Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
13. Why Names Come Before Definition: Equivocal Words, Parts and Wholes, and Two Senses of 'Its Own'
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[0:04] Learning is through the foreknown, right? Both that by demonstration and that by definition, right? Okay. The complex unknown statement, right? By demonstration, the simple unknown, the what it is, or something, by definition. Okay, that kind of corresponds, right?

[0:30] So Albert the Great divides it according to the simple unknown and the complex unknown, and the one is answered by defining the other by reasoning. Okay. To declare.

[1:03] Now, let's just be a little bit further next time. Better get into it. So we're going to follow Thomas's division. We're going to talk about the art of definition, and then the art of the statement, and then the art of what? Argument, right? Okay. So this is the first part of the art of definition.

[1:31] I have to make some copies of these things. Yeah, the other one. You can put it. No, I give it. Okay. I should order one. Yeah.

[1:58] Now the the first part of the art of definition is not about definition, but about what names, huh? Okay. I begin with the question there: Why names should be considered before definition?

[2:19] We should consider a name before definition, for we name things before we define them. Okay. Now the reason for that goes back to the natural road we talked about, huh? And one before and after there is that we know things in a confused way before what distinctly. And so, in order to name something, you don't have to know it as distinctly as you have to in order to what define it.

[2:51] So for the most part, at least, we'll name things before we what define them. Yeah. Okay. Further, we use the name of the thing to be defined in the question which seeks its definition, as when Socrates asks, "What is virtue? "

[3:14] But one must understand the question before one tries to answer it. You see that? And most of all, it is necessary to understand name before definition, because every definition is composed of names, and a whole that is composed of parts cannot be understood without knowing its parts. That's true of every speech, huh? So Aristotle takes up noun and verb before it takes up statement, right? Because the statement is composed of the noun and the verb, huh?

[3:54] Okay. So these are three reasons why we should take up name before definition, huh? I mentioned how the book of Porphyry is sometimes called the book of the five names, and the categories that are styled, the Book of the ten names,

[4:15] and those are considered in the tradition the fundamental books, huh? In the logic, but they're about names, okay? We should first consider what a name is and define it, okay?

[4:43] And since the name of the thing to be defined should not be used in its definition, we must also distinguish between the name of the thing to be defined and the names used in its definition.

[4:58] And since there are many names, the definition, we must also see what is the difference among these names and their order. So each of these, I broke the text a lot down with each of these titles, and see what each one is doing, right? Okay. So we're starting the logic of the first act, right? First act of reason is understanding what a thing is. The chief tool, right, for understanding what a thing is is definition, right?

[5:35] Okay. But the definition is a speech composed of names, right? So we have to talk about names before we talk about this, huh? Okay. And when we ask for definition, we use the name, right? Okay. We name the thing before we define it, right? There's all reasons to take up. Okay. We have to not only say what a name is, but we must also distinguish among names.

[6:03] Because it's the name of the thing defined. One of the names is the definition. In a way, you you learned a rule in logic, right? When you said that the name of the thing being defined should not be put in its definition, huh? That's something we learned in grade school or high school, maybe, right? And that's in a sense a rule of logic, isn't it? So you have to talk about names.

[6:27] We can talk about definition. You have to distinguish somehow between the name of the thing defined and the names used in the definition. But there is going to be more than one. There is going to be a distinction among those names, huh? Okay. I've already given you the definition of a name there. A name is a vocal sound signifying by custom. No part of which signifies by itself.

[7:04] Then I explain each one of those parts, right? Starting with sound, huh? Vocal sound, signifying by custom. You notice that four parts of the definition are common to the definition of name and speech. It's only the fifth part that separates the two, right? Okay. And I contrasted with the the grammarian and the poet and so on with the logician right Sometimes they'd call these sermos and now the scientiae, the sciences that talk about words, right?

[7:46] Speech, right? But the grammarian doesn't talk about words in the same way the logician does, and the poet looks at language differently too, huh? What's the difference between these, huh?

[8:02] What's the difference? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's concerned, you know, with the fact that the sounds are what pleasing, right, huh? Okay. So he's going to try to rhyme things and alliterate things, right? And he's going to try to have meter to start, right? Okay. But he's also going to use we'll see things like metaphors that the logician will try to avoid, huh? Okay. But it's because his end or purpose is to make a pleasing representation, that he uses all these things.

[8:47] Logician is not interested in making a pleasing representation. He's trying to come to know what he doesn't know, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. The grammarian is concerned with what, making a sentence in some language.

[9:11] So, how do you make a sentence in Greek? Make a sentence in Latin? I make a sentence in English, right? And he's concerned with all sentences, not just the statements, right? With commands and prayers and so on, right? The logician doesn't care about commands and prayers and

[9:30] exhortations, right? Shut the door. Grammarian says, "Well, that's a command, right? " Just doesn't talk about those sort of things. Help me, help! Grammarian would talk about that. The magician

[9:53] doesn't care if the sentence is true or false. Yeah, we always contrast these. You know, if you say. to. The grammarian Which is better, man is a stone, or men are an animal? Well, man is a stone is correct, right? Good grammar. Men are an animal. Incorrect, right?

[10:20] Socrates is a dog. Good. Socrates am a man. Socrates are a man. That's bad. The magician would say, "Well, Socrates am a man. " I feel I should speak grammatically but he ain't a what stone, right? You know, sort the truth or falsity of these things, and and knowing whether it's true or false, then Chameleon couldn't care less, right? As long as you see it properly, right?

[10:56] Okay, so that's things we somewhat met, but you know, more of that, right? Okay, but now towards the bottom of page two, there I make the distinction there between calling a thing by its own name or the name of another thing. Okay. What is that distinction?

[11:23] No. No. If I call a man who eats too much a glutton, I'm calling him by his own name, right? If I call him a pig, I'm calling him by the name of another thing.

[11:48] Proper and metaphorical transfer. Yeah. If Romeo calls Juliet, Juliet, right? He's calling her by her own name. If he calls her honey or sweet or something, he's calling her by the name of another thing, right? Right. Somebody Harrod in the fox or something. No. no. No. that's an example of a metaphor, right? Okay. But now, is there a reason why we call something by the name of another thing?

[12:25] Yeah. Yeah. But is it more with regard to knowing that thing that we call it by the name of another thing, or do we

[12:38] do so more to express our emotion, right? Or to arouse emotion, right? Yeah. If the person who. Yeah, if you want to arouse emotion or express emotion, you want to be, you know, colorful in your speech, right? Then you might call something by the name of another thing, right?

[13:16] Nixon called the Democratic programs retreads of the New Deal. Well, that's a unsavory metaphor, right? You know, retread. It doesn't. Yeah. So you want to, you know, you know, arouse an image, right? But more so emotion, right? But but romeo's called juliet sweet or honey, more to what? Because it was only emotion, right? You know.

[13:49] Now, would the logician want to when he asks the definition of a thing? Would he call the thing by its own name or by the name of another thing? Yeah, its own name, right? Okay. So this seems to be an exhaustive division, huh? Call something by its own name or by the name of another thing, right?

[14:14] Another question is: what names would you use in the definition? The proper names. But if you call the thing by its own name, but you are not supposed to use the name of the thing you are defining in the definition, right?

[14:30] If you use the name of another thing, how is that going to help you to define? Derived from other things. Yeah, but I mean, would the word pig

[14:42] be a name in the definition of glutton Oh, no! It would be the genus of the thing So. you get a little bit ahead of this, don't you? See. No, so we made a distinction. We can call a thing by its own name or by the name of another thing, right? Okay. And there is a reason why we do both, right? Okay. What's more appropriate, you know, to the the poet, right, or the rhetorician, or to people in daily life, to call something by the name of another thing, right?

[15:16] Because they want the poet or the rhetorician or people in daily life, they want to express their emotions, right? They want to arouse emotion, right? Okay. So I say you rat, you know, or something like that, you know, and it makes you kind of bristle, and so on. You snake, you fox, and these sort of names, right? Um. But the magician wants to kind of avoid that, right?

[15:41] Okay. So it seems you have only two possibilities: to call a thing by its own name or by the name of another thing. So when he asks for the definition, we call the thing by its own name, right? That means we can't use its own name in its definition, then, right? We can't use the name of another thing as definition, but that's useless for defining. The word "pig" doesn't really tell you what a glutton is, does it?

[16:13] So, that's a, that's a, I present this form a little problem there, right? Maybe use the names of its parts. Perhaps. You're going to

[16:30] define a thing by its own name or by the name of another thing. Either either alternative seems to be what. When is a violation of the rule you learned in grade school? Right. There's a reason for that rule, right? You define something by itself, and you aren't making anything known, are you? The purpose of the definition is to make known something that you don't know what it is.

[16:53] So I say a dog is a dog. I don't make it known anymore, right? It's true that a dog is a dog, but it doesn't make it known anymore than the word "dog" did, right? Say a dog is a dog, you're no more, you're better off than where you said "dog. "

[17:09] But you can't define it by the name of another thing, right? Because I don't really what a glutton is. A pig is not really a four-footed animal to tell us now. Yeah.

[17:23] Yeah, problem right in the beginning, right? That is an apparent problem Yeah. What's the solution to that, right? It's not to go too far. We raised the problem there, right? The problem should be define a thing by its own name or by the name of another thing. You have a dilemma there, right? Then you get the solution of the problem, right?

[17:58] Right. Okay. So you see. You can see it with that problem when you think about a little bit. How you really got to think about names for a while before you can what understand definition, right?

[18:21] You finally get to to the distinction of porphyry. He distinguishes between the name of the thing being defined, the name that begins a definition, the name that completes a perfect definition, the name that completes an imperfect definition, and the name that's useless for naming the thing or for defining it. He distinguishes all five, five names. Of course, as he points out, these five distinction to five is useful not only for definition but for division and for demonstration.

[18:58] Porphyry's work, you know, was originally called the Isagoge, meaning introduction in Greek. The Isagoge to the Categories of Aristotle, right? But as time went on, it is called the isagoge by tona messia it is the introduction. it's the introduction to sense to logic, which is introduction to the whole philosophy. Yeah. Yeah It's called the Isagoge Then you get the next problem there in page five.

[19:34] But that second problem arises because the solution is the first problem Solution of the first problem. Solution first problem, he's just the difficulty. But the thing, yeah. Then you get the solution of that in page six, right? Okay.

[19:49] Gradually, sticking up to what Porphyry's going to talk about. You know. Get a hint I got a hint years ago from Thomas Aquinas there, because he uses Porphyry's distinction of the five names in the Summa Contra Gentiles to show that no name is said univocally of God and creatures. So he pointed out something about Porphyry's division that's usually not pointed out, not even by Porphyry, so I incorporated in here.

[20:23] You know, one of the problems for the for the modern philosophers, it's a very basic problem. They don't know how to use names. They don't know how to use names, and and you know the Greeks really thought out how to use names in a way that helps the mind, right? And the moderns have just lost that.

[21:01] In fact, the very you know, it's kind of you know, democratic customs kind of exacerbate this problem, how to use names. Use names the way you want to. It's a free country, you know. Well, it's a free country. You can't stop people using names the way they want to. I mean, you can't stop them, But it's not really very helpful in the long run.

[21:27] When you say they don't know how to use names, like for example, using metaphors or. Well, basically, they don't know how we use names to define. Don't know how we name things, huh?

[21:55] How we carry over names, right? Like we see there at the word before, right? Remember those propositions I was giving you before, saying that if a man doesn't

[22:10] understand the names he uses, is he wise? Now, if he understands the names he uses, is he wise? I would say understanding the names you use is before being wise in the second sense there of before, right?

[22:39] You can understand the names you're using without being wise, but you can't be wise without understanding the names you're using, right? Therefore, I say if you don't understand the names you're using, you're not wise. If you do, I don't say you are wise. Because before that second sense, this can be without that, but not vice versa, right? When Aristotle, you know, begins the subject of wisdom, there in five of of the first philosophy, he has a whole book devoted to the names used in the science.

[23:17] I had a couple of people at my house last night for learning the words there in five, and I said to them, I said, you know, give them the same proposition, right? If you don't understand the words you're using, right, you're not wise. So book five is not going to make you wise, but if you don't know book five, you're not wise. Kasurik used to say that every respectable word in philosophy is equivocal by reason.

[23:50] Huh? Moderns don't understand what a word equivocal by reason is. Once in a while, they have a little hint of it, you know, like when Bertrand Russell talks about systematic ambiguity, you know, but they don't understand the various ways that we use words equivocally, There are reasons for doing it.

[24:20] This is too below them, you know. It's too below them to descend to this kind of talking about the names they use. I was listening to a guy give a talk based on his his doctoral thesis on Heidegger, you know, and of course the word they love to use is process or proceeding, right? So I said to him, you know, as far as I know, you know, something proceeds from something, right?

[24:49] So what are you saying is proceeding from what? No response, right? Well, I'm using the word, right? That's a good one. Terminated problematic. Yeah, yeah.

[25:27] Don't even understand the word whole and part, the moderns, huh? They don't. If you asked modern philosophy what are the the four basic meanings of the word part, they wouldn't be able to tell you. They confuse parts with senses.

[25:58] I give the students sometimes a little sophistical argument. I'll say, "What is man? He's an animal, right? Yeah, man's an animal. But is he just an animal? No, the animal with reason. Yeah, so animal is only a part of what man is, right? Yeah, okay. But animal includes besides man, dog, cat, horse, elephant, right? Therefore, the part sometimes is more than the whole. Gee whiz, yeah. Well, this is the most common kind of mistake made in thinking, right?

[26:32] From mixing up two senses of the word, right? And Aristotle, in the chapter on part and whole, right, the chapter on part in particular, he says that the genus is a part of the species in one sense, and the species is a part of the genus in another sense. And you're confusing the two senses, right? Animal is a part of the definition of man, right? But a man, horse, elephant, dog are not parts of the definition of animal.

[27:04] They're particular kinds, parts in the sense of particular kinds, right? So you're confusing two different senses of whole and part there. And the definition of man contains more than animal. An animal is said of more than man. The two different senses of part there. What the average student, I mean, he gives it in class. It seems like a good argument, right? Seems to call in question the axiom that the whole is more than the part.

[27:49] Cutting up bodies, the the medical man says, huh? Adamus never found a soul there. You know, I find the lung and the heart and the never found this thing he called the soul. Was the soul part of us in the way that the lungs and the brain and the heart and the liver are part of us? Huh? What sense is the soul, part of us. It's different senses.

[28:23] Aristotle distinguishes all these senses, huh? Not very much saying in a sense, right? Once in a while, the moderns they realize there's something to this, you know. And you can see that in the Essay of Human Understanding by John Locke, you know, where he says, you know, that I've noticed in conversation, you know, that men aren't really thinking about the same thing, although using the same word.

[28:50] You know, But he doesn't really develop the doctrine, you see? you know, but he sees somehow, you know, this is really behind a lot of this confusion, right, huh?

[29:06] It takes a long time, you know, to to to understand these words that are equivocal by reason. The care which Aristotle did those, or even the care you know, Thomas learned it from Aristotle, you know, but I think I mentioned how the word "in" you know, Aristotle, we don't have an explicit text where Aristotle orders the meanings of "in." But Thomas says we'll order them in the way that Aristotle taught us in the fifth book of Metaphysics.

[29:33] He orders them from what in the room, right? Part in the whole, right? Genus in the species, species in the genus, form in matter, the whole in the parts. I've got you in my power. Left my heart in San Francisco, It works perfectly, right? You know, but you never find life in the moderns, you know. In a sense, what does Shakespeare, you know, compares the proud man? You know, he climbs to the heights on a ladder, right?

[30:16] He disdains to look down from where he started. You know, in order to say that that you don't have to distinguish and see the order of the senses of these words as equivocal by reason that dominate our whole speech. It's kind of like a pride, in a sense, right? You know,

[30:40] I mean, God, angels don't have to do this, right? Just man has to do this, huh? It goes back to the fact that we're so tied to our senses, huh? And and the most most common mistake in thinking is what due to mixing up the senses of word. It's most common mistake. I asked my students, you know, we discussed the question of whether nature acts for an end, right, for a purpose, And art is for against, and one student in his paper is saying, you know, if nature acted for an end, all things would come to an end, but they haven't, therefore.

[31:22] He's obviously confusing end in the sense of destruction of the thing, right, with end in the sense of purpose that for the sake of which, right? Well, the first one is more the quantitative sense of part, right? Yeah, yeah.

[31:46] And then, these are distinguished. That—that's the most known composed whole, right? With the what they call the universal whole, right? And you know later on we'll use it in logic. The composed whole is put together from its parts, right? But not said of its parts. And the universal whole is said of its parts, but not put together from them. Okay. But the first meaning of whole and part is the composed whole.

[32:25] So we might say that the word cat is composed of c, a, and t, right? Okay. And we might say, if the chemist are right, that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen, right? Okay. The family is composed of the mother and the father and the children, right? Okay. But then the universal whole is said of its parts, huh? Like number is said of odd number and even number, right?

[32:55] Parts of number, right? So you're talking about the general to particular, but the word particular is taken from the word part. It's a different sense of part, huh? So number is not put together from odd and even number. But number is said of odd and even, right? Okay.

[33:17] Animal is not put together from dog, cat, and horse, but it's said of them, right? Otherwise, to say a dog is an animal, you say the dog is composed of cat, dog, horse, elephant, right? Now, you know, if you look, you know, going back to our friend there, John Locke. He's talking about the general idea of triangle. He says it's a scalene, isosceles, equilateral. He says what's all none of these.

[33:41] He's looking at the universal whole as if it were composed of the what? Things that set up. He's confusing the what? Composed whole with the what? Universal whole. Okay. But then Aristotle goes on to distinguish two other kinds of what? Of composed whole. And one, of course, is the definition. Okay.

[34:12] And the other is the composition of what? Matter and form, huh? Okay. Now, take a very simple example of that. If you had the word cat here on the board, on I just say sure. If

[34:29] you had the word cat here, what are the parts of the word cat? Yeah, and that might seem to be the only parts of the word cat, right? Because you take away the C and the A and the T, nothing's left, right? So there's nothing in the word cat except C, A, and T, right?

[34:56] But then when you look at the word act, same word, exactly the same letters, right? Left the same word, right? Same letters, right? Same word, but there's something in the word cat besides the letters.

[35:27] So you might say that the word cat is put together from the letters and the order of the letters, okay? And the word act is put together from the same letters but a different order. So you can speak of the letters and the order as the parts of the word cat. Okay, but you obviously use the word part a different sense when you start off with it.

[35:54] You wouldn't think of the order of the letters as being part of the word, would you? Of course, would you? Yet it's intrinsic to the thing, and that's what you mean by a part, anyway, right?

[36:06] You wouldn't have the word cat without that order. So the way the word cat involves the letters and the order of the letters. The rubber ball involves what? What are parts of a ball? Rubber and shape. Those are in a sense parts, but not parts in the way that C, A, and T are parts.

[36:38] That's a different sense. So Aristotle does is distinguish three senses of composed whole. The first one is kind of the quantitative one, right? And then the one of matter and

[36:55] form, form in the broad sense, including on the shape but order, right? And then parts of the definition or different senses of part. The fifth book of the Metaphysics. It talks about all the words that are mainly used in wisdom because of its generality, but they're used in the axioms, right? And used to some extent everywhere.

[37:35] Okay, so so basically, there's two parts composed in universal. The three parts. Three senses, yeah. Yeah. The quantitative ones is most known to us, right? Yeah, and then quantitative. Oh, okay, yeah. So, like, all parts of the body make up the body. Yeah. Yeah. This part is more known to us. You could you could divide the body, put the liver here, and the heart here, and the lungs here, right?

[38:08] I have. You know, just like take the word cat and put the cut up, you know, put the C here, the A here, the T. But you can't put the the letters here and the order of letters here. So it's less manifest to us that these are distinct. When you compare cat and act, or dog and god, then you realize there's something in the word cat besides the three letters.

[38:30] What is that? In this case, it's the order, right? Okay. Letters, matter, form. A form in general, form is used not just for shape, right? But for the act, the order, the order.

[38:52] Parts of the definition. The distinction then that would be third and order senses. So that's less. Yeah, the less known to us. But two two of these senses are part of found in the real world outside the mind, right? Quantitative parts matter and form. Right. But the parts of definition are more in the mind, and the general and particular, right? Universal is only in mind. What Boethius was saying: a thing singular is sensed and universal is understood understood.

[39:42] So when you divide the general and particular, you're talking about the universal. That's in the mind. The things are universal, and the parts of the definition are universal. What's defined is universal. However Albert the Great says the first thing to be considered in logic is universal. Yeah, we can make that a little more sensible and say that the first thing to be considered in logic is its name, set of many things.

[40:07] And see, I might be meant to that here in the first reading: names, set of many things. Um. So that. But the name of what is defined is a name set of many things, and the names the definition are names set of many things. But something's universal only in the mind. See, so two of those senses, parts of definition, and then the you know the general and particular, the genus and the species.

[40:36] It's divided into. That's in the mind too. Although it has a foundation in things, the foundation in things for those ones in the mind is matter and form, basically.

[40:54] We'll see that as we get on, because the genus is the differences like matter is to form. is poorly said The universal—that's a sense of as how we could speak of dog, cat, man as parts of animal as being universal. Yeah, but of course all of these are a set of many things, so they're all universal, right? Man, dog, horse, but animal is more general than they are.

[41:28] It's more universal. Outside the mind, everything is what singular, right? Never had man in general sitting in my class. I taught humanity. What? I taught humanity. Yeah. yeah. I never danced with woman in general. It's always this particular woman. What a scholar does is to distinguish, you know, when I say that, you know, the basic meanings of these words, right? You can attach sometimes to each meaning, in a number of meanings that are very close.

[42:27] So that's below the notice of the letters. The closest to what I do. is something I would have taken out here, but he doesn't succeed in doing so It's probably connected with kind of contempt sometimes. Well, I say it goes all the way back to the Greeks. So the Greeks, thought, you had to stop and talk about these things.

[43:09] You'll notice when you get into that that thing about calling a thing by its own name. That expression, its own, one's own, my own, your own. That phrase

[43:24] is what that one will be. Well, we live now in the age of sound bites, and people know. Yeah. If I speak of my own watch, right, then I can speak of my own mother.

[43:41] Is that sense of my own the same there? Do you possess your mother? Well, I'm not thinking that so much, see? But um, uh...

[43:57] Nobody uses his watch but me. Or take my own head. Nobody else has his head. Okay. And my own mother. Is she only my mother.

[44:15] I can speak of my own country. My own city, my own state, right? Same sense. This is a very important distinction, right? The meanings of my own. It's going to be very important for logic. It's also very important for practical philosophy.

[44:50] My own life, my own country. I've spoken of now as an isolationist by just being particular to your own country and not to the world. Yeah, yeah.

[45:11] My own planet, though, right? Did I speak of my own God? What do you think? Is Jesus Christ my own savior? What would you say?

[45:37] In a sense, yes, in a sense, no. Monsignor Dionne my own teacher. My own teacher in geometry has been Euclid. Well, some of my brother Mark too, but, but maybe Euclid has been my own teacher. You know? So he'd say, go and get Euclid, Buy it and study. Okay. New idea You see my own teacher. He's your teacher too? isn't he Yes. My own head. Nobody else's head.

[46:22] Is this nobody else's head? Yeah, it's becoming our head. It's there. Yeah. Of course, yeah. I could say to these guys, everyone has his own head. Yeah, but but yeah, yeah, right, yeah. I have Two different senses here of the phrase "my own."

[46:51] If I speak of my own wife, she's nobody else's wife, huh? Now, I might speak of my own daughter. You know, some people say well, you shouldn't say that. You should say, you know, our daughter. I say, what's been now? Can I speak of my own daughter? My own mother.

[47:23] You know, when I say that Rosalie is my own wife, she's nobody else's wife. Okay. When I say my own mother. She's somebody else's mother besides mine, right? Yet she's my own mother, right? My own daughter, right? She's somebody else's daughter besides mine, but still, is it incorrect to say that she's my own daughter? This is my own child, right?

[47:53] Have to say she's our child. That's true too, right? But, I can still say she's my own daughter, my own flesh and blood, right? But is my own mean the same instead of my daughter instead of my wife?

[48:19] My own wife is nobody else's wife. My own head is nobody else's head, right? But my own mother and my own daughter is somebody else's mother and somebody else's daughter.

[48:46] My own country, somebody else's country, right? My own president. That's to be correct, isn't it? but it's a different meaning, right? I think the first meaning of my own is what belongs to me alone.

[49:13] But then there's a second sense of my own, right? What belongs to me, but not only to me, right? My own daughter, my own mother, my own country. Can I speak of my own God.

[49:32] Second sense. Yeah, I might say at first sight you might think I am using it in the wrong, you know, a false sense, right? My own God. My Lord and my God. Yeah, yeah. He's mine. My God.

[49:52] He's not my God in the sense that he's mine. Yeah. Truth is my own good, What sense of this should be my own good. Truth. Second. Second sense, yeah. So do we define something by its own name, by the name of another thing? If you are stuck on that first meaning of its own, then you'd be trying to define dog by dog, cat by cat, and that would obviously, you know, not get you anywhere.

[50:32] Yeah. But when I call a dog, let's say an animal. Am I calling a dog by its own name? No. Oh, and and, yeah, okay. Um, it's in the second sense. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. When I call a, a square parallelogram, Am I calling it by its own name?

[51:13] What's the name of this? Glass. Yeah, that's its own name. Yes. Any other glasses around here? Yeah. It's very important to make that distinction, right? Because for logic, if you don't see the distinction, then there's no names you can define a thing by. You can't define a thing by its own name, and you can't define it by the name of another thing. So you're out of line. But you actually define a thing by its own name in the second sense.

[52:01] I say it's very important for for practical philosophy, right? Because in some sense, you've got to see the common good as your own good, right? Some sense, right? Not in the perverse sense that you make it your own private good, but you got to see it as your own good. Now, if I remember the basketball team, right, is victory my good, or is it the good of the team?

[52:28] Yeah, yeah. If you call it my good, right, it should be in that second sense, right? But I should really see that as my good, right? In some sense, the victory of the team, right? As a philosopher, I should see truth as my good. That's good. that's my good that's my good, but not my good in the sense that this is a private good of my possessing the truth, right?

[52:56] I was saying you have to love wisdom as a common good, right? You have to love truth as a common good. You know, you have to love God as a common good, right? But in the second sense, he's my good. He's my chief good, God,

[53:17] and he's my greater good, than the good which is mine alone, right? understanding the true or the false and then reasoning the true or the false, and then reasoning them, and the first act is presupposed to the second, and the second is presupposed to the third. I couldn't understand that it's true that man is an animal or that man is not a stone unless at first understood in some way what a man is, or what an animal is, or what a stone is.

[53:50] And I couldn't reason until I had some statements to reason from. Now, how are these three acts directed, or ordered, or perfected? Well, chiefly they're perfected by three speeches,

[54:14] meaning by speech as we've defined it, vocal sound, signifying by custom or by agreement, human agreement, having parts that signify by themselves. So the three chief speeches that perfect these three acts of reason are definition, which perfects understanding what a thing is; statement, which is necessary for understanding the true or the false; and syllogism and other kinds of argument that perfect reasoning. So definition

[55:04] is speech signifying what a thing is, or speech making known what a thing is. Sometimes I say it makes known or signifies distinctly what a thing is,

[55:24] and more so than a name could ever do, because a name doesn't have any parts that signify separately. But the definition is a speech, and therefore has parts that signify separately, so it breaks up and makes more distinct what the thing is.

[55:46] Statement is speech signifying the true or the false, or you could say it's a sentence signifying the true or the false. You don't find the true or the false except in statements. So unless you form a statement, you can't understand the true true or the false.

[56:18] Now the third act, reasoning, is perfected by syllogism or some other kind of argument, and syllogism is speech in which some statements laid down, and usually just two of them, right? Another follows necessarily because of those laid down.

[56:44] So if I lay it down, for example, that no speech is a name, and every definition is a speech, it follows necessarily that no definition is a what name, right? Or if I lay it down that no speech is a name, and every statement is a speech, then no statement is a what name? Okay. Likewise, if syllogism is a speech and no speech is a name, no syllogism is a name.

[57:21] Okay. So these three speeches are three tools by which the aforesaid three acts are directed or ordered or perfected. So we can say that logic is about those three acts, or it's about these three speeches, which are the tools for perfecting those acts. Now, perhaps there is a

[57:54] multiplicity of meaning there in the phrase "about" something. I think you could say that logic is about these three acts, more as its end or purpose. Logic is for the sake of perfecting, directing, ordering these three acts.

[58:18] But it's about those three tools, those three speeches, more as its subject or matter. So, you could say the logic of the first act is really about definition chiefly, and the logic of the second act is chiefly about statement, and the logic of the third act is chiefly about the syllogism and some other kinds of argument, but chiefly about the syllogism. Okay, is that clear? Any question about that?

[58:50] Can you just repeat how you phrased reasoning as a speech? Well, reasoning is the name of an act. A syllogism. A syllogism is speech in which some statement's laid down,

[59:08] another follows necessarily because of those laid down. We'll be coming back to these definitions as we take up each of these. So we're now in the logic of the first act, which is the logic of definition. Now, I try when I give this text here. You can notice I have a lot of little titles there, sometimes two or three on a page. That kind of gives you the topic being discussed, right?

[59:47] And as I tell students, sometimes you know when you're studying for this, look at the title and see if you can recall without reading the text again, and then come back and read the text again, right? Okay. So why should name be considered before definition? We gave three reasons there,

[1:00:08] and the first reason was that we name a thing before we define it, and this goes back to the natural order because we know things in a confused or indistinct way before we know them distinctly, and so you don't have to have as distinct a knowledge to name a thing. As you have to to define it then. so it's natural in that sense for us to name things before we define them, and that's what we usually do.

[1:00:45] But secondly, when we seek a definition, when we ask for a definition, like Socrates is doing all the time in the dialogues, we use the name of the thing to be defined. So Socrates asks Meno, "What is virtue? " Right? Or he asks Euthyphro, "What is piety? " Right? Or he asks Theaetetus, "What is episteme? "

[1:01:13] And he's always asking that question. Okay. So if you don't understand names a bit, you don't understand the question, right? It's not that you're seeking a definition of the name so much; you're seeking a definition of the thing, right? But you have to To name the thing you want to have somebody define. But the third and the most important reason why we have to talk about a name before definition is that a definition is composed of names, put together from names, and every speech is ultimately put together from names.

[1:01:57] As you recall, the definition of name is the same in four parts. In its first four parts, is a definition of speech. They're both a sound. They're both a vocal sound. They're both vocal sounds and signified, and signified by human agreement or custom rather than by nature. But the speech has parts that signify by themselves, and the name has no parts that signify by themselves. So every speech is composed of two or more what names?

[1:02:36] I notice the word name there as I explain it around here is a little bit broader in meaning than sometimes in daily speech where we think mainly a name and noun is being the same thing. But notice the definition of name here could apply to what the verb or the adjective as well, right? Okay, so colored or just right is fits the definition of what name, right?

[1:03:04] And walks or runs does right. But white man or man walks. That's already a speech, huh? It would be more narrow than word. Yeah, somewhat done, because you might even call an article maybe a word, right? Okay, but the ambiguity there in English, right? Sometimes word and name are used almost synonymously, right? Okay, but if anyone's a little broader, perhaps wordier, son.

[1:03:41] Incidentally, when you get into Greek or Latin, there they have the same word for name and for noun, and so you read the Peri Hermeneias of Aristotle and you read the Greek commentators and so on. They're always explaining, you know, when he's using the word onoma as common to noun and verb, and when he's using it as noun as opposed to verb, right?

[1:04:13] In Latin, you have you know nomen and verbum, right? Nomen also means noun. But in English, we are a little richer there. It's a name, but we tend, even English, to sometimes identify name with what noun, right? Okay, but name is a little bit broader.

[1:04:34] Now the next thing to be considered is what should you consider about name, right? Okay. And obviously we want to define name, and we want to distinguish between the name of the thing being defined and the names what used in the definition. And you learned a rule of logic, it seems, in grade school or high school, that the name of the thing being defined should not be one of the names in the what definition, and certainly not with the same meaning, right?

[1:05:11] Okay. So we have to, in order to understand name and definition, we have to distinguish between the name of the thing being defined and the names that are actually found in the definition. Okay. And since there's going to be more than one name in the definition, it's a speech, right? We have to see what differences among those names. And as we'll see, there's not only a difference there, but an order among the names that are in the definition and so on.

[1:05:42] Okay. Now the next thing is the definition of name in logic, and we've touched upon that here a number of times. The first word in the definition of name is sound. Okay. And the logician leads the natural philosopher to consider the nature of sound. He takes the notion we all have of sound. Now the second part of the definition of name is that it's a vocal sound.

[1:06:17] And again, the logician leads to the natural philosopher the question of how these sounds, these vocal sounds, are produced. Now the third part of the definition is signifies. And perhaps when I clear my throat, that's a vocal sound, but it's not intended to signify something.

[1:06:43] The definition of sign that is traditional is the one from Saint Augustine, right? Which I translate a bit freely as that which strikes the senses and brings to mind something other than itself. So its first meaning, at least, a sign is always something sensible, right? But apart from as Augustine says, the species or form that it imprints upon the senses, it brings to mind something else, right?

[1:07:14] Okay. So in the automobile, there you give a signal, right? You better turn left or right. The press says the traffic experts tell you when you see that blinking light to the right, what does that signify? Well, all you can be sure about is that the guy's system works, right? Because sometimes he doesn't know it's on, right? But you know the red light, the sign right, to stop, and the green light to to go and so on, right?

[1:07:46] Okay. But words are are sounds. When you hear them, something else what comes to mind? The fourth part of the definition of name is that it signifies by custom, or we could say by human agreement. And this is to distinguish it from vocal sounds that signify by nature, like a baby's cry. So it's natural for baby to cry when they're hungry or they're in pain or something of this sort, right?

[1:08:20] And someone kicks you in the stomach or punches you in the stomach, you naturally get something of a groan, right? And that's why these sounds, like a baby's cry or a man's groan or a woman's scream when she's attacked on the street or something, are known and understood around the world, right? Because they're naturally signifying. But if I say something in a language that you're not accustomed to, then you don't understand what I'm saying, right?

[1:08:48] So I end up in the hospital in some foreign country, and Neither doctor nor I speak each other's language, right? We can understand my groaning. That's an actual sound, right? But my words, he maybe wouldn't understand or vice versa. Okay.

[1:09:06] And the last part of the definition of name is no part of which signifies by itself, right? Okay. And so even if a a word was made up of other words, right? When it's functioning as a name, the individual parts don't what? Yeah. So if you call me Berquist, which comes from the Swedish word Berg, originally Berg meaning mountain, and quist meaning branch, right? Well, you're not really signifying what mountain branch are.

[1:09:45] You're signifying this man, right? We had friends whose name was Johnson, right? Okay. And the John and son in the name Johnson, right, don't signify anything. And so even the woman could be called Johnson, even though she's not a son, and maybe her father's not given the name John, right? Okay.

[1:10:11] Does the parts here even just refer those to the letters, individual letters instead? It can be the syllables, the letters, right? Okay. And notice, ah, as we mentioned before, the the grammarian in his analysis of language, he goes down to the letters, right? When I learned Greek, whatever Greek I know. First thing you learn is the alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon. You learn the letters, right? And then you talk about syllables and so on, right?

[1:10:43] And likewise, the poetic science and even to some extent rhetoric, they want to talk about the syllables, right? Because the poet especially wants to write things in maybe meter, and that's meaning long and short syllables, or accented and unaccented syllables, and order of those things. He wants to maybe rhyme or alliterate, huh? And so the last letter or the first letter, right? But the logician, he doesn't care about such things, right?

[1:11:14] His analysis goes down as far as the name, which is you might say the smallest unit that signifies, right? But Shakespeare would say, "Full fathom five thy father lies," and all those words begin with the letter F. Right, full fathom five, my father lies. And therefore, you can see why you can't translate the poet, because the words that would mean full and fathom and father and five in, say, French wouldn't begin with the same what letter, right?

[1:11:51] Okay. Or in Shakespeare, there they're always. I think in Romeo and Juliet, for example, but very commonly they're they're rhyming love and dove, right? And the dove, of course, is the animal, the symbol of love, right? So it's very appropriate in English that love and dove rhyme, and the dove already has that connection with with love. But maybe the word for love and for dove in another language would not what rhyme, right?

[1:12:17] And they might have, you know, amore might have two syllables instead of one syllable. So the task of translating is almost what impossible, really, to you know, you really lose the the the flavor, you might say, right? Okay. But now the same problem is acting in philosophy because you're not concerned with alliterating or rhyming or putting things in meter, right? The logician is a clod in that sense, right?

[1:12:47] He couldn't care less whether the words rhyme or you know, whatever. Okay.