Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 27: Axioms, First Principles, and the Central Question of Philosophy

Transcript
================================================================================

Statements that everybody knows, and they're obvious to everybody, you don't go around trying to prove what is obvious, right? You just use what is obvious to prove things that are not obvious, right? So why bother to consider these things, right? You can't equivocate on them, and you can't confuse people obviously. But then, you know, there are people who do object to them, and do give a reason that most people can't answer, and someone has to reply to that objection. But in realizing that some of those objections, not all of them, some of them are based upon equivocating on the senses of those axioms, well then, you realize that people don't have a completely distinct knowledge of the axioms, that there's some advance from a confused knowledge to a more distinct knowledge, right? So you say, for example, that the whole is more than a part, right? In the case of a composed whole, that means that the composed whole is put together for more than just one of its parts. When you talk about universal whole, you mean that the universal whole is set of more than any one of its parts. Like animals set of more than dog is set of. Or animal is set of more than cat is set of. Or quadrilateral is set of more than square is set of. That's wrong, right? Okay? So, more doesn't have exactly the same meaning, does it? So you say that man is more than an animal, and you say animal is more than man. Well, in a sense to say animal is more than man is to say that animal is set of more than man is set of. But to say that man is more than an animal is to say that man is put together from what? And reason, yeah. Okay? So he's not set of more, but he's put together for more then. Okay? So you're mixing up two different senses of whole and part and two different senses of more, right? But there's some likeness of the two, huh? And that's why we use the word particular sometimes. Okay? Aristotelic will come down to the idea that you do have to consider the axioms, right? Because of those reasons we just gave, right? But then, the next question is, does it belong to the wise man to consider, or to, you know, whom does it belong to consider the axioms, right? Okay? And we might either ask, does it belong to the wise man more than others to consider the axioms? Okay? And someone might say, well, everybody knows these, everybody uses these, right? But it seems to be particularly about the wise man, right? So you might say there's no more reason for him to consider them. Anybody else uses them, right? Okay? Well, when you get to the fourth book, Aristotle would give the reason why it belongs to the wise man to do this, right? You can see a little difficulty right now, right? Why does it belong to him more than anybody else? Because everybody uses these things, right? Every reason out now is just based on that, right? Why should the wise man, why should it belong to him more than anybody else to do this, huh? Why not to the magician? Yeah, yeah. And who's to say that he doesn't have much right to talk about them as the wise man, huh? Okay? Well, you could just pause with some of the first principles, so he never goes into it. He never discusses them. He's one of the few guys that tries to state the old axioms, right, huh? That's true, but... It's funny, you know, I mean, even Aristotle and Thomas, when Thomas talks about axioms, either they talk about, you know, those ones about being and unbeing, right? Yeah. But usually the common example is the whole is more than a part, right? And that's about it, you know? They don't say, here's another axiom, here's another one, you know? And I don't think they could ever enumerate them all, but anyway. So you see the problem in that second question, right, huh? You know? There's a problem, first of all, in seeing that it's necessary to consider the axioms at all, right? Because there's reason to think that everybody knows them, right? Okay, so why bother to consider something everybody knows? Why not just use it, right? We have to investigate something everybody knows. And then if you have some reason to say why we should investigate them, why should this investigation belong to the wise man rather than to the geometer or the logician or somebody else? In fact, the way he's got it stated there, the same can be affirmed and denied, while it's the logician that talks about affirmation and negation. It should be the logician that do this. Although there's a kind of a likeness between the logician and the, what? Yeah, yeah. And Thomas, following it very well, in talking about the third book here of wisdom, he says, for the reasons that Aristotle gives here in the first reading, you'll find in natural philosophy and ethics, you know, political philosophy, you'll have dialectical disputation, right? Before he tries to determine the truth, huh? But one of the differences between that here and in natural philosophy is that you have a kind of universal dialectic about all the problems or main problems of wisdom all in one book. The whole book is dialectical. Well, in natural philosophy, you have a little dialectic, say, about place in the beginning of book four, and then you determine the truth about place. Then you have a little dialectic about, you know, something else in book one, right? And then you determine the truth. You have only particular dialectic, right? But here dialectic seems to be a main, what? Part. A whole book of wisdom, huh? And it shows kind of an affinity between logic and, what? And wisdom, huh? And, of course, Plato, you know, in the Republic and so on, he identifies dialectic with wisdom, huh? There's a certain likeness between the two, huh? So it's interesting to think about those things. Now, so if you wanted to, you could put those first two questions against the ones that are coming up now, huh? Now, okay, the seven questions to come up now. Because those are more about beginnings or causes, right, huh? Okay? The first one about causes, but the second one, causes our beginnings, too. And the second one about, is it also about these kind of beginnings, right? Or just, okay? Now, the fundamental distinction of things that the philosopher makes, as you know, is between substance and accident, right? Okay? So substance is a thing that exists, right? Not in another is in a subject, huh? Like a man or a dog, say. By an accident is a thing that exists only in another subject, okay? It's just a part from it. Like the health of the man or the health of the dog, right? Or the shape of the man or the shape of the dog. Or the knowledge of the man or the virtue of the man, right? Okay? So the first of these remaining questions, the first five, are about substance. And then he goes into questions about accidents. Or the first, maybe more I could say, yeah, four, yeah. Then the last three are about accidents. Okay? Now, as I said earlier, there's an exception to all of these questions being about what? What wisdom is about. Because he sticks in here two questions about substances themselves. And the reason why he does so is because they seem to be involved in the question of what wisdom is about. Now, skip a couple of paragraphs down there, down to the fourth paragraph. And it is also necessary to investigate whether only sensible or material substances exist, or others besides these, right? What the philosophers would call the separated substances, huh? The immaterial substances. And that's a question about the things, right? That's a question about the things, right? That's a question about the things, right? It's not a question about what wisdom is about. What things are there? In the sense of what substances, right? Are there only these material substances like man and dog? Or are these substances... Are there material substances, huh? Which the Greeks would call separated substances, right? We might call angels or something, right? But angels is more a name taken from scripture, right? Because of their task and carrying messages to us. And so on. But the philosopher more calls them separated substances. This is not a question about what wisdom is about, is it? But it's going to involve what wisdom is about. Because if there are immaterial substances, then the question arises, well, is there the same knowledge about material substances, man and dog, and about the angels? Right? Or are there two knowledges? One about material substances, another about immaterial substances, which is wisdom. Okay? You see? So, there's kind of intertwining those questions, so Aristotle sticks in those two questions there. But in the dialectic, in the part we're not going to read in this course, but in the dialectic, you'll pull those questions out and make them a separate part. Because they're really about the things, rather than about what wisdom is about, right? But there's a connection between those and the questions. The answer to that has to do with what wisdom is about. Yeah, yeah. Because if you say there are immaterial substances, then is it the same knowledge, wisdom, that considers both of these, right? Okay. And then the second question is also, assuming that there are immaterial substances, like the Platonist said, right? Or like Anaxagoras said, those are the guys who mainly spoke of something immaterial besides Aristotle, or before Aristotle, I mean. And whether there is one or many kinds of such substances. Now, Anaxagoras speaks only of the greater mind, right? Of one substance there that is not mixed with matter, right? But Plato speaks of all these, what, forms and these mathematical substances, right? Now, there's more than one reason, maybe like Plato said that, but it touches upon, as I think I maybe mentioned before, the central question of philosophy. Remember that? We talked about that in here before? What's the central question of philosophy? So it's whether the way we know is... Yeah, thank you. Does truth require, right? That the way we know be the way things are, right? Let's just touch upon that again, because that's a question that really is central to the whole philosophy. Require that the way we know be the way things are. That's a central question of philosophy, because it unites or brings together what you might say is the end of philosophy, right? To know the truth, with the two things the philosopher talks about. If you hang around me long enough, you'll find me talking either about the way things are, like in natural philosophy, I talk about the way natural things are. In political philosophy, I talk about the way political things are. In wisdom, all the way all things are, right? But if you can't be teaching logic, I'll be talking about the way we know, right? Or if I'm talking about the road and the way of knowing in this particular science, I'm talking about the way we know. So these are what the philosopher talks about. Either the way we know or the way things are. That's what he talks about. And it involves a lot. And truth is his end or goal, right? He wants to know the truth. So in a sense, it involves everything he talks about and his end or purpose, right? Well, as I say to my students, there's two possible answers to this question. What are they? Yes or no? Yeah, yeah. They're looking very deep and extrused. I'm feeling very obvious. I'm looking for yes or no. Okay? Now, the chief philosopher, the Sophie Grick-Kippwee, as Thomas says, Or Plato and Aristotle. And Boethius would say that. And Albert the Great would say that. And the Arab philosophers would say that. Everybody up until the modern, right? The modern here is his old master. Okay? But Plato seems to be answering what? Yes. And Aristotle answers no. If you went down the history of human thought, right through the modern, it would seem to me in my experience of the famous thinkers, that there's more who agree with Plato than Aristotle. They may not explicitly say this, but implicitly in their very way of thinking is the answer yes to this question. Now, of course, they reach very often different conclusions about things because of the other premises they have, right? But they share this answer yes. Few would agree with that crazy Aristotle, right? Okay? Now, I think the reason why people would tend to agree with Plato is because of a confused notion that they have at least of what truth is. The truth is the agreement of the mind with things. Truth is the harmony of the mind with things, right? If I say you are sitting now, my mind is true, right? Because what I'm saying agrees with what's out there, right? If I say you're not sitting now, you're standing, then my mind is false. It doesn't agree with things, right? So you kind of tend to think the truth requires that the way we know be the way things are. And what can be said in favor of Aristotle, right? Well, I think you have to do like Thomas says in the Summa Theologiae. You have to see this, and the question there on the teacher, you have to see this in particular that Aristotle is right and gradually see it in a more universal way that he's right. And one place where Aristotle in particular brings this out in the second book of Natural Hearing, he brings out that we can know in separation things that don't exist in separation. We can truly know in separation things that don't exist in separation. And you see this even in the senses, huh? Sugar is both white and sweet, right? Can you know one without the other, truly? So when the eye knows the whiteness of the sugar, leaving out that it's sweet, is the eye false? So it's knowing the whiteness of the sugar and separation from its sweetness when they're both together in the sugar. And if I put sugar on my tongue, I can taste the sweetness of the sugar, but I can't taste the whiteness of it, huh? Is my tongue false in knowing the sweetness? You can say it's knowledge that's incomplete of the sugar, just like the eye's knowledge of the sugar is incomplete. But is it false? What Aristotle is saying is that if one can be known in separation from the other, it's not false to know it in separation. If you said now that this white thing is not sweet, or vice versa, this sweet thing is not white, then you would be false, right? Yeah. But knowing one without the other, you're not false, huh? When I, you know, example, I was in class there. My students might know me to be a philosopher, I don't know me to be a philosopher. I don't know me to be a philosopher. leaving out that I'm a grandfather, right? The nurse at the hospital might know me to be the grandfather, leaving out that I'm a philosopher. Well, to my students, are they false? In reality, I'm both of these. But one is knowable without the other, right? So Aristotle says there's no falsity in knowing one without the other, even though it doesn't exist without the other. Because one is knowable without the other. What you say about the thing has got to be with it, right? So if you said this philosopher is not a grandfather, or this grandfather is not a philosopher, then you would be false, right? But in knowing one without the other, you're not false. Do you see the idea? And Aristotle brings it up when he's talking with Plato there. I can know the shape cube without ice cube, sugar cube. Wooden cube, or any other sensible cube, right? Is my mind false in knowing cube, apart from sugar cube, wooden cube, ice cube, plastic cube? See? It's knowable without that, see? But Plato thought, and rightly so, that we know the truth in geometry, right? And since we know the truth in geometry, and we know cube in separation from ice and wood and anything sensible, and he'd answer yes to this, then there must really be what? A cube apart from. Yeah. So he had a mathematical world corresponding to geometry, in addition to the sensible world, right? But notice how he arrives at that, right? Through his mathematical studies with the Pythagoreans, he's convinced that we know the truth here. But because he's answered yes to this question, then he's forced to say that because we truly know cube in separation from wood and ice and everything else, it might be more or less in a cubical shape here, right? It must, what, exist in separation. Otherwise, the way we know it would not be the way the thing is, and it would be false. Aristotle says, no, it's a mistake. He's right. You see the idea? Perkus is a philosopher. That's all you know you need to know. Are you false? You know Perkus is a philosopher? Hey, you left out. He's a grandfather. He's a husband. And he's an old man. Maybe you know that. You see the idea? What? You left the last one out to be polite. And now it might be incomplete of me if you don't know these other things about me. But are you mistaken? Now, after separation comes the idea of order, right? Now, as I say to students, I know you before your parents. And I probably know your parents, if I do, someday, before I know your grandparents. So you are before your parents, in my knowledge, right? And your parents are before your grandparents, in my knowledge. Now, in things, what's the order? Another way. Just the reverse, right? Now, am I false in knowing you before your parents? I might not understand you fully why you are the way you are without knowing your parents, right? My knowledge might be imperfect of you, right? I've seen the influence that your parents had upon you and so on. My father was a businessman, huh? Sometimes people say, Berkowitz, you think like a businessman. And it's kind of funny, after my father had died, you know, people would say to me, you know, It's just like your father. I say, what? Well, I'm going to take my father without realizing it, you know. I'm kind of a no-nonsense guy. I got this bad, right? Or take another example here. Water is known by us before hydrogen, isn't it? And that's why we name hydrogen from water. Hydrogen. And hydrogen is, in our knowledge, before proton, right? But proton means first, right? So what is first in things among these three, anyway, right? Is last in our knowledge, huh? Is my mind false in knowing water before hydrogen? You might say my knowledge of water is incomplete. I don't know about hydrogen. So be it. But is it false? See? So I take these examples here because, as the great Sherlock Holmes said, you know, to Watson, we have to, what, reason backwards. And Watson says, what do you mean? We've got to reason from the effect back to the cause. So in these examples, where the effect is in our knowledge before the cause, or water before hydrogen and so on, the order in our knowing is actually the contrary, the exact reverse of the order in things. Is our mind false in knowing backwards? Our mind goes forward by going backwards. I mean, it's going to be a lousy mind. I suppose it is. You consider that fact, right, man? But the order in which we know is obviously not the order in which things are. Is our mind false? That is no? No. The falsity would come in, Aristotle says, if you attributed the order in our knowing to the order in things. If you said that because you come before your parents, in my knowledge, therefore, in reality, you came before your parents. Then, see, it's by identifying the two that you get falsehood there. Now, Plato was influenced by the great Socrates, and Socrates was seeing the role of definitions in knowing. And, of course, Socrates convinced Plato that through definition you can know the truth. That's why Socrates is always trying to get people to define. Well, now, when you define, your mind knows the universal in separation from the singularist. So when I define man as an animal that has reason, Socrates is not there, Plato's not there, Aristotle's not there, I'm not even there in that definition, right? And every man past, present, and future is not in the definition of man. So I'm knowing man, the universal, in separation from all individual men. Well, Plato said, if we know truly through definitions, right, then we truly know the universal in separation from the singulars. And since truth requires that the way we know be the way things are, therefore the universals must truly exist in separation. And that's what are called the, what? The forms, right? With a capital S, right? Now, it's kind of badly translated as the ideas, right? Because it's not ideas. It's, you know, in the English sense of what that word means, right? But idos in Greek, meaning form. So because we know mathematical things in separation from sensible matter, and because we know the universal, truly in separation from the singulars, right? And he's answered yes to this question, then he arrives at the strange conclusion that there are, in addition to the sensible world, this mathematical world, and the world of forms, right? Aristotle says, no, no, no. The answer is no to this question, huh? Okay? But as I say, down to the ages, people tend to agree with Plato, huh? Now they may, by the other premises they take, right, reach other conclusions, huh? So they say, William of Ockham in the 14th century said, well, there's no world of forms, right? There's no universals, right? But our analogy is universal, therefore we don't know anything. So you have this kind of universal skepticism running. So you have this kind of universal skepticism running. So you have this kind of universal skepticism running. So you have this kind of universal skepticism running. So you have this kind of universal skepticism running. So you have this kind of universal skepticism running. So you have this kind of universal skepticism running. So you have this kind of universal skepticism running. So you have this kind of universal skepticism running. They're right, huh? Okay. Or Karl Marx, say, in the 19th century, takes the way of knowing in experimental science as being the only way of knowing, because that's custom, right? But in experimental science, we know only by making. And Kant pointed out we know in experimental science by making. Well then, if you answer yes to this, we know only by making, therefore we know only what we make. But I'm the beginning and end of what I make, therefore I'm God, right? I'm the beginning and end of all that I could know, you see. Now Hegel, though more like Plato in some ways, but he makes the beginning of everything correspond to the beginning of all our thought. Well, the most confused thought of all is the thought of being, the most general thought. So he identifies that most confused thought of our mind with the one who says in the Bible, well, I am who am. See? So that's really terrible confusion, right? And it's got to lead to pantheism too, of course, like all the German thinkers following Hegel or pantheism. But in a sense, he's answering yes to the question, right? That the way we know is the way things are. And Spinoza had said that before. Hegel, I mean, it's just Hegel. So Spinoza says the order in our thoughts and the order in things are the same. And Aristotle says, no, they're for the most part contrary, right? So if the order in our thoughts and the order in things is the same, right? And then what comes first in our thought corresponds to what's first in reality. And that's this most confused idea of what? Of being, right? You know, you can't be more confused than that, huh? So, but notice, huh? Just I would say, you can talk about yesterday, today. You can remember the past now, right? Is that false? Do you remember the past now? If you think the past is now, you're mistaken, right? But the now is in your known, right? Yeah. Now, one of the first great thinkers to follow Aristotle explicitly is, I think, Waithe, yes, right? Now, Waithe is in the constellation of philosophy. In the first book, he announces himself as a member of the academy. A member of what? The academy. Okay. The school of Plato, right? And Aristotle sometimes speaks that way, too, because he learned a lot from Plato. But in the way Waithe is talked about happiness there in the early books, it's more Platonic in some ways than the Recitilian. But when he gets to the fifth book and he's trying to understand God's knowledge, right? And God's knowledge is eternal. It's not temporal. There's no past or future in God's knowledge. No before and after. But he knows the before and the after in time, right? And the past and the present and the future of time are all present to God in his knowledge. But yet he truly knows these things. Well, in order to defend that and to understand that so far as we can, he has to, what? Give up Plato and follow Aristotle. Well, the consolation of philosophy is written in the form of a dialogue between Waitheus and Lady Wisdom who's come down to console him, right? In prison. So at the beginning of the fifth book, Lady Wisdom introduces Aristotle as a true follower. Which is a nice way of saying, I'm going to follow Aristotle now, and then what? Plato, right? You know, this old idea of solver reverencia, you know? You know, like when Thomas disagrees with Albert, you know? And some say, he doesn't name him by name, you know? So he doesn't say, you know, Plato's mistaken here now, I read our follower of Aristotle. But he has Lady Wisdom introduced Aristotle as a true follower, and maybe we can see that he realizes he's got a follower of Aristotle here. So he goes back, you know, to the fact that we, what? Even human knowing, you can see that the way of knowing doesn't have to be the way we know. You know, when we know what a square is, for example, right? You know, I know fully what a square is by the definition of square, which is an equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral. But is the definition of square continuous? But the square is continuous, right? So you're knowing a continuous thing in an uncontinuous way. Which is one of the ways we understand that the universal reason, the reason he knows universal, is not a body. It's not, what, continuous, right? Is the mind not knowing what a square is? When it defines it? No, it's knowing very well what it is, right? But its way of knowing is not the way the thing is. What you say about the thing has to be with it, right? You can see what a profound question it is, right? I think Aristotle's final refutation of Plato, you might say, is in the 13th and 14th books of wisdom, right? At the very end. But this question is finally decided by Aristotle, you know? So there's a question then, right? Before this question has been answered, right? You know? Is there one, if there are immaterial substances, there's just this greater mind that Anxagoras talks about? The sober man among drunk men, as Aristotle describes him? Or are there all these different kinds that Plato talks about, right? So, I guess we've got to stop now, huh? Those questions, I say, are not about what wisdom is about, but they're kind of intertwined because he's kind of, you know, I'm assuming that there must be immaterial substances here when he raises the other question, you know. Would there be one knowledge about all of these, right? So we'll come back to these questions here in this second reading, right? Thank you. Thank you. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, or to illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor. Thank you, Thomas. And help us to understand all that you have written. So we looked at a couple of the questions last time. Which causes should the wise men look for, right? And although we know there are four kinds of causes, not every science uses all causes, or not all of them equally so. So that's the first question. And then the second question was whether one should consider only the causes of substances in this course, in this subject, or also those statements that are the beginnings of all reasoned out knowledge. And we saw the reason why a person might say that those statements are the common beginnings of all reasoned out knowledge. Everybody knows them, right? So why have to consider them? Why not just use them? And we mentioned, though, that people do sometimes object against these. There are arguments that most people can't answer, right? And so people think they don't know what they do know. Aristotle, in the second book of the natural hearing there, the so-called physics, he says, you know, it's strange, but it's possible that a man can think he doesn't know what he does know. And the way he shows it to be possible is by the reverse. If I can think that I know what I don't know, and Socrates' whole life was showing that people do make that mistake, then the reverse mistake should be possible. If someone can think that a man is a woman, let's say, right? Someone else can make the mistake of thinking a woman is a man. Because you think a man is a woman because he can't tell her part sometimes. And so he can make the mistake going the opposite direction, right? If someone makes the mistake of thinking Budweiser is Miller's, someone else can make the mistake of thinking Miller's is Budweiser, right? So someone can think that what is unknown to him is known to him, and we make the mistake very often, when the reason why we make the mistake is because a customer, well, then it's because we can't sometimes tell apart what is known and what's unknown, right? And so you can make the mistake going in the reverse direction. But the mistake of thinking you know what you don't know is more common. But thinkers especially, right, get in the position of thinking they don't know what they do know. So I remember in modern philosophy class, a student asked my old teacher, Kasurik, you know, how do you argue with someone who denies the existence of things outside of him? Kasurik's answer was kick him in the ass. And this is not a jocular reply, because your senses are closer to things around you than your reason is. And so if your senses don't convince you there's something out there, and especially the sense of touch, which is the one that is most certain, as you know in the Doubting Talmud, right? Reason is not going to do that, right? It's like, you know, if I tell you about my mother, and you have known now as my mother except through me, and I'm not sure about my mother, how could you be? So, but there are people then who think they don't know what they do know, huh? They used to say about Barclay, you know, even Barclay, the English philosopher, who denied his innate material, right? Even Barclay opens the door of his study before he tries to leave. Okay, then he has, the way Thomas would divide them, five questions about substance, huh? But the first one, I mean, I've already talked about already, right? Now, as we mentioned before, he sticks into questions about things here because they're relevant to substance, huh? And let's jump ahead for a moment there to the fourth paragraph in page two. And it is also necessary to investigate whether only sensible substances, bodies, that is to say, exist, right? Or other substances besides them, immaterial substances, right? What the Greek philosophers would call separated substances. Well, as Aristotle remarks there in the fourth book of Natural Hearing, when he's talking about place, it's a common opinion of his predecessors that whatever is must be somewhere. And if it isn't somewhere, it doesn't exist, right? If you went out down on Main Street here, Worcester or any Main Street, any town, and you ask people, they'd probably say the same thing, right? If something exists, it's got to be somewhere, meaning in some place, right? And if it's nowhere, not in any place, it doesn't exist. Well, notice, to be somewhere, to be in a place, to be contained in a place, is really a property of actual bodies, right? So in a sense, you're saying that all that exists is what? Bodies, right? And part of the reason for this is that we never, what? Think without imagining. And imagination is tied to quantity, to something like a body, right? And that's the question, you know, how can you even think about something that is not a body? And why it involves, what? Imagining, but negating what you're imagining. When you say something is not a body, it doesn't have length, width, and depth. But in the study of natural philosophy, which was regarded as wisdom by the Greeks for 200 years, in the study of natural philosophy, there's perhaps three places where you get some evidence of there being something besides a material world. And we saw one of those in the great fragment of Anaxagoras, where Anaxagoras says that what's the cause of the order in plants and animals, huh? And he saw the likeness between the order in plants and animals and the order in this room, or the order in automobile, or the order in a house, and so on. And we know what the cause of the order is in the house or the automobile, it's a human mind, huh? And so he made the reasonable guess that there is, what, another mind, right? But a greater mind that's responsible for the order in the natural world. Another scientist, you know, have been led to this idea of a greater mind, huh? A great mathematician, as Sir James Jean, the British astrophysicist, said, right? God is a great mathematician. But then he gave a reason for saying that this greater mind could not rule over this world if it were, what, mixed up with it, right? So there he gets some evidence of there being an immaterial substance, this greater mind. Plato and Aristotle, Socrates, they call off and investigate our own soul. And they find evidence that our reason, the one that understands universals, can't be a body. And there's many ways this can be shown in the study of the soul, in the third book on the soul. And we're giving a simple example of the one time, I think, weren't we, where you look at the fact that I understand what a square is very well by the definition of square in geometry. It's an equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral. Now I know distinctly what a square is. But if you examine this way I know what a square is, by this definition of square, you find out that the definition of square is not continuous, the definition itself. The definition of the continuous is that its parts mean a common boundary. And the genus and the differences don't mean a common boundary. So although the square is a continuous thing, I'm knowing it in an uncontinuous way. Was that due to the thing being known? We could eliminate that because that is continuous, right? So if reason knows a continuous thing in an uncontinuous way, it must be because reason itself is not continuous and not a body, therefore. Now I really argue that you can give to show the immateriality of our reason, and that shows that our reason, or rather our soul, rather, has an operation that's not in the body. So let's see if we can give it a little bit more time. So let's see if we can give it a little bit more time. So let's see if we can give it a little bit more time. So let's see if we can give it a little bit more time. So let's see if we can give it a little bit more time. So let's see if we can give it a little bit more time. So let's see if we can give it a little bit more time.