Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
23. The Art of Definition II: Substance and Accident, and How to Hunt Down a Definition
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[0:00] the word definition there. Now, in page five, we meet a third distinction, but quite different from the first two, right? Okay. It's a different kind of distinction, and it's a distinction based now upon the thing being what defined. Okay. While the first two distinctions were how we define the thing, right, by cause or by effect, right, by difference or by property, and so on, right. But now we're talking about things that are so different in the kind of thing they are that you can't define them in the same way at all.

[0:48] Okay. Now the fundamental distinction is the one that we meet in the categories of Aristotle between substance and accident. Now let's recall a little bit that distinction there and why they have to be defined differently, and we'll see that in comparison here with the that word definition.

[1:19] A man, for example, or a dog. These are examples of a substance, right? A thing that exists, right? But not in another; it's a subject, right? But you take the health of the man, let's say,

[1:40] or the health of the dog, and that's not something that exists by itself, is it? So if you had a man and a dog in this room, you could leave the man in here and put the dog in the next room, right? Or leave the dog in here and put the man in here, right? But if you have a healthy man in this room, you can't. Put the man in one room and his health in next room, right?

[2:06] Because the health exists only in what the man, right? Okay. So health is an example of they call an accident as opposed to a substance. Okay. And substance comes from those Latin words to stand under. That's why it has that name, right? Stands under the accident. So the accident comes from those Latin words to happen to something, right? So it happens to something else. So the kind of thing that accident is is really quite different from a substance.

[2:40] The substance is something completed itself, and the accident is really something of another, right? Okay. An accident, something of another, right? Maybe that which it exists. But the man and the dog is not something in another, right? It's in a subject. So you can define the man and the dog by itself, but you can't redefine health by itself because it isn't something by itself. It's something of another.

[3:18] So you have to define health as something of another. So without trying to be very profound, you might define health as something like the good condition or good disposition of the body. Sickness would be a bad disposition of the body, right? So you have to define it as something of another because of the kind of thing it is. It is not a thing in its own right or by itself.

[3:48] It's something of another. It's not complete. But the man and the dog is something in itself, complete. Now, in a way, the definition of an accident here almost seems to go against the meaning of the word definition, because the word definition comes from the word limit, right? And as we said in the limits of my field or the limits of the city of Worcester, there shouldn't be contained anything besides Worcester, my land, right?

[4:22] But in the definition of accident, you have to bring in something other. You have to go to the definition, right? Like here, I bring in the body, which is not health, right? Something else. The body is something the genus of substance.

[4:39] So in the seventh book of wisdom, Aristotle says that either there's no definition of accident, right? Because you bring in something other than what you're defining, right? You seem to go against accident, or you have definition in a secondary what sense, right? Okay. So the distinction between substance and accident is where we first see distinction between something that can be defined by itself and something that has to be defined as something of another.

[5:12] Right? You have to say what it is of another. Sometimes when Thomas talks about wisdom, right? You know, human wisdom. He'll say it's the highest or the greatest perfection of reason. Now all reason's knowledge is a perfection of reason, right? But wisdom is the highest or the greatest perfection of reason, and that's not yet a complete, you know, understanding what wisdom is. But notice how you're starting to define wisdom as something of what?

[5:48] Another, yeah, something of reason, right? Okay, it's a what? It's perfection of reason, right? So is geometry, right? But wisdom is the highest or the greatest perfection of reason. Wisdom. Well, then you can't really know wisdom. Without knowing that something of reason, and we looked at the proemium to wisdom, right? And remember, the sixth attribute of the wise man. he he orders and directs others, right? Well, if you recall in the proemium to the Nicomachean Ethics, now Thomas quotes that from the proemium of Aristotle to wisdom, and he gives us a reason for it, right?

[6:30] That wisdom is the highest perfection of reason, and it's proper to reason to what? To order things, yeah. If you go back to the definition of reason, which is first definition is the one given by Shakespeare, huh? It's the ability for a large discourse, looking before and after. Before and after is a definition of order. So if wisdom is the highest perfection of reason, then the wise man most of all will see order, most of all be ordered to order direct things.

[7:01] So you can't really understand what wisdom is fully, human wisdom anyway, right? Without understanding reason, right? Because wisdom is not something by itself, right? It's something of reason, right? Okay. And in general, we can say reasoned out knowledge is something of reason.

[7:27] When we take up love, and love is really something of the heart. Now, desire is something of the heart too, right? The heart desires, the heart loves, and so on. But just like wisdom is something of reason, love is something of the heart. So if you want to see what love is, you have to say what it is of the what heart. And and the basic notion is that love is the conformity or agreement of the heart with its object.

[8:01] That's really what it is. And once the heart is conformed to an object, to an agreement, the object, then if you don't have the object, then you have this desire whereby you try to acquire it, right? Or if you acquire it, then you have delight or joy or pleasure, right?

[8:22] So you can't really know what love is unless you know what it is of the heart. Love or liking, yeah, it's conformity of the heart with its object, right? And desire or wanting is the heart is the seeking, the heart seeking of an object, right? And joy or delight or pleasure is the heart resting in that object once it's acquired and possessed.

[8:50] So this is an extremely important distinction here, huh? Between the definition of a substance and the definition of an accident, but this distinction can be understood more broadly than just substance and accident, right? Okay. And that is a distinction between something that can be defined by itself, right? And something that must be defined as something of another, right? And if we have a chance sometime to study about the human soul, right?

[9:19] The human soul, and that was not an accident, right? But it's actually what they call substantial form. But it's something of another. You can't define the human soul by itself. You have to define it as something of another. And so Aristotle finally, you know, approaches the definition after the dialectic of Book One. He starts to approach in the second book. He gives six divisions, right? And as Thomas explains, three divisions are on the side of the soul itself, and three on the side of that which the soul is something.

[9:52] Just like if I was going to define wisdom, I might say, "Well, we've got to talk about you know what reason is, right? Let's see some things about that, and then what wisdom is a reason, and he says something about that. Okay. So this is an extremely important distinction, but notice it's a much different distinction than the first two, right? The first two, in a way, corresponded to each other, right?

[10:21] And you're reading a distinction by the way you're defining the thing and how perfectly you're defining it, right? Are you defining it by difference or by property? Are you defining it by cause or by effect? But here you have things that are so different that they have to have also different meanings of definition, right? One is defined by itself, and the other is defined as something of another, because it is something of another, right?

[10:47] That's a good sign of of the fact that you can't separate logic entirely from things, like the modern logicians try to do in symbolic or mathematical logic, right? They want purely formal logic, nothing to do with things, forgetting that the purpose of logic is to help you know things, right? And I want to know both man and health, right? I want to know, you know, the soul, right?

[11:15] I want to know wisdom as well as reason, right? And so you have to take into account the fact that the kind of definition you have of a substance and accident cannot be the same kind of definition. One must be what? Must be in something other than what you're defining, which might seem at first contrary definition. What is a contrary definition in the full sense where you have a definition of a substance?

[11:42] Okay Aristotle, you know, I mentioned there when we were talking about the categories that instead of calling the first category substance in the topics, he calls it what it is, because that's the fundamental meaning of it. What it is, huh? But in some way, health is what it is too. The more fundamental you say, health is how you are. How are you today? Well, kind of sick, right?

[12:08] Healthier, whatever it is, right? You know, but in some sense, you can ask the question, "What about health?" Right? As Aristotle says, "Healthy seems more real than health," right? Because healthy brings out the fact this is something and another, right? While health seems like it's something in itself, you know.

[12:31] Wise is something more real than what? Wisdom. So, is wisdom then is that like an accident of an accident, something of an accident? I say in general, we're saying it's something of another, right? Yeah. So you can't really understand wisdom without understanding something other than wisdom, namely reason. You can't really understand health without understanding something other than health. You can't really understand it. You can't really understand

[13:04] Is glass suitable for drinking red wine? No. And is the mug suitable for drinking red wine? No. You want a glass that's shaped like this, right? To look like, you know. So you can, you know, put a little bit of wine in there and swish it around and sniff it, right? Huh? Okay. So notice there are some differences among liquids, right? Like the wine and the coffee or tea, right?

[13:34] And the water, right? Where you've got to know something about what people are doing things, or use these things to drink. Okay. Other things, the distinction is kind of irrelevant, right? So maybe maybe hot chocolate and coffee could be drunk out of the same what? Mug, right? Okay.

[13:58] I like a clear mug for my tea because I can see the beautiful color of the tea, right? But that's unnecessary with coffee because it doesn't have any color. Okay. But I see a distinction between the teacup or the tea mug or the coffee mug and the glass that doesn't have any handles, right? That's a distinction that's very important, isn't it? Okay. So the difference, say, between the definition of square and the definition of circle, the logician has nothing to say about that, right?

[14:33] Just the geometry talks about the definition of circle and the definition of square. Logician doesn't. Because there aren't really a different kind of definition, are they? Right. Okay. But when you define something as something of another, right, and define something else by itself, right, to be of a different kind of definition, you can't use the same kind of definition. And that kind of distinction would be relevant to the what?

[15:01] Yeah. See. Okay. You see the comparison I'm making, right? The glass there and the and the mug are tools for what drinking, right? Definition is a tool for what understand what a thing is. And some distinctions are relevant, right?

[15:24] Among things you drink with, right? The mug and the other glass, right? Others are irrelevant, that, right? Okay. But here's a distinction where you really need a different kind of what Definition to define hell and to define man. Okay. It's like you need a different kind of receptacle here, right? To drink coffee than to drink water. Do you see that?

[15:55] Okay. So you can't fully separate logic from from things, huh? In fact, the distinction between definition by cause and definition by effect—that's something to do with things, right? Cause and effect is a distinction in things, right? And so, definition by cause, definition by effect—you have to know what you are doing, right? As I was trying to indicate, I mean, the most basic things, like the definition of good, right?

[16:24] The whole of ethics and the whole of what you say about human life and action depends upon understanding what good and bad are, right? And what kind of definition you have here of good, right?

[16:40] So those distinctions are very relevant. Logic is going to be useful for knowing things, huh? I don't know. One of the symbolic logicians at the University of Minnesota told one of my friends here in Minnesota that symbolic logic is useless for knowing things. It was a moment of honesty, or what? No, we're not going quite that far, but some tooth is he mark. Okay.

[17:13] Now, in the next section here, page six and seven here, it's not enough for the logician to know what a definition is, and even to know the kinds of definitions he has to know that. But he also has to know how to find the definition, right, or how to arrive at a definition. And

[17:40] one thing you have to know when you learn the ways that we arrive at a definition—it's useful to know these ways, and you have to follow these ways. But logic is not a substitute for thinking. You still have to think when you use these ways, and it's not automatic in the way that adding or subtracting or multiplying or dividing becomes kind of what automatic, right? Okay.

[18:09] I find in myself, even if I am correcting papers or something like that, you know, I have to think a little bit about whether the student has said something or not, right? When it comes time to figure out the averages, you know, and got a bunch of numbers there, it's just a mechanical thing, right? You can do it automatically, right? But in defining, you have to do a lot of what thinking, right?

[18:30] And a definition, as they say, like the definition of motion, the definition of the soul, the definition of eternity, the definition of time—these are a major work of reason, huh? Okay. Now, I like to use a military kind of metaphor here to approach the question of how you investigate a definition.

[18:56] Plato and Aristotle often compared to finding the hunting right. You see this in the dialog that Plato over kind of hunt down the things trying to escape from us, right? And Aristotle speaks of the Posterior Analytics use the word "therion right, Which comes from the word for a beast, right? You are hunting down the beast. He's trying to escape you. Okay, I use a slightly different metaphor, but hunting and warfare are similar, right?

[19:27] And I say you've got the enemy castle here. You want to take the enemy castle here? It's a little easier to get you thinking, right? Okay. Now, there is

[19:44] three ways of attacking that castle, right? Which is guarding what it is, right? Okay. You can attack it from the side, right? Knock down the walls, right? Battering ram, right? Okay. Or you can dig underneath it and try to undermine it, right? Okay. We read about these tunnels that the North Koreans have dug, you know, or something. Of course, they did the visa down too, but not right underneath, but in the enemy territory, it would be tremendous.

[20:20] Or if you've got an airplane, or if you've got catapult, you can get one. Okay. And so you'll see that even the old castle around they they would try to undermine it, right? Dig holes, right? And the enemy says, "Let's start the own hole, dig them halfway down the passage, and we got nasty exchange down there." Okay, but then you you know shoot flaming things and so on, and you try to knock the walls down, and so on.

[20:47] Okay. Now, let's drop the the metaphor here, right? There is logical terms, right? What do these three correspond to? Yeah, yeah. But notice how when we talk about the more universal and the less universal, right? We tend to what put the more universal above the what less universal, right? Okay. So we'd say that under animal comes man and dog and cat and horse, and under you know quadrilateral comes square and oblong and so on, right?

[21:35] Okay. There is a reason why we do that, right? Okay. But notice even the definition there of species in general. We said it's the name of a particular kind of thing, right? Placed under a what genus, right? Okay. And notice how we tend to say the more universal the less universal, right? We're more apt to say man is an animal than animal is a man. So we can say some animal is a man, but we tend to see the more universal relation first.

[22:06] And they call the thing of which something is said the subject, remember? And then that which is said of it the predicate. And subject means sub, under it. Okay. So we tend to put the more universal above the what less universal, right?

[22:27] That's why we speak of porphyry's tree, right? Because you divide the more universal, it spreads out like a tree, huh? One time at a Christmas party there, they gave the logician porphyry's tree, right? Kind of a joke, right?

[22:41] But they call it porphyry's tree, huh? Because you divide, it spreads out like a Christmas tree, right? For Christmas time. So you can attack it from above, meaning start off with something more universal than what you're trying to define, right? Okay, or you could attack it from below and start off with something less universal, okay, or even singular, right? Okay.

[23:18] Or if you attack it from the side, there would be something what? Yeah. Okay. So you can. We're talking first here about where you begin to investigate definition, right? And you have three places where you might begin, right? But notice this is a division again into three. You know how most distinctions are into two or three. In fact, we'll meet them earlier in another page or so, but that seems to be all there is, right?

[23:55] More, less, and equal, right? What else is there, right? But in terms of something logical, right? Because the distinction between the universal and the more universal and the less universal and so on, things universal only in the mind, only in reason, right? So this is a distinction that's fits reason, right? Now let's be more precise here. If you start off with something more universal, you're probably starting off with something like a what genus, right?

[24:30] If you start with something less universal, right, okay, or singular, you're starting with what examples of the thing, right? Okay. Now most often in the dialogues of Plato, when Socrates asks somebody what is something, they'll begin by giving what examples, right? And a child always do this, right? If you ask a child what is a circle, they'll say, "Well, that's a circle, right?" They'll point to the clock or something that is a circle, right?

[25:06] Okay. But a lot of times in class, if you ask somebody what is a dog, they'll say, "Well, dog is a what animal, right?" They'll start with something more general, right? Something that's true, right? But obviously, it's not definition of dog, right? Ask them what is love, They'll say it's emotion, right? Well, maybe there is one kind of love that is an emotion, right? The emotion, even of that kind of love, he'll say a what a genus, right?

[25:35] Okay. Those are the two very common places where people begin. I asked them what is a sonnet. Shakespeare wrote 150 or more sonnets, right? What's a sonnet? They'll say, "Well, it's a poem, right?" Okay. So very often they'll start with you know genus, right? But more often they'll start with the, what, examples, right? Now, if you start with something equally universal, what would you be starting from?

[26:06] Property, property, or property fact right Okay Property, or maybe proper effect. So, there's three places where a man might begin to investigate what something is, right?

[26:36] In fact, he does. We find, you know, that they spontaneously they will begin with one of these or the other, right? Okay. What is a comedy? Well, it's a play that makes you laugh. Okay. One way you're starting with something equally universal, right? Now, okay. What is a dog? It's an animal, they'll say. That's unclassifying animal,

[27:01] right? What's a chair? Something to sit on. Well, that's again like genus, right? There are many things one can sit upon. The chair is one particular kind of thing to sit on, right? But there are benches and sofas and all kinds of things. And when Socrates asks, you know, "you know what virtue is?" or "Euthyphro what piety is?" or he asks, "Details what episteme or science is can go with examples first, right?

[27:31] Okay. So, three places to begin, right? Now, is the road from each of those beginnings the same, or do you have a different road to get to the definition of each of those starting points?

[27:54] Now, if you begin with examples, what is the road you take to the definition? And suppose I wanted to define, like, I wanted to define what a Shakespearean sonnet is, right? Since I got a book of Shakespearean sonnets, and I've got 154 examples of the sonnet, right? Okay. How do you go from those examples to the definition of sonnet?

[28:22] Compare them to find what is common. Yeah, you compare the sonnets, right? And separate out what they have in common, right? And leave aside their what differences, right? Okay. Now, notice, huh? That way is simple enough to say the way you proceed, but would take in practice a long time to separate out everything that the 154 sonnets have in common, right? And I might notice at first, well, they seem to have some of the same length.

[28:55] If I examine more carefully, this one's got actually 14 lines, yeah, and this one's got 14 lines, and they all have 14 lines, right? Okay. But is that all they have in common? See. As I read them, I might begin to see where there seems to be some kind of, you know, meter here, and there seems to be some kind of what, rhyme, right? Huh? I said, well, look, look, the first line and the third line rhyme, and this one, and the second and the fourth rhyme, right?

[29:23] I'm seeing a meter, first to the third, and the second and the fourth, right? And then the fifth and the seventh, and the sixth and the eighth rhyme, right? And then the what? They seem to alternate the rhyme, right? And then the ninth and the eleventh, and the tenth and the twelfth rhyme. Then there's two lines at the end, but they both rhyme, right? See. So it kind of falls into what they call three quatrains, right, with alternate rhyming, and it's completed by a rhyming couplet, right?

[29:51] Okay. But as you also think of what Shakespeare's doing there, he's making a likeness of what, some thought or feeling, right? So eventually, I arrive at my definition of of a Shakespearean sonnet, which is that it's a likeness of thought and feeling, right? In 14 lines of iambic pentameter, divided into three quatrains with alternate rhyming, and completed by a rhyming couplet. See, I hadn't arrived at definition all at once, right?

[30:23] Huh? You have to read the sonnets and compare them, and you know, other people maybe help you with it too, right? Okay. You see that?

[30:39] If someone asks you what is a definition, right? See, we'll take some easy definitions here. You know, you might go to Euclid, right? A bunch of definitions there at the beginning, right? And then you start to see, you know, if you examine these definitions, that they have what,

[30:58] something like a genus, right? And then they have these what, differences, right? Okay. So you might arrive at the idea that definition is speech composed of the genus and differences, right? Okay. But no, you get this by comparing definitions, right? Okay. You see the idea? So basically, if you start off with examples of a thing, and they can be, you know, species with examples of a genus, right?

[31:28] Like man and dog and cat and horse with the examples of animals, right? Or individuals, right? Huh? You know, this man and this man and this man, examples of man, right? Huh? Okay. But in both cases, you would compare the examples, separate out what they have in common, and either side the differences, right? Huh? That's basically the way you proceed, right? Now, if you start from the more universal, from the contrary place, now, right?

[31:56] Maybe you start with something one. You don't have many examples. You have something one, right? A dog is an animal, right? If I started with the sonnet, right? I say the sonnet is a poem, right? Okay. Now, how would you go from the more universal down to the species? How would you proceed there? By dividing, right? You divide by differences, right? And then you see under which difference the thing to be defined comes, right?

[32:28] Then you add that difference to the genus, and if that speech resulting is convertible, you might say, "Well, I got a kind of definition of the thing, right?" If it's not, I've got to have another division and add another difference, right? Okay.

[32:43] So if I begin, you know, say, "What is a square?" and somebody says, "What's a quadrilateral?" right? Then I might say, "Well, how do you divide quadrilaterals?" right? And say, "Well, parallelogram, trapezium, right? Which is the square?" Well, has opposite sides and angles equal, it seems, right? So it's a parallelogram, right? And then I say, well, it can be right angle or even obtuse angle. Okay. Which is this?

[33:11] It's right angle, right? Now, okay. But now is that convertible with square yet? Not right angled, quite relatable, right? It's not convertible yet with square, right? Okay. So, notice this doesn't substitute for thinking. You get a lot of thinking, right? You got to do a lot of comparison down here of examples. Here, you've got to see what differences are appropriate for dividing this sort of genus, right?

[33:37] And you got to think about which difference does it come under, right? And then you have to see is the speech resulting from adding that difference to the genus convertible or not, right? So it's a major work to define, right? I can't just go automatically from here to there like I can with any number of figures, right? Because I can have a little editing machine if I want to, you know, to do something, right?

[34:02] But here I can't get a little machine to go from the genus down to the difference, right? You see that? So you have two distinct beginnings, in a way contrary, right? One is above, the one is below. And above you start with something one, and below you start with many, right? But the way of getting from the one to the definition, or from the many to definition, are quite distinct, right?

[34:31] The many you have to compare, right? And separate out what they, have in common. And the more universal, you have to do what divide, right? Aristotle talks about these two ways in the second book of the Posterior Analytics because he's talking about demonstration that book. And definition is the beginning of demonstration. That's why Euclid starts with definitions. And so he talks about how you get the beginning of demonstration, right?

[34:56] Okay. And he talks about these two different ways. One way is more proportioned to us, right? In other ways it's a little more rigorous, but okay. And he has some likeness to to distinction later on in third act there between syllogisms and then what induction, right? As an induction, you go from many particular statements to a general statement, right? By the syllogism, you start with something general and you do something from that.

[35:25] So that's a very fundamental distinction. But induction comes first for us because it starts from the singular, which is sensible, and the examples are sensible or closer to senses. Okay. Now, if you start from something equally universal,

[35:48] like it can be a property or proper effect, or it could be an encircling even, right? Okay. You had another. What road did you take to get in there? Reasoning, yeah, reasoning, right? Okay. Now, take my example here because I can kill two birds in one stone. Suppose someone asks me, "What is wisdom? "

[36:20] And I might say, "Well, my starting point is wisdom is the best knowledge. " Now, wisdom is the best knowledge, and the best knowledge is wisdom. They're like the same thing, right? It's a kind of outward knowledge here, right? And I want to reason inwardly to what wisdom is, right? Okay.

[36:50] So, I have to do a lot of thinking about this, right? I might say, for example, what does "best" mean? Well, best means better than all the rest, right? Okay, you all know best means right.

[37:18] If I say so and so is my best student, what do I mean? Better than all the rest, right? This is our best model. The salesman says, right? It's supposed to be better than all the rest, right? This is the best cut of meat we have, right? Better than all the rest, then.

[37:38] Then I have to stop and think, and I say, if this is a knowledge that's better than all the rest, why is one knowledge better than another?

[37:52] Okay. I have to do a lot of thinking, right? In the beginning of the three books on the soul, Aristotle talks about how good the knowledge is of the soul.

[38:11] And he begins by saying that one knowledge is better than another if it's about a better thing or if it's more certain. Okay. So it's better to what smell a rose than to smell the what? I think I want to mention here. Okay, it's better to hear music of Mozart than to hear noise, right?

[38:46] It's better to see a beautiful painting right now than to see the ash can or something, right? Okay. Now, in the parts of animals, Aristotle points out though that the criterion of being about a better thing is more important than being more certain. Right? It's better to know a less a a better thing, even imperfectly, than to know a lesser thing. What? Perfectly, right? It's more essential knowledge, but it is that you know.

[39:21] So, after a lot of thinking, I might say that knowledge of a better thing is better what? Knowledge, right? Okay. No, it's one knowledge differs from another chiefly by what? What's a knowledge of, right? Okay.

[40:02] Might be said before when we talked about before and after. What comes before seeing it before and after? There's no looking. Yeah, you have to see a distinction before you can see before and after, right? Okay. So before you can see that one knowledge is before another in the sense of being better, right? You have to see distinction. And the fundamental distinction between one knowledge and another is what's a knowledge.

[40:31] Oh, right. Okay. So you figure out then that knowledge of a better thing is better what? Knowledge, right? Okay. Now, if that's true, then the best knowledge must be what? Knowledge of the best thing. Yeah. Okay. Actually, if you wanted to, I could put this in the form of a if then syllogism, what they call conditional hypothetical syllogism. If knowledge of a better thing is better knowledge, then knowledge of the what?

[41:04] Best thing is the best knowledge. Okay. Okay. But knowledge of a better thing is better knowledge, right? In fact, I might show that by the ash can,

[41:20] beautiful painting of the sunset, or something, right? And smelling the rose and smelling things are imaginable, and hearing music and hearing noise and so on, right? You start to see inductively, right? That knowledge of a better thing is better knowledge, right? Okay. And then you reason from that that knowledge, the best knowledge, must be then the knowledge of what? The best thing, right? Okay. So what's I'm doing here now?

[41:58] Basically, I'm constructing a syllogism and saying wisdom is the best knowledge. The best knowledge is a knowledge of the best thing. Okay. Now, if I know what the best thing is, I can what? Go further, right? See, I might know that the best thing is God. Let's say, right now. Okay. I might believe this, right? Okay.

[42:36] So the best thing is God. Therefore, wisdom is the knowledge of what? Yeah. So that done, right? I'm reasoning from the statements that wisdom is the best knowledge, and the best knowledge is knowledge of the best thing, and the best thing is God. So wisdom is the knowledge of God, right? Okay. Now you read Galileo there, but but more so, maybe Einstein. Einstein wanted to know the universe as a whole, right?

[43:09] So Einstein. Reasoning, right? Okay. Let me give another example that's very important. Suppose I say now that moral virtue is a praiseworthy quality, right? Now, how would I try to reason my way in? How would I try to get more inward knowledge of what virtue is, right? Well, let's say when a man sits down to eat or drink, huh? You know, what's praiseworthy? Eating too much and getting drunk and so on.

[44:02] No, that's crazy, right? but what about these women? You know, they're suffering from anorexia or whatever it is, They're not eating enough? Right? They're actually what killing themselves, right? Huh? And I don't know much about women myself, but for this is a serious problem, right? You know, kind of woman there, you know. So, is it praiseworthy to eat more than you need, or to excess, you know?

[44:30] Or is it praiseworthy to eat less than you should? No, no. What is praised is in the what? Middle, right? okay? So you add to this what is praised

[44:47] is not extreme, too much or too little, but what is praised is in the middle, right? Okay. Well, now I could syllogize that moral virtue is what in the middle, right? Okay. This is only the beginning of reasoning out what moral virtue is, right? But you see what I'm doing? I'm going in by what reasoning, right? Okay.

[45:23] Now, as a matter of fact, you know these ways of proceeding. Probably nobody would use just one of them, right? You might be attacking the fortress as they do in the military example, right? They don't just attack one of these ways; they're attacking in three different ways at the same time, right? And it is a hard time resisting undermining them, breaking these walls down, and the flames or dropping bombs on them, right?

[45:47] It's pretty hard to resist, right? And so, when I'm investing what moral virtue is, I might be reasoning in this way, right? Okay. But I might also be looking at examples of moral virtue, right? I might look at at moderation there, which is in eating and drinking.

[46:14] And you know, I always quote that famous remark of Teresa of Avila, right? Someone brought partridges up to the convent, and she enjoyed them, you know, for dinner. And someone saw her enjoying them, right? And protested, and she says, "Penance is penance, and partridge is partridge." You can go to, you know, a defect, right? You know, and you know, you don't want to, waste this wonderful food, right?

[46:39] Who's that woman who's always fixing the specialty for Saint Francis? You know, he was a, you know, a sissy. He's a very fastidious man, right? But he'd always be so thankful when she brought this, you know. And you have to understand, you know, if a woman thinks you really like a particular food, and she makes it. You know, goes out of her way to make this for you.

[46:58] You should receive it with what open arms and enjoy it, right? You know, you shouldn't not enjoy the food because you know it's pleasurable, right? So moderation, you might say, you know, but most people go to the opposite thing, right? Eat too much, you drink too much, and so on. Okay, but then you take what they call liberality or generosity, and say, "Well,

[47:27] is that also in between two extremes?" Huh? Well, it's in between the stingy man, right? Doesn't spend enough, right? And then t here is the man who's what extravagant, right? Okay. So I like to have wine with my dinner, but if I go out and buy a fifty dollar bottle of wine, say, well, that's you know, soon at a freshman starvation you'd buy fifty dollar bottles of wine, right?

[47:54] okay, that would be what extravagant for me, right? Okay. But now suppose it's our anniversary, and I take her out to McDonald's. But that's all I can afford. That's okay. I mean, you know, you see. So, liberality is spending neither more nor less than you should for this what event, right? Okay, see. So when my daughter gets married, I am going to spend a lot more money, right?

[48:26] To spend a lot more money than if I am, you know, taking my family out to dinner or something, right? Okay. You expect to pay a lot, you know, your father, right? On the drive, huh? Okay, but for this occasion, right? Remember one time reading a newspaper, I should have cut it out years ago. Some some Maharaja in India, right? You know, and he's extremely wealthy, right?

[48:48] You know, his daughter or somebody's getting married, and he decided to give a donation to the local charity, right? And he gave something like twenty dollars. I am like, hey, millionaire, you know, millionaire, and just a little. It seems like you know, it's an example of stinginess, right? Inappropriate for him, right? To give so small, given to celebrate this occasion. He's just, you know, so pity, you know.

[49:13] So I might what Aristotle does in the second book. If you look at the second book of of Nicomachean Ethics, he's investigating what moral virtue is, right? And partly he's reasoning, you know, that what is praised is the man, who hits the golden mean, right? And but then he's looking at the particular virtues and seeing what they have in common, right? And he shows that each of them is a virtue in the middle, right?

[49:40] Okay, but he also investigates and starts off from what quality habit is, right? He starts to divide it, right? So he's actually attacking moral virtue in in maybe all three of those ways, right? Okay, but nevertheless you can distinguish those three ways, and if you use them, you know, separately or together, right? Or one after the other, right? Until the thing finally gives way, says, "Okay, I surrender."

[50:06] Right? You've got the fortress, right? You've got the what it is, right? But none of these, as it says, is automatic or mechanical. See, with symbolic logic or mathematical logic, as we call it in some cases, they were trying to assimilate logic to calculation, right? And as Leibniz said, you know, some of the early founders of it, Leibniz said, you know, well, when men disagree, we'll sit down and calculate them.

[50:32] That's simple to resolve, but thinking is not that simple, right? So never becomes automatic like counting or adding or subtracting, multiplying. You still have to think, right? So some people, you know, logic is going to be a substitute for thinking. It's a help to thinking, right? But it's difficult to understand what something is, right? And where do you begin to investigate what something is? Well, one way of dividing it logically is to start from something above or universal or below or equally universal, and then what are you starting from the fact?

[51:14] You start from those places, the genus or examples, or property or convertible, you know, a circle or something like that. And then you have a few different ways of going from each of those beginnings.

[51:31] There's the error there that you mentioned that people try to calculate. Isn't that they don't make the distinction between reasoning and calculating? Yeah, defining is so much different from counting, right? Counting is something you know I can do just like that, you know. But defining, you got to stop and do a lot of thinking, right? I want to count the people in here, count the books in here, count the chairs in here, right?

[51:54] You know, Going away not one, two, three, four, five. But defining is not like that. So counting is uh defining is like counting. And the Greeks had two arts. Now, one was called logike get the word logic, right? This is the art of defining and reasoning. And then you had logistike right

[52:19] you get the word logistic, but has a different meaning. Logistic, and that was the art of counting and calculating. So as a child, you learn something of the art of counting, calculating. I learned in grade school how to count and how to add and subtract and multiply and divide, right? But I didn't learn logic until I was a senior in high school, and my buddy, which was in college, he started to teach me the logic course.

[52:42] Okay, so it's quite different art, but mathematical logic was attempting a way to bring these two together, assimilate one to the other. There's a likeness of the two. In both cases, the reasoning has a discourse, right? But counting is really the first step to before you calculate, right? You have to have some numbers by counting before you can add or subtract, multiply, or divide, And defining is the starting point for the most rigorous reasoning.

[53:08] huh. But counting people doesn't tell me what a man is, right? And telling what a man is doesn't tell me how many men there are. So we help one question the other, right? We have to be able to recognize men to count them. We have to, you know, know what man is and what reason is, like we did for the definition. But if I define man as an animal with reason, that doesn't tell me how many men are here.

[53:37] And then, that it's going to deal with an accident instead of substance, so that it has to do with quantity. That would be why am I confused with something? No, the question is, it's a different question. So, what is a man, and how many men are there? Right. Wasn't the first? I mean, you're doing substance, number second one, an accident. Well, there's something accidental there, yeah. You know, but but look at the questions being a different kind of question, right?

[54:13] Okay. What is water, and how much water is there in the world? Right. The other thing I was wondering about is: do we need to? It's important to go through the different senses of reason. It seems like there's different senses of reason. before as in ratio, I came upon this because I was looking at, for instance, in Saint Thomas and the Summa on Providence. we have the question of predestination.

[54:43] came up so predestination is part of Providence, and then the definition of Providence. It speaks about ratio ordinis. It seems like ratio has sort of a. You know, ratio has many more meanings. You know, you know. I mean, if you take let me give an example here. Okay. Something this.

[55:07] You say. Reason. Is the ability to give a reason. Is the word reason here? univocal or equivocal here. Because here, reason means what? The ability that Shakespeare defined, right? Okay.

[55:51] You know, so you give a reason for something. You're in a way knowing one thing to another, right? So that's related to the ability for discourse, right? Okay. But this here is more like the object of this ability, right? Okay.

[56:09] Now, sometimes I ask students, "Is this a bad definition of reason, right? " And sometimes I want to say it's a bad definition of reason because you're using the thing you're defining in the definition, right? But if you're not using the word in the same meaning, right? And you know the other meaning of the word reason, then this is not really defining something by itself. And you notice in some things, like you take take the word taste, for example.

[56:41] Sometimes the word taste is the name of a sense, right? Okay. But we speak of the taste of the food, right? Well, taste in the sense of one of the five senses is the ability to sense the taste of things, right? Okay. To some extent, the word smell is like that, right? Smell something, okay? But you also use smell maybe for one of the five what senses, right?

[57:16] And this is something like that, right? Here. So you want to distinguish between those two senses, right? Okay. Now, when you speak of to reason,

[57:34] you know, apart from the grammatical difference here, noun to verb, definitive. But notice here you're talking about ability. Here you're talking about the what act. And here you're talking more about the what object, right? Okay. So you want to distinguish those three, right?

[57:58] And reason gives a reason for a what statement, right? Okay. And but there are more than one kind of reason that it gives. So sometimes I ask the students, "What's the best reason you can give for a statement? " It's

[58:24] the best reason. You know, I give an example like this, and I say, "here's an example of geometry. Straight lines intersect, right? Are these angles here equal? " What do you say?

[58:44] Now, one reason for saying they're equal is they look like they're equal. Is that the best reason you can give for saying those angles will be always equal? Another reason might be something like, "Let me measure these two, right? " Okay. That might tell you these two are equal, but will they always be equal? No. You measure hundreds of them and find it to be true. We can induction, right?

[59:08] Is that the best reason you can give for saying equal? No. Or you can say, well, Euclid says they're equal. Argument from authority? Right? That's the reason to say that they're equal. Is that the best reason you can give? No. The best reason you can give for a statement that when straight lines intersect, these angles are equal, or that many others. Best reason you can give is the reason why it must be so.

[59:35] Okay. And this is what a demonstration is, huh? The reason why it must be so. When Aristotle defines demonstration, he defines it as a syllogism, making us know the cause, right, and that of which it is a cause, and that it cannot be otherwise. That's really a demonstration involves the reason why it must be so, right? Now, the reason why it must be so is basically because the lines are what straight, and so because the

[1:00:18] lines are straight, angle A and angle X must be what two right angles, huh? Or equal to right angles, huh? Okay, so A plus X must equal two right angles, huh? And because this is a straight line meeting a straight line, B plus X must equal two right angles, huh? And the rest is simply the obvious axioms that quantities equal to the same, equal to each other.

[1:00:51] Therefore, A plus X must equal B plus X, and then equal subtracting equals results are equal, right? But all this follows because the lines intersecting are straight, right? Because they intersect their angles, but because the lines intersecting are straight, A plus X must equal two right angles. B plus X must equal two right angles. There was an early theorem in geometry that when a straight line meets a straight line and makes two right angles, angles equal to right angles.

[1:01:20] That's pretty easy to see. Once you see that, then you see the reason why A and B must be equal, right? And that's the best reason you can possibly give, right? And Plato had seen that before Aristotle, right? He talks about that in the Meno, right? He talks about the difference between knowledge and strict sense and right opinion, because when you have the right opinion, you are right too.

[1:01:46] You are saying something true. See, everybody says in the case of knowledge, what you think is not only true, but it's tied down by the knowledge of the cause, right?

[1:02:04] So the cause of. These lines, these angles being equal, is the straightness of the lines, and the demonstrator in that demonstration, Euclid shows that the reason why A and B must be equal, he's giving the reason why it must be so. That's the most perfect reason you can give. You can't always give that that reason, you know. But the best reason you can you can give, it's a perfection.

[1:02:31] So if you define reason right as ability to give the reason why it must be so, you're defining reason by the most perfect reason it can give, right?

[1:02:48] Of course, that's you know already involved in looking before and after. That's a common sense of before, right? The cause is before the effect, right? But leads the same thing, right? And Marvis the way it does.

[1:03:07] I'm Looking at Thomas there he's talking about sacramental orders. right Holy orders and he says it's in reference to the what Eucharist, right? Because that's the the ultimate thing, right? You define something by the greatest thing it can do, right? And then he reasons that because the priest can what say mass, consecrate, and so on, and therefore distribute, you know, Eucharist, then he has to have the ability to forgive sins, because without that, someone would not be suitable to receive Eucharist, right?

[1:03:42] But the ultimate thing is Eucharist, right? That's the greatest of the sacraments. It's the end of all the other sacraments. All the other sacraments contain the power of Christ, but this alone contains Christ Himself. So it's the end of the culmination. So the ultimate thing for reason, right, is to give the reason why it must be so, right? Ultimate thing is to look before and after in that sense.

[1:04:03] It's the cause before the effect, right? That's why I call that fifth sense that Aristotle gives after the four, you know, the crowning sense, right, now the culmination of reason. We also use the word reason there the word reason there. we say to reason for the name of the act, right?