Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
11. Logic as Tool and Liberal Art: Ordering Thoughts Through Words
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[0:00] This is page five of your book. This is taken from Thomas's commentary on Augustine's work on the Trinity. Thomas says, "Looking sciences, as is clear in the beginning of the Metaphysics, are about things the knowledge of which is sought for its own sake. "

[0:26] So the word "looking" means trying to see, trying to understand, right? So looking sciences, which are really mathematics and natural philosophy, and First philosophy or wisdom, they're pursued for their own sake. This is not true about logic.

[0:49] The things, however, which logic is about, are not sought to be known for themselves, but as a help to the other sciences. And therefore, logic is not contained under looking philosophy as a principal part, but as something reduced to it. In a way, it's the what tool of looking philosophy and in general philosophy.

[1:17] But now. Thomas adds something here that's a little more new to us here. Insofar as it provides speculative philosophy with its tools, namely syllogisms and definitions and others of this kind, which we need in the looking sciences, once according to Boethius and his commentary on Porphyry, is not so much a science as a tool of science. Porphyry wrote a famous book called the Isagoge, the Introduction to Aristotle's Categories, and that became a standard text all the way through the Middle Ages.

[1:51] So Albert the Great has a commentary on it, huh? Cajetan has a commentary on it, huh? Boethius has a commentary on it, and so on.

[2:05] Notice what. Thomas is saying here that logic is more the tool of philosophy, right, than a chief part of it, right? But also that logic, in a way, is about tools, right? Okay. Now, how does that compare with the basic thing we've seen up to this point? Let's go back to the starting point here. We said that logic is about three acts of our reason, right? It's going to direct or order three acts of our reason, and those three acts.

[2:43] Let's put them on the board again. Understanding what a thing is, two. Understanding the true or the false, and three, reasoning. Okay. Now, what are these tools he's talking about, like definition and syllogism and other things of this sort, right? How are they related to these three acts? Well,

[3:29] suppose a student doesn't understand what a perfect number is. How would I help them understand what a perfect number is? Define. Yeah, yeah. So a perfect number is a number equal, right, to the sum of everything that measures it. So the first perfect number is six. Six is measured by one. It's measured by two. It's measured by three, but not by four or five. And one plus two plus three equals what?

[4:06] Six. Four is not a perfect number. It's measured by one and by two, not by three. And one plus two doesn't equal four. Okay. No, no. it's just examples there to kind of illustrate the definition, right? But it's through the definition that one is able to understand what a perfect number is. It's a number equal to the sum of everything that measures it. Okay. What's a composite number?

[4:38] Some students don't know what composite number is. What's a number that's measured not only by the one but by some other number, right? So four is a composite number, but three is not. Five is not.

[4:55] And that's what a prime number is, right? A number that's measured only by the one, not by any other number, right? Okay. If you didn't know what blank verse is, I would give you the definition, right? It's unrhymed iambic pentameter. If you didn't understand what an iamb is, I would give you the definition. It's two syllables with the accent on the second one. Okay.

[5:18] So definition is a tool, as Thomas says. A tool that is necessary often for this first act, right? I can't understand what a perfect number is without the definition of perfect number, right? I can't understand what blank verse is without the definition of blank verse, huh? I can't even understand clearly what a square is without the definition of square, an equilateral right angle, quadrilateral. Okay.

[6:05] Now, is there a tool corresponding to understanding the true or the false? Because you have to make something. Just like here, it has to make the definition often to understand what something is. What does it have to make before you can understand the true or the false? Statement. Yeah. Yeah. Because really, where do you find truth or falsity? Is there any truth or falsity in this room, outside of us here?

[6:43] huh? Any truth in the ground, false in the ground. I dig in there. Mike wants to plant some things, and you keep on hitting rocks and roots and yeah, just just one hole. You know, I use a hole, but you get the rocks like this, you know, you have two about four or five rocks out of one hole, and then two on another thing. So I dug there.

[7:05] They had rocks and so, and then had roots, you know, with the big much bigger than this, like that, you know. It's like chopping with some blunt ax, and so on. So I never found any piece of truth in the ground. I swam in the ocean and lakes. Never found any truth or falsity there in the water. I walked through the air every day. You know, no truth or falsity there, right? Where do you find truth or falsity Come to mind.

[7:36] Yeah, but not in the first act here, because man, true or false? Animal, true or false? Stone, true or false? I put that in a true or false exam. You wouldn't know what to do. But when I put these together in an affirmative and negative statement, I say man is an animal, or man is not an animal. It's either true or false, right? Man is a stone, or man is not a stone, right?

[8:02] Okay. So in order to understand the true or the false, I have to make a statement. So in a way, statement is to the second act.

[8:13] What definition is to the first act? Now, what tool corresponds to the third act? Syllogism. Syllogism is the most perfect, but in general, you could say an argument, right? Okay. An argument.

[8:44] And we'll be distinguishing the syllogism and induction, which are the two main kinds of arguments. And the enthymeme and example, are weaker but I like those two.

[9:03] I know it's uh and you make these, yeah. Question about the second. You also say that the tool for the second part of understanding would be combination and division. Or more properly, Thomas uses that to mean the act, the act, right? You're putting things together in affirmative statement.

[9:28] Otherwise, separated. Okay. So those these are not the same thing, right? Now sometimes they compare this a little bit to the telescope, let's say, the microscope, and these things. My nose is holding up, right? You see, this is not an act of the eye. This thing here. Okay, it's not. It's not a see, is it? And a telescope and a microscope are not a see either, right?

[9:53] But are they related to see? Yeah. There are things I can see or see better because I have these on, right? And things I can see with a microscope that I can't see without the microscope, right? And things at a distance that I can see the telescope that couldn't see otherwise, right? Okay. So you can see that the my glasses or the microscope or the telescope are tools that enable us to see some things we couldn't see without them, right?

[10:22] Or to see those things at least better than we can see them without them, right? Now what you got these things on for? Yeah. Okay. So in a way, these are like that in the sense that they're tools; they're necessary to complete or perfect these three acts, right? Okay. And

[10:45] you could say that logic is about these tools in a way. When you say it's about these three acts, you're thinking more about the end or purpose of logic, right? It's to perfect these three acts. It's to order these three acts. This is what logic is about, in the sense of an end or purpose, right? But these are the tools necessary, right, to perfect and order these acts.

[11:19] Okay. So when I talk about glasses or microscope or telescope, they're for the sake of seeing, right? For the sake of an act of the eye, right? Okay.

[11:36] But you can really see a definition and statement argument are more what the subject of logic is, right? Okay. But you got to see them as related to the end or purpose, which is to perfect and direct these acts. Now, notice that making a statement, as they say, is necessary to understanding the true or the false, because you find truth and falsity only in statements. Sometimes I ask, "Is where is truth?

[12:04] " You know, I don't know what to say at first, right? I say, "Well, in general, it's in the same place that falsity is in statements, right? " Okay. But notice, making a statement doesn't tell you whether the statement is not a statement Statement is true or false, does it?

[12:21] Now, sometimes we know that a statement is true or false through our senses, right? So if you take these two statements, Berquist is standing now, right? Berquist is not standing now. Okay. One of those statements is true and the other is false, right? And in this case, how do you know which is true, which is false? Looking, I see. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, sometimes you know that a statement is true or false, through the first act, right?

[12:56] If I define, for example, triangle and I define square, I could see that no triangle is a what square, right? Or if I define square and I define quadrilateral, I could see that a square is a quadrilateral. So sometimes you know that a statement is true or false through understanding the parts. Okay. Sometimes by the senses. Sometimes through understanding the parts, right? Well, if you don't see it through your senses or through understanding the parts, then you have to go to what?

[13:32] Reasoning to decide whether this true or false. Okay, so Euclid says, for example, that the in a triangle, these three angles will add up to two right angles always. Even if I know what a triangle is and what right angles are, I don't see that these have to add up to two right angles. Go ahead, just by looking at it. I have to reason it out, right?

[13:56] I have to use a number of what arguments, right? But obviously, you must know some statements without having to what reason to them. Otherwise, you'd have no statements to reason from. Okay, so they don't either by sense or by understanding the parts of them. Okay,

[14:22] so it's interesting that logic is called the organon of philosophy, the tool philosophy. But as Thomas points out here, you could say also that in a way, it's about the tools, right? The tools for the sake of perfecting those three acts. Tools for the sake of directing or ordering those three acts.

[14:50] Now, the original meaning of art, as we said before, is that an art is right reason about making, right? But making in the in some kind of matter, right? But then we carry the word art over and apply it to what they call the liberal arts. Where there's a kind of making, but it's not in matter, but kind of a mental making.

[15:17] And this is what Thomas points out here in coming on the boethius. the seven liberal arts. Now, you know what the seven liberal arts are. They go back to Pythagoras and Plato, right? The seven liberal arts were divided later on in the Middle Ages into the Trivium, which was grammar, rhetoric, and logic. They're the distinguished rhetoric and logic, grammar, rhetoric, logic, and then the Quadrivium goes back to Pythagoras, and that was arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.

[16:02] Plato in the *Charmides he talks about the liberal arts, right? Of course, at this time they're just starting to anticipate logic, right? Rhetoric had been developed a little bit earlier, and men were running around teaching rhetoric, and they were starting to understand grammar, right?

[16:22] A learned grammarian told me that the Greeks understood their language; they figured it out. They figured out the grammar of the Greek language, but then the Romans came along and they were too stupid to figure out the grammar of the Latin language, so they imitated the grammar of the Greeks, and that's why they got their cases all screwed up. And they had a you know tack on whatever was in the Greek, you know, added on.

[16:48] And then we imitated the Latin grammarians and fouled up our understanding of our own native language. You have to admire the Greeks, right? They're the fathers of everything, even of grammar.

[17:00] And then you know they developed rhetoric, right? Of course, Cicero said that Aristotle's rhetoric was a golden river, right? Greeks invented the art of rhetoric. They're the fathers of logic, right?

[17:12] And the more difficult to understand things in logic, the Romans didn't even have a name for it, like syllogism. That's a Greek word. Induction is a Latin word, huh but the more difficult things they didn't even have enthymeme and syllogism. Okay. That's. where we get the word trivial, right? Because everybody would know the trivial. But it's not trivial, in our sense of the word, right? So the seven liberal arts, he says, among other sciences, are called arts as well as sciences, because they not only have knowledge, but some work that is immediately of reason itself, as to construct syllogisms, to make a syllogism or to make a definition, or make a statement, right?

[17:57] Logic's about that, and to form speech, to form sentences, like in grammar, and then to number and measure, like in arithmetic and geometry, and to form melodies, music, right? And to compute the course of the stars, right? He's touching upon the four parts of the quadrivium, which go back to the great Pythagoras To form speech, of course, you take that to mean rhetoric too. Rhetoric is about giving speeches.

[18:34] But other sciences either do not have a work but knowledge only, as divine and natural science, or they have a bodily work, as medicine, chemistry, and others of this kind. Whence, they cannot be called liberal arts, because acts of this kind belong to man, by that part which is not free, namely the bodily part. Okay.

[18:59] So notice in those two short texts there, Thomas is pointing out that logic, like the other what liberal arts, right, is in a way an art because it makes something, although it's a more mental making than making in wood or glass or paper or something like that, right? And that it's these are in a way tools, right, that reason needs for these acts, right? Now the next two little passages here, and the first one is more complete for our purposes here.

[19:37] Thomas says, just as in exterior acts, one can consider working in the work, the making of a chair and the chair, the making of a house, the building of a house and the house, right? So also in the works of reason, one can consider the act itself of reason, which is to understand either what a thing is or understand the true or the false, right? Or reasoning, right?

[20:03] Or something constituted by an act of this kind, which in looking reason first is definition, which corresponds to understanding what a thing is, statement, which corresponds to understanding the true or the false, right? Composition or division, and third syllogism or general argument, okay, which corresponds to what reasoning, right?

[20:41] So we could say that logic is about right, three acts of reason, right? But it's about three acts of reason, not so much as its subject as its end or purpose. Its end or purpose is to perfect these three acts, right? To direct and order these three acts. Okay. But its subject more is the what three tools, right? Definition and statement and syllogism mainly, argument, which perfect those three acts, which make them possible or at least make them more perfect, right?

[21:16] To direct them, right? Okay. Now, if you go back to the text here in the proemium of Nicomachean Ethics, when Thomas is dividing order in comparison to reason, let's look at the order in comparison to reason that logic is going to be concerned with.

[21:50] And Thomas says, "There is also an order which reason, by considering, makes in its own act, as when it orders its thoughts to each other. " And the signs of thoughts right in the middle of the page there, and the signs of thoughts which are signifying vocal sounds. I think there's a very key passage there in Thomas, because I think he's bringing out something that is very subtle.

[22:23] Let me stop and expand on this bit. And this is a kind of a key to seeing. If you ask the fundamental question: How do we order our thinking?

[22:52] Okay, use the broad term thinking there to include all these acts. How do we order our thinking? Words. Yeah, yeah. So I'm going to take another step there, right? Okay.

[23:13] I would say first we order our thinking by ordering our thoughts. Okay. Let me make this a little more explicit. How do we order our thinking about things? Okay. Make it more specific.

[23:40] We would answer the question by ordering our thoughts about things. Okay. Now, we pointed out before that thinking and a thought are not the same thing exactly. Just as imagining and an image are not the same thing, right?

[24:11] But they're very closely tied, right? When we imagine something, we form an image of it, right? When we think about something, we form a thought about it. Okay. And the image in a way is a likeness of something, and the thought is a likeness of something. Okay. So if we could order our thoughts, our thinking would be what? Ordered, right? Just like if we order our images, our imagining will be what?

[24:41] Ordered, yeah. In a way, when you memorize something, you know you have the steps there, right? You're ordering your what? Images, right? Okay. And that's why we go back to the beginning, you know, to follow it in order. You try to remember something. Sometimes I, you know, get lost in the middle of a passage. I can't remember. I go back to the beginning and say it at the beginning, right?

[25:03] And then I remember it, right? It's in the proper order. But notice something about this. Can you see, hear, smell, taste, or touch thinking?

[25:21] No. Can you even imagine thinking? No. Can you see, hear, smell, taste a thought? No. Can't even imagine a thought. So, for an animal with reason, whose natural road is from the senses into reason, how can it get at these things that it can't sense or imagine?

[25:50] It needs something sensible, right? Okay. That comes to the third thing now, the vocal sounds, huh? Okay. But ask the formal question first. How do we order our thoughts

[26:10] about things? About things. Well, it's by ordering the words. That signify things through thoughts. Okay. According to words that signify things through thoughts. In words, the original words are not the written words, but the vocal sounds, as he says. Right. Okay.

[27:02] So you can say that logic, in a way, is about using words, right? Insofar as they signify things through thoughts, right? To order our thoughts and consequently our what thinking. That's very subtle, right? See, I think that's all implied in what Thomas says here. There is also an order which reason. This is now in the proemium to the Nicomachean Ethics. There is also an order which reason by Considering makes in its own act, in its own thinking, right?

[27:35] As when it orders its thoughts to each other, and the signs of thoughts which are signifying vocal sounds, huh? Okay. Well, I'm kind of splitting up that second part there, right? Okay.

[27:54] One time the apostles asked our Lord, "Teach us how to pray." John taught his disciples how to pray, right? And what did Christ do? Give them prayer. Yeah, yeah. He taught them what? Give them some words to use to pray, right? huh? Okay. Now notice those words are not the inward prayer, are they? No. But in order to teach us how to pray, he has to use the what?

[28:27] Outward sensible sounds, right? Then. So when you teach a little child to pray, right? You teach them the Our Father and say the Hail Mary, right? And they will say these words, right? Not fully comprehending them, right? But they're gradually what? Ordering their what? Desires and their requests to God, right? As they say these words again and again, understand the words better, right? Okay. Uh, we see it

[28:57] in the 18th psalm, right? He says, "That the words of my mouth and the thought of my heart find favor before you." It's interesting the way it proceeds, right? You have to, you know, since learn the words, but then your thoughts have to, but go along with those words, and you know the king in Hamlet, you know, when he falls down, he starts to pray, right? After the scene there where he reenacted the murder, right?

[29:23] And he can't bring himself to repent, right? He's down there saying words, right, to God, but then he says, "Words without thoughts, nearer to heaven go." You know, Hamlet was by almost going to kill him right? But then he doesn't kill him. He's praying because that's too nice a way to go, right? He's got to wait till he's drinking and drunk or something, you know, and some activity.

[29:46] There's no relish of heaven in it at all, right? To get the revenge, right? This is kind of you know Christian in a way, but but after Hamlet goes by, the king rises up, right, and realizes that he's not really what. Inward is not conformed to the words, right? So he says, "Words without thoughts, ne'er to heaven go," right? Well, the same way in thinking here, though, right?

[30:10] The words, right, just as physical sounds wouldn't do anything, right? But in so far as these words signify things through thoughts, right, we can use those words to order our thoughts about things, and consequently, our thinking about things, huh? Okay.

[30:30] Now some people, you know, are kind of shocked by that, and when you examine the definitions, say of definition or the definition of statement or the definition of syllogism, the first word in the definition of all those things is Greek "logos," right? Okay. Now, the Greek word "logos" can mean word, mean the spoken word later on the written word. "Logos" can also mean speech, right? Now later on, "logos" can mean the thought, right?

[31:04] When Aristotle uses "logos" as the genus in the definition of definition or statement or syllogism, he's using it in the sense of thought or in the sense of of words, word or words, which is words, yeah, yeah. If you look at the commentary, if you look at the Peri Hermeneias, Aristotle makes it crystal clear that he's using "logos" there to mean the vocal sound, as Thomas says.

[31:36] Thomas is very concrete there, right? So it's kind of a shock to people when they you tell them that logic is about vocal sounds. See, it's kind of shocking. Seems to be putting logic lower than it should be, right? They want to say logic is about thoughts. Well, in sense it is, right? It's about thinking, right? But the point is, you can't order your thinking without ordering your thoughts, and we need a sensible tool, right, to order our thoughts.

[32:14] And the sensible tool we use to order our thoughts is words, insofar as they signify things through thoughts, right? It's only insofar as words signify things through thoughts that they can be used to order our thoughts huh? About things and consequently our thinking. So what's up front is the sensible what tool, which is either a word or a speech, right,

[32:42] or just say a logical name or a speech. It's kind of a shock, but make another comparison I make sometimes: seven sacraments, right? Very important, huh? What's the genus of the seven sacraments? Sign. The Sign, yeah. The sign is something what sensible, right? Thomas always goes back to Augustine's definition of sign: is that which strikes the senses and brings to mind something else, right? Now, if you say that the seven sacraments is seven sensible signs, that seems to to lower the dignity of the sacraments, right?

[33:29] You know, instead of saying that the seven sacraments is seven graces. No, you're saying the seven signs, right? But there are seven signs instituted by Christ to give grace and so on, right? You know. But that's the genus of sign, and and God is what, condescending to an animal with reason, right? Has to be led from the sensible to what is above the sensible, right? Okay. You see the idea?

[34:05] You know, sometimes in these contemporary catechisms, you know, or we're going to call catechisms, but they'll want to, you know, speak of the sacraments as an encounter with Christ, right? Was that really the genus of the sacrament? Yeah, you're doing encounter with Christ through sacraments, and and that's why they're so important, right? But the sacrament itself is not an encounter with Christ. It's a sensible sign to which you're going to encounter Christ or the power of Christ, right?

[34:36] You see the idea? So, you know, sometimes I find people are kind of shocked, right? I said had, you know, you know, some heated discussion with people about this, right? Aristotle makes it crystal clear that very clear that logos is.