Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
38. Fallacies Outside Language: Accident, Secundum Quid and the Meno
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[0:00] Now, Aristotle goes to the mistakes outside of language, huh? The first one is called the fallacy of the accident, huh? Okay. You could call it also if you want it to the mistake of mixing up

[0:29] the as such as such huh, Or the through itself, and what happens, huh? Okay, but you often see the Latin word for happening accident, right? So you call it the mistake or the fallacy of the accidental. That's the one you see more: fallacy of the accidental.

[1:13] Now, it's important to see that distinction between the through itself and what happens, and we've talked about it already a lot of places, right? In a way, it comes up in the Isagoge when you talk about the accident, right? Okay, and it comes up when we're talking about demonstration and so on.

[1:40] Aristotle makes the remark that this deceives even the what. wise, which is as strong a way as you could possibly say it, right? I think the great mistakes of some of the ancients and the great mistakes of some of the moderns, maybe the most important ones, are often of this kind. They're often of this kind.

[2:10] Okay. Now, let's talk a little bit about this in a kind of larger context. They used to think that marsh air caused malaria, right?

[2:33] That marsh air made you sick. That was unhealthy air. Now, is the marsh air as such bad or malaria producing? Well, no one who got malaria has not spent some time in the marsh air, and those who've been exposed to the marsh air seem to get be the ones who got malaria, or vice versa. Okay, but is it really the marsh air as such that's causing this?

[3:11] Well, if a man slept in the marsh air but put a mosquito net over his bed, right? Maybe he wouldn't get malaria, right? Maybe it's not the marsh air as such as you thought was causing this, right? But it's the what mosquitoes in the marsh air that are causing the malaria, right? See that? Because really, only those bit by the mosquitoes get malaria. You see?

[3:42] But until you in some way separate the mosquito from the marsh air, you don't realize that it's mosquito rather than the marsh air, right? Okay.

[3:53] Now, second thought, maybe it's not even the mosquito that's actually causing the malaria, right? Because maybe it's something that infects the mosquito, right? And not all mosquitoes, right? But if you get bit with one mosquito that has that, then you get malaria, right? So maybe it's not even the mosquito that's actually causing this, huh?

[4:18] Okay. Take another more homely example. Did you ever hear the expression? I used to hear from my mother, "Put on your thinking cap." Well, they say it goes back to the Middle Ages, huh? Where the professors, you know, would would dress in something like we do on graduation day, right? And with these kind of fancy hats, right? And so they never saw anybody lecturing without wearing those hats on.

[4:46] So the ignorant peasants thought, gee, if I could go in those hats, I could lecture too. Because they happen to go together all the time, right? You think one is pertaining as such to the other, right? Okay. But it's actually what purely accidental, right? Okay.

[5:17] Take another example. When I was back in my hometown of St. Paul, there living, one relative lived in the state but not in the city. He comes down to St. Paul to visit, and one of the relatives died, right? So I runs into this relative they hadn't seen for a while at the funeral, right?

[5:40] Then a few weeks later, he comes down to visit again. Another relative dies, and him at another funeral home, and that's happened two or three times. And finally, says to me, "I'm not going to come down anymore. " Somebody seems to die, right? Now, to the best of my knowledge, this was purely what accidental, right? But he's got to felt, but you know.

[6:06] But suppose no one ever died until after this guy came to town. Then you might ask him to what? Stay away, right? And you know, if there's never trouble in town until after Professor Moriarty, let's say, shows up, right? It becomes a great antagonist. Should I call? Oh yeah. Well, you get suspicious of this guy, right? Huh? You know, if there's never, you know, maybe a clever terrorist attack until after so and so has been around, right?

[6:36] You might begin to suspect that he's in some way a cause, right? Okay. Um. Now, I think where this becomes very difficult, and we'll see this in the first book of Natural Philosophy, Deceiving even the wise, it's where the accidental is always found there. Okay.

[7:08] In fact, where it's necessarily found there, that sounds like a paradox, doesn't it? How can the accidental be necessarily there? Right? That sounds crazy, doesn't it? Huh? Okay.

[7:21] But take the way that Berkeley proceeds. Everything I know, it's in my mind, right? You don't know something until it gets into your mind, right? So everything I know is in my mind.

[7:50] Therefore, I don't know anything outside my mind. And everything you know is in your mind, right? So we really have nothing to say to each other, do we?

[8:15] Now, can I know something without being in my mind? No. Does it follow then that I know only what's in my mind? Here's something that's necessarily so, right? So when I talk about what a triangle is, right? Of what a square is, square is in my mind, right?

[8:55] But would I put square in my definition? Would I put in my mind in my definition of square that a square is an equilateral right-angled quadrilateral in the mind of Euclid, right?

[9:14] If that's what I know, the whole thing, right? Then you know, right? Equilateral right-angled triangle in your mind, but not in my mind. We wouldn't even have the same definition of square because in my mind would be in my notion of square, right? Would be in your notion of square, but in your mind, right?

[9:38] But when I define square, or Euclid did, you could define square as an equilateral right-angled quadrilateral. But he doesn't add in the mind of Euclid. See, but when he knows what a square is and he defines it, it must be in his mind, right? But in his mind is accidental to what a what square is, right? And so he leaves it out of definition of square. Thank God.

[10:13] You see, but this, in a way, is deceiving Berkeley, right? He's saying we don't know anything outside of our mind, right? Anything outside of our senses in the same way, right? Because these things are known when they're in there, right? Okay. Now, you have other arguments that are like that from the accidental, and this is kind of the stock example. Let's say man is an animal.

[10:52] Animal is a genus. You made this very well. Therefore, man is a what? Genus, right? Okay. Or man is an animal. Animal is said of dog.

[11:27] Therefore, man is said of dog, right? Animal said of dog man is an animal Therefore man dog, man is an animal. Therefore, man said a dog.

[11:39] Perfectly good syllogism, right? Or Socrates is a man. A man is universal. Do you see? There's a man, right? Aristotle is a man, right? So man is something universal, right? But Socrates is a man. Man is universal, therefore Socrates is what? Universal. It's not individual. It's not individual; It's actually universal. Okay.

[12:23] These seem to be pretty good syllogisms, right? Kind of hard for the average person to say what's wrong with that, though. There is something wrong with it, but they observed the conclusion, right? What's What's wrong with it, right? You notice

[12:58] if animal is said of man, it's said of man as a genus, isn't it, right? So it seems something necessary in that sense, right? Okay, and necessarily a man is something universal, right? Right. A man is something universal because the universal is something that can be said of many, right? And man is something that can be said of many, right? Okay. So what's wrong with those arguments?

[13:41] Genus, like the first one, isn't in the definition of animal as said of man. Okay. So is animal being said of man because animals a genus,

[14:05] or is that something accidental to animal insofar as it's said of man? Yeah, it just belongs to animal as a as a predicate. Yeah, it's kind of hard to see that. See, you know. Or take this example here: Socrates is a man.

[14:34] Well, man is something universal in reason, right? Huh? To be universal belongs to man insofar as man is in the what? Reason, right? Huh? Okay. But is man being said of Socrates by reason of the existence that man has in the mind? Socrates is something in the mind, nothing more, huh?

[15:01] Socrates in reality. Yeah, it's being said of Socrates by reason of what Socrates is, right? Okay, he's an animal with reason, right? Okay, it's not being said of Socrates by reason of what happens to animal with reason in the mind, where it becomes something what universal and common to many, huh?

[15:26] So here you have an example of something that is necessary. Man or is necessarily something universal, right? And man is said of Socrates, right? Okay.

[15:44] But something that belongs necessarily. to something is accidental to it in some way when it's said of something else. That's a very hard thing to express, even in words, isn't it? Yeah. So the accidental can deceive even the what? Wise. And we're going to see a very powerful example of that in at the end of readings in book one, where Plato himself seems to be falling into the fallacy of the accident.

[16:16] So that Aristotle can say, "Well, that deceives even the wise." Give an example from Shakespeare, maybe a little bit misquoted here, but anyway. And some by virtue fall, and others by sin arise.

[16:45] I used to put this on the board in my final exams. And some by virtue fall, and others by sin arise. Of course, what I had in mind was, huh, that some students who did well in the earlier exams got overconfident, right? Ah. And then they took a tumble in the final exam because they thought they had this thing sorted out, right? Ah. Others didn't do so well in the early exams, right?

[17:10] Goofed off, you might say, and they get kind of concerned and they read the books and they, you know, did well in the final exam, right? But the students probably thought, you know, those who don't cheat, so by virtue fall, and others by sin arise, those who cheat. Oh. So I used to put this on the board there, and I was teaching at St. Mary's College, and I remember the the dean used to, academic dean used to have a policy of walking around doing final exam days, you know, to see that everything was proceeding orderly, you know, and so on.

[17:43] And I looked there one day. You see the doorway there, you know. Look at that thing on the board. He just smiled and walked away. You know what the heck of an old thing.

[17:55] But but let's look at that phrase, right? And some by virtue fall. Is that as such, or by happening? By happening. Yeah. Does virtue as such make you fall in the moral order? No. Make you worse, huh? No, no. So it's not virtue as such that makes you fall, right? It's the pride you might have, right? Because of your virtue, right, that makes you fall, right?

[18:33] And is sin as such, sin through being sin, the way to rise in the moral order? Huh? No, as such or through itself, it's the way to fall, right? Huh? So when he says, "and some by sin arise," he's speaking what? By happening, right? Huh? Okay. But the sin is an occasion to recognize one's what? Weakness, right? And therefore, occasion for humility, right? And so on, and for being more cautious in the future, et cetera, et cetera, right?

[19:11] Okay. So it's not through the sin as such that you rise, but through the humility and the caution and the other things, right? See. But this is very common, the accidental, isn't it? Huh? See. And there's a passage in Augustine somewhere where he's talking about the virgins, right? The women in the early church there who were virgins and who became proud, right, because of this, right? Okay.

[19:38] And he says it would be better if they fell into sins of the flesh, than to remain this kind of what? Pride, right? Because they fell into sins of flesh, it's obvious that you you sinned, right? And obvious that you've fallen, and this would be an occasion for them to what? Get the humility that they need, right? And that's the only you know solid foundation which to build, right?

[20:01] Huh? See. But it's strange, huh? That the the accidental in that sense, isn't it? Huh? See. Um. So we're going to see in the first book, huh? The end, huh? Plato being deceived by the accidental, and we'll see some other things just like Plato, all the way up to Sartre, who is deceived by the same kind of thing. Okay. Not least the Kant of Plato, right? But yeah.

[20:43] Yeah. And then Hegel, Hegel universalizes this deception. Okay. But notice, huh? Apart from this fallacy, that kind of distinction between the as such and the accidental is altogether essential to philosophy, huh? We saw the importance of that in demonstrations, right? Okay. And just to bring out one, you know, a very important example, in the Meno, Socrates says an objection to Meno's definition of virtue as the desire for good things.

[21:23] Well, doesn't the bad man also desire good things for himself, right? Doesn't the man who robs the bank, see, doesn't he want something good for himself, the money? Yeah. So

[21:37] when we first define the good, we define the good as what all desire, right? And some of you may have checked and say, but isn't the bad desired sometimes? Well, yes, it is. Well, how can you define the good then as the good is what is desired? How can you say it's a good definition of good if the bad is what sometimes desired, right?

[22:08] And yet, not only does Aristotle, you know, quote that definition. You know, he says, therefore, at the beginning of Ethics, they speak well who say the good is what all desire, right? And Thomas follows that definition, right? You know, he uses it all the time.

[22:26] How can I say this when the bad is desired sometimes, right? Well, the man who denies that definition is going to get very serious trouble, by the way, denying it. But the man who denies it denies it because he doesn't see the distinction between the as such and the accidental. Is the bad desired because it is bad?

[22:58] Is the bad desired as such? You know, the man who robs the bank, right? Does he rob the bank because it's unjust to rob the bank? Because he's taking what isn't yours? No, he robs it because that's where the money is. As the bank robber said, huh? Okay.

[23:28] The same way, the man who commits, let's say, fornication or adultery, right? Huh? He doesn't do this because of the adultery, right? But because it's what pleasant, right? Huh? Because good in some way, huh? Okay. So it's very important then to see

[23:51] the distinction between the as such and the accidental, right? Otherwise, you can't defend that definition of the good, right? You can't understand that definition of the good. You're going to misunderstand it, right?

[24:09] Shakespeare has a sonnet here, the one about the mistress, right? And one of the lines goes, "I love to hear my mistress's voice, although I know that music hath a far more pleasant sound." Okay. Now, what is that touching upon? Music is good.

[24:34] Yeah. But does he love her voice as such? Oh just for what it means to him to pleasure Yeah, yeah, because it's associated with something else, right? Okay. See, just like you know, if the telephone rings, I answer the phone. I recognize the voice of a what friend, right? And I rejoice, right? Is because his voice is like Pavarotti or like somebody, right? You know, maybe not a very pleasant voice, right?

[25:09] In his actual sound, right? High pitched or squeaky or you know, but because what it's a sign to me that my friend's at the other end of the line, right? Then I have this what rejoicing, right? Huh? See.

[25:28] And and sometimes something makes us happy because it reminds us of something else, right? So we're rejoicing in this thing as such. Sometimes a person hears a piece of music, or they smell certain food or something like that. It reminds me of. Some event or something that they enjoyed a lot or something, right? Okay. So it's accidental, right? Right. Yes. It's not that sound or smell as such that delights them, right?

[26:02] But something else, huh? And because you don't realize how much of the accidental there is in our life sometimes, right? Huh? By this kind of association that we have with things, right? And and it may be, you know, purely what accidental that we associate this with that, huh?

[26:27] But sometimes it causes pleasure or pain because of what we associated with, right? But it's not the thing as such that is causing the pleasure or the what pain, right? You see that? So the accidental plays an enormous role in our life that we're not maybe aware of, huh? But as far as addition is concerned, it plays an enormous role in deceiving us, right? And especially in deceiving even the the wise, huh?

[27:02] We're going to see something that is necessarily there, but isn't really responsible for something, right? And tends to to seem to be responsible for it because it's always there.

[27:18] Okay. Happens all the time. Yeah. I'd be reading something. and I'd go, how do they start thinking about this? And then come back that word. Oh, sure, sure, sure. Okay. So there would be a cause between the

[27:49] thing that's necessarily there, but not with. Well, take the example. Take the example of Socrates, right? As we learn in the Apology, right? How did Socrates make so many enemies? We run around examining people, right? Who thought they knew something, and he showed them they were mistaken. He showed the slave boys mistaken, right? Now that's way to make friends.

[28:19] See? Well, someone who who thinks he knows something, right? And especially if he's admired for knowing what he thinks he knows, well, then he's going to get what angry, maybe, right? When you show him, and maybe others go around, he doesn't know what he claims to know, right? Okay. But is Socrates as such helping the man or harming him? By showing him that he's mistaken, yeah, yeah.

[28:53] When I show you that you're mistaken, I'm actually removing a mistake from your mind. I'm helping you remove a mistake from your mind, right? I'm actually helping you, aren't I? I'm doing good to you. See? Now, is helping another and doing good to another is that the way to make an enemy?

[29:22] That that's accidental, right? That makes an enemy, right? By doing good, huh? And yet, you could almost say, you know, taking into account the way human beings are, right, that they're going to resent this.

[29:40] And therefore it almost seems to be, as such, the way to what? Make enemies, right? And yet, in a certain way, it seems to be accidental, right? Because as such, it's helping them in the life of their mind, huh?

[30:01] But you need the humility, let's say, of the slave boy, right? The philosopher needs, you know, you know how our Lord would say, unless you become like a little child, you know, when the apostles are squabbling about who's the greatest among them, right? And then He says, you know, unless you become like a little child, you're going into the kingdom of heaven, so on. But I could say, you know, unless you become like the slave boy, right?

[30:29] When your mistakes are pointed out, you'll never get very far in philosophy. But the slave boy is nobody in that society, right? He's got no reason to be proud, right? See? But if someone has a position or reputation or that sort of stuff, well, then he's not going to what?

[30:49] Accept this very well, right? But it's really his pride that is the cause of this, right? Rather than you're helping him, right? The pride of the man you're helping is something that happens to you're helping him, right?

[31:14] But notice how how how frequent that is in human life, huh? So Socrates has got more enemies than friends in the end. He's more concerned about you know people saying bad things about him because of this, right? Than he is about any arguments they can proof they can bring up in court, huh?

[31:44] So it's very important philosophy to distinguish between the as such and the accidental, right? You know, sometimes you know priests, you know, in the parishes don't speak enough about you know abortion, contraception, all these things, right? They don't want to offend their congregations, right? And they will offend their congregations or a certain part of their congregations, right? But maybe they have a duty and obligation to do this, right?

[32:17] So, maybe it's a little Western way to do it. It's better in other ways, right? But you're almost bound to offend some people if you hit the law, yeah? But they don't do it.

[32:35] Yeah. So, you know, one of the discussing fallacies here, in a true way, but some of those brought up a chance time is very enlightening for myself because the discussion or the presentation of just speaking about how some lawyers or contemporaries will speak about, say,

[33:04] Aristotelian philosophy or Greek philosophy, and say, "Well, well, that's Greek thought," you know, that's that's just Greek thought, and that just was so illuminating for me to hear that. Just that's a fallacy. It's the fallacy of the accident. Could we maybe comment upon that? to someone Maybe I don't remember everything I said in our discussion. Yeah,

[33:29] right. It is accidental. The philosophy could be in Greek or in English or some other language, right? Although you can say, you know, that one language is sometimes better than another language for philosophy, right? Okay, but still, basically speaking, it's accidental, right? Yeah.

[33:45] But Monsignor Dionne and Father Bolet to say that Greek is better for philosophy than Latin, and that English is better for philosophy than French, although French was their native language, right? Our purpose said English is better than French. Our purpose doesn't know French very well, but his native language is French. Now he said English is superior. Monsignor Deian always said English is superior for poetry and for philosophy, over English over French, and Greek is superior to Latin for both philosophy and for poetry.

[34:24] I used to point to André Gide there in his preface to the Playout Edition. you know, Shakespeare. plays in French. He talks about the difficulty of trying to translate any poet into another language. But the peculiar difficulty of trying to translate Shakespeare into French, right? Yeah. And he calls the French language, of which he's supposed to be a master of French prose, I guess, and he calls the language presque-antipoetic, almost antipoetic, to extract the, French.

[35:03] Okay. Yeah. You have mentioned the Feuerbach earlier. do you think that he was really mistaken, or he knew that he syllogized wrongly and did it because maybe he had some agenda, maybe some? Well, I would suspect it's more pride, right? Pride is the chief cause of deception on the side of our will, right? Huh? So the man who's proud will be more apt to accept an argument that agrees with his pride.

[35:38] Oh, yes. So if you want to be put yourself in place of God, right? You're more apt to accept an argument that is what to not delve into argument too much, right? Okay.

[35:57] I mean, I don't. I mean, to what extent it's self-deception? In what sense it's just deceiving us? You know, I think there's some amount of self-deception there too, right? But kind of a voluntarily thing, see? You know,

[36:15] the fool has said in his heart that there's no God, right? Okay. You know what it says in the Bible? But notice he says the fool has said in his heart, right? As if it's not just to the outside world, right? But in his heart he said this, right?

[36:34] But in the power of his will, his pride, right? You know, if you look at that preface of Marx to the his doctoral thesis, there,

[36:49] you can see the element of pride there because because he takes as his hero Prometheus, right? Well, I mean the image there, Prometheus is revolting against Zeus, right? Not obeying Zeus and being punished by Zeus. But Prometheus is not unaware that Zeus exists. Zeus is punishing him, right? So I mean, it's kind of a funny image to take. You think there's no God, right? Yeah. Might take a man who's you know revolting against God, right?

[37:20] And being punished by God, huh? And you know it's even more clear in Sartre because in Sartre, you know, he says we're not atheistic. He says in the sense that we would exhaust ourselves by trying to prove he doesn't exist. Atheistic in the sense it makes no difference to us whether he does or does not. exist you know bad faith in a sense because how can I can see a man maybe in some sense being in doubt about God's existence but saying it makes no difference whether he does or does not exist.

[37:52] We're going to go on live our same way. You know, seems like you know he's just voluntarily choosing, right? Okay. Now the second kind of mistake outside of language is extremely important for the kind of distinction also that it's overlooking. And this now is the mistake

[38:20] from not distinguishing between what is so simply or without qualification in the way of saying it. And what is so in some imperfect or qualified way? Reader, a

[39:11] mistake from not distinguishing between what is so simply or without qualification, and what is so in some respect, in a qualified way, qualified in division sense, huh? Okay.

[39:32] Or you could say a mistake from mixing up, right? What is so simply and what is so in some what limited way, right? Okay. Now Aristotle takes a very simple example, right? He says, "Are you a white man or a black man? " Am I?

[39:56] Look into my eyes. What color is it? I'm black. Yeah, I'm black, right? Now has he contradicted himself? No, huh? No, no. Because you call a man black or white simply by the color of his skin, right? Yeah. But the black man is white in his eyes, right? See, you wouldn't say he's white, period. He's a white man, period. You'd say he's white, and you qualify it in his eyes, right?

[40:30] Okay. Or he's red in his lips or tongue, or we are red in our lips or tongue, right? Okay. Um. Suppose just a delicious poison, huh? Okay. And mummy is aware of this, right? Okay. And the little boy or little girl asks, "Mummy, is this good to drink? " What's one we going to say? No. Bad, right? Okay. But is it good tasting? Yeah. So in some imperfect way, it's good, right?

[41:18] Mm. You can't deny it's good tasting, right? And someone might be deceived into what drinking it because it's good tasting. In some way, it's good. Smells good, tastes good, right? But simply without qualification, you have to say is it good or bad to drink? You say it's bad to drink this. Okay.

[41:47] Mama, is it good to rob the bank? No, it's a bad thing to do. I'm not qualifying anything, Am I saying, it's a bad thing to do to rob the bank, right? Okay. But why do people rob the bank? Some ways, good, right?

[42:06] Pieces of money in your pocket if you don't get caught, anyway, right? Okay. It's good to murder somebody who annoys you. What would you say? I'd say no, right? It's bad, right? Not qualifying, it's a bad thing to do. It does get rid of annoyance.

[42:33] So something that is bad, simply speaking, right, can be in some very diminished, imperfect way, good, right? Okay. Now is the reverse possible, right?

[42:53] Well, any good thing in this life prevents you from doing something else if you do it, right? Right. So I said to students now, "Is it good to know? Yes. Well, then it's good to study, right? But do you sometimes not study when you should study? Oh, God! See, but because it might prevent you from going to party, it might prevent you from playing a game, it might prevent you from something else that's good, right?

[43:26] Huh? Okay. So in that sense, anything that's good, right, and even necessary to do, could in some way be considered what bad because it prevents you from doing something else that's good, right? Getting up and going to mass on Sunday morning prevents you from sleeping longer, right? Right. Okay. So I say you're making this kind of mistake. I tell them all day long. You're doing something bad because in some ways it's good.

[44:04] Or you're not doing something good that you should do because in some way it's what bad, right? So your life is based upon this, right? Huh? Okay. Even the terrorists, you know, the terrorists. I think we all think they did something bad, but in some ways, it's good to them, right? That's how they did it, right?

[44:29] Okay. So this is a distinction now that comes up all the time in philosophy between what is so simply and what is so in some imperfect way. Take for example in logic, right? In logic, Aristotle sometimes says, well, there's two kinds of arguments: syllogism and what? Induction, right? And so he says, if the rhetorician uses enthymeme, an example, they must be of these two kinds, right? Well, the enthymeme is a syllogism, and the example is an induction, right?

[45:09] But you'll call them what? In the Greek, you'll say "kiss" there, right? They say it's in some way. It's "secundum quid," that's the way you say in Latin, right? Okay. So the enthymeme is in some way a syllogism, right? Example is in some imperfect way an induction, but not simply without qualification. A boy is a man in some way, right? A girl is a woman in some way.

[45:37] A kitten is a cat, right? Okay, but not simply without qualification. So it's a distinction. We use sometimes we call it encircling a definition. Other times we deny it's a definition, right? Not a definition in the full sense, right? If I encircle wisdom is the best knowledge. I really defined wisdom when I say it's the best knowledge,

[46:05] no, in a way I defined it, but not simply or without qualification. So it's a distinction, a sense between the perfect and the imperfect that lies behind this, right? Which are words that when learning they have the perfect and the imperfect.

[46:23] Do you think would they both maybe would they both be as such a per se, but just one would be. involved Also the same distinction, but sometimes you know have both of the distinctions involved. Okay, I take this very simple example in class here.

[46:44] You know, I always pick on a girl and I say, "Do you know my brother Mark?" And she asks the question, and she answers, "No," right? I said, "Now you all heard what she said." She doesn't know Mark. I said, "now you know what a man is. You know what a brother is." And she says, "Yes, that's where my brother Mark is." So you know where my brother Mark is.

[47:09] But notice, simply speaking, we'd say she doesn't know my brother Mark, right? But in knowing what a man is, knowing what a brother is, in some way she knows every man and every brother in the whole world, right? That's a very what diminished sense of knowing, right?

[47:28] To know the universal in that sense, know everything because everything is something, and I know what something is as opposed to nothing, don't you? I know something is not nothing, right? So some of his students would say, "I'm going home and tell Dad that I know everything about." Don't be that. I mean, I mean, I'm sure you can make the distinction clear that I have in mind there, right?

[47:50] In knowing the difference between something and nothing, you know, in some way everything, because everything is something, right? Even the guy who says I don't, you don't know everything. You mean something by the word "everything," right? What does you mean by "everything"? Everything, right? So even to say I don't know everything is to admit that in some way you know what you're saying, and therefore you know what you mean by everything, and therefore you, in some way, know everything, right?

[48:16] Isn't? But simply speaking, I'd say I don't know it, right? I don't know everything, right? But in some way I do know everything. I'm not really contradicting myself when I say that, am I?

[48:36] Now, sometimes we say, if you're looking at our knowledge and God's knowledge, we say God is wise. And man is not wise, except in somewhat very diminished and qualified way. Right now, okay. But if you're looking at human knowledge, right, then metaphysics we call that wisdom simply, right? And we call philosophy of nature wisdom about natural things, or political philosophy wisdom about political things, right? Okay. But metaphysics is wisdom simply without qualification.

[49:15] But then you're looking just at the genus of human knowledge, right? But if you compare man's wisdom with God, right, you know the first attribute of the wise man we saw was he knows everything, but in some way, right? But God knows everything, but qualification, right? You know, perfectly, all things are naked and just open, right, to him, the scriptures, son.

[49:43] So that's a very important distinction in philosophy, huh? What's good for man? What's pleasing to his senses? What's good for man? Not everything. Not everything, right? What's good for man? I want the answer with the brevity of listening right now.

[50:28] What's good for man? Reasonable. Yeah. Okay. Even more simply, you can say what's good for man is what is reasonable, right? Since man is an animal with reason, right? What's reasonable is good for man. Okay.

[50:52] But now, what about what is pleasing to his senses? Is that good for man? Well, if you don't qualify it, you know, don't say insofar as it's reasonable, right? You say what is pleasing to senses, then you're talking about what is good in this in some way for man, right? Huh? Okay. What is reasonable is good in some way for man, right? Now, sometimes that might seem too weak a word, you know.

[51:27] If you talk about about the the terrorists or somebody who murders somebody like that, you know, is it reasonable to murder somebody? Is it reasonable to rob the bank?

[51:40] To say that they're unreasonable. Might seem too weak a word, right? But in a very fundamental way, they are unreasonable to rob the bank, right? It is unreasonable to murder somebody.

[51:54] You don't really see that it's bad for a man haplos simply without qualification until you see that it really is unreasonable. Because man is by nature a what? A political animal, right? This is this is contrary to that.

[52:18] So it's unreasonable for a reasonable animal, right? That must live in society to do what is contrary to life together, right? Now, in the Meno, you people read the Meno. In the Meno, you have a beautiful example of this fallacy in the middle part of the dialogue.

[52:48] Middle part of the dialogue, Socrates has found out that Meno doesn't know what virtue is, so he proposes that they have a joint investigation into what virtue is. And Meno objects. He says, "How can we go investigating what we don't know? "

[53:06] Now he's in a sense saying, "How can we, in our conversation, in our investigation, how can we aim at what we don't know? " You can't aim at something you don't know, it right. So, what are you proposing, Socrates?

[53:28] And if I drive into the into the gasoline station, I says I say to the guy, "How do you get there? " What's he going to say? Where? Where are you going? I can't tell you how to get there. You don't know where you're going, right? Well, how do you get there? Okay, so here, you know, if the teacher knows, he can direct the student to what he, the teacher, knows, right?

[53:52] Just like the gasoline guy can do that. But if neither one of us knows, right? How can we direct our conversation to what we don't know? Seems impossible, right? Now, this is an objection, really, that if it's good, it takes away both logic, the art of defining and reasoning, and logistikē, the art of counting and calculating. Because these are the two arts that are for the sake of coming to know what you don't know.

[54:23] They're the two arts that direct us to a knowledge of what we don't know. Well, how can you direct yourself to what you don't know?

[54:36] How can you do that? You have to know what you're aiming at, right? Okay. Well. This objection is overlooking the distinction between what is known simply or without qualification and what is known in somewhat qualified and diminished way. Right. Now I take a very simple example, which I can't do in this class, but I can do it at school where we have more students. I say, how many students are in class today?

[55:10] I said, I don't know. Nobody knows here, do you agree? Nobody knows. how many students are in class today, right? Okay. And then I what count one, two, three, and I counted one class twenty-six. Right. I said, do you see how easily I got to the number twenty-six? I know exactly how to get there. Right. But now, how did I know how to get to twenty-six when I didn't know I was trying to get to twenty-six?

[55:36] Huh? I mean, if we go out on the highway, say, what road should I take? Well, you got to know where you're going, right? So how could I have known? What road to take to get to 26 when I didn't know I was trying to get to twenty six.

[55:57] And I took the best of ease. I mean, it's amazing that I directed myself to what I didn't even know I was trying to get to.

[56:05] How can I do that? It's amazing, right? Well, the point is, in some imperfect way, I already knew twenty six, right? I knew I was looking for the number of students in class, and that, in fact, is twenty six, right? So, since twenty six is the number of students in class, and I knew I was looking for the number of students in class, in some way I knew what I was looking for, right?

[56:32] And knowing that I was looking for the number of students in class was enough to tell me that I should count, right? That that's the road I should take, right? So, by knowing, in some imperfect way, right, what I was looking for, I was able to know the road to take to know what I didn't know at all. In the strict sense, in the full sense, namely twenty six.

[56:55] Do you see that? Well, if the question had been "What is a student?", I would not have counted them, right? I would have compared them and separated out what they have in common, right? Leaving aside the differences, right? Because I knew, without knowing the definition of student, I knew in some way what I was looking for—the definition of student—and that's enough to tell me that I should take one of the roads to a definition.

[57:19] Do you see that? It's a very subtle thing, isn't it? Now, when Socrates replies to that objection, he makes the same kind of mistake in trying to reply to it, because he tries to say, and he recalls, he says, he's heard some priests. I tell him it's not Catholic priests, but no Catholic priests at those times. But he's heard some priests say that our soul existed before Meno's body, right?

[57:56] And maybe it had some knowledge, right? That it's forgotten and was put into the body, and if we make an effort, we can recall that, right? Okay. And Meno says Well that's interesting, but do you have any evidence?" that this is simple? And Socrates takes the slave boy, of Mino, right, and Mino witnesses the fact that the slave boy was born in his house and has never been given the chance to study geometry, right?

[58:26] Doing manual things all his life, and Socrates asks the slave boy questions, and eventually out of the slave boy's answers comes a theorem in geometry that the diagonal of a square is the side of the square twice as big. And Socrates says, "What came out of his answers? So he must have been what recalling this, huh? Okay. Well, now is the slave boy in fact recalling the way to double a square, or is he coming to know it for the first time in his life?

[59:02] See, because Socrates is saying he's recalling it, right? But when Socrates first asked him how to double a square, he said double the side. He was not only not knowing it, he was mistaken about it, right? Now, when Socrates asked some questions, the slave boy can answer the questions, but out of those answers, eventually he sees, right, the way to double a square. But maybe he's putting together for the first time in his life things that enable him to what see this, right?

[59:37] See, so Socrates, no, no, Socrates does there. He he says, if this is the original square, well, couldn't you put another square just like it next to it, and another one just like it next to that, and then fill up the square here, you make a square four times as big. Oh yeah, the slave boy can see that. You put four of the original squares together, you'd have a square four times as big, right?

[59:59] And then Socrates takes the what diagonals, right? And the slave boy can see that the diagonal divides into equal parts. And eventually, you can see that this square inside the square is made up of four halves and four squares, and therefore he knows that half of four is two, so it's what equivalent to two of the original squares, right? Original square. So he now knows that the diagonal is the side of the square twice as what as big, right?

[1:00:31] See, but maybe he's putting together these things for the first time in his life, huh? And then he's coming to know something he never knew before. Now, take a simple example of that, right? See, if one day I measure this oblong, and let's say the length is ten, and another day I measure the width and it's four, do I know the area?

[1:01:02] Forty. Well, if I don't, if I would multiply these two numbers, I wouldn't know it yet. But if I know the length, I know the width, I know to multiply, I'm able to know the area, right? Okay. But is able to know the same as actually knowing? No. See, but after I multiply them, then I would know the area is forty, right? Okay. So there's a distinction between knowing something and able to know, right?

[1:01:35] Now, if I asked you about something that you're able to know but don't know yet, right? Do you know it? What would you say?

[1:01:45] No, I don't know it, right? See, okay. Even though you know it in ability, but that's a qualification that is in a perfect way, right? Okay. So, in a sense, what Socrates is saying that because the slave boy was able to know this, to what he knew already, right? That therefore he actually knew it, right? So he's confusing his knowing in ability with knowing actually. He's confusing these two, right?

[1:02:24] Knowing in act is knowing simply without qualification. This is knowing, knowing in a qualified sense, right? And I think a more difficult example of this, because here ability and actus are close together, you might not see that they're different, right? I take the example, you know, the man who's been putting items in his grocery basket and examines the price of each item he puts in his grocery basket, and he's got a big basket full.

[1:02:53] But now, as he approaches the checkout counter, if someone asks him, "Do you know what that's going to cost?" Does he know? See, I don't know until they bring it up, right? See, but I'm able to know it, right? If I know the price of each thing I put in there, and I know how to add, right? I don't actually know it until I add up those, or they add it up for me, right?

[1:03:18] You see? You see that? So if he asked me as I approach the checkout counter, I've been adding up myself, or I haven't even counted it, you know. I don't know how much I'm going to pay. I don't know, right? Even though I'm able to know, right? I have to qualify that. I know in ability. I know how to get there, but I don't know yet.

[1:03:49] So Socrates is claiming that the slave boy already knew how to double a square, right? And he gives the appearance of that because it comes out of what he does know, right? But it comes out of it in the same way that the area comes out of these two numbers, right? Or it's like that, right? But to know those two numbers is not to know the area, but it's to be able to know the area, right?

[1:04:21] But to know something in ability is not to know it simply without qualification. So Socrates, in replying to the objection of Meno and trying to see a way out of it, right, makes the same kind of mistake that Meno makes—the mistake. That comes to mixing up what is so simply and what is so in some what respect and some qualified way, right?

[1:04:48] You wonder who the Plato, you know, did that on purpose, huh? But it's a beautiful example here, right? Of a tremendous, you know, example of this, right? Because something so basic, right? The very existence of logic depends upon answering that objection, right?

[1:05:08] And that objection, if it's good, means there's no logic. It's end of logic, and there's no logicity either. No art of counting and counting, so on. There's no art at all to direct us to what we don't know, right?

[1:05:28] You see, understanding what logic really is about, logic involves, on the one hand, right, directing you to what you don't know, because in some limited or qualified way you do know it, and logic involves Using what you do know, right,

[1:05:50] to come to know what you don't know, right. But in the beginning, you don't know what you don't know, but you're able to know it through the things you know already, right? So you know it in ability, right? That's what you have to see. to understand what logic is all about. To understand what the discourse of reason is right? The discourse of reason is coming to know what you don't know through what you do know, right?

[1:06:15] Okay. But it's one thing to know what you already know; another thing to come to know something through it, right? Okay. Um. So when Socrates says that learning is recalling, it's not recalling what you learn, but it involves recalling what that through which or by which or from which you learn, huh? Okay, learning by reason, right? Involves that. All advanced learning is of that sort.

[1:06:52] That's really kind of a marvelous thing to see what Plato's done there, right? But he's teaching us in a way; he's giving us.