Why Names Come Before Definition: Equivocal Words, Parts and Wholes, and Two Senses of 'Its Own'

Orientation #

He opens by finishing last time’s comparison: Albert the Great divides logic by the simple unknown (answered by defining) and the complex unknown (answered by reasoning); “we’re going to follow Thomas’s division” — definition, statement, argument — and today begins the art of definition, whose first part is about names (prev. lecture). He promises “a little bit further next time” on Albert. The recording contains two passes over the same handout material (the three reasons and the five parts of the definition of name); the second pass, later in the recording, adds new examples. The previous class set out the definitions of name and speech and the divisions of logic; the next takes up Porphyry’s five names and figurative speech.

The class, in order #

1. Why names come before definition (“we name things before we define them”) #

The first part of the art of definition is not about definition but about names, for three reasons:

1. We name things before we define them. Reason: the “natural road” — we know things confusedly before distinctly, and naming needs less distinct knowledge than defining.
2. We use the name of the thing to be defined in the very question that seeks its definition (“What is virtue?”, Socrates to Meno; “What is piety?” to Euthyphro; “What is episteme?” to Theaetetus). One must understand the question before answering it. It is the definition of the thing, not of the name, that is sought — but you must name the thing.
3. “Most of all”: every definition is composed of names, and a whole composed of parts cannot be understood without its parts. So Aristotle takes up noun and verb before statement. Every speech is ultimately put together from names.

Aside: Porphyry’s book is sometimes called the book of the five names and the Categories the book of the ten names; the tradition counts these the fundamental books of logic — and they are about names.

2. What must be considered about names (“the name of the thing to be defined”) #

Three tasks: (a) define name; (b) distinguish the name of the thing defined from the names used in the definition, since the rule learned in grade school — don’t put the thing’s name in its definition (“certainly not with the same meaning”) — is in a sense a rule of logic; (c) since a definition is a speech with many names, see the difference and the order among those names.

3. The definition of name; logician vs. grammarian vs. poet (“vocal sound signifying by custom”) #

Name: “a vocal sound signifying by custom, no part of which signifies by itself.” Four parts are common to name and speech; only the fifth separates them (speech: parts that signify by themselves). Contrast of the “sciences that talk about words” (he calls them the sermocinal sciences [ed.: ASR "sermos"]):

• Poet: end is a pleasing representation, so rhyme, alliteration, meter, and metaphors the logician avoids.
• Grammarian: making a sentence in some language (Greek, Latin, English), and all sentences — commands (“Shut the door”), prayers (“Help me, help!”). Truth is irrelevant: “man is a stone” is good grammar, “men are an animal” bad; “Socrates is a dog” good, “Socrates am a man” bad.
• Logician: wants to come to know what he doesn’t know, so cares about true and false and would say “Socrates am a man” is at least true even if ungrammatical; “he ain’t a stone.”

4. Own name vs. the name of another thing; the dilemma (“call a thing by its own name”) #

Distinction (bottom of handout p. 2): calling a man who eats too much a glutton is his own name; calling him a pig is the name of another thing. Romeo calling Juliet “Juliet” vs. “honey”, “sweet”. Why we use the name of another thing: not for knowing the thing but to express or arouse emotion — Nixon calling Democratic programs “retreads of the New Deal” (an “unsavory metaphor” arousing an image, more so emotion); “you rat, you snake, you fox.” Proper to the poet, the rhetorician and daily life; the logician avoids it and, asking a definition, calls the thing by its own name. The dilemma (an exhaustive division, it seems):

1. You cannot define a thing by its own name — “a dog is a dog” is true but makes nothing more known than “dog”; the purpose of definition is to make known what you don’t know. (This is the reason behind the grade-school rule.)
2. You cannot define it by the name of another thing — “pig” does not tell you what a glutton is. Student suggestion: “pig” could be the genus of glutton — he rejects it (“Oh, no!”) and says the student is getting ahead. Another student: “maybe the names of its parts” — “perhaps.” He leaves the problem posed: “an apparent problem”; the solution comes in the handout, then a second problem (p. 5) arises from that solution, solved on p. 6.

5. Porphyry’s five names (“the name that begins a definition”) #

The road ends at Porphyry’s distinction: the name of the thing defined; the name that begins a definition; the name that completes a perfect definition; the name that completes an imperfect definition; the name useless for naming the thing or defining it. Porphyry notes the distinction is useful not only for definition but for division and demonstration. The work was the Isagoge (Greek “introduction”) to Aristotle’s Categories; in time it became the Isagoge — introduction to logic, hence to all philosophy. He got a hint years ago from Thomas, who uses the five names in the Summa Contra Gentiles to show no name is said univocally of God and creatures, bringing out something about Porphyry’s division “not pointed out, not even by Porphyry,” which he has incorporated in the handout.

6. Digression: the moderns do not know how to use names (“they don’t know how to use names”) #

A “very basic problem” of modern philosophers; democratic custom (“use names the way you want to, it’s a free country”) exacerbates it. Content of the charge: they don’t know how we name things, how we carry names over, how we use names to define.

• The propositions on “before”: “If a man doesn’t understand the names he uses, is he wise?” Understanding names is before wisdom in the second sense of “before” (can be without it, not vice versa) — so, “if you don’t, you’re not wise; if you do, I don’t say you are.” Aristotle devotes book five of the first philosophy to the names used in wisdom (he had people at his house last night reading it): book five won’t make you wise, but without it you’re not wise.
• A teacher of his [name unclear in recording] used to say every respectable word in philosophy is equivocal by reason; the moderns glimpse it (Bertrand Russell’s “systematic ambiguity”) but don’t know the ways and reasons words are used equivocally — “too below them.”
• Heidegger thesis talk: “something proceeds from something; what is proceeding from what?” — no response.
• Whole and part: the sophistical argument he gives students — man is an animal, but animal is only part of what man is; yet animal includes dog, cat, horse; “therefore the part sometimes is more than the whole.” Reply from Aristotle’s chapter on part: genus is part of species in one sense (part of the definition), species part of genus in another (particular kind). “The most common kind of mistake made in thinking” is mixing up two senses of a word. The medical man cutting up bodies “never found a soul” — in what sense is the soul a part of us? Locke’s Essay notices men using the same word without thinking the same thing, but never develops the doctrine.
• “In”: no explicit Aristotelian ordering, but Thomas orders the senses as Aristotle taught in Metaphysics V — in the room, part in whole, genus in species, species in genus, form in matter, whole in parts, “I’ve got you in my power,” “left my heart in San Francisco.”
• Refusing to distinguish and order senses is “kind of like a pride” — Shakespeare’s proud man who climbs the ladder and disdains to look down; God and angels needn’t do this, man must, being tied to his senses.
• Student paper: “if nature acted for an end, all things would come to an end” — end as destruction confused with end as purpose.

7. The senses of whole and part (“the composed whole and the universal whole”) #

Prompted by a student (“the first one is more the quantitative sense”). Composed whole vs. universal whole: the composed whole is put together from its parts and not said of them (cat from c, a, t; water from hydrogen and oxygen, “if the chemists are right”; family from father, mother, children); the universal whole is said of its parts but not put together from them (number said of odd and even; animal said of dog, cat, horse — otherwise “a dog is an animal” would mean the dog is composed of cat, dog, horse, elephant). “Particular” is taken from “part,” a different sense. Locke’s general idea of triangle — scalene, isosceles, equilateral and none of them — treats the universal whole as if composed. Aristotle then distinguishes three senses of composed whole: (i) quantitative, most known to us (you can lay the liver here, the heart there; the C here, the A there); (ii) matter and form — cat and act have the same letters, so there is something in the word besides the letters: the order; the rubber ball’s parts are rubber and shape; form taken broadly for act, order, not just shape; these cannot be laid apart, hence less manifest; (iii) parts of the definition. Quantitative parts and matter-form are found outside the mind; parts of definition and the universal (general/particular) are in the mind, though founded in things — Boethius: the singular is sensed, the universal understood. Albert says the first thing considered in logic is the universal; Berquist puts it more sensibly as “a name said of many things.” The foundation in things for the two senses in the mind is matter and form: genus is to difference as matter to form (to come). Outside the mind everything is singular — “I never taught humanity,” “never danced with woman in general.”

8. Two senses of “my own”; the dilemma resolved (“what belongs to me alone”) #

The phrase “its own / my own” in the first distinction carries two senses:

• First: what belongs to me alone — my own watch, my own head, my own wife (“she’s nobody else’s wife”).
• Second: what belongs to me but not only to me — my own mother, my own daughter (still “my own flesh and blood,” though also “our child”), my own country, city, president, planet; “my own teacher” Euclid; my own God (“My Lord and my God” — not mine as a possession); truth as my own good. Application to the dilemma: stuck on the first sense you’d define dog by dog; but calling a dog “animal,” or a square “parallelogram,” is calling it by its own name in the second sense. “Glass” is this thing’s own name, yet there are other glasses. “It’s very important to make that distinction”: without it there are no names you can define a thing by. Also “very important for practical philosophy”: the common good must be seen as your own good in the second sense, not as a private good — the team’s victory as my good; truth and wisdom loved as a common good; God “my chief good,” a greater good than the good which is mine alone.

9. Second pass: three acts, three speeches, “about” (“logic is about these three acts”) #

Restatement of the framework: understanding what a thing is, understanding the true or false, reasoning; each presupposes the prior (you can’t understand that man is not a stone without some grasp of man and stone; can’t reason without statements). Perfected by three speeches: definition (speech signifying/making known what a thing is, “distinctly,” more than a name, since it has parts signifying separately); statement (speech signifying the true or false — found nowhere else); syllogism (speech in which some statements laid down, usually two, another follows necessarily because of them: no speech is a name, every definition is a speech, so no definition is a name; likewise statement and syllogism are not names). New point: “about” is said in two ways — logic is about the three acts as its end, about the three speeches as its subject or matter. Student asks him to repeat “reasoning as a speech” — reasoning names an act; the syllogism is the speech. Study tip: use the handout’s little titles to recall before rereading.

10. Name broader than noun; the five parts of the definition (“the smallest unit that signifies”) #

“Name” here is broader than noun: “colored,” “just,” “walks,” “runs” fit the definition; “white man,” “man walks” are already speeches. Narrower than “word” (an article may be a word). Greek and Latin have one word for name and noun (onoma; nomen vs. verbum), so commentators on the Peri Hermeneias must explain when onoma is common to noun and verb; English is “a little richer.” The parts of the definition:

1. Sound — the logician leaves its nature to the natural philosopher.
2. Vocal sound — likewise how they are produced.
3. Signifies — clearing the throat is vocal but not meant to signify. Augustine’s definition of sign, freely rendered: that which strikes the senses and brings to mind something other than itself; so a sign is first something sensible. Turn signal (all you’re sure of is that his system works), red and green lights.
4. By custom / human agreement — against sounds signifying by nature: a baby’s cry, a groan when punched, a woman’s scream, understood around the world; in a foreign hospital the doctor understands my groan, not my words.
5. No part signifies by itself — even a name made of words: Berquist from Swedish berg (mountain) and quist (branch) signifies this man, not mountain-branch; “Johnson” said of a woman not a son. Student: do parts mean letters? — syllables or letters. Depth of analysis: grammarian down to letters (alpha, beta, gamma…), poet and to some extent rhetoric to syllables (meter, long/short or accented syllables, rhyme, alliteration); the logician only to the name. “Full fathom five thy father lies” — all F’s; love/dove rhyme and the dove is the symbol of love — hence the poet is almost untranslatable, while philosophy has no such problem: “the logician is a clod in that sense.”

His words #

• the natural road; confused before distinct — order of our knowing, ground of naming before defining
• name: vocal sound signifying by custom, no part of which signifies by itself; speech: same first four parts, parts signify by themselves
• sciences that talk about words [ed.: sermocinal sciences] — grammar, poetics, rhetoric, logic
• calling a thing by its own name / by the name of another thing (proper / metaphorical)
• the five names (Porphyry): of the thing defined; beginning a definition; completing a perfect definition; completing an imperfect definition; useless for naming or defining
• Isagoge — “introduction”
• “before” in the second sense — can be without the other, not vice versa
• equivocal by reason — words with ordered several meanings
• composed whole / universal whole — put together from parts, not said of them / said of parts, not put together from them
• three senses of composed whole: quantitative; matter and form (form broadly: order, act); parts of the definition
• “a name said of many things” — his rendering of Albert’s “universal” as logic’s first object
• my own, first sense: belongs to me alone; second sense: belongs to me but not only to me
• about (something) — as end vs. as subject or matter
• sign (Augustine, freely): what strikes the senses and brings to mind something other than itself
• name vs. noun vs. word — onoma, nomen, verbum

Texts #

Read in class

• Berquist handout, “Foreword to Logic”, p. 8 (verified) — three acts, three speeches, “about”
• Berquist handout, “Reasoning and the Four Kinds of Argument”, p. 5 (verified)
• His own text on names (pp. 2, 5, 6 cited): reasons for names before definition, own name vs. name of another, the two problems and solutions
• Definition of name and its five parts

Mentioned

• Porphyry, Isagoge (five names; useful for definition, division, demonstration)
• Aristotle, Categories (“ten names”); Peri Hermeneias (noun and verb before statement; onoma)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (names used in wisdom; chapter on part and whole; senses of “in” as ordered by Thomas)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles (no name univocal of God and creatures, via Porphyry’s five)
• Albert the Great (division of logic; the universal as first considered)
• Plato, Meno, Euthyphro, Theaetetus (the “what is” question)
• Augustine (definition of sign); Boethius (singular sensed, universal understood)
• Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding (same word, different thoughts; general triangle)
• Bertrand Russell (“systematic ambiguity”); Heidegger (a doctoral talk)
• Shakespeare: the proud man’s ladder; “Full fathom five thy father lies”; Romeo and Juliet (love/dove)

His questions #

• Why should names be considered before definition? We name before we define; we use the name in the question; the definition is composed of names.
• What’s the difference between the grammarian, the poet and the logician? Poet: pleasing representation; grammarian: correct sentences in a language, all kinds; logician: true and false, to come to know.
• Is it more to know the thing that we call it by the name of another thing, or to express or arouse emotion? To express or arouse emotion.
• Would the logician, asking a definition, call the thing by its own name or by the name of another? By its own name.
• What names would you use in the definition? Left as a dilemma at first: neither its own name nor another’s seems to work; resolved by the second sense of “own.”
• If a man doesn’t understand the names he uses, is he wise? If he does? Not wise if he doesn’t; not thereby wise if he does (“before” in the second sense).
• Is the part sometimes more than the whole? No — two senses of part confused (genus in the species; species in the genus).
• What are the parts of the word “cat”? The letters — and, comparing “act,” also their order (matter and form).
• Is “my own” said in the same sense of my watch and my mother? No: belongs to me alone vs. belongs to me but not only to me.
• When I call a dog “animal,” am I calling it by its own name? Yes, in the second sense.