Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
44. Equivocation, "As Such" versus Accident, and Being Simply or in a Certain Respect
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[0:00] Simply and without qualification, accidental being is being in a what limited and qualified way. Now you can see that, right? This is an example I was giving in class. I say, if you leave this room, you're going to cease to be. Doesn't that sound like a threat? Right. Now if you bring me to court for threatening my students, Mister Burgess says, well, all I meant was, if you left the room, he would cease to be in the room, Mister Burgess.

[0:37] No one understands that remark, right? When I walked into this room this afternoon, did I come to be? Yeah, you want to qualify it though, right? I came to be when my my mother and father conceived me or something, right? Okay. Do you see that?

[1:05] When I die, I will cease to be. My soul will go on, but I will cease to be, right? I won't be around until the resurrection then. Okay.

[1:16] When I leave this room, I don't think I'll cease to be. At least I hope not. But I will cease to be in this room, right? In the same way, the other distinction of being into act and ability, right?

[1:34] When you have a pile of lumber, do you have a wooden house. An ability, you could say, but you wouldn't say you have a wooden house without qualification, would you? No. A pile of bricks is a brick wall, right? An ability, you wouldn't say it's a brick wall. Sure. Simply or without qualification. So the fundamental distinctions of being into substance and accident and into act and ability, they are distinctions of this kind, right?

[2:07] So understanding that kind of distinction helps you to know what kind of mistake is being made, right? But seeing the danger of this kind of mistake there, and we may know in other places, makes you what aware of the importance of that distinction, right? And there's no kids' play to avoid that, right? When you see people are making that mistake all day long, right?

[2:33] Now suppose that door over there you can't see through. Suppose somebody knocked at the door, okay? I say to the student now, do you know who's knocking at the door? He says, I don't know. I don't know. Right. The door. We open the door, and it's your mother. You said you didn't know who's knocking at the door, right? But your mother knocked at the door. So you don't even know your mother, right?

[3:07] Well, now what's the fallacy in that? I can prove to you that you don't know your mother. Is that in a way overlooking the distinction or not?

[3:36] Doesn't know his mother as the one knocking on the door. Yeah, in a qualified way, right? You don't know your mother, right? See, you don't know your mother as the one knocking at the door. You know your mother. Period, right? But you don't know your mother as the one knocking at the door. In some ways, she's unknown to you, right? Okay. Now again, there might seem to be in that same example something of the accidental too, right?

[4:07] Because to be knocking at the door is something that happens to your mother, right now. Okay. And notice when I was talking about substance and accident, and act and ability, and talking about the distinction here, right? But also you can say that substance and accident are two meanings of the word being, right? And to be an act and to be an ability are two meanings of the word to be too, right?

[4:38] So you can have, you know, more than one of these what distinctions and more than one of these what fallacies, huh? Okay. Now when you see some of the Greek philosophers, they'll think that whatever comes out of matter is already in matter, right? Okay. Well, they're confusing two senses of to be in: to be in matter and to be in place, right? What is in place is actually in there, eh?

[5:09] What is in matter is only there in what ability. So in a big slab of marble, right? There is the pietas huh? The pietas out here, okay? Inability, right? Okay.

[5:30] But this table is in this room, right? In a different way than the pietas is in a rough slab of marble that hasn't been shaped yet, right? By Michelangelo, right? Okay. So you can say he's confusing two senses of to be in, right? The way in which something is said to be in a place, and the way something is said to be in a what? In matter, right?

[5:57] Okay. I've got you in my power. That's another sense of being in. In fact, there's eight senses of being in, and people often confuse this, right? Okay. But you could also say that in thinking of these things as being actually in matter, right? Why they're actually why they're only what in matter and ability, they're confusing what being simply and being in some way. Okay. So it's possible that we have more than one kind of mistake, right?

[6:37] And more than one kind of distinction involved, almost in the same what matter, right? This is the same thing you're talking about. What would be the title or kind of fallacy? You know, the fallacy of equivocation of the accident. Did you? I remember I made that on the road. Yeah, what usually is it? Is it in Latin? simpliciter and secundum quid? Okay.

[7:27] Haplos in Greek. What's a little bit hard, you know, even to you know, you know, to get a hold of what this is at first, right? You have to go through a mini example and get kind of a sense of what this kind of distinction is, right? Okay. But understanding this kind of distinction is made is made over philosophy. If you look at every part of philosophy, you'd see this kind of distinction is being made all the time.

[7:58] But this kind of mistake could be made all over the place too by the unwary, huh? So this belongs to the mistakes which are in the things themselves, not in language. Yeah, yeah. So is abortion something good or bad?

[8:21] What is? It's taking the life of an innocent human being. So that's that's bad, right? Okay. But enables somebody to continue their career. Or enables somebody to finish their college education uninterrupted. So in some very diminished sense, it's what good, right? So people are choosing what is bad because in some very what imperfect way, it's what good, right? Huh?

[8:51] You annoy me, so I'm going to murder you. Couldn't get rid of annoyance in your life, right? Something annoying, get rid of it, isn't it? Huh? See, you're annoying me, so as far as I can see, it's good to get rid of you.

[9:07] I mean, that's really what we're what what's going on, right? People are choosing something bad, abortion, or murder somebody, somebody, because in some very diminished sense, it's good. Robbing the bank because it's what money is.

[9:31] And robbing things, whatever the name was. You see, or else they're not doing what is good because it's what it's uncomfortable to study, isn't it?

[9:48] Makes me restless studying or something. Isn't it also true that some things are bad as such, but may appear to be good? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's true too. Yeah. But again, you see, when a man chooses the bad, it's not as bad, but because in some way it's good, or because it has an appearance of good, right? See. But then it's really the, you know, I always take the example there.

[10:24] My wife tells me of some Italian relatives she had, and one of the relatives had come over from Italy, and he was a self-proclaimed expert on mushrooms, and they gathered mushrooms and had some big Italian feast, and ended up having their stomachs pumped because now did they desire poisonous mushrooms, right? No, no, they desired the good mushrooms, right? But they wanted to eat these mushrooms because they appeared to be the good ones.

[10:55] So he desired the bad because it appears to be good, or because of the good that's in it, but not because it's bad. People sin so they can go to hell. That's why you sin,

[11:16] Huh? No. You sin because of some paltry good, right? That you want, right? So as I say, I'd like to emphasize those three kinds of mistake. Most of all, the mistake from mixing up the senses of a word, right? The mistake from mixing up the as such and the accidental, and the mistake from mixing up the what is so simply and what is so in some imperfect and limited and diminished sense, huh?

[12:04] Wait. Okay. Because of the how common those three kinds of mistakes are, right? And they're such important mistakes, I mean, such dangerous mistakes, you could say. But also because they correspond to three kinds of distinction that are so fundamental to uh, to philosophy. huh?

[12:30] Okay. So we're going to philosophy of Nature next time, then, huh? Okay. I'm going to give you. um, I think I've got about eight copies Do you need about eight copies. I think I got eight here. Okay. What? Michael will be beginning next week. uh, in one extra a week hours, and we'll be having one student. Okay. So there's an eight, eight here. Okay. Um...

[13:04] So, um, you could be reading over reading one here, right? And we may get through that right next time, if we want. Okay. I remember a when I was in graduate school, right. You can go in the library, and they have bound editions of doctoral theses that people have written before your time, right. And so, as a student, people would often go there and look at these bound copies, of doctoral theses, And they might look at them, you know, because they're going to write doctoral theses themselves and want to see exactly how it's done, you know, a little bit of the, or because you're interested in the topic of this person's doctoral thesis, right.

[13:57] Here's a doctoral thesis just on on these words here. Of course, I was interested in them, so I read the doctoral thesis, but I didn't think he did justice to it, right. So if a man can write a doctoral thesis, which is a major undertaking, on just these words, right, we can take some time to try to understand those words, right. Okay. And I know myself. I first studied these words with the when I was a student at the College of Saint Thomas with my teacher Kasurik and so on.

[14:34] And I had read these words many times, and Thomas's commentary many times. And so I said to myself, well, if there's anything I know, it's this. And when I got to Laval, De Koninck was lecturing on this here. of course, it is there for the first year students. And I said, well, now when I went to class, I said to myself, now let's see if he says something that I don't understand.

[14:57] Because sometimes professors just read the book first, right. And sure enough, huh De Koninck really gave me a much deeper understanding of this. Okay. Well, then after a couple of years, my brother Mark called me up on the phone, and needed somebody at Saint Mary's for a while, so I interrupted my graduate studies and went out to teach for three years at Saint Mary's College. Of course, I was teaching the philosophy of nature every semester, so and you teach something, you learn better, right.

[15:29] So then I came back to Laval, right after three years of teaching this now. And then talking once again, I began to realize something else I hadn't seen, right. You know, but De Koninck had been teaching, you know, these things from the 1930s, you know, on when I had met him in the, in the 6 or 3, 6, well, 58, was the first year I was up there.

[15:52] And so he had been teaching these for maybe 30 years almost, right. And he said he still would see something new in them when he went through them again, right. And maybe in class, you know, he'd be uh you know, at the Contra Gentiles of Thomas, you know, and he'd read a little bit, you know, and then he'd stop, and he'd go and he'd explain how this modern philosopher misunderstood this, and you know, and he'd go on, you know.

[16:15] So I mean, one can make a whole excursion in a few words that he says here, right? Huh? And see how how universal importance it is. So,

[16:28] but you want to first do a you know basic reading of the text, right? But then you want to you know kind of go off the text and make an excursion where you see the universal importance of these things and other things about them. So,

[16:48] I remember De Koninck you know, he'd teach these things. You know, he'd come down the hall, you know, and De Koninck was kind of a short man. I mean, you know, wasn't too tall, you know. Come down the hall, and I'd be standing there in the hall waiting for class, you know. De Koninck would come down. He'd come to my eyes, a little child, you know, saying, "Isn't this wonderful?

[17:05] " You know, but you see the man was filled with wonder, even though he'd been through this, you know, thirty, forty times, you know, in class, and who knows how many times in his office and so on, right? He had more wonder than anybody in the class, right? I say, you're supposed to be wondering because something is new to you, you know. But to him, I mean, just you know, amazing to see that that wonder.

[17:26] And until you get on, trying to get down these texts, you know, who's the best of you know, the vajra, you know, he'd be like that, you know, vajra, you see. You know, so something you know, something that you get from you know seeing one of these great minds, or you

[17:49] know, trying to expound, you know, an even greater mind, you know, vajra, you know. It's just amazing to see that, huh? So it's kind of it's kind of fun, you know, because some people, you know, they kind of measure how much you've seen, and of course, by how many words you've read, huh?

[18:12] I read a few pages with you know. But but when you make you know some of these excursions, you begin to realize how this little is a seed of so many things, huh? Okay. So read the first page and maybe look at the second page. That's as far as we'll get at the most, right? Huh? Okay.

[18:40] Okay. So good luck.