Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
19. Aristotle's Ten Categories and Porphyry's Isagoge: Quantity, Quality, Relation, and the Predicables
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[0:00] In the beginning of our experience are the material ones. So the distinction or division of substance into material, and immaterial, is something that would come what later, right?

[0:14] And then we might divide the material into the living and the non-living. And you might divide the living into the plant and the animal. You might divide the animal, following Shakespeare there, into the beast and man. So in case you want to know where you are, right, in the scheme of things, huh? You're in the genus substance, or what it is, as he calls this, because these are distinguished by the way something is said of individual substances.

[1:03] And so, when something is said of individual substances, like you and me, or your dog, or my cat, or something, in answer to the question "What is it?" you can end up with something in the genus of what substance, right? So what is Socrates? We can say he's a man, right? More generally, we can say Socrates is a what animal, right? More generally, he's a living body, right?

[1:32] More generally, he's a material substance or a body, and most generally, he's a substance. So all the ones above are said of those below, signifying what they are.

[1:49] If you, don't put the genus in there, right? Material substance, right? Living body, plant, animal. So that's the first highest genus, substance. Now the second one, which Aristotle also devotes a chapter to,

[2:16] there he actually divides the second category into its immediate species. The second category is how much or quantity, to use the abstract word. Aristotle divides quantity, which is like the measure of substance, he divides it into two kinds, and these are called discrete

[2:52] and continuous. Now the main kind of discrete quantity is what we call numbers, and the main kinds of continuous quantities are the line and the surface and body now in the sense of three dimensions. So if we use the word body for a species of continuous, and we saw before body as a species of substance, the word is equivocal, and that equivocation deceives Descartes and others, right?

[3:27] Who confuse length, width, and depth with a substance that is apt to have length, width, and depth. Might as well say if Descartes grew up, right? The substance, the man, remains, but the size, what, changed, the quantity. Now Aristotle distinguishes between the discrete and the continuous in one way in logic, and in another way in natural philosophy.

[4:02] In logic, he defines the continuous as a quantity whose parts meet at a common boundary. So he says it's a quantity whose parts meet at a common boundary.

[4:30] Okay. Like in a straight line, for example, the left and the right side of the straight line meet at a point, which could be considered the end of one part and the beginning of the what next part, right? In a surface, take

[4:51] the diagonal. One part meets the other part at a what line? And this line is the end of one part and the beginning of another part. Or let's say in a circle, you take the diameter, the left and the right side there, or top and below part, we're going to call of the circle, they meet at a common boundary. This line is the end of one and the beginning of the other.

[5:20] And if I was to break this piece of chalk and talk about the right and the left side of the piece of chalk, they would meet at a what plane?

[5:31] Time is also considered sometimes a continuous quantity. The past and the future come up to the now, right? And the now, in the sense, is the end of the past and the beginning of the future. But a discrete quantity like number, you take the number three or the number five, the number seven. Anyway, you take the parts of seven, say three and four. Do three and four meet somewhere?

[6:00] No, no. So the discrete quantity is a quantity whose parts do not meet at a common boundary. That's why it's called discrete, as the word "separated." But continuous implies that the end of one is the beginning of a what? Another, right? So the boundary between the United States and, say, Canada—that imaginary line there—it's the end of the United States and then the beginning of what? Canada, right?

[6:41] Now, in natural philosophy, Aristotle would give another definition of continuous. You recall this one, but he gave another definition of continuous, and that is the continuous is that which is divisible forever. Okay. And he'll show in the sixth book of natural philosophy that the continuous is divisible forever.

[7:10] But the discrete, the number, is not divisible forever. So if I divide seven into four and three, and I divide the four into two twos, and the twos into two ones, you can't really divide the one unless you're talking about continuous quantity. But if you're talking about the one that's the beginning of number, that is actually simpler than the what? Point in geometry. The Greeks used to speak of the point as a one or a unit having position, right?

[7:40] So if you can't divide the point even more, so you can't divide the one. So the discrete is not divisible forever. And if we ever get to study the first book about the soul, Aristotle is proceeding dialectically, but he points out something interesting about our thoughts: that our thoughts are like numbers rather than like the continuous.

[8:11] We saw that, when you divide, say, the species into genus and the difference, right? And sometimes the genus is a species, right? So it can be divided into another higher genus and difference. But doesn't go on forever, does it? We show that there are highest genera, which quantity is one, right? So discrete quantity is not divisible forever, and that's the way our thoughts are—they're not divisible forever.

[8:40] But the continuous is divisible forever. That's a kind of sign that thoughts are not continuous. Is a sign that our reason, the universal reason, is not material. Because everything material is what continuous, and even our thoughts about continuous things are not continuous, and that's not explained by the fact that they're about the continuous. It's explained by the nature of our reason. It's one of the first places in the De Anima, in the first book, where you get a reason for thinking that our universal reason that understands what things are is not in fact what a body, right?

[9:33] That the brain, in fact, is not the organ of thought, although it's related in some other way, we'll say to thought when you study the three books about the soul.

[9:48] Motion, especially local motion, is something continuous. So if I walk down the garden path, and that path is something continuous. And you can divide it forever. So likewise, my motion could be divided into infinity of parts, huh? And even the time it takes me to walk down the map is divisible forever. But the discrete is not divisible forever.

[10:20] Now, of course, this distinction between the discrete and continuous is even more basic to mathematics than to natural philosophy, because mathematics is about quantity, huh? But arithmetic is about what the main discrete quantity, which is number, and geometry is about what continuous quantities—the line and the angle and the plane the surface, the, body, and so on. So the distinction between arithmetic and geometry, both of which are found, by the way, in Euclid's Elements, is based on this distinction here between the discrete and the continuous, huh?

[11:04] So sometimes they say how much or how many, right? Is that little difference there, huh? When we speak them. So this is the second

[11:20] category, and notice, huh? Most basic division of continuous is that which is continuous in one dimension, a line, in two dimensions, a surface, and then in three, the what body, right? Of course, we show later on geometry that it can only be three dimensions—only three lines that are each right angles to the other two.

[11:46] Well, it's kind of interesting if I contrast a little bit with logic here. In the beginning of logic, we distinguish three acts, right? And there are three parts of logic, corresponding to the acts. Here we have three species of continuous: the line, the surface, and the body, with only about two parts to geometry—plane geometry and what solid geometry, right? Kind of interesting, huh? Plane geometry is both about what the line and the what Geometrical figures, right?

[12:21] Okay. In the very first theorems, if you recall in Euclid, there the very first theorem, right, is ordered to the second theorem, right, and so on, and eventually to cutting off a line equal to another line, right? But you have to use circles and figures, so you're already in a plane, right? So if you have some experience of the beginning of geometry there, you can kind of see why there's no geometry of the line distinct from the geometry of plane surfaces.

[12:52] But there is a distinction between plane geometry and solid geometry, huh? And books one through six are really plane geometry. and books 11 through 13 are solid geometry and he interrupts it with seven eight, and nine with the arithmetical books and there's a reason for that but we won't go into that right now. Okay. So you said our thoughts are discrete quantities and that it is a sign.

[13:24] Yeah, they're not quantities at all, but they're they're like numbers, you say, right? Okay, but you said it was a sign that that it's immaterial. Yeah. And so I'm trying to understand why is that? Well, if you see the connection between the continuous and the body, right? Every body is continuous. Yes. So what is received in the body is received as continuous. But even when we we see the you know the continues into our mind our reason in the form of thoughts now right the thoughts are not continuous so we receive the continuous in a non-continuous way.

[14:05] Why is that then? It's not because of what is received because that's continuous. Therefore, it must be due to the nature of receiver. Whatever is received is received according to the nature, the condition of receiver. So it's a sign that the reason is not a body, that it knows bodies, the continuous in a non-bodily way, a non-continuous way. Okay.

[14:33] And if you go back, say to the definition which we've been talking about, but mentioned a little bit already, the genus being one part and the difference being another part. Do the genus and the difference in a definition meet at a point, a line, surface?

[14:54] I don't know. They met at a point. The definition would be a line. It's not a line. They met at a line. they'd be a surface, but not a surface. So we're getting ahead of ourselves by just mentioning, you know, how the distinction here in logic, which Aristotle points out in the chapter on quantity and how much, this distinction between the discrete and the continuous. Every quantity has parts, right?

[15:23] Either parts have a common boundary or they don't. That's the basis for distinction between geometry and arithmetic then But it's also important later on in coming to understand that the reason, the universal reason, the ability for a large discourse, right, looking before and after, is not a body. It's Anaxagoras who we'll meet when we do some natural philosophy who first began to suspect that the mind is not something material.

[16:00] But Plato and especially Aristotle brought this out much more fully. Now, chapter Aristotle gets to the chapter on quality, the chapter on how, or to use the more abstract word quality.

[16:31] Here we have an example. Now the division into four by the master himself. This is one of the prime examples that I give why I don't think one should always divide into two or three. Okay, I'm not a fanatic about this. I think it's a good rule because it's true for the most part.

[17:03] Now the first species of quality that Aristotle speaks of is called disposition or habit. A habit is in a way a disposition, but it's a disposition that is firm, right? And therefore, it's got its own name, habit.

[17:38] Later on, we divide habit into virtue and vice. Okay. Now the second species of quality is natural ability or inability. And there we put the ability to digest, ability to see, ability for a large discourse, looking before and after. It's like a quality of man, right? An actual ability. The third one is the sense qualities.

[18:34] The fourth one is figure or shape. As Aristotle distinguishes, then or divides the genus quality, which is one of the ten highest genera, into these four.

[18:56] If you ever look at the Summa Theologiae of Thomas in the Prima Secundae, we started to take up what we sometimes call moral theology. He wants to talk about virtues and vices and so on, right? But he recalls what Aristotle says about quality, and he sees that the virtues and the vices come under quality. But then he will recall this distinction of the four, right? And then show that virtue and vice come under this, one.

[19:29] So you can see how the different highest genera are starting points for the different sciences, right? For the distinction between geometry and arithmetic, we sometimes go back to what Aristotle says about quantity. When Thomas wants to talk about virtues and vices, he comes back to this, right? Okay, as Aristotle himself does in the second book of the Nicomachean Ethics, when he wants to define virtue, right? Passions come under this thing too.

[20:07] We call feelings. Similarity. Aristotle will ask you know, are the virtues a natural ability, or are they a passion, the feeling, right? Or are they a habit or disposition, right? He's pretty sure they're not this thing over here. But which one of these is a virtue, right?

[20:32] Is it is anger a virtue or a vice? Or is the ability to feel anger a virtue or a vice? Or is it some kind of what habit or disposition, right? Where I'm disposed to feel anger when I should, or when I shouldn't. Depending on whether it's a virtue or a vice, right? Eventually, he's going to conclude that the genus of moral virtue, moral vice, is disposition or habit, right?

[21:03] Habit in particular. The same way for temperance and all these virtues. It's not the ability to be hungry that makes you temperate or intemperate, right? It's not hunger as such, right? But the fact that you're disposed, right, to desire these things moderately, reasonably, that you are virtuous, or because you're disposed to desire these things more than you should, that you maybe are intemperate, right? Okay.

[21:44] Aristotle, in the chapter on quantity and quality, he gives the first division of the genus into its species, and that helps us to understand the highest genera better because we can't define them in strict sense. Because the genus, a highest genus, doesn't have any genus above it, right? And so there's no genus and differences whereby you can define it. So the way you have to know it by that which is divided, yeah, makes it more clear to us.

[22:19] It's also a starting point for investigating the things. For getting the the genus eventually of virtue or vice to the genus of reason, right? Other genera.

[22:46] Now, like substance, the the basic division of towards something. Our job is to make it explicit there, in the physics he does towards something.

[23:08] Sometimes we use the more abstract word there, relation. but we might mention a little bit about this. Relations are based upon something more fundamental, and some relations are based upon quantity.

[23:37] Others are based more upon acting upon and undergoing. In quantity, they sometimes distinguish there between quantity in the strict sense, and then one which is the beginning of quantity.

[24:06] So I'm taller than you, or I'm shorter than you, right? Or I'm equal. These are relations based upon what? Quantity, right? But I could be taller than one of you and shorter than somebody else, right?

[24:31] It's being towards another, right? But it presupposes my quantity, my size, right? Yours too, for that matter. In one, well, actually, equal should be over here because there's this kind of unity, right? Or we're alike,

[24:57] same, same, like, equal. But here we have double, half, third, greater, lesser, that, right? Relations based more upon quantity, and then the other ones are based more upon qualities and the action, acting upon, undergoing, the result of that. So father and son, right?

[25:25] Mother and son, teacher and student, right? Teacher's acting upon you, you're undergoing it, right? One friend of my brother, Richards, who teaches, described it. You know, his classes there, where was he at the University of Colorado somewhere? Looks down upon the students, looking up at him, kind of expression in the face. Why are you doing this to me?

[25:55] But the mover and the moved, right? Okay. Okay. So you have one group of relations that are based more on quantity, and the others upon acting upon and undergoing in some way. Okay, that goes back to to qualities, right? Okay.

[26:14] But notice, if I know something, that's a quality of me, right? Okay. But I have to in some way act upon you, right? Before I can be said to be your teacher, or you can be said to be my what student, right? Okay. I can have muscles, right? But I have to actually move something before we have this relation of the mover and the what moved.

[26:46] Now the last six categories, Aristotle just kind of enumerates them. huh? Excuse me, I just have a question. Just about the thing under uh? The relation based upon? Did you say I was writing something else there about based upon quantity and quality? Well, in a sense, they usually say acting upon and undergoing, but those kind of presuppose qualities, right? Okay.

[27:17] I think I've seen St. Thomas divide relations into act upon and undergoing, or based upon that and based upon measure. It's the same thing. Quantity, yeah. Yeah. Now the remaining categories, we're not going to do that so much. But kind of wonder, you know, you have the category of where, the category of when, right?

[27:44] And category of position or positioned, and then you have what I take the liberty of calling outfitted, but to have in the Greek or Latin,

[28:02] and then you have acting upon and undergoing. I often wonder about where. I mean, we are said to be in this room, right? We are said to be in what's the genus of that? To be in Pynchon. And the genus of that is to be in Massachusetts. Is that the genus? Won't be the genus, huh? It seems to be more like whole and part, almost than like.

[28:37] Yeah, at least not genus and species in the same way you have in the first four there, right? Or to be, you know, here today, right? To be here this week, to be here this month. It's kind of strange If that's the genus, it's kind of strange, Our different sense almost is to genus, huh?

[29:06] To have a suit on. You have a tuxedo on, right? But Aristotle doesn't even devote a chapter to those. He just enumerates them, exemplifies them. That's it. But he has a whole chapter devoted to substance and one to quantity and one to quality and one to quality and one to relation. He takes us up again the words of the metaphysics.

[29:37] mention though, when he takes up the word "how" there in the metaphysics, he distinguishes four senses, but he eventually reduces them to two. you know. Back in the row of two and three, right? I'll leave that for clarification.

[29:57] So up to this point, now we've been introducing. you a bit to the two fundamental works in logic, in the logic of names, you might say, which is the first part of the logic, the first act. One book called the Isagoge, right, which is by Porphyry,

[30:18] and I mentioned before how the word Isagoge is the Greek word, etymologically the same as our word introduction, right? Eisagoge is like duxio leading, and is in leading in, okay? Greek would be eis, I guess. E I S Eisagoge? So it means the introduction. Now, originally, the occasion for Porphyry writing this work

[31:00] was somebody was having a hard time understanding the book called the what? Categories of Aristotle, right? And in the book called the Categories, Aristotle will use words like genus, species, difference, as if everybody knows what these mean, right? And there are places elsewhere in Aristotle where he talks about the word genus and difference and gives some information about that. So it was originally written as introduction to the categories,

[31:38] but then it got kind of contracted to what? Introduction, right? This happens down through history, right? If you look at Sir Isaac Newton's major work, it's called in Latin the what? You know, Principia Mathematica, the mathematical principles, Naturalis Philosophiae, the mathematical principles of natural philosophy. But got referred to for centuries as the what? Principia. Principia, yeah. But as time went on, they began to see calling this just the introduction as a kind of example of that figure of speech, huh?

[32:19] antonomasia, right? This is the introduction to logic, which in a way is a tool of the whole philosophy, and therefore, in a way, it's introduction to the whole philosophy. So this is antonomasia, the introduction, right? And they often refer to this as the book of the five names: genus, difference, species, property, accident. To use the Latin

[32:53] and Greek words, right? Genus, diaphora, eidos idion and sumbebekos, right? So they call it the book of the five names, huh? Actually, the Greeks often say the book of the five vocal sounds. Okay, genus, species, difference, property, accident. As Porphyry says in the premium, that to know genus, difference, species, property, accident is useful, my friend, not only to know the category, right? But it's useful for understanding definition.

[33:21] And we saw that because among those five names, you have the name that begins a definition, the genus, right? And the name that completes a perfect definition, difference, right? And the name of what is being defined, namely species. And then the name of what is useful to investigate, the what difference if you don't know it, namely property, right? And which can be substituted for a kind of imperfect definition if you don't know the difference, right?

[33:55] And then the name that is useless for naming a thing or for defining it, right? So green is useless to name triangle and useless for defining triangle, right?

[34:10] So he says it's useful not only for the categories but also for definition. And he says it's useful for division. And you can see that because one of the main kinds of division in philosophy is the division of a genus into its what species. Like in Euclid, you have the division of quadrilateral into square, oblong, rhombus, rhomboid. You divide a genus into what species by differences, right?

[34:38] So it's useful not only for definition but for what division, right? And the fourth thing he says is useful for. It's useful for demonstration. Understanding demonstration. Now in demonstration, you tend to prove a property of a species.

[35:04] You show, for example, that it's a property of the triangle to have its interior angles equal to right angles. Proposition what thirty-two of the Book One of the Elements, right? You prove a property of the species, and you show why that property belongs that species. Now, as you know from your understanding of property, it's something that follows upon the nature of the species. So if you define the species and know its genus and difference, you would be able to see why this property belongs to the what species.

[35:43] The old example logic books is that risible is a property of man. Risible means this what? Yeah. The word risible Now to define man as we do as an animal with reason, right? You can see why he's the animal that laughs, right? Because he's an animal he can make the the sounds of laughter, right? But because he has reason, he can see something. What laughable, something absurd, something ridiculous, right?

[36:17] Something preposterous, right? And so, in a way, the conclusion of a demonstration is stating the what property of the species, right? Man is risible, right? And the middle term unites those two is the definition of man, which includes the genus and the difference of man. So, species and property and genus and difference are necessary for understanding what demonstration, right? And this will be the highest kind of what reasoning, huh?

[36:53] Apodeixis in Greek, right? Demonstration is called in Latin. That's why Euclid, you see, at the end of the demonstration, they'll have the Latin initials, QED, right? What was to be demonstrated, we've done it. I'm from Missouri. Better show it to me. The word "apodeixis in Greek and demonstrare in Latin, from, the word to show, right? I showed it to you, right? It's clear. Well, that's really a magnificent, absolutely magnificent framing he has to his own work.

[37:28] He says to a friend who asked him to write a book explaining what these words that Aristotle was using in the categories, genus, species, difference, and so on, property. He says it's useful not only for what you asked me for, right? But it's useful for understanding definition, for understanding division, for understanding demonstration, right? And there's a text in Thomas that detect where it is, but kind of a summary of the scientific method.

[37:58] He says in three words: definiendo, dividendo, demonstrando. Three Ds, they're on a nice alliteration. Defining, dividing, demonstrating. Just like Euclid, right? He defines these things like triangle. He divides them into their species like equilateral, scalene, isosceles, and then he starts demonstrating properties, right? Defining, dividing, demonstrating, right?

[38:24] So this is what this is useful for: defining, dividing, demonstrating, and for understanding the categories, huh? Now, in Latin, those five were sometimes called the predicabilia, so, in English, we call them sometimes five predicables, huh? Equal to be said of, right? In Latin, they used a similar word to describe the ten categories. They called them predicamenta, To use the plural predicament And, you see that's where you get a real predicament.

[39:08] It comes to enjoy the fact that when someone says I'm in a predicament, right? Situation is hard to get out of. I'm in a real predicament, you know, I'm in a real predicament, you know, can you help me out?

[39:21] And that's kind of a reflection of the ten categories, right? Because you can't get out of it, right? If you're a quality, you know, like your habit, you can never be a substance or quantity, right? If you're a number, you're always going to be a quantity. You're stuck there, the rest of your your being, right? And so it's kind of funny. Here's the abstract word has come into daily speech, though, huh?

[39:49] And so you see this in literature and so on. Guys in predicament. Actually, the Greek word for categories comes from the courthouse. If you see this work of Plato called the Apologia, the apology, categoria is the name for accusation, legal accusation, right? Charging you with some crime, right? And Apologia is the name for the defense in the what courtroom, right? So it's not apology as they transliterate it, right?

[40:24] It's a legal defense. Cardinal Newman wrote that work kind of defense of his life, even the Anglicans, is Apologia, right? Pro Vita Sua, right? A defense in a sense. But Socrates, in a way, in the Apologia, the Apology, we call it in English, is defending himself in court, right? Not only against the charge, he's defending his whole life, right, as a philosopher. But categoria was the opposite of Apologia.

[40:54] That's the accusation, right? And the reason why the word is borrowed is that when I accuse you, I have to accuse you of something. You're a murderer, or you're a thief, or you're an embezzler. I gotta say something of you, right? And the categories is what the ten ways something can be said of individual substances, right? The highest, the ten needs, right? So a friend of mine, kind of playing on the legal origin of it, he calls them the ten supreme accusations.

[41:30] What's supreme? The highest, right? Accusation is the ten highest things I can say about you. The ten supreme accusations. It did come in from the court, right? You'll find you see that the words that we use in looking philosophy are often borrowed from practical things. Just like the scientist borrows the word law, right? The word law comes from human society at first.

[42:01] So although the biologist and the chemist and the physicist talks about the laws of nature, we don't call them lawyers, do we? We don't see the legal profession, right? Although the whole talk is about laws.

[42:17] That Latin predicamenta, Yeah. Predi. Probably a E, predicamenta, huh? As opposed to predicamenta. Yeah, and again, I think the names here are a bit like the names of the figures of speech. They have something to do with the meaning of it, but they don't really, I don't think, bring out the distinction of the two, right? They're both taken from the word to be set up, predicare, right?

[42:46] Predicable means literally able to be set up, right? But that's true about these things, able to be said as something. And predicamentum maybe has more the sense of actually set up, but. It doesn't mean bring out the distinction between the two. I'm just familiarizing you with the way they're named in Latin. So if you look at Albert the Great's paraphrase of the doctor, these two works in Latin, one would be called the, you know, De Predicabilibus, and that's about genus, difference, species, property, accident.

[43:19] And then De Predicamentis, huh? There you're getting about the predicamentis, and that's about substance, quantity, quality, and the rest. Now, they'd often refer to the categories as the book of the ten names. Genus, not genus, no. Substance, quantity, quality, relation, where, when, so on. Okay.

[43:54] So the five and the ten names, right? Okay. I notice a difference between the five and the ten names. The five names are names of names,

[44:16] and the ten names are names of what? Yeah. Interesting. What was that? The ten or what? Names. Yeah, substance, quantity, quality, etc. The ten names, the ten categories, are names of things, right? Things. Yeah.

[44:42] So I'm the substance, right? I am a what? My health, right? Is a disposition, it's a quality, right? Okay. My size is a quantity, right? My being a father, a teacher, a son, right? Or being taller or shorter than somebody, this is being towards something. My being in this room, right? These are all real, but the Isagoge is about the names of what? Names, right? Okay. And sometimes you find in the Greek philosophers, and occasionally in Thomas, you have more in sentences in the later works, but they'll speak of the first placing of names and the second placing of names, and they'll say the categories is about the first placing of names.

[45:37] Okay. What does that mean? Well, the simplest way of understanding it is that in the beginning there are no names at all, right? Remember how God led the animals by Adam and gave all names. I always call my my wife that, you know. Therefore, the father should name the child, right?

[45:59] His name took me job, right? But it was bad strategy, right? Anyway, something seems fogged up here as well. Okay, but notice in the beginning there were things, but no names, right? And for many practical reasons, as well as later on theoretical reasons, we're going to put a name upon these things, right? So we'll place upon this animal dog, right, and upon this animal cat, and upon this plant tree.

[46:31] So we place names upon things, right? And now we have not only things, but we also have names, right? And then we come back and place what names on names? Yeah, that's the second placing of names. Okay, kind of very concrete way of speaking, right?

[47:01] Now, for the goodness of teaching about names, we could attach a couple things to what we've taken up here. One would be to talk about name

[47:29] equivocal by reason, which could also, if you want to, you can say it equivocally of things. huh? Now, when we first distinguished genus, species, difference, property, and accident, these were five names, right? Said univocally of many what things, right? Names said with one meaning of many things, right? But it's also possible to have what a name said of many things with different meanings in mind. Like in my mother's saying there, I see said the blind man, but he couldn't see at all, right?

[48:14] Now sometimes two things have the same name by chance, right? Okay, and then we call them purely equivocal or equivocal by chance, right? But sometimes a name is equivocal by reason, and these names are very important in philosophy.

[48:36] Okay, and the most common names, the names that are used everywhere, and also the names that are used in the axioms, right, and the names are used especially in wisdom because it's about what is said of all. Those most common names are especially equivocal by reason, huh? Okay.

[48:58] So we could, since the teaching there, add a consideration here name equivocal by reason. The other thing we might add is a little discussion of figurative naming, right? Okay, figures of speech, right? Figurative

[49:30] naming. I call it figures of speech. Now it's very hard to get a universal understanding of these figurative names. When I asked Monsignor Dionne, he referred me to Quintilian, right? You know, because Quintilian has a somewhat lengthy discussion of these things, but it's imperfect, I think, in many ways, as Monsignor Dionne himself would agree when I talk to him about it, right? Okay.