Metaphysics IX, Reading 2: Rational vs. Natural Abilities — Knowledge of Contraries and the Modern Misunderstanding of Reason and Nature

Orientation #

He is taking up the second reading of Book Nine (the first reading, on the senses of ability, was treated before). He breaks off at the end for time, saying he wanted to stop on this text because the distinction it draws is easily misunderstood. The previous class opened Book Nine and worked through the senses of “ability.”

The class, in order #

1. The distinction announced (“some such beginnings are present in soulless things”) #

Aristotle now divides the abilities: some are without reason (in soulless — i.e. natural — things), some with reason (in the soul, especially the part having reason). All the arts and making sciences are abilities, being beginnings able to produce change in another as other. The mark of difference: a natural ability is determined to one of two opposites (fire heats only; heat is only of heating), while a rational ability is of contraries (the medical art is of disease and of health).

2. Anticipation of openness to opposites in the lower soul (“a tree seems to grow in opposite directions”) #

Heavy things go down, light things up — each to one. But a tree grows up into the sky and down into the ground, in a ratio between the two: an anticipation in the lowest (living) soul of being open to opposites.

3. The same knowledge of contraries (“if you guys knew what you were doing”) #

Examples, all for the one point that a rational power reaches both opposites because knowledge does:

• Symposium: at the end Socrates tells Aristophanes (comic) and Agathon (tragic) that if they knew what they were doing they could both write tragedy and comedy.
• Homer wrote the Iliad and the Margites (lost, fragments survive); Aristotle in the Poetics says the Margites is to comedy what the Iliad is to tragedy. Shakespeare likewise writes tragedy and very funny comedy (his brother Richard’s surprise at the comedies).
• Politics V teaches both how to overthrow a government and how to preserve it, in one book.
• The logical works: the eight books of Topics with the two books on sophistical refutations form one work, teaching correct and incorrect reasoning together.
• Grammar lets him say “I am your professor” and also “I is your professor” — and know the second is wrong.
• A good persuader can persuade for or against.
• Cooking the steak: knowing how much to cook it is knowing how to overcook it. Aside: Coriolanus — Volumnia’s “Nature not being able to be more than one thing”; Coriolanus can only be a soldier, cannot adapt to civilian life. Custom is like a second nature, determined to one.

4. The cause Aristotle gives (“the same thought in a way shows the thing and its lack”) #

Why is the rational ability of contraries and the natural not? Because there is the same knowledge of contraries. In matter one contrary excludes the other (sight and blindness cannot be in the same thing); but in knowledge one contrary is known through the other — blindness is known through sight; the idea of high blood pressure includes what normal pressure should be; an over- or under-active thyroid is known by what the thyroid should be. So such knowledge is of contraries, but of one as such and the other not as such, but through the first. And it is in a soul which has a beginning of motion.

5. The problem raised: does reason or will know or will anything naturally? (“all men by nature desire to know”) #

He puts it to the class. In the restaurant I can choose steak or no steak — but can I choose between happiness and misery? “All men by nature desire to know” (Metaphysics I, Proem). Do I choose to like the beautiful and dislike the ugly? (Student: “It’d be natural.” He agrees.) Is reason free to think the whole is not more than the part, or that something both is and is not? Thomas says reason knows some things naturally, determined to one side of a contradiction, and the will is naturally turned to something. So what happens to the distinction he is making here? Answer: my reason has a nature, and so knows something by nature; nature is what is first in the thing.

6. Digression: the beginning of trouble in thinking is a missed distinction (“not seeing some distinction, or misunderstanding some distinction”) #

• Fallacy of equivocation generally; Melissus mixing two senses of infinite.
• His sophism: man is an animal but not just an animal (animal is part of the definition, less than the whole); yet animal includes man, dog, cat, horse — so “sometimes the part is more than the whole.” Solution: two senses of whole and part. The composed whole (the definition) is composed of more than one of its parts; the universal whole is said of more than one of its parts. Students first accept the sophism.
• The general before the particular (we know confusedly before distinctly: “a dry red wine” is known more surely than “cabernet sauvignon”) vs. the senses, which come first and know only particulars. Apparent self-contradiction in Aristotle, solved by two senses of “particular”: singular (Socrates is a particular man) vs. less universal (dog is a particular kind of animal). Singulars come before universals; among universals, the more universal comes first.

7. The right way to take the distinction: equivocation by reason, where one member keeps the common name (“man is not just an animal”) #

The key move of the class. When a name is said of two things, sometimes one keeps the name as its own and the other gets a new name.

• Animal: said of animals with reason (men) and without (beasts) — but often we keep “animal” for the beasts and distinguish man against animal. His mother disliked “man is an animal”; he answered, “Mama, I don’t mean he’s just an animal — he’s an animal that has reason.” So “animal” as distinguished from man means what is just an animal.
• So too nature vs. reason, and nature vs. will: what is just a nature keeps the name “nature”; what is a nature plus something (the ability for opposites, the ability to choose) gets the new name.
• “That’s kind of a subtle thing”: two and three. Is there a two in three? Yes — three is two plus one. It is as if we divide two into what is just two and what is two plus one; the latter, not being just two, gets a new name. Distinguishing three from two does not deny a two in three.
• Hence Aristotle distinguishes the rational ability by what it has in addition: openness to opposites (Shakespeare’s tragedy or comedy; Politics V either way; the Meno arguing with probability both that virtue can be taught and that it cannot; choosing to study natural philosophy or geometry or theology tonight, to read John or Matthew or neither). But I do not choose to want to know rather than be ignorant, or to be wise rather than a fool — Othello crying “fool, fool” when he sees Desdemona was innocent.

8. The moderns misunderstand it (“there is nothing that we will naturally”) #

• Mill, On Liberty, chapter on liberty of thought: part is what Aristotle would admit — in many things we do not know which side is so, reasons may be stronger on one side, someone may later find better reasons, so keep an open mind. Where Mill differs: nothing is such that reason is naturally determined to say it is so and cannot not be so.
• Sartre: nothing the will necessarily wills; absolute indetermination is complete freedom, and you are a coward [“copping out”] if you think your will necessarily wills something.
• Against Mill: Metaphysics IV on the axioms — the mind naturally knows them. One can say something both is and is not, but cannot think it; one can say the part equals the whole, but give him part of the celery and he will rant. Being capable of contraries does not mean having no determination at all.

9. Every thought an hypothesis? The logic of confirmation (“if Berquist dropped dead last night”) #

The same error runs through modern scientists from custom: every idea is an hypothesis to be tested by its consequences.

1. Confirmation: if A then B; B is so; therefore A — not a syllogism, a fallacy. (If Berquist dropped dead last night he will be absent; he is absent; therefore — “that’s wishful thinking, not logical thinking.”)
2. Rejection: if A then B; B is not so; therefore not A — this follows necessarily. So there is more strength in rejection than in confirmation.
3. More and more precise predictions give more probability, never necessity. Einstein on Newtonian physics: so much was predicted truly that physicists thought it must be true, until relativity predicted the same things plus more.
4. Claude Bernard: “doubt is intrinsic to the experimental method” — an hypothesis however often confirmed can still be doubted to the extent of testing it again. Shakespeare: “their thoughts are but dreams until their effects be tried.” Self-refutation: the scientist who rejects an hypothesis because observation contradicts it is using the impossibility of something both being and not being. He cannot treat that axiom itself as an hypothesis tested by contradiction, since he would have to assume it in testing it. So there is a thought which is not an hypothesis — something we naturally know. Parallel: his brother Mark on Euclid’s fifth postulate — the attempted proofs assume the very thing they prove, which invalidates the proof but shows they really do know it.

10. The force of custom (“custom is stronger than argument”) #

Claude Bernard’s scheme: the scientist has ideas, deduces consequences, tests them; the philosopher has ideas and deduces consequences but does not test; the theologian just has ideas — a caricature, but he was a great physiologist who knew only the experimental method. Custom is second nature (his own musical habit, breathing in and out): the determination they have by custom leads them to reject determination by nature. In the Apology Socrates fears his anonymous accusers more than those accusing him in court, because they influence the jury more — for the most part custom is stronger than argument, and the customary seems to be known naturally and unquestionable. Shakespeare: “Use almost can change the stamp of nature” — almost.

11. The circle of knowledge, in Euclid I.6 (“judge what we don’t naturally know by what we naturally know”) #

For Aristotle and Thomas there is a circle: we begin from what we naturally know, go toward what we do not, and judge the latter by coming back to the former. Euclid I.5 proves that equal sides give equal opposite angles; I.6 is the converse, proved by reduction to the absurd: suppose the sides unequal, AB greater than AC; cut off BD equal to the lesser; join D to C; then triangle DBC has two sides equal to the two of ACB containing equal angles, so the triangles are equal — the greater equal to the smaller, the part equal to the whole. That goes against what we naturally know. (A student follows the construction throughout.) For the moderns “axiom” now means something merely assumed or postulated, and thinking becomes a game with arbitrary rules like Monopoly.

12. Closing: not an absolute distinction (“east is east and west is west”) #

He stops for time, on the point he wanted to leave them with. One might take nature vs. reason as an absolute distinction like virtue and vice, or sweet and bitter — no sweetness in the bitter, no bitterness in the sweet; “east is east and west is west, and never the twain shall meet.” That is the misunderstanding: it is like thinking there is in no way a two in three. (He thanks the student for raising it.)

His words #

• Beginning — origin or source; what stands in the definition of ability [ed.: principle].
• Ability / power — [ed.: potency]; active: beginning of change in another; passive: beginning of being changed by another.
• Book Nine of Wisdom — [ed.: Metaphysics IX]; also “first book of Wisdom,” “fourth/fifth/eighth book of Wisdom.”
• Knowledge of reason — his rendering of the rational kind of knowing that is of contraries.
• Equivocation by reason — one name said of several by different accounts, where one member may keep the name as its own.
• Composed whole vs. universal whole — composed of its parts; said of its parts.
• Equivocal by reason / places — “the eight books about places” [ed.: Topics].
• Use — Shakespeare’s word for custom.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX, reading two (the paragraphs on abilities with and without reason, the cause in the same thought of contraries, and the soul having a beginning of motion) — read and commented sentence by sentence.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics I, Proem (“all men by nature desire to know”); IV (defence of the axioms); V (senses of words in the axioms); VIII (definitions compared to numbers).
• Aristotle, Poetics (Margites : comedy :: Iliad : tragedy); Politics V; Topics and Sophistical Refutations as one work.
• Plato, Symposium (closing conversation); Meno (whether virtue can be taught); Apology (anonymous accusers).
• Euclid, Elements I.5, I.6, postulate 5.
• Mill, On Liberty (chapter on liberty of thought); Sartre; Claude Bernard; Einstein on Newton and relativity.
• Shakespeare: Coriolanus (“Nature not being able to be more than one thing”), Othello, “their thoughts are but dreams until their effects be tried,” “Use almost can change the stamp of nature”; Homer, Iliad and Margites; Melissus.

His questions #

• Why is the rational ability of contraries when the natural one is not? Because there is the same knowledge of contraries — one contrary is known through the other, though one as such and the other not as such.
• Is there anything reason naturally knows, or the will naturally wills? Yes — the axioms, and happiness; my reason has a nature, so it knows something by nature.
• Can I choose between happiness and misery, as I choose steak or chicken? No; I naturally want to be happy, to know, to be wise.
• Did I choose to like the beautiful and dislike the ugly? A student answers “it’d be natural”; he agrees.
• Is there a two in three? Yes — three is two plus one; distinguishing three from two does not deny it.
• If it looks like Aristotle is making an error in this distinction, is he? No; in Book Four he speaks of the mind naturally knowing the axioms, so capacity for contraries is not total indetermination.
• Does it follow, if my hypothesis predicts B and B is so, that A is so? No — wishful thinking, not logical thinking; only rejection follows necessarily.
• Can the axiom of contradiction be treated as an hypothesis tested by its consequences? No — you would have to assume it to test it; so it is something naturally known.
• Is the distinction of nature and reason like that of sweet and bitter, or virtue and vice? No; it is the division of what is just a nature against what is a nature and something more.