Article 9 continued: Necessary and Contingent Knowledge, Contradiction, Opinion and Certitude

Orientation #

He opens with “now the third one,” i.e. the reply to the third objection, and says the fourth reply “as I pointed out” turns on whether Damascene’s words name powers or acts (prev. lecture). He does not announce next time. The previous class treated articles 9 and 10 on higher and lower reason and analogical names; the next takes up whether intelligentia is a power distinct from intellectus.

The class, in order #

1. Aristotle’s scientificum is not Augustine’s higher reason (“necessary noble things are found even in temporal things”) #

Point: the objection’s pairing of Aristotle’s two parts with Augustine’s two reasons fails, first because scientificum is wider than higher reason.

1. Higher reason (Augustine) is knowledge of eternal, divine things only.
2. But necessary truths are found even in temporal things: change is always between opposites; man is always an animal, the cat always an animal. Natural science and mathematics are about these.
   • Aside-distinction: natural science and mathematics are both about material things, but natural science defines with sensible matter (flesh, blood, bones), mathematics without it: the geometrical sphere is neither hard nor soft, hot nor cold, heavy nor light.
3. Aristotle’s scientificum is taken in the sense of episteme: knowledge of the necessary, the result of demonstration, a syllogism making us know the cause of what cannot be otherwise, from premises seen to be necessarily true. Conclusion: scientificum includes more than knowledge of divine things, so it is not higher reason. Aristotle’s text here is “kind of obscure.”

2. Opinativum and ratiocinativum are less than lower reason (“there are different ways of making a house”) #

Point: Aristotle’s other part concerns the contingent as contingent, here and now, which is narrower than Augustine’s lower reason. Examples of the contingent in making and doing:

• the abbot’s chapel compared with the Benedictine one (cheaper but better interior, no wallboard): a house can be made this way or that;
• additions on houses in his neighbourhood: one with windows of different sizes from the original (his wife’s verdict), others that match: “you need somebody who knows what he’s doing”; it could have been designed otherwise;
• cooking: the recipe book has infinite ways to flavour meat; his ham last night went in the frying pan because of rain, tonight probably the grill: it depends on circumstances or whim;
• a fortiori the domain of prudence: study this time or that; this tea or that; red or white wine with chicken. He adds that Aristotle may there be touching something in the order of an interior sense, the cogitative power.

3. Yet not simply two powers: both known under being and the true (“quantities equal to the same are equal to each other”) #

Point: Thomas says it should not be said without distinction that one power knows the necessary and another the contingent, because reason knows everything under the definition of being and the true. Necessary things, having perfect being and truth, reason knows perfectly, attaining to what they are and thence demonstrating their proper accidents. His worked example on the board:

• Intersecting straight lines: because they intersect there are opposite angles A and B; because they are straight, A + X equals two right angles (a straight line meeting a straight line makes angles equal to two right angles, the previous theorem), and likewise B + X. Then axioms: things equal to the same are equal to each other, so A + X = B + X; equals subtracted from equals, so A = B. “Notice all this follows because the intersecting lines here are straight”: if one were bent it could not hold. That is the cause, the reason why.
• The triangle’s angles equal to two right angles: Euclid extends a side and uses the exterior angle by the parallel theorems; more simply, draw a line through the vertex parallel to the base and use equal alternate angles. Needs more prior theorems than the first example. A “triangle” on a sphere, as modern mathematicians say, is the word used equivocally; here it is the flat-surface triangle with straight lines. So the triangle’s angle-sum and the equal opposite angles are proper accidents demonstrated from what the thing is: necessary truths known completely.

4. Contingent known imperfectly; acts and habits diversified, not the power (“perfect and imperfect do not diversify a power”) #

Point: contingent things reason knows imperfectly, as they have imperfect being and truth.

• Example: “Brook was just sitting”: true now, but if you leave the room he may stand; for all you know he has pushed the chair back and is crouching. Sometimes true, sometimes false; known only when you are there and can sense it.
• Thomas: perfect and imperfect do not diversify a power, but diversify the acts as to the mode of acting, and consequently the principles of action and the habits.
• Hence Aristotle lays down two parts, scientific and ratiocinative, not because they are two powers but because they differ by aptitude to receive diverse habits, whose diversity he there intends to inquire (e.g. prudence and art about the contingent, science about the necessary).
• Contingent and necessary differ in their own genera but come together in the common notion of being, which the understanding regards, standing to it as perfect and imperfect.

5. Aside: a sign of the soul’s immortality (“England has no permanent friends”) #

Point: because reason knows the necessary better and is more perfected by it, this is a sign the soul is immortal in its nature, since perfection and perfectible are relative to each other (repeated at a student’s request: reason is perfected more by knowing the necessary than the contingent; as to knowing, that is; the contingent is needed for acting and making). Illustrations of how hard the contingent is to know: the British statesman’s “no permanent friends or enemies, permanent interests”; Germany the friend in the Napoleonic wars, the enemy in both world wars, now friendly; France the friend in the Revolutionary war, opposed over the Iraq war (people pouring out French wine, not buying French cheese; we buy more from them than they from us); the US supporting Iraq against Iran after the embassy seizure, then Iraq the enemy; politicians rivals for a nomination then running mates to balance a ticket (Kennedy needing LBJ for the South; a New Yorker with a Californian). “That’s the nature of the contingent.”

6. Summing up the reply to the third (“the proportion that they made in the objection”) #

Point: two defects in the objection. (1) The two parts Aristotle distinguishes are not the two Augustine distinguishes. (2) Necessary and contingent both come under reason’s object, being and the true: reason can know that the angles are equal and that you are sitting, though the first more perfectly and always, the second not always true.

7. Reply to the fourth: Damascene’s terms name acts; contradictory statements (“same subject and predicate”) #

Point: Damascene’s distinction is according to diversity of acts, not of powers; opinion signifies an act carried to one part of a contradiction with fear of the other. This calls for what contradictory statements are (the “famous thing” from the second part of logic).

• Definition: same subject and predicate, one affirmative and one negative, opposed so that both cannot be true and both cannot be false; one must be true and the other false, though you may not know which.
• Singular subject: easy. “Berquist is standing” / “Berquist is not standing.”
• Universal subject “man”: “man is standing” is ambiguous (every man? some man?), so Aristotle compares universal and particular:
  • every man is standing / no man is standing: cannot both be true but can both be false (one man standing and one sitting in this room suffices), so not contradictory;
  • some man is standing / some man is not standing: both true, so not contradictory;
  • universal affirmative vs particular negative, and universal negative vs particular affirmative: these are contradictory (if every man is standing there is no exception; if some man is standing, “no man” is false).
• Reference: Aristotle teaches this in the Peri Hermeneias (transcript “Prior Peri Hermeneias”; likely an ASR garble).

8. Knowing which side is true: sense, definitions, reasoning; dialectic vs demonstration (“with fear of the other”) #

Point: the logic of the second act does not tell you which side is true; that is known in three ways, and reasoning divides into demonstrative and dialectical.

• By sensation: Berquist is standing, at least now.
• By understanding the parts: no odd number is even / some odd number is even: the first is true from knowing what odd and even are.
• By reasoning: every triangle has angles equal to two right angles is not obvious from the definitions; you reason it out, and if from necessary truths you come to know it (also that equal sides give equal angles, and the reverse).
• Dialectical reasoning reasons to one side of a contradiction with probability, hence with some fear the other may be true; demonstration gives the reason why it must be so, with no fear (the intersecting lines).
• Example: will George Bush get a second term? He thinks it likely, yet fears the opposite: assassination by terrorists, the economy in a tailspin after an attack, a political goof.
• Dialectic reasons from probable opinions, even to both sides: Socrates in the Meno argues that virtue can be taught and that it cannot; one may incline to the stronger side without knowing for sure. A jury hearing two somewhat convincing lawyers may end hung, or take time to come down one side.
• So opinion or suspicion may be stronger or weaker, but is less than certitude.

9. Judgment, mind, understanding; can dialectic prepare demonstration? (“do you see that dog out there”) #

Point: the remaining terms of Damascene and a student’s question on dialectic.

• To judge (iudicare, to measure) is an act applying principles to examining proposed things; from this the name mens is taken (he remarks “our friend Avicenna” is saying this); to understand is adhering with approbation to what has been judged. Thomas uses “judgment” in logic to mean certitude, unlike today’s looser “judgmental.” Judging that this side is true and that not requires a definite, necessary reason.
• Phaedo: Cebes objects that Socrates’ reasons are probable, not necessary, and wants a reason why the soul must survive; Socrates attempts it with his last argument. In demonstration you have the reason why it must be so on this side; in dialectic something weaker, yet some reason for thinking it probably this side.
• Student: is this “the second road,” reasoning from probable opinions to reasoned-out understanding? Answer: that is a different question, whether dialectic can prepare the way for demonstration. Aristotle says yes, Descartes no (Descartes: how can the merely probable make you see something must be so? Aristotle is not saying that). Thinking about these things, you suddenly see what you did not see before.
• His example: you cannot see the dog; look at the barn, then the big tree to its right, then just left of it: now you see the dog. You came to see the dog by seeing barn and tree, but not through them. “That’s kind of a subtle thing.” Student: but you cannot reason that something is necessarily so from the merely probable; he agrees, and says Aristotle saw that better than Descartes thought.
• Result: Damascene is talking about different acts of reason.

10. Back to Augustine: offices, not powers; the contingent against the necessary (“not distinguished except by their offices”) #

Point: all this arose from Augustine’s higher and lower reason; Augustine himself says, in De Trinitate XII, ch. 2, that they are distinguished only by their offices, not by different powers. Closing contrast: the abbot deliberating the chapel; his brother-in-law the carpenter building the deck (how big? it could have been a couple of feet longer; nothing necessary about the length); how many feet wide the new church should be: “a lot of contingency.” But intersecting straight lines cannot be otherwise; one opposite angle cannot be a little bigger than the other. “It’s a necessary thing.”

His words #

• scientificum: Aristotle’s “scientific” part of the soul, taken as episteme, knowledge of the necessary through demonstration.
• episteme: knowledge resulting from demonstration, the syllogism making us know the cause of what cannot be otherwise.
• opinativum, ratiocinativum: Aristotle’s other part, knowledge of the contingent as contingent, here and now [ed.: the calculative part].
• higher reason / lower reason: Augustine’s; higher reason is knowledge of divine or eternal things; distinguished by offices, not powers.
• being and the true: the definition of reason’s object under which it knows both necessary and contingent.
• proper accidents / properties: what is demonstrated of a thing from what it is.
• cogitative power: an interior sense, possibly what Aristotle touches with the ratiocinativum.
• contradictory statements: same subject and predicate, one affirmative one negative, both cannot be true, both cannot be false.
• dialectical reasoning: to one side of a contradiction with probability and fear of the other, from probable opinions; demonstrative: with the reason why it must be so.
• opinion, suspicion: an act toward one side of a contradiction, less than certitude.
• iudicare: to judge or to measure, applying principles to examine what is proposed; in Thomas’s logic, judgment means certitude.
• mens: “mind,” name taken from judging.
• to understand (here): adhering with approbation to what has been judged.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 79, a. 9, ad 3 and ad 4 (probably; verified source: between a. 9 and a. 10), translated and glossed phrase by phrase. Mentioned
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, on the scientific and ratiocinative parts (locus not stated).
• Aristotle, Peri Hermeneias, on contradictory statements (universal and particular).
• Augustine, De Trinitate XII, ch. 2 (higher and lower reason differ by offices).
• John Damascene (opinion, judgment, mind, understanding), as cited in the objection.
• Avicenna, on mens (as he remarks in passing).
• Plato, Meno (virtue taught / not taught); Plato, Phaedo (Cebes’ objection, Socrates’ last argument).
• Descartes, on reasoning from the probable (no work named).
• Euclid, on the triangle’s angle-sum (no book or proposition stated).

His questions #

• What is the contradictory of “Berquist is standing”? Can both be true, both false? “Berquist is not standing”; neither both true nor both false, one must be true, one false.
• Are “every man is standing” and “no man is standing” contradictory? No: both can be false, as one man standing and one sitting in the room shows.
• Are “some man is standing” and “some man is not standing” contradictory? No: both are true.
• Which pairs are contradictory? Universal affirmative with particular negative; universal negative with particular affirmative.
• “No odd number is even” / “some odd number is even”: which is true, and how do you know? The first, from understanding what odd and even are.
• Why do perfect and imperfect not make two powers? They diversify the acts as to mode of acting, and so the principles and habits, not the power.
• What is the sign of the soul’s immortality drawn here? Reason is perfected more by knowing the necessary, and perfection and perfectible are relative.
• Can dialectical reasoning prepare the way for demonstration? (student’s question) Aristotle yes, Descartes no; you come to see it by the probable, not through it (the dog, barn and tree).