't been made before, right? Like my son-in-law tells me, you know, don't bother to turn your computer off, because it'll be outdated before it wears out. But man is always making something, you know, like in our own 20th century, say, you know, the automobile and the airplane and the computer and all these things, right? Or it's making an old thing in a new what? Way, right? But if you look inwardly at the mind, you'll see that it knows the universal. And the universal contains how many things? That's why we said in the premium to wisdom, that the wise man in some way knows all things, right? And you say, well, how is that possible? There's an infinity of things, right? But in knowing the universal, in some sense he knows an infinity of things. Just like the mathematician when he knows what an odd number is and an even number is, and makes a statement that no odd number is even, he's making a statement about, what? An infinity of things. So that's probably inwardly the best evidence that the mind is in some way limited, that it knows the universal. And since you can go from the confused and distinct, you can go from the universal down to the more particular things, right? So the mind is therefore open to an infinity of what? Things, right? If I know what an odd number is, I can go to three and five and seven and nine, and go on forever. So the mind is open to an infinity of things, huh? And that's where Aristotle says in the Dianima, after he gets through talking about the senses and talking about reason, right? He'll say that the soul is in some way all things, right? Okay. But in a kind of outward way, you see this because of it's always making and inventing something new. But they sometimes point to language, right? Whereby a man can keep on signifying something, what? New and, what? Different, right? So that's the first thing he says about the mind. It's interesting now that the word unlimited here is a different meaning of unlimited than when you said that air is unlimited going on forever, right? Okay. And this is closer to the meaning of unlimited when you say God is unlimited, right? Hmm. Okay. That's the first thing he says about the mind, huh? The second thing he says about the mind is that it is self-ruling. Okay? One way I often approach this is to say, or ask the question, what part of philosophy is a sign of the truth of this second statement? Logic, yeah. Logic is the art that directs reason itself. So that there can be something called logic is a sign of the truth that the mind is, to some extent, self-ruling in. Now you say, why is the mind self-ruling? Well, later on, he'll talk about how the mind distinguishes and orders things, and we see that the definition of reason that Shakespeare gave us, right? That reason is the ability for a large discourse, looking before and after, right? So to rule things is to order them, right? And you have to know order to do that, and so on. But notice there's also a connection between that and the first thing here. Because to rule something, you have to be able to know that thing as well as to know order, right? And so the mind could not rule itself if it didn't know itself, right? But if it's unlimited, it's ability to know, it can know not only other things, but also what? Know itself, right? And so, although he doesn't say it explicitly, we could put in brackets here, mind is what? Self-knowing. And what part of philosophy is a sign of the truth of the statement that mind is self-knowing? Dianima. Dianima, especially, right? So my reason in the Dianima, and especially in the third book there, is asking, what is reason, right? And what is the distinction between reason and sense, and between reason and imagination, right? You could say, the philosophy of nature in general, right? Because we're in the philosophy of nature now, and the mind is knowing itself, right? So there's a connection between this and the philosophy of nature, and the philosophy of the soul in particular, which is a part of the philosophy of nature. Well, the second statement of his, we have a connection with, what? Logic, right? Now, what's the third part of philosophy? Wisdom. Ethics, yeah. Yeah, I mean, wisdom will come up here. Ethics, yeah. And ethics is concerned with reason, ruling, will, and emotion, and coxswaini are actions, huh? And is that connected with mind as being self-ruling? Mm-hmm. See? Well, I always ask the question, are you fit to rule others if you can't rule yourself? Well, if I'm in your command, you can't rule yourself. If I'm in your command, office sir I'm going to lead you into battle and I'm scared you can feel the fear in my voice and I tell you what we're going to do today I'm not fit to rule you am I right and the same way if a parent can't control his own anger let us say right or his desire for drink or drugs or whatever it is he's not fit or she's not fit to be really a parent right okay you have to be able to what rule yourself right my friend used to work in the state house there says the people come into the session sometimes drunk at night so these guys fit to be making laws for us okay now you could add to mind yourself knowing that mind alone is self-knowing right the eye doesn't know what an eye is right let alone there's a hand know what a hand is right or the lung know what a lung is right the mind is the only part of us that knows itself therefore the mind is the only part that can rule itself and if you have to be able to rule yourself before you fit to rule others then the mind or reason is the only part in us fit to rule the other parts but is the idea that mind should rule maybe rest of man right and that's the basic thing in ethics right that we should live by reason should follow reason so you can nicely arrange around the statement mind is self-ruling the three main parts of philosophy right directly mind is self-ruling is why logic is possible right but vice versa the existence of logic is a sign that mind is self-ruling right but if you look before and after mind is self-ruling you see the rest of philosophy coming into play such a beautiful thing now incidentally if you spoke of god right strictly speaking uh if you said god was self-ruling you'd be um understanding this in a different meaning right it'd be a uh affirmative way of saying something saying something negatively because god is not ruled by another is he see but he doesn't have to be ruled himself because he is the end of all things he doesn't have to be directed to some end okay but he's the source of all other rule okay now the third thing he says about the mind is that the mind is mixed with nothing else right and now he's separating the mind from matter right and aristotle will refer back to this in the diadema right and give a somewhat similar argument for our mind being immaterial right to what anxaginus gives here as a reason why the greater mind is not mixed with things huh okay so this is the third thing here um it's mixed with nothing huh but here now he'd be having the text the reason he gives for that right it's a beautiful one for if it were not by itself but were mixed with something other it would have a share of all things like everything in matter has a little bit of everything else in that time if they're mixed with anything for there is a part of everything and everything as has been said by me and what goes before right and now the hub of the reason and the things mixed with it would hinder it so that it would rule over nothing like it does being alone by itself now later on he's going to bring out that the greater mind is responsible for the distinction and the order of things in the natural world especially the order and distinction of the parts of animals and plants right and he's saying that it couldn't rule over the world so well as it does if it were mixed up with it now what's underlying the statement is the idea that the ruler must not be mixed up with the rule he must be separate from the rule right now going back to what's more known to us our own mind right is there some uh evidence huh that the ruler must be separated from the ruled in order to rule well that the ruler must not be mixed up with the rule right yeah yeah one example is in the army right see where there's a separation between the ruler and the ruled right and so you know i salute you first if you're my commanding officer right if he has somebody above him he salutes him first right and insignia and other things right so there's a real separation there right and on the military base they have maybe a commissioned officers club right the non-commissioned guys can't go in there so even a social basis they can't mix in a familiar way so they realize that separation is good for what command or rule and i think i mentioned before talking about these things how they said that in russia after the bolshevik revolution everybody was calling everybody comrade and the discipline of the army started breaking down and therefore they had to what reinforce you know the old separation of ruler and rule down for the army to work out or take another one take the idea of the judge right the first thing we demand of a judge i'm going to judge between you two people um that i'd be impartial right which means literally not a part of right so if i have a friendship or financial interest in your company or something i should be deciding between you but two right because i'm mixed up with you you see so there must be a real what separation there between the judge and those he judges right and sometimes you know if a man is on trial in a particular community and he can show evidence that the community opinion about him is that he's guilty and the jury is going to be selected from this community of people who become guilty he can sometimes get his thing what transferred out of that right and the idea to get a fairer trial if he's being tried people who have no opinion right and not in any way mixed up in the case right or not friendly with a man who's the victim of the other thing um i mentioned the practice there in in industry sometimes where where um my friend who worked for minnesota mining a big company there said that when you're promoted from a lower echelon to higher echelon you're expected to associate those in higher echelon and not be buddy-buddy with your former friends and uh how somebody tried to be buddy-buddy like go in the lunchroom and eat of his former buddies and that was frowned upon right and uh how i ran into a employee of minnesota mining at a i think a wedding one time and that's kind of joking about this and he said well you can tell exactly how high somebody up is in the company by the degree of separation so if you have a desk along with all the other desks in a big room you know that's that's the lowest stage right but if you got a little partition around your desk to separate you from other people you're a step up right but if you have a office like if i'm in that office in there and you guys are out here i'm even higher up above you right and then if you have a a what inner office and with an outer office with a secretary to screen people to get in to see you then you're really up there right and you're on the top floor you don't go up there so um you see the same principle right the degree of separation right i've heard it said too even like in the church you know when a man is is uh made a bishop let's say right huh he has to somehow what cut off his buddy-buddy with the priest he might have been on a particular friendly basis with right so he can rule right more objectively um now um that's true also you know uh in the family right huh that the parents are just you know one of the kids you