Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
39. Syllogism Figures, Wisely and Slow, and the Eight Recurring Forms of Argument
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[0:01] Figure, huh? And in both of those, there were four arrangements that are, in fact, in the form of a syllogism, right? But twelve that are not, right?

[0:16] And there's one for universal affirmative conclusions, and only one, right? Figure. Yeah. One. One. They call it mood or case, right? And three, three, one in the first figure, and two in the second figure for universal negative. So I have to look at the third figure, huh? Okay. The third figure comes third because it's third in power, right? As we'll see, it has no universal conclusions.

[0:49] So we're looking first at the four cases where you have two universal statements. Okay. Now in the third figure, huh? Your middle term is the subject in both cases.

[1:10] And then you have the universal affirmative major premise, and the universal negative minor premise. Every B is A, and no C is B. And then you have the reverse: universal negative is the major, no B is A, and every B is C. That's your minor premise. And then you have the two universal negatives: no B is A,

[1:50] and no B is C. So notice the middle term. Oh, see? Wasn't thinking, was I? Huh? Oh my goodness! Now the first figure, right? Okay. So B is the what? Subject in both premises, huh? Okay. Now we're asking merely: is there anything that follows necessarily with C as a subject and A as a what? Predicate. That's all we're asking. On the basis of the statements laid out, is anything you can say affirmatively or negatively about C with the subject and A as a predicate, right?

[2:40] Okay. Now, as we mentioned before, in the second and in the third figure, the set of all or the set of none never apply to it exactly as it stands. But sometimes by conversion, you can get the what? Set of all, or the set of none,

[3:01] and so you have to know how to convert statements, right? And if you recall, universal negative converts simply, and stays universal negative. The universal affirmative converts partially, right? And you get a particular affirmative, right? The particular affirmative converts to a particular affirmative, but the particular negative doesn't convert that at all. Okay. So conversion is a necessary tool for making clear that a syllogism in the second, the third figure is in fact a syllogism, right?

[3:42] Okay. Now, look at the first case here: every B is A, every B is C. So these forms will be used again and again, right?

[3:56] And they're used very much in theology because in theology you are proceeding by the via negativa, right? Via negationis, showing that God is not something, right?

[4:19] Now I might mention there just as a particular thing there that God, who is not a universal, right, said of many, but not one God. The individual there, as far as conversion functions, the same as universal. right I'll. Give an example of what I mean. If Socrates is not a woman, then no woman is Socrates, right? Okay. If God is not a body, no body is God, right?

[5:00] But vice versa, if no woman is Socrates, Socrates is not a woman. Okay. If no body is God, God is not a body. You see? Okay. So all the time, you know, when you syllogizing there in theology, you are finding something which is said of God and denied of other things, or vice versa, right? Okay.

[5:41] Everything corruptible has parts. God has no parts. Therefore, God is not corruptible. Okay. Whatever has what parts is a composition of act and ability. God is not a composition of act and ability, therefore he has no parts. Okay, you're going to find these used again and again when you have a negative thing, huh?

[6:18] Have you people read the Phaedo? or I don't know if you have Yeah. yeah. Well, when Socrates is reasoning against the soul being the harmony of the body, right? He wants to find something that is affirmed of the soul that is denied of the harmony of the body, or vice versa, right? So one argument he has is that the soul resists the body, right? But the harmony of the body does not resist the body.

[6:46] Therefore, the soul is not the harmony of the body, right? Or the the soul has the harmony, right? But a harmony doesn't have a harmony. Therefore, the harmony is not the what soul, right? So he's using these forms here. They're often the second figure, right? That's very common, huh?

[7:19] So these four forms are used again and again, and notice that it's easier in a way. This is more ways you can draw a negative conclusion than a universal what affirmative, right? One way to do that. Okay.

[7:38] Notice in a way you're trying to find the reason why there that middle term, huh? The first road in our knowledge is what? Natural road. Yeah. But I want to suggest that the first road in our knowledge is the road from the senses into reason, right? Okay. So first road in our knowledge is C, and the road from the senses into reason is A, right? What I want to do is to find the middle term, right?

[8:10] That brings together first with the road from the senses into reason, and the middle term is natural, right? The first road is the natural road in our knowledge, and the natural road in our knowledge is the road from the senses into what? Reason, huh? Okay. Now you might want to come back and back up to my major premise, right? Why is the first road the natural road, right?

[8:38] Well, if you know that nature means what a thing is, and a thing must be what it is before it can be anything else, obviously what is natural is first in the thing, right? So obviously the first road is the natural road, and vice versa for that matter. And then. Why is the natural road the road from the senses into reason? Well, the nature of man is to be an animal with reason, right?

[9:03] An animal is defined by senses, huh? But man is not just an animal; he's an animal with reason, huh? But what is general in a thing develops before what is what particular. So the natural road then is from the senses into reason, right? And the senses he has an animal to reason, which is particular. So we're finding a middle term there to unite those two, right? Okay.

[9:35] Can you explain that final statement? I don't remember Uh why is it Wise and slow. Yeah. Well, when I started thinking about it, I began to realize that he's coupled wisely and slow there, right?

[9:53] And so he's not recommending slowness, period, because there's a slowness of stupidity and etcetera, right? Okay. But there's a slowness that Is wise, right? So, it's applied now to his thinking. When does the wise man proceed slowly, right? Well, the most obvious time he proceeds slowly is when there are many things to be considered before you can decide or judge. And obviously, you have to proceed slowly, right?

[10:23] Okay. But secondly, he proceeds slowly when something is difficult to understand. And there, the text comes from the second book of wisdom, when Aristotle shows that there can be a difficulty in things, either due to the thing itself or through the weakness of our mind, right? And in natural philosophy, the difficulty is due to the weakness of the thing, but in theology, it's due to the weakness of our mind.

[10:54] And so he proceeds slowly in those matters, unlike Descartes, right? Who, who, you know, skips over the definition of motion, right? Never understands because too hard to understand. What does he says? You know, that's it. You know, no real attempt there to understand something is difficult. The definition of motion. And then when Descartes talks about God, well, it's kind of obvious what God is and so on, you know.

[11:22] It's obvious what thought is, right? Okay. But then the most subtle thing, and this is the very important thing, the greatest minds are very slow in the beginning, huh? And De Koninck, you know, pointed out that even Edgar Allan Poe, sees that, right? He says the law of inertia applies to minds as well as to bodies. Edgar Allan Poe says in the Purloined Letter, huh? You know how a ping pong ball is easily set in motion but easily stopped.

[11:56] While a heavier body is hard to get moving, but once it starts to move, it's hard to stop. He compares the great mind, the little mind, to that, right? Okay. Then you start to think, hey, why did they call Thomas the greatest mind in the Middle Ages? Maybe the greatest mind of all time, the dumb ox You know, Chesterton took that that whole thing, the dumb ox it's the title of his little biography.

[12:21] huh Why, why would it be the greatest mind for the period to his fellow students to be the dumb ox? Well, Thomas was proceeding slowly in these fundamental things, right? Because they are so important that everything else you want to know depends upon them. And if you make a mistake in those fundamental things, all the rest of your thinking is going to be affected by that. Aristotle and Thomas give the comparison to a man comes to the fork in the road, right?

[12:51] And makes a little mistake, turns this way and that way, and the further he goes, the further he is. So the wise man is especially slow in the fundamental beginnings, huh? And that's why Thomas was called the dumb ox, right? And I compare him, you know. I tell that little anecdote there about Gamow, one of the Nobel laureates, in fact, who studied under Bohr. The way he described Bohr, well, you see, in Copenhagen, Bohr set up a institute for the study of theoretical physics.

[13:26] This is actually became famous for his understanding of the atom, quantum theory, the atom. And this became a very famous place. People came over the world to study under him. Like Oppenheimer came to the United States, and Heisenberg came from Germany, and Gamow came from Russia. And many of these guys who studied under Bohr got the Nobel Prize themselves later on, right? So he was tremendous influence upon the younger generation.

[13:49] We flew him out of Denmark in the Second World War, right, to help with the e bomb and so on huh? But anyway, Gamow says that because this place was so famous, there was always some physicists coming through, right, with a new theory or hypothesis, right? And they would get like a seminar room, like we're here, and sit around the table, and the visiting, you know, physicist would explain the new idea.

[14:12] And he said he saw this happen over and over again. Everybody seemed to get the idea except Bohr. He says, and then we turned to Bohr, and we what? Tried to explain it to Niels Bohr, right? This would go on for some time, and finally Bohr said, "Ah, now I see it. Isn't it this way?" And he explained the way he saw. He said, "They get all wrong."

[14:34] And then there'd be another long conversation, at the end of which they would what? end up agreeing with, Bohr. Now the point of that, you see, so it's happened again and again and again. The last man to get the idea was the first man to get the idea right. Yeah. See, Wisely and slow, right? They stumble and run fast. So there's a certain likeness there, of Bohr, right?

[15:01] You see, there's a dumb ox, there, right? And there's Thomas Aquinas, huh? Okay. Do you see that? So there is a slowness of stupidity. That's not what Friar Lawrence is talking about, huh? But there is a slowness that the wise man has in those three or four places, right? When there is many things to be considered, right? When they're difficult for two reasons, different reasons that Aristotle gives why they can be difficult in the second book of wisdom, and then he's slow in the fundamentals, right?

[15:35] That everything else what depends upon, huh? Okay. I remember my mother, you know, telling me that about my father. Father was kind of a self-made businessman and so on, but when he was a young guy coming up, you know, and the the boss was sometimes calling my father in and the other young young executive to kind of, you know. I asked to advise her. You know, toss that around.

[16:03] And the other guy would, you know, come up with his answer. My father says, "I'll tell you tomorrow," but I think he always followed my father's advice. No, he's got interesting, though. Example of that, right? You know, other guy was quick to state his mind, and my father's not. Let me think about it. You know, the next day, right? You get a much better idea. There's something like that, right?

[16:31] You know, there's a slowness which is stupidity, right? You know, of the, but there's a slowness that the mind realizes, huh? There's the difficulty of the thing, or the complexity of it, or because it's so fundamental that you've got to be so careful about this. So

[16:53] I used to say about the Indian, you know, it's predominant, passionate fear, you know, the fear of being mistaken, right? Especially the fear of being mistaken about something that's so fundamental, right?

[17:07] Okay. There was one of the desert fathers who was known to do that. They would ask for advice, and he would say, "Wait, he would wait a month or something before he says something." But they would always want to hear what he said. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, quoting him as wisely and slow, stumbling. I'd run fast. Yeah, yeah. There's another remark about stumbling that Friar Lawrence makes too that's very interesting, huh?

[17:44] For not on the earth so vile, but to the earth some special good doth give. Nor aught so good but strained from that fair use revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse. What's that phrase? Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse. Stumbling what? On abuse. An abuse. Abuse. Yeah. Yeah.

[18:12] Nice talk about that too, right? Because nature, there, the word nature comes from birth, right? So he's using the word birth there. He's extending the word in English like it's extended in Greek and Latin, right? So you revolt from you from true birth from your what your very nature, and you stumble on abuse, right?

[18:35] Or as Heraclitus says, huh? Wisdom is to speak the truth and to act in accord with nature, even here and there too. I was looking at at the beginning of Macbeth there, you know, and the weird sisters, the witches, huh?

[18:57] You know, they kind of say they have a companion animal, or they assume the form of an animal, right? And one of the witches says she'll be a rat without a tail. And and the old you know Hudson edition has a very nice remark upon that that there's always some defect in the animal they assume, like the cloven foot of the devil and so on, right? Isn't that subtle, huh?

[19:21] That the what the body that the they assume you know has a what natural defect, right? It shows that they are what twisted out of what their nature should be, right? They're they're actually contrary to their nature, right? Mm. Why why if the good angels you know assume a body, I mean not not I mean incarnation, I mean just in the presence of it, you know, like they come to Abraham or something, right?

[19:44] You know, it's not a deformed body, right? You see, but a body that has what it should have naturally, right? And it's subtle way, you know, it's in the it's kind of in the original, I think it's original the Shakespeare, you know, but he said he's praying for nature, terrible, terrible thing. Now I want to just take a few little examples here.

[20:26] Now as I've been saying here, there are four forms here of the syllogism that are used the most. These are the four remember. But then in addition to these, there's the two forms of the if-then. syllogism, right? One where you deny the consequent and then deny the antecedent, and the other where you affirm the antecedent and then affirm the consequent, right? Okay. We mentioned how Socrates in the Meno uses the two forms, right?

[20:59] If virtue is knowledge, then virtue can be taught. But virtue is knowledge, therefore virtue can be taught, right? You're affirming the antecedent. If virtue is knowledge, right? In the second premise, right? And then the other form is when you deny the consequent. If virtue is not, if virtue can be taught, then there are teachers, right? But there are no teachers of it, therefore it cannot be taught.

[21:25] Okay. Now, and then there's the two forms of the what? Either-or syllogism, right? Okay. And the difference is then one you deny, right? All but one of the alternatives, because you know what you're talking about comes under one of these, right? You're trying to find which one it is. The other is where you deny all the possibilities because you're wondering whether what's being divided is something that the thing you're thinking about comes under or not, right?

[22:01] Okay. Okay. I was explaining in class today in philosophy of Nature, you know, the the reason why Empedocles gave up the attempt to find one first matter, right? And I said, well, if there's one first matter, either it has definite qualities or it has no definite quality, right? Now if it has definite qualities, like sugar is definite, everything would have to be sweet in the world, right?

[22:29] Okay. If water was the beginning of all things, everything would be wet. If fire was the beginning of all things, everything would be hot. But we live in a world of contraries, so it seems you can't have one matter with definite qualities, right? Now if you take the other alternative, which the Milesians are trying to do, when they go take water, which seems kind of qualityless, and then they take air, right?

[22:52] If you say that the one matter has no qualities, how do you get any qualities in the world, right? In the world, right? You know, you're, you're a kid. you had a Kool-Aid to water, and you got some taste and some color and so on. But if you add water to water, you never get any taste, any color, right? You see, so it has maybe a greater problem: how to get something out of nothing, right?

[23:16] See, so those are two alternatives, right? If there's one matter out of which all things are made, either it has some definite quality, like red wine is red or sugar is sweet or something, right? Or it has no definite qualities, right? Either one is a problem, right? Therefore, it seems it can't be just one matter, right? Okay, there's a way out of that. I mean, that's where argument proceeds, right?

[23:39] So there are really eight things you have to know, in the sense they'll come up again and again, right? The four ones we have on the board here, right? And then the two ways of arguing from an if-then statement, right? And the two ways of reasoning from an either-or statement. And these will come up again and again, right? Okay. Now, sometimes, of course, you'll use the induction also, or the enthymeme, or the what example.

[24:08] But as far as syllogism is concerned, those eight are the ones that come up again and again. Now, this first example here from Euclid's Elements, right away, Book One, Proposition One. I start with that one because he uses exactly the same kind of syllogism throughout there, right?

[24:31] Now, this is a construction theorem: on a given finite straight line, to construct an equilateral triangle. You met this theorem before. Let AB be the given finite straight line. Thus, it is required to construct an equilateral triangle in the straight line AB. So, a center AB with center what A and distance AB, let the circle what BCD right be constructed, right? Okay. And then, again, with center now in this case the other end B and distance BA, let the circle ACE right be described.

[25:08] And from the point C in which the circles cut one another to the points A and B, let the straight lines CA, CB be joined, right? Okay. Now that's the way he's going to construct an equilateral triangle. But he has to prove that he has in fact constructed an equilateral triangle by doing that, right? So he has to prove that AC and AB and BC that each of those lines is equal to the other two, right?

[25:35] Okay. Now, how many syllogisms does he need to prove that, right? We have one syllogism to prove that AC and AB are equal, right? One syllogism to prove that BC and BA are equal, right? And then he has to have a third one to prove that AC and CB are equal to each other. Okay. Now, what's the syllogism to prove that AC is equal to CB? What you're looking for there is a middle term for connecting now, right?

[26:09] Those two lines with what equal, right? Okay. And what's the middle term to enable our mind to see that those two lines must be equal? What's the middle term? Radii of the same circle. Yeah, yeah. So if you want to put in a formal term, you could say these two lines, right, are radii of the same circle, right? Radii of the same circle are equal. Therefore, these two lines equal.

[26:37] Simple enough, right? Do you see that? Okay. In the same way, you would prove that BC and AB are equal, right? Because they also are radii of the circle A C E, right? And radii? And radii of the same circle are equal. Therefore, so two syllogisms there, right? Now he wants to prove that the remaining two lines equal. That AC is equal to what CB, but he can't prove that in the same way, can he?

[27:10] Because they're not radii of the same circle, are they? Okay. So what's the middle term to unite the lines AC, CB, and equal? What's the middle term for uniting those two? Things which are equal to the same thing. Yeah. AC has been proven equal to AB, right? Already. And CB has also been proven equal to AB, right? By separate arguments, right? So you can take as a premise then AC and CB are equal to AB.

[27:42] And your major premise would simply be the axioms: quantities equal to the same are what? Equal to each other To each other, right? So you had three syllogisms in this first theorem, right? But they're all of exactly the same form, right? Right. They're all basically in this form here, right? You could say all angle, I mean all radii of the same circle equal, right? These two lines are radii of the same circle, therefore they're equal, right?

[28:13] Or all quantities equal to the same are equal to each other. But these two are equal to the same, therefore they're equal to the same, therefore they're equal to each other. Do you see? Okay.

[28:28] Now, in the second one here, this is more subtle here, more difficult, much more difficult matter, right? This is the first article in the Summa in the treatise on love in the question on the causes of love, right? Thomas's treatise on love. There he has a question on the nature of love, and has several articles, and then a question on the causes of love, and then a question on the effects of love.

[28:57] And there's four articles on the causes of love, and six articles on the effects of love, right? And I used that that in the love and friendship course, right? We could do something if you wanted to, you know. Consider those things, you know. What I do is, for each article of Thomas, I begin with a page from Shakespeare to lead them from their own experience of love to something more universal, and then they can see it in Thomas.

[29:21] Okay. But notice this is the he wants to syllogize that the good is the cause of love. Okay. And sometimes in an article, you not only syllogize a conclusion, but one of the premises, or in some cases both the premises, are needed being manifested, right? Okay. Now take the example I was giving you there from my own thinking. There, I wanted to syllogize that the first road in our knowledge must be the road from the senses into reason, right?

[29:59] So I had to find a middle term uniting first road with the road from the senses into reason, right? And the middle. Term I found was the natural road in our knowledge, right? But then I had to kind of manifest how the first road, the natural road, would go together, right? Because the nature of the thing, or what it is, is what's first in that thing. And then I had to manifest the major premise a bit that the natural road for man, right, is the road from the senses into reason, because, like the middle term would be, that man is an animal with reason, right?

[30:32] Okay. And you can see, you know, the animal with reason is the nature of nature of man, the one hand, and the animal with reason is going to have senses, right? And his senses are going to develop before his reason, huh? So the road is going to go from the senses into the reason. Okay. Well, Thomas is going to do something like this here, right? Okay. But it takes you a while to analyze what he's doing here, right?

[30:57] So he says, I answer that as has been said before. This is something we had earlier. Love pertains to the desiring ability, huh? Which is an ability that is acted upon. Hence, its object is compared to it as the cause of its motion or act. It is necessary, therefore, that what is the object of love be properly the cause of love. But the proper object of love is the good, because as has been said, love implies a certain natural fit or agreement of the lover with the loved.

[31:32] And what naturally fits or agrees with something is proportioned to it is good for it. Whence, it remains that the good is the proper cause of love, huh? Okay. Now, this is more difficult to analyze than than the one from Euclid, right? Okay. But now, I tell the students, huh? You know, the Aristotle's books are called the Prior and the Posterior Analytics, right? Analysis, and the culmination of the books is not the generation of syllogisms we've been studying, but how you take apart a syllogism, see how it is.

[32:08] Well, in an argument like this here, the way you do is in a way you begin from the what? Conclusion. Yeah, the chief or main conclusion, right? And then you figure out what are the premises that are immediate to that conclusion, right? And then everything else is either superfluous or it's there to back up one or the other, or in some cases both of those premises, right?

[32:35] Okay. So the what's the chief conclusion? That's where you begin with. Then you find the chief syllogism, and then you find what some people want to call the post syllogism, or I call it the backup syllogism, sometimes, right? Or backup manifestation of these things. Okay. They say the chief conclusion is actually at the end there. Whence, which obviously is a sign of these type conclusions, right? Hence or whence it remains that the good is the proper cause of love, right?

[33:07] That's the main conclusion, right? So we got to start with that main conclusion. Maybe I'll start with the future, so I can work my way back, right? Okay. So the main conclusion

[33:27] is that the good is the proper cause of love, right? Now, being a trained logician, right, I say this is an affirmative conclusion, right? Okay. She's not going to be using those three forms of the categorical or regular syllogism that draw negative conclusions, right? It's not going to be using that kind of syllogism at all. He might be using this then syllogism too, but if he's using this regular syllogism, it's going to be in the form every B is A, every C is B.

[34:13] B is going to be a middle term uniting C and A, right? Okay. And what does he use to unite those, right? By kind of, you know, if he's using that kind of syllogism, he's going to say

[34:28] the good is whatever that is, right? And whatever that is is the what cause of love, right? That makes sense. Okay. He's got to find a middle term, huh? That unites these two, right? And often I compare the middle term in logic to the middle middle man economics, right? Who unites the producer and the or the matchmaker, right? Unites the man and woman, right? Huh? Okay. Because he knows both of them, right?

[35:02] So what does Thomas use as a middle term to unite these two? Object of love. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The good is the object of love,

[35:19] and the object of love is the cause of love. Okay. Now, if you read through this, you see though there are many whenses and therefores, therefore, right? And therefore there must be many arguments, right? Okay. But notice what Thomas does grammatically, right? At the end of the first paragraph, and I mercifully separated the first and second paragraph for the students, right?

[35:55] But at the end of the first paragraph, he must be drawing a conclusion, right? But it's not the main conclusion. It is therefore necessary is necessary therefore. That what is the object of love be properly the cause of love, right? The first paragraph is drawing at the end the conclusion, which is in fact the major premise of the main syllogism. this is going to be the main syllogism,

[36:24] okay? But notice what Thomas says grammatically. As he begins the next paragraph, he begins giving you the what? Minor. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, minor premise. Yeah, yeah. Now notice he he has a reverse order, right? But the two are really convertible things, right? So you can turn that around and say the good is the proper object of love, huh? But notice, huh? After he says that, he says because, right?

[37:08] Okay. So notice grammatically, in the first paragraph he gave the reason and then drew the conclusion. In the second paragraph, he states the conclusion and then gives a reason, right? See. I say, does do that confuse you? No. It's so that the two premises, which are conclusions of earlier arguments, right, will be put together in your mind, and you can draw the conclusion right away. See. Okay.

[37:38] So he ends the first paragraph with the statement of the major premise, the reason for which he's given in the earlier part of the first paragraph, and he begins the second paragraph, right, by giving the minor premise and then going on to state the reason for it, right? So that the major and minor premise are right together. You see what he's doing? Okay. He wouldn't have to do that, I think.

[38:06] It's a little easier for the student, huh? Okay. Now there may be syllogisms or some kind of manifestation of both of these premises. There must be because when he says at the end of the first paragraph, "is necessary therefore," he's obviously showing this from something, right? Okay.

[38:30] Now you have to go back a little bit. You know, when we say that love pertains to the desiring ability, which is an ability that is acted upon, well, when we study the the abilities of the soul, the powers of the soul, as they call them sometimes,

[38:46] one very fundamental distinction we see is whether the object acts upon the power or the power acts upon the what? Object, basically, right? And of course, Aristotle takes up the soul and its powers. You know, asks the question. Should we consider the powers first, or the acts of the powers, right? And should we consider the acts first, or the objects of the acts, right? Okay. And you eventually learn that the powers or abilities are for doing something, right?

[39:25] So you have to know the abilities or powers, but what they do. And you don't even know you had the ability to walk if you don't walk, right? You don't have the ability to see, right, until you do it. Sometimes you do something you didn't know you had the ability to do. I didn't know I had it in me, but you know you had the ability to do it, right?

[39:41] Okay. And but so if you can distinguish the ability to see from the ability to hear, it's because you distinguish seeing and what, hearing first, right? But seeing and hearing are both sensing. So how do you distinguish between those? Well, seeing is sensing color, and hearing is sensing what, right? So the difference between color and sound enables you to understand the difference between seeing, which is sensing color, and hearing. Which is sensing sound, and the difference between seeing and hearing, and that seeing is not a form of hearing or hearing a form of seeing, means that the ability to see and the ability to hear are not the same what ability, right?

[40:25] Okay. But now, when they talk about the ability and its object, the fundamental difference, or one very fundamental difference, is does the object act upon upon the ability, or is the ability act upon the object? Now, when Aristotle talks first, he talks about the ability to digest your food, right? And the ability to digest your food, the ability acts upon the what object and breaks the food down, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, right?

[41:00] And all the way down my stomach there, right? I'm acting upon the food, right? Okay. But in the case of the senses, right? Does my eye act upon the lamp over there, or does the light act upon my eye? See, you know.

[41:20] Does my ear act upon the sound? Does the sound act upon my ear? Well, these kids are going deaf because they listen to this. You know. But if you looked at the light too much, you you would get blinded too. You know, You're supposed to look at the sun, you know, too much or something, right? During an eclipse, huh? So, so the sense powers are acted upon by their object, huh?

[41:47] But the digestive power acts upon its object, right? Okay. Now, if you stop and think about that, you got an either or there, right? Either the ability acts upon the object, or vice versa. But if neither of those is the case, there'd be no connection between the power and the object, right? If the object in no way acted upon the power, the power in no way acted upon it way acted upon it.

[42:13] There'd be no connection between the what two, right? This is a fundamental distinction of abilities. Now, when you come to the heart, right? The ability to desire, right? Now let's call it the heart for want of a better name. Um, uh, is the object? Does the power act upon the object, or does the object act upon the power? Which kind of power is it? Yeah, yeah. And even you know, you talk to kids, you know, you go to the party there, and you made a big impression upon her, or she made a big impression upon you, right?

[42:51] Huh? Okay. So the one's heart has been what acted upon, right? Huh? Okay. That's why they speak of the heart as being what wounded, right? Huh? And even in the highest kind of love, you know, you know, we're captain of, I mean. Saint Teresa of Avila, right, or Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, they receive an increase of love under the likeness of being what? An arrow pierced, yeah, with a lance, right, or an arrow, yeah.

[43:21] So Thomas would be calling this, right, that the heart, the desiring ability, and to call it a passive ability, is an ability that is acted upon. upon by its object, right? And that makes clear that the object is what causing the love or whatever the act is, right? And you can see that in the case if you want to proceed by example, which is philosophical example they call it, as much you didn't say, right?

[43:52] You can see that in the case of the other acts of the desiring ability, like fear or anger or something, right? It's the object that what causes it, yeah, yeah. So people had fear with this, you know, terrorist attack, right? Okay. So it's the object that arouses fear, right? If a man comes in here with a gun and says I hate monks or something, right? You have to feel some fear, right?

[44:18] Or I hate Americans, whatever it is, right? He would be the cause of your fear, right? So the he'd also be the object of your fear, right? Okay. If somebody comes and insults you, you might get angry about it, right? Okay. So the object of your anger is also the cause of your anger, right? Okay. So Thomas, in that way, is manifesting the major premise, right? See.

[44:49] Now, if we wanted to put that in the form of syllogism, we'd say that the object of love acts upon the heart, right? Bringing it to love, right? And what acts upon the what passive ability is the cause of its activity, right? So that would be another syllogism, and the middle term would be acts upon, right?

[45:16] What acts upon the heart, arousing its love, is the cause of love, right? But what is that? It's the object of love that acts upon the heart, arousing its love. See? The same thing you could say, right? You can syllogize in a similar way that the object of of fear is the cause of fear, right? The object of fear acts upon the heart, right, moving into anger.

[45:40] It acts upon the heart in its way as the cause of its what? Fear, right? Okay. So you have another syllogism of the same kind, right? The middle, term is the same right? Okay. Thomas doesn't you know spell it all fully, but that's what he's doing, right? Okay.

[46:04] So he has a syllogism to back up the major premise, right? The object of love acts upon the heart when it loves, and what acts upon the heart when it loves is the cause of love. Okay. Okay. Now,

[46:21] in the second premise, this kind of presupposes already the the what he said about love. What's the middle term uniting good with the object of love? Right. The agreement? Yeah, it's the idea that the good is what fits something, right? What agrees with it, right? The shoe fits where, right? And what is fitting is the object of love. How is the idea? to be manifested, right? Well,

[47:02] when we talk about the desire ability and talking in reference to the good, you have really basically three acts, right? Love, desire, and what pleasure or joy, right? Okay. And love is the most basic, right? But now, if you love something but don't have it, then you what want or desire, right? Right. But if you love something and you get it, then you have pleasure or what joy, right?

[47:38] So want or desire arises from love in the absence of what is loved, and joy or pleasure arises from love in the presence of what is loved, right? Okay.

[47:54] But what is love itself, right? See, well, love is nothing other than the what the agreement of the heart with the what object, right?

[48:07] So on one hand, he sees that since the love is nothing other than the agreement of the heart with its object, right, that's why you pursue it because your heart is agreement with the object. Then he sees a connection between the object of love and what fits you, right? Right, because your heart is going to be in agreement with what fits you. And then he sees, on the other hand, a connection between the good and what fits you, right?

[48:40] Because that's what's good for you, right? Okay. The shoe that fits you has got to fit you, right? Okay. So fitting there is the connection between good and the object of love, right? Okay.

[49:00] So notice if you compare this with the argument of Euclid, right? Huh. In Euclid's theorem, there there were three syllogisms, right? All the same kind, right? Mm-hmm. In Thomas here, there's at least three syllogisms, all the same kind, right? They're like that. Well, every B is A, every C is B, right? You see the middle term right middle term, right? Nine nine to two two, right? But notice, huh?

[49:28] In the case of Thomas, there's one main syllogism, right? And he uses that, and the other two are to back up. In the one case, the major premise, in the case, the minor premise, right? Okay. Euclid's a little different there because he's got three things to prove, right? And he proves two of them by separate syllogisms that are similar, right, in the reason, but different, right? And then he takes the conclusion of the two ones he has to construct one of the premises in his third syllogism, right?

[50:03] Okay. But you wouldn't want to say if that's necessarily the main syllogism, right? Because he's got to show equally, you might say, that these two sides are equal, these two sides are equal, and these two sides are equal. Right, okay, but there's a certain order among them, right? But you have to show that these two are equal and these two equal before you can show that these two are equal, right?

[50:25] You see that? But here it's constructed a little bit differently, right? Here there's clearly one main syllogism, one main conclusion, right? Not three things you got to prove. You want to prove one thing that the good is a proper object of love, right? And your middle term is object of love, right? Then the other two are one to prove the major premise, one to prove the what?

[50:51] Minor premise, right? But the proof of the major premise he gives before he what? States the major premise. The minor premise he states and then proves it, so you can see these two together, right? That would be good in your mind, right? Okay.

[51:09] But notice there's only one kind of argument being used in these, right? In one case the matter is very easy, relatively speaking. The other one is very difficult, compared, right?

[51:22] But nevertheless, there's a structure, there's a difference in the way the three syllogisms are what? Ordered, right? Okay. Do you see that? Okay.