Shakespeare's Definition of Reason, Words Equivocal by Reason, and the Fallacy of the Accident

Orientation #

He refers back to what “we talked before” about some statements being known through other statements, and to “the other day” when he handed out the sheet on the fallacy of the accident. He does not say what comes next. The previous class treated the fallacy of figura dictionis; the next continues the fallacy of the accident with Porphyry and De Fallaciis.

The class, in order #

1. Shakespeare’s definition of reason is made of equivocal words (“every word in the definition of reason”) #

Point: you cannot define reason without words equivocal by reason. He goes through Shakespeare’s definition (reason as an ability for large discourse, looking before and after) word by word:

• ability: Aristotle in the “ninth book of wisdom” distinguishes abilities for motion (to be moved vs. to move something; rational vs. natural), then other senses of act and ability besides motion. Shakespeare presumably means ability to do something.
• discourse: running from one thing to another, or coming to know what you don’t know from what you do know; reason is an ability for both.
• large: covers a large area because about the universal, or about something great (the soul, the best thing in the material world; angels; God).
• looking: act of the eye, of memory or imagination, of reason.
• before: equivocal by reason, from the Categories (before in time, in being, in the discourse of reason, in goodness, as cause to effect).

2. The same definition tells you how to understand such words (“run from one sense to another”) #

Point: Shakespeare’s definition also says what it is to use reason on a word equivocal by reason.

1. To understand such a word you run from one meaning to another (discourse).
2. A word equivocal by reason, unlike one equivocal by chance, has an order among its meanings; so you must look before and after. Example: Physics IV, eight chief senses of “in”. Aristotle orders them only by saying the first is being somewhere (in this room); Thomas runs through them and orders them “in perfect order” from first to eighth. “Isn’t that tied very nicely” — either Shakespeare followed Aristotle and Thomas or had natural genius.

3. Wisdom, the highest perfection of reason (“the largest discourse of all”) #

Point: the definition fits wisdom exactly. The wise man’s discourse is largest in both senses: about the most universal (being and one, said of everything) and about the best things (separated substances, God). He most of all looks before and after: sapientis est ordinare; Thomas’s reason is that wisdom is the highest perfection of reason.

4. Axioms also need words equivocal by reason (“the whole is more than a part”) #

Point: not all statements can be known through others (else you would never know any, ad nauseam), so some are known through themselves, the axioms; but even these cannot be stated without words equivocal by reason.

• The stock axiom “the whole is more than a part”: whole and part are equivocal by reason. His sophist routine with students: “man is an animal” (his mother: “doesn’t sound good, Duane”); animal is only part of what man is; but animal includes dog, cat, horse, elephant; so sometimes the part is more than the whole. Resolution: composed (integral) whole, put together from its parts and more than one of them, vs. universal whole, not composed but said of its parts (hence “subject parts”) and said of more than one; not the same sense of whole.
• The axiom Aristotle calls the natural beginning of all axioms (something cannot both be and not be at the same time in the same way): “being” is most equivocal by reason. Conclusion: you cannot understand definitions or state axioms without words equivocal by reason, and cannot understand those words without running from sense to sense and looking before and after. Shakespeare “a wise man”, “much more impressive than Hugo’s definition”; the modern philosophers never talk of words equivocal by reason. Aside: reading Marxist theses in the Laval library during the Cold War. “Dialectical materialism”: matter the beginning of all things, and things develop out of matter by the war of opposites. “Opposite” is equivocal by reason (Categories: contradictories, contraries, having and lacking, relatives), yet the Marxist never distinguishes, using “contradiction” for any opposition; “ignorant men”. It is very often the common words (like “before”) that are equivocal by reason.

5. The fallacy of the accident: Albert and Thomas (“the first of the kinds of fallacies outside”) #

Point: the fallacy of the accident is first among the fallacies outside language, to be taken up one by one because their distinction is hard.

• Handout quote from Albert the Great (his “teacher in logic”): the fallacy of accident is before all the others because it plus habet of the virtute decipiendi.
• Thomas, “eleventh book of wisdom” (of fourteen): no science which is truly science and has certitude considers being per accidens; only sophistic busies itself with it, using what is per accidens as if per se, to deceive. Later in the text: sola sophistica, efficacissima for deceiving; even the wise are deceived, as Aristotle says in the first book of the Elenchi — “what about the rest of us?”
• What “per se” means, by examples: the arithmetician considers what belongs to two as two (a number, even, prime — the only even prime — half of four, a third of six), not two chairs or two eyes. The geometer considers triangle as such: three sides, continuous quantity, plane rectilineal figure contained by three sides, interior angles equal to two right angles (Euclid I.32). Not that triangles are green or pink: that is accidental, not through being triangle. Aside: memory hook — SCG I begins God’s perfection at ch. 28, the second perfect number.

6. Axioms of before and after; nothing is the beginning of itself (“nothing is before or after itself”) #

Point: Shakespeare’s “before and after” touches an axiom: nothing is before or after itself, like nothing is beginning or end of itself.

• SCG: book I God in himself, II God as beginning, III God as end — beginning and end of everything other than himself.
• Physics I: Parmenides and Melissus, denying multiplicity, do away with beginnings, because nothing is the beginning of itself.
• Thomas: nothing is the cause of itself. Can God have a beginning? Either himself (impossible) or another (then he is not first cause). “If you can’t see certain distinctions, you’re going to be deceived.”

7. An objection to creation from two senses of “able to be” (“God couldn’t make something that was not able”) #

Objection: to create is to be a cause (which of the four causes — matter, form, mover, end — does it reduce to?). Scripture says God made heaven and earth, but not as we make a wooden table. Could God create what is not able to be? No. So what he created was able to be, so it was not nothing; so God needs a pile of stuff like a carpenter. Reply: two senses of ability, very hard to see. “Able to be” as involving no contradiction (God cannot make a square circle, or an even number that is odd) vs. the ability of matter, which is really something, to be a table. Omnipotence does not mean making what involves contradiction. Student on non-Euclidean parallels: “they’re not really parallel lines”. Student: is it a limitation on God, by his will, that square circles are impossible? Answer: not a limitation; a square circle is nothing, and nothing is impossible with God.

8. David of Dinant: difference vs. diversity (“difference and a what diversity”) #

Point (SCG I.16, where Thomas shows God is pure act): David of Dinant held God is first matter, since they differ by nothing (a difference would make them composed). Thomas: David does not know difference from diversity.

• Difference (Greek diaphora, “carry apart”, like metaphor is “carry over”; one of the five predicables): things together in something are carried apart by a difference. Man and dog are both animals, carried apart by two-footed vs. four-footed (Aristotle’s usual definition in the Metaphysics: two-footed animal); odd and even are both number, carried apart by divisible / not divisible into equal parts.
• Diversity: nothing in common, other by themselves. Divisible and not divisible are separated by themselves, not by a further difference. God (pure act) and first matter (pure passive ability) have nothing in common: diverse, not different. Aside: watching a squirrel come down and leap between split trees — “even in the squirrels I have something to admire”. People likewise have trouble seeing Peripatetic from Cartesian.

9. Examples: singular/universal, Socrates a species, cat and dog (“you just proved that a dog is a cat”) #

• Handout example: the singular is understood; what is understood is universal; therefore the singular is universal. Fallacy of accident: the material singular as such is not understood.
• Albert: a defect of the middle term. Socrates is a man, man is a species, therefore Socrates is a species — “plain as the words on the page”, A is B, B is C.
• His own example: cat is an animal, animal is said of dog, therefore cat is said of dog. Compared with genuine syllogisms of the same look: substance said of animal, animal of dog, so substance of dog (Categories); three is odd, odd is a number; Marin is a man, man is said of Michael, so Marin is said of Michael.
• His own discovery (“kind of my own”): the fallacy of the accident deceives most of all when it is there necessarily. “Cat is an animal” is not contingent like “cat is brown”; “animal is said of dog” is also necessary.
• Diagnosis (with a student: “some change going on in the middle term”): animal is said of cat not because it is said of dog but because cat is a living body with sensation (plant: living body without sensation). Being said of dog is accidental to animal’s being said of cat. “Very subtle.”

10. Square is a definition (“Is a square a definition?”) #

Square is an equilateral right-angled quadrilateral; that is a definition; therefore square is a definition. Contrast the valid: square is a quadrilateral, quadrilateral is a rectilineal plane figure, so square is a rectilineal plane figure. Student: a “pseudo equivocation”, something accidental; another student: universal vs. individual square (offered tentatively, “may not even be valid”). His answer: equilateral right-angled quadrilateral is said of square because it expresses the nature, not because it is a definition — “hard to get hold of”. Student asks whether public and cultural discourse is full of this: “Oh yeah”, especially in the more universal things.

11. The soft becomes hard (“the soft must be hard”) #

You became a monk, so you are a monk; soft butter in the refrigerator becomes hard, so the soft is hard (and the hard becomes soft). Student: softness is accidental; the butter as such becomes hard. He: soft belongs to the butter before it becomes hard, so what becomes hard is said to be soft; but the softness is lost. Heraclitus speaks as if one opposite is the other since change is between opposites; Physics I distinguishes what really becomes the opposite — the underlying subject — from the opposite as such. Ordinary speech: cold becomes hot, young become old, healthy become sick — so “the sick are healthy”. And yet there is a necessity: only the soft can become hard, only the cold hot, so it seems per se, since (Posterior Analytics, on demonstration) the necessary is per se. Restates: the accidental deceives people most of all when there is some kind of necessity there. Repeats with Michael is a man, man is said of Bernardo. Aside: icebox vs. refrigerator, “a horrible fight we have all the time”.

12. De Veritate: last instant of sin, first instant of grace (“the justification of the impious”) #

A “very different problem” raised at the end, from Thomas on justification: a time turned away from God, a time turned toward. Is the end of the one and the beginning of the other the same instant (contradiction: turned away and turned toward at once)? If not, there is a time between in which he is turned away from neither, so he turns from sin without grace. Solution stated in passing: no time in between; only a first instant of being turned toward, not a last instant of being turned away. Left there as the class ends.

His words #

• equivocal by reason vs. equivocal by chance; an order among the meanings marks the former [ed.: analogical vs. purely equivocal].
• ability: Shakespeare’s first word; he lists Aristotle’s senses [ed.: potency].
• ninth / eleventh book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics IX, XI].
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics].
• discourse: running from one thing to another, or coming to know the unknown from the known.
• sapientis est ordinare: it belongs to the wise man to order.
• composed / integral whole vs. universal whole; subject parts.
• per se: what belongs to a thing “through being” it; per accidens.
• plus habet virtute decipiendi, efficacissima, sola sophistica: Albert’s and Thomas’s phrases for the fallacy’s power.
• difference (diaphora, “carry apart”) vs. diversity (nothing in common, other by themselves).
• pure act vs. pure passive ability (God vs. first matter).
• Cratylians: his tag for talking as if one opposite is the other (uncertain in the recording).

Texts #

Read in class

• Albert the Great, commentary on the Sophistical Refutations (handout quotation): fallacy of accident before all others; defect of the middle term.
• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on Metaphysics XI (handout): no true science considers being per accidens.
• Handout example: the singular is understood. Mentioned
• Shakespeare’s definition of reason (no locus given).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX (senses of ability); Categories (before; opposites; substance said of animal); Physics I (Parmenides and Melissus; subject and opposites); Physics IV with Thomas’s commentary (eight senses of “in”); Posterior Analytics (demonstration and the necessary); Sophistical Refutations I (even the wise deceived); Metaphysics (man as two-footed animal).
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles I chs. 16 and 28, and the plan of books I–III; De Veritate on justification of the impious.
• Euclid, Elements I.32.
• Hugo’s definition of reason (contrasted, not quoted).

His questions #

• Can you define reason without words equivocal by reason? No; every word in Shakespeare’s definition is equivocal by reason, yet the definition tells how to understand such words.
• Are all statements known through other statements? No, else no statement would ever be known; some are known through themselves (axioms).
• Are “whole” and “part” equivocal by reason? Yes: composed whole vs. universal whole, which is how the sophism “the part is more than the whole” works.
• Could God create something not able to be? No; but “able to be” means involving no contradiction, not having matter — two senses of ability.
• Is it a limitation on God that there is no square circle? No; a square circle is nothing, and nothing is impossible with God.
• What separates “divisible into equal parts” from “not divisible”? Do they have a difference? No; they are separate by themselves, the one not being the other (diversity, not difference).
• Is animal said of cat because animal is said of dog? No; because cat is a living body with sensation; the link through dog is accidental.
• Is equilateral right-angled quadrilateral said of square because it is a definition? No, because it expresses what a square is.
• Do you think there is a lot of this fallacy in public discourse? “Oh yeah”, especially about the more universal things.
• Is there a last instant of being turned away from God, or only a first instant of being turned toward? There is no time between; the rest left open at the end of the recording.