Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
37. Dialectic and Sophistical Refutations: Fallacies of Language
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[0:00] Let's just a few more words about dialectic. Now we talked last time about the four tools of dialectician, right? And Aristotle in that first book of the dialectic, the so-called Topics, as they call in English, but it's about places. Um, he speaks of what dialectic is useful for, right? And he says it's useful. He says to exercise your mind, huh? Okay, the mind is exercised in looking at both sides of a question, right?

[0:34] And seeing what can be said for or against it, right? Okay. And then he says it's useful for meeting somebody on his own grounds, right? So when I encounter somebody and I try to reason with them, I will take statements, right, or opinions that he has, right, and reason from them with them, huh? Okay.

[1:04] But then the third thing he says is it's useful for philosophy, huh? Okay. He says you know the ability to reason on both sides of a question helps you to what judge better, right? Just as the jury is better able to judge if they heard both sides, right? But he says it's also useful to find the beginnings of philosophy. And he says in the Greek there that that dialectic has a road, huh?

[1:37] A hodos a hodos And the and the it? has a road to the beginnings of all knowledge, huh? And Plato touches upon that when he talks about dialectic in the what Republic, huh?

[1:55] But in a kind of a formal way, you could say dialectic is concerned with the question whether this is that, right? Whether this is said of that, right? And Aristotle divides that question: whether this is said of that, whether this is said of that as being essential to what it is, right? Whether this is said of that, as. convertibly, and whether as a property or as a definition.

[2:26] And so the later books of the Topics will give you places to look, right, to argue on whether this should be said of that, right? Whether this should be said of that as a genus or difference, something essential, in other words. Whether this is said of that as a what definition or property, huh? He breaks it down according to those things, huh? Okay.

[2:56] Now going back to Socrates in the Phaedo, there you know where he. Distinguishes arguments and people into three: there are those you can trust completely, those you can't trust at all,

[3:18] and those you can trust but up to a what point, then, okay. And that's what arguments are, right? A demonstration you can trust completely. It's really demonstration. A dialectical argument or rhetorical argument you can trust up to a point. Dialectic more than a rhetorical argument, okay. And then the sophistical refutations is about arguments you can't trust at all, okay. It's simply a bad argument, right? Okay. Now, why did Aristotle title his book about sophistical refutations?

[4:06] Well, we have to see what the word refutation means in this context, and then what sophistical is saying. Refutation means what? To show somebody that they are what? Contradicting themselves, right? Okay.

[4:27] In sense to take what somebody says and show that it's not consistent. It involves contradiction. Now, people don't always contradict themselves directly and immediately, but some things they say, right, lead to a contradiction of something else that they say.

[4:51] Now, there is such a thing as a real refutation, and the simplest example I can think of is when Socrates refutes the slave boy, right, who thinks the way to double a square is to double the side, right? Okay. So Socrates is saying to the slave boy,

[5:13] "If you have a square whose side is x, and you want to get a square twice as big, how much longer would the side have to be?" Boy says, "Twice as long." Okay. Now, is that true or false? Is the square whose side is two x is that going to be twice as big as a square whose side is two? Well, the side is twice as long, why isn't it twice as big?

[5:42] Okay. But then Socrates would take an example, and the actual example is not important, but let's just take an example. If this square was two by two, then the square whose side is twice as long. Would be four by what four, right? And now if you cut like this out, two by two, is got an area of four, and four by four, the area is sixteen. Even the slave boy can see that sixteen is not double four, but four is double of two.

[6:11] He said that the side is twice as long as twice as big. Therefore, from something he says that the side is twice as long as twice as big, there is twice as big as that. But sixteen is twice as big as four? No, four times as big, right? So they don't fit together those things that he says, right? Okay. Or take a simple example. If Berquist says an album here, and he says the length is ten and the width is three and the area is forty,

[6:43] you're going to show Berquist that he has a what? Contradiction, right? Because three by ten would be thirty, and thirty is not forty, right? Or if I divide forty by ten, I don't get three, I get four, right? Okay. So I'm going to contradict myself and do something screwy about what I'm saying here. These three cannot be all what? True, right? Now you're going to find very often in the dialogues it's dangerous to admit three things to Socrates because usually those three things don't include a contradiction as such, right?

[7:25] But from two of them, you will deduce something that contradicts the third, right? Just like here, right? From these two, I could deduce thirty, right? Which contradicts forty because it's not forty, huh? Okay. So if you admit three things to Socrates, you know he may have enough to put you in a contradiction, right? But notice that's a real refutation, right? You know, I really am inconsistent in my thinking, right?

[7:54] See, I think I can think that the length is ten, the width is three, and the area is forty. I don't realize that those don't harmonize, which is a Greek word meaning fit together. There, it's incoherent, right? Okay. Now, if I can show that you contradicted yourself, then I've in a sense overcome you, right? And the Sophist, huh? He wants what? The glory of being superior to everybody else, right?

[8:23] And the best way to have the glory of being superior to everybody else is to what? Refute him, right? Huh? Then you seem to have put him in his muddle, right? Okay. And just like you know in Shakespeare's play there, Prince Hal, you know, everybody's admiring Hotspur, right? And Prince Hal says, "it'll be on the battlefield, right, all his glory's going to come over to me because he's going to overcome the guy that everybody admires, right?

[8:52] " Okay. So the Sophist, he likes to take you know even famous people. And make them what at least appear to contradict themselves, right? So the sophist enters into a conversation not with the view to find the truth, but with the view to winning, right? Okay. And therefore, he's entering into the conversation as if there were a form of war, right? Well as the old proverb says, "All fair, love, and war," right?

[9:21] And so the sophist will even use what bad arguments if the person can't see through them, right? Okay. And but sometimes we use a bad argument just to see if someone can see the defect in it, right? Point something out, huh?

[9:42] Now, in his book about sophistical refutations, Aristotle distinguishes thirteen ways that the sophist right deceives, right? And of course, we want to learn them to avoid being deceived by the sophist, but also to avoid falling into these errors by ourselves, right? I'm not going to go through all thirteen, but I'm going to talk about a few of the most important ones, huh? But those thirteen kinds of mistakes are divided into two groups, huh?

[10:19] And six of them come from words or language, huh? And seven of them come from things, huh? Okay. And Thomas touches upon this in his commentaries on the Epistles of Saint Paul, right? Because Saint Paul alludes to these two ways of being deceived, huh? Six came from what? Language or words.

[10:49] And then seven outside of language, huh? And like you noticed in the little thing I gave you there, I emphasized one from language, the very first one, and the first two outside of language, huh? And I did so because these are the most common, but also because

[11:12] they correspond to three kinds of distinction that are made again and again and again and again in philosophy, right? And the mind is deceived because it doesn't see a particular kind of distinction, okay? And so it's a way also of learning these kinds of distinction, huh? Now, the first one that Aristotle gives, and it's from language, it's often called in the books the fallacy of equivocation, right?

[11:48] Okay. I like to spell it out a little bit and say it's the mistake. From mixing up the senses of a word, okay, or you can say the mistake from not seeing the distinction of the senses of a word, right? Okay, mistake from not seeing the distinction

[12:22] of the senses of a word, or a name. It's the mistake that comes from mixing up the senses of a word. Now, sometimes we we play upon the different senses of a word, and people, you know, know their different senses, right? Okay.

[12:50] And sometimes I, you know, illustrate this in the beginning with something very what easy, right? Okay. So my stock example is: Roger Maris hit sixty-one home runs of the bat. The bat is a flying rodent, huh? Therefore, Roger Maris hit sixty-one home runs of the flying rodent. Is that an argument you can trust completely? I can trust that to some point. Is there an argument that's something bad?

[13:20] Bad. Yeah. I know he's going to be deceived by that argument because they can see the two meanings of the word bat, right? The piece of wood used in baseball and the flying mouse, huh? The flying mouse huh mouse, huh? Okay. But if someone couldn't distinguish those two senses, right, then he might be what deceived, right? Okay.

[13:50] And when I'm teaching the first reading there in natural philosophy, there is a uh sophistic argument based on this, and I give it to the students, right? I tell them I'm going to refute Aristotle now, right? And when I get through the argument, they think that I've refuted Aristotle. And that's enough. The old guy came up to the floor, right? We all see it till we get there, okay, and see if you can see through it, right?

[14:21] Yeah. Okay. But Aristotle would say, "Hey, Berquist I said this in the most common, you know, in Sophists, advantage of these poor little kids and say. Another

[14:36] stock example, just to get the idea across, is if you say that Chianti is a what dry wine, right? What is dry is not wet. Therefore, Chianti is not what. Not wet. Okay. Nobody's deceived by that, you know. But using the old, you know, rule there, right? Look at the opposite. Dry as opposed to wet. Dry as opposed to sweet. Right. So when you say Chianti is dry, it's dry in the sense opposed to sweet.

[15:10] When you say what is dry is not wet, it's dry as opposed to wet. Right. Okay. Now let's take. You ever hear about Feuerbach now? That vicious little mind there between Hegel and Karl Marx. You ever hear Feuerbach? Terrible thinker, huh? He has a perverse little work called The Essence of Christianity, you know, in which he maintains, you know, that all this talk about the incarnation is just a symbolic way of saying not that God became man, but that man himself is God.

[15:45] Okay. And Karl Marx and Engels say young men they read with enthusiasm this great work of what Feuerbach right. When I was first. Teaching in college at St Mary's College in California, I was teaching a course in Marxism at that time. It was kind of relevant, and at that time you still would get permission to use these books that were on the index, right? It was kind of you know you would give the books to the registrar, and he'd send down to the bishop's office, and come back, right?

[16:13] So when my request came back, I was going to use I was not using the whole essence of Christianity, just the certain passages. When he came back, he called me in, you know, in case you permission, he says, but you're responsible for anybody who loses their faith." Oh. Nowadays they don't bother those things, but it was a good thing in those days. I was going to you know have read the whole book because that would be a bad thing.

[16:37] But but this is the syllogism of of Feuerbach yeah That's a nice old guy's form here. He quotes a number of theologians who say the unlimited or the infinite

[16:55] is God. Okay. So that seems like you know a reasonable thing, right? The infinite is God, huh? Okay. And then he points out that man's mind is unlimited. Okay.

[17:18] We can always learn more, right? Huh? We're always inventing something new, right? There's no limit. That's right. I mean, do you ever reach the point where you can't learn anything more? No, you can always learn more, right? Has man ever reached the point where he can't invent anything more? You can always invent something more. The fact that we know the universal, like odd number, right? I know an infinity of things, right?

[17:46] I know even number, I know infinity of things. When I know that no odd number is even, I know making a statement that I know about infinity of things, right? So in some sense, my mind's unlimited, right? The theologians say the limit is God, right? Therefore, man's mind is God, right? Okay. Pretty good argument, right? See. And

[18:15] now unlimited is not like the word bat, huh? With two meanings, unlike and what sensible and concrete, and everybody maybe knows them, right? Or even like the word dry, which is much closer to senses. You know, a lot of people couldn't really say what that there's two meanings there about unlimited, right? And so if you can't see any distinction between unlimited in this sense here and unlimited here, then you can be deceived by Feuerbach, right?

[18:45] And so Marx and Engels were what deceived by him? Maybe they wanted to be deceived, right? But I mean, you know, it's easy for somebody who wants to be deceived to be deceived, and certain minds get deceived by this.

[19:02] So you look at Marx's doctoral thesis, you know, and we reject anybody who does not accept the human mind as a supreme divinity, right? He says. You can

[19:13] say that right now, Moscow edition, right? Okay. Now, what is the difference in meaning here between unlimited, when you say God is unlimited, and man's mind is unlimited?

[19:30] Was it in the second, man's mind is unlimited? The example he gave is imperfection, but yeah, no one's getting better. Yeah, you can always learn something more, right? When you say God is unlimited, it means there's always something more you can inquire. It's an actual infinity, right? So right away there is a difference in meaning, right? If the average person maybe have a hard time, you know, expressing that, right?

[19:54] So the sophists then what deceive in that way, right? Okay. And the thing you notice, like like my teacher De Koninck used to say, every respectable word in philosophy is equivocal by reason, huh? It has many meanings, huh? In this connection, and what Aristotle has done is taken all the key words in philosophy and distinguished in order their senses, huh? But he's the only guy who does that, you know.

[20:30] Thomas does it, but he's mainly following Aristotle. But the moderns don't, huh? And there's, I've seen them. You know, Locke says, I think, you know, there's a lot of confusion in conversation because of different words, right? He doesn't really understand, you know, but he realizes something going on there.

[20:52] But this distinction of senses of words is very important in philosophy. What you're saying, and to avoid this, huh? And the second tool of dialectic, Aristotle mentions that, right? It's for clarity in conversation, but also to avoid this mistake. It can be very serious, the mistake that you make, huh? Okay. But Aristotle says this is the most common kind of mistake in thinking, the one due to what?

[21:21] Equivocation. Now I might mention here the second mistake, huh? Which is like the first one, except that instead of a word, we have a what phrase or a speech, right? Okay.

[21:44] Let's put the speech there instead of the name. Okay. Now, this still doesn't put the Bible. The Bible is the Word of God. Vatican II,

[22:07] I mean, document on the Bible on Revelation is entitled "De Verbo," right? The Word of God, right? Then, okay. But then, when you read Saint John's Gospel, you find out that the Word of God is the Son of God.

[22:26] Okay. Therefore, the Bible is the Son of God, right? Any wrong with that argument? It sounds good to me. Well, this phrase or this speech, "Word of God," has two different meanings, right? Okay. But I think it's interesting to note that there is a likeness between the two, right? Which is developed by the Second Vatican Council that just as the Word of God, in the sense the Son of God, He became man, right?

[23:17] He took on human flesh and so on. So, likewise, the Word of God in this other sense takes on human what language, right? And expresses itself in a human way, right? Remember that proportion there in the De Verbo, huh?

[23:38] But notice that the two meanings are connected. You could say the Word of God in this sense is chiefly about the Word of God, and that's taught in Vatican II as well, right? Okay. That's why the greatest books of the Bible are the Gospels, right? Okay, but all the other ones, in some way, refer back to the Word of God. So the Word of God is about the Word of God.

[24:07] Two different meanings, right? But it makes you stop and think, right? You see the connection between those two meanings, huh? The Word of God is about the Word of God.

[24:22] I like Shakespeare's words for the philosophy of nature. He uses English words. He calls it the wisdom of nature. The wisdom of nature, you could say, is about the wisdom of nature.

[24:39] The wisdom of nature in the philosophy of nature, right, is about the wisdom of nature—the wisdom that nature shows in its what operations, right? Which is a reflection of the divine wisdom, right? Okay. Sometimes they say that nature is something of a divine art, right? In things, right? Uh but? Into things, huh? Okay. So the wisdom of nature is about the wisdom of nature, but two different meanings are wisdom of nature.

[25:11] But one is about the other. Okay. Remember the proemium to wisdom, right? You could say wisdom is the knowledge of God, but wisdom is the knowledge of God in two senses.

[25:36] It's a knowledge about God. In that sense, it's a knowledge of God, and it's the knowledge that God most of all has, right? So it's the knowledge of God, right? Okay.

[25:53] It's interesting, huh? to? See that, huh? And then when you study God's own knowledge, you could say the knowledge of God is chiefly a knowledge of God, because God knows chiefly himself, right? And he knows other things only in knowing himself. So the knowledge of God is chiefly a knowledge of God.

[26:18] Interesting, huh? So you don't want to do away with with they call that amphiboly, right? As opposed to equivocation. Amphiboly means it's going to be thrown two ways, right? But

[26:40] how does that differ from equivocation? Equivocation is with one name, right? See, you have one name that actually has two meanings, right, or more. And in amphiboly, you've got one speech that actually has more, right? Those are the first two ones, but the one equivocation is much more important, right? In a sense, it's much more common, right? problems, huh?

[27:17] What about knowledge of reason? The knowledge of reason. Does that have more than one sense? Knowledge about reason. Yeah. Knowledge which reason has. Yeah, yeah. So some knowledge of reason is a knowledge of reason. But some knowledge of reason is not a knowledge of reason. It's only a contradiction, isn't it? Some knowledge of reason is not a knowledge of reason. Explain that. Contradicted yourself, right?

[27:59] But geometry is some knowledge of reason, meaning some knowledge of reason has, right? But it's not a knowledge of reason, right? But it's not a knowledge of reason; it's a knowledge of triangles and cubes and so on, right? Do you see that? Yeah.

[28:16] Okay. And after that, they take up the fallacies of language where you don't actually have two meanings, right? But you potentially have two meanings, right? And the one in in speech is given first, but it's more important. The fallacy of composition and division, right? Okay.

[28:47] So can I stand when I'm sitting? What did you say? Think so? Yes, think so. Yeah. You stand there. They kind of pause and say, "I can stand when I'm sitting, right? At the same time, I could stand, right? Huh? But I can't stand when I'm sitting and put them together in the composed sense, right? Oh, okay. Right? I can't be sitting and standing at the same time, right?

[29:18] Okay. But when I'm standing, I could be sitting, right? Yeah. Okay. See the ambiguity there, right? Huh? Okay. Isn't it? And it comes up very important when we talk about God's foreknowledge, right? Huh? If God knows that you're going to sin, right? Must you sin? Huh?

[29:46] Well, you know, an if-then statement to be true, the then part has to follow the if part necessarily, right? So if God knows you're going to sin tomorrow, then you will sin tomorrow.

[30:04] Okay. Does that mean then that you must sin and you're not free? Therefore, you have to be held responsible for your sin tomorrow? Huh?

[30:17] Well, if you consider that separately by itself, you know, must you sin tomorrow? No. You can sin or not sin, right? You have free will, huh? Okay.

[30:30] But if you take the thing together, right? Then necessarily, right? You can say, if God knows you're going to sin, then it follows necessarily you will sin. But in the composed sense, right? Not in the divided sense, huh? Okay. Just like in the other example I was saying, can I sit when I'm standing? I can't sit and stand at the same time. But in the time when I'm sitting, I could be standing, and vice versa, right?

[31:02] Okay. That's kind of a subtle thing, right? Okay. So it's a different sense of must, is it? No. Well, no, no, no, no, not since it's a must. This is a different type of fallacy. They call it the fallacy of composition and division, right? Where it's true maybe in the composed sense and false in divided sense, or vice versa. Okay. So in itself, you can sin or not sin.

[31:31] But if you take the proposition as a whole, if God knows you're going to sin, then you will sin, right? Then that's necessarily true. Because God cannot be deceived, right? Okay.

[31:58] The other ones are not as important. There's another one in the single word, which is called accent, right? You know, but that's no big deal, right? The same word doesn't really have two meanings, but pronounced one way it means one thing, pronounced another way it means another. But it might deceive you in what? The written word, right? Okay. You can see how we do that kind of even grammatically.

[32:23] You know, we, you know, students are always in a paper, you know. And I find once while I do it myself, even you'll write there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. The similarity there, but anyway. Then the last one is is kind of a fantastic or imaginary multiplicity, but where the ending of a word, right, makes it appear to be something different.

[32:52] Ah. Makes. Let's take seeing, right? Huh? Seeing and being seen, right? One is active and one is passive, grammatically speaking, right? Just like kicking and being kicked, right? Okay. But now, if I'm doing the kicking and you're being kicked, I'm acting upon you, right? So when I'm seeing something and it's being seen, my eye is acting upon it because I'm seeing it and it's being seen.

[33:36] That's all right. Actually, the thing I'm seeing is acting upon my eye, right? But grammatically, I say I'm what? Seeing it as if I'm active and it's being seen, right? You see? Okay. So it can be deceived by the ending, right? Okay. Sometimes they say that Mill is making a mistake. He says the only reason we can say something is burnable, he says, is that it's able to be burned, right?

[34:08] The only reason we can call something lovable then is that it's able to be loved. You know. And someone says it's something burnable. We put in the fire, it burns. Then you say it's burnable, right? Is something lovable? You got to see that somebody loves it, and then you can say it's lovable. See. Okay. So what it means, huh? Or desirable, right? Does desirable mean able to be desired?

[34:35] Like burnable means able to be burned. Right. Well, some might say it doesn't desirable mean what? Should be desired, right? Not that someone could desired, right? But if you look at the ending of desirable, it's the same as burnable, right? So you might think, well, then desirable means like burnable, able to be desired, right? Do you see that?

[35:03] Yeah. So there are many ways, but I'm not trying to teach them all today. But the one I like to emphasize is the first one, the fallacy of what equivocation, the mistake from mixing up the senses of a word, and that's very easy to do, and it's done all the time. Okay.

[35:28] And so, occasionally, go through the philosophy of nature. I'll do this, right? Aristotle will be talking in the first reading about how the the confused is more known to us and more certain of it than the distinct. How can he say that? When a man's confused, he's mixed up, he's mistaken, right? How can he be more sure? Well. Again, there's maybe two meanings of the word "confused," right?

[35:58] Aristotle doesn't mean confused in the sense of mistaken. You're more sure when you're mistaken, but confused in the sense of what? Indistinct, right? Okay.

[36:11] But maybe Descartes said the opposite because he was a little bit confused with the words. We'll see that with other words in that first reading, too, but. Anyway, forewarned is forearmed, right?

[36:28] Okay. Now, I was noticing Shakespeare there in one of the in the Tempest, there, right? The Greeks, I mean, not the Greeks, but the English have a saying, you know, for somebody who's kind of a strange, odd person, you know, he's a natural, right?

[36:58] And so they're calling. I think it's Caliban a natural, right? But he's a monster, right? So he's kind of punning a natural monster. A monster means something unnatural. He's a natural monster. He's a natural, unnatural thing. It's easy to be saying, right? But it's because that strange use of natural, right? You know, Shakespeare in the Tempest, he complains about simple truth, miscalled simplicity.

[37:29] And sometimes we use the word English. Don't we? A simple simpleton. That's not common. They call you a simpleton, right? Huh? You said. So simple sometimes means kind of what foolish or something of this sort, right? But don't we say God is the most simple thing there is, right?

[37:50] Different meaning, right? Yeah. He is a monster, a natural thing being called a natural, right? So it's one of the characters who kind of knows something kind of strange about saying that he's a natural monster.

[38:12] Okay. And I mentioned a letter of Cardinal Journet right? Where he's at the Angelico, and he's writing to a friend, and he's he's discovering how profound Thomas is, but he's amazed he could be such a he can write so simply, yet be so profound, right? You know, like he's kind of puzzled by that, right? But there's something about that, right? Huh? You know why? I guess they have a letter, you know, of Hegel, you know, where he's on purpose he's writing in obscure ways because he writes in a way to be understood.

[38:43] Nobody will admire him. And Descartes used to say, you know, in his public lectures, he'd sometimes stick in a sentence that had no meaning even to himself. And people would go out to you afterwards and talk to you and say, "I like to talk." They see all that sentence. The one that made no sense even to you. Yeah, simplicity, huh? So,

[39:21] becoming aware of these kinds of distinction, and the kind of distinction I want to emphasize here first is the distinction of the senses of a word, right, or the distinction of meanings of a word, and the connection between that and this kind of mistake, right? Okay, and seeing this kind of mistake being made makes you more aware, more attentive to the fact that you have to be very careful with the senses of a word, right?

[39:45] Okay, but vice versa, right? Understand that kind of distinction helps you understand that kind of what mistake, huh? And it's a very common mistake, huh? Very common, huh? Okay, you don't realize how common it is at first, huh?