Logic (2016)
1. The Equivocity of "Logos": From John's Gospel to Thomas's Division of Logic
Class of 2016-10-06
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/2-logic-2016/001-the-equivocity-of-logos-from-johns-gospel-to-thomass-division/

[0:00] Greek word logos. Thought, word. Now, the Greek word logos is a word equivocal. It's a word equivocal by what reason? Now, our purpose is here. What are the three main reasons, of main, main meanings of logos? huh? The first have to do with counting or something. Well, no, not so much. Word, word, yeah.

[0:46] Now, in the beginning of John's Gospel, right now, the second person of the Trinity is called what? Beginning and logos. Yeah. And they translate the word. The beginning was the word. The word was toward God, and the word was God, right? And there's a little problem there because in English, the word "words" kind of stops in that meaning, right? Okay. Although we kind of sense that there's something behind this, right?

[1:19] Okay. Boom! Now, boom is the second meaning of word, right? Which is mental word. thought, yeah. Thought that the the thought that the word signifies, right? So there's a connection between the first meaning of logos as word and thought, right? Two different meanings, right? There's a real distinction, but the connection because the word signifies the what? Thought. So I signify my thoughts to you. I try to using what words, right?

[1:59] Okay. Both uh, Monsignor Dionne would say, you know, that Greek is better than Latin, both for poetry and for philosophy. And both Monsignor Dionne and Father Boulet who were both either French-speaking, right? He said that English. Both said that English is better than French for poetry and for philosophy. Okay. That's interesting, right? If I said that to you, you know, you know, you know, what do I say to you?

[2:33] You know, don't you know how to speak French? Says yeah, I don't know how to either. Not that you know, but here the men's native language is French, right? And they say that English, you know, is superior, right? Okay. I had heard this one story, you know, that Monsignor Dionne first came into contact with Shakespeare, you know, through a French translation, right? And he kind of gave him an English one right away.

[3:01] And so one day I was in Monsignor's room in the seminary, and I referred to something Shakespeare. He'd got a couple editions of Shakespeare, you know. And one of them had a note there from Deconics. I said, "There is some truth in that story."

[3:16] But Deian would come in with a quote from Shakespeare, or they would come in, you know. Kind of fun to watch the pronunciation too sometimes. But uh, Monsignor was not too much at home in English, right?

[3:36] Yeah. Uh No I'll tell the story I was introducing him to somebody from from from San Francisco, right? Monsignor said, "Oh, San Francisco. I've never been there twice." He said. We always joked about that, you know. And he may have been there once, right? But never been there twice And what's the third reason. Now, again, is that movement? You know, in Thomas he talks about these things.

[4:18] He says we first place a name upon this, right? Then we pick up the name and carry it, place it on this. The Latin word is impositio, impositio nominis, right? But impositio could be translated as placing upon, right? And we still speak of putting a label upon something, right? Putting a name upon something.

[4:41] Parents put a name upon you when you're born, or shortly thereafter. And there's a reason why words should come first, right? It's most known Yeah, yeah. And Thomas he explains, you know, not the word logos, but he explains the words in the fifth book there of wisdom. He says that we name things as we know them, right? So that the order of imposition of name follows the order in our knowing, right?

[5:14] So word is is sensible. You can hear the original word, right? And even written words you can see, right? But you can't see hear, smell, taste, or touch a thought. You can't see hear, smell, taste, or touch reason, right? But the thought is more closely related to word, right? Because the word signifies a thought, right? And then is there a connection here between these two? Just by chance, the word for thought came to mean reason.

[5:46] Well, it's the reason that has thoughts, right? The reason that thinks. Okay. Now, if I asked you. In the Gospel of Saint John, what meaning of Logos really is there? What does it point us to?

[6:09] Yeah, yeah. It's the thought of God, right? Okay. And the thought proceeds from reason knowing itself, on the thought of what reason is, on the definition of reason. And so, when God thinks of himself or knows himself, there proceeds a thought from him of himself, right? And that is the thought, right? Right, point of the scene.

[6:34] And why is it the thought? Well, first of all, because the thought of the best thing there is, right, which is God. And then, secondly, because it's the only perfect thought of God, the only thought God expresses God perfectly, right? And even more than that, it's the only thought that is a what person? But it's a thought that is what God Himself, right? And of course, my thoughts remain in my mind, and so the Son is in the Father.

[7:13] Okay. But logic is taken from what sense of these three? Well, in Latin they call it, rational philosophy, right? Huh. But it's from what reason, right? Okay. Now Thomas india's premium to to logic, huh? he has two premia, right? And one I call the short proemia. It's at the beginning of the commentary on the exposition of the Peri Hermeneias, right, of Aristotle. But the major proemium, I call it is the one at the beginning of the exposition of the Posterior Analytics, right?

[8:00] Okay. Now, perhaps he he wrote a exposition of the Posterior Analytics, right, because of it being what the greatest book of logic, you might say, right? The exposition of the Peri Hermeneias is because a student asked him to explain the book, right? And he didn't quite finish, you know, explaining it, so that he put a Cajetan sort of thing there into it, right? Now, when Thomas does this, he goes back.

[8:37] He goes back to Aristotle in the third book of the De Anima, yeah, book on the soul. And because Aristotle says that the powers of the soul, as they call them sometimes, or the abilities of the soul, right, huh? Are known through their what acts, yeah. And so the ability to see is known through what seeing, right? And you distinguish the ability to see from the ability to hear by the distinction of seeing and hearing, right?

[9:18] And then he goes and says that the seeing and hearing, the acts, are distinguished by their what objects, yeah. So if you go down to the third definition of reason, right?

[9:39] What's the second definition of reason? What was Hugo's definition of reason? Ability, ability to know itself and order others, something like that. Yeah. yeah. The Ability. There was an ability to what? Who had a definition? Who had the ability to understand, reason, and direct itself and others? So that Dwayne's definition or Hugo's?

[10:18] Okay, somebody's definition. So Thomas goes back and he says that logic is the art that what directs reason itself, directs the active reason. And then he says, therefore, the art of logic, in a way, is the art of arts. So go back to definition: the ability to understand, to reason, and direct itself and others, right? Well, the other arts arise from reason figuring out how to use your hands.

[10:59] In some cases, your feet, right? You got to keep the wheel moving or something with the feet or something, right? And so you're directing some other part of man, right? But as reason figures out the way you should use your other parts, you know, to make a chair or to make a car or whatever it may be, and but logic directs the act, the reason itself, right?

[11:22] And so the other arts in some way proceed. So he calls it the art of arts, right? That expression "art of arts" is almost like the king of kings, right? It's kind of a way of. It's almost like what figure of speech? Antonomasia. Yeah, yeah. The art. Yeah. But antonomasia, you know, is kind of the you stand out, right? Okay. So, you know, in St. John's Gospel, he's called what?

[12:05] The word, right? The thought. But the Bible is called the book, right? Okay. You could also say the Bible is the book of books, right? Okay. And you could say Christ is the King, right, or something like that, or God is the King, or you could say He's the King of Kings, right? Almost, you know, it's like an antonomasia, right? Okay. So he says that logic is the art of arts, right?

[12:30] It's like saying it is the art, right? But it shows the importance of that. huh? And it should get you. Benevolent, right? You know, in the if you ever look at the premium to the three books on the soul, right? Thomas has a beautiful division of the premium. And of course, it's into three things. And he says, first, Aristotle renders the student benevolent, right, by showing the what desirability of this knowledge, right?

[13:17] Okay, in itself and just being useful too. Kind of interesting, huh? And Thomas will, of course, in the exposition there will elaborate there. But Aristotle says that the, you know, all knowledge is good, right? But some knowledge is better than others because it's about better things, or because it's more certain. And in both these ways, this knowledge is most good, yeah. And then he goes on to say, and it's most useful.

[13:53] And Thomas will elaborate on that, you know, how we use this in ethics, right? Because in ethics, you're studying the human virtues, right? And some are in this power of the soul, and some are in that power of the soul, and some in that power of the soul, and so on, right? And Thomas is going back here for logic, right? Because he talks about the acts of what reason there, Aristotle, right?

[14:16] Okay. So Thomas kind of expands on that. Now, was it was Hugo who plagiarized Thomas there? Yeah. He says the first act of reason is understanding, and that has what two meanings, right? Okay.

[14:41] Two kinds of understanding. Aristotle says talks about this in the third book on the soul, right? But there's a third act which is reasoning, right? Isn't talked too much about. Textbook they're more in logic, right? But it's still an act of reason, right? Now, what are these two kinds of understanding, right? Well, understanding what a thing is, right? Okay. What simple grasping? Yeah, simple grasping is another name for it.

[15:17] Yeah. The Latin word is intelligere, right? But the English word is understanding. So, as I say to the students, you understand what a square is. Must not be too. Maybe you don't understand what a soul is, but you understand what a what a square is. Yeah, it's a kind of soul. And you understand what a circle is, right? What a triangle is. Understand what an odd number is.

[15:44] Understand what an even number is. Yeah. So, okay. So some things at least you understand what they are, right? Understand what a dog is. Yeah, but not as well, maybe. What a cat is, right? I can kind of tell. Sometimes you get a dog in the yard. Sometimes you get a cat in the yard. I can kind of tell which is which, right? Okay.

[16:04] Okay. Aristotle will speak of this more, you know, Aristotle will speak of this more you know? The proper object of our mind is what it is, a thing sensed or imagined, right? A dog or a cat or a square or a circle, right?

[16:28] But then there's a second understanding, understanding the true or the false. Now, if I'm understanding what a square is, and I'm understanding what a circle is, it may dawn upon me someday that a square is not a circle. That's something what true. If I understand what a quadrilateral is, and what a, yeah, not a triangle but a square, it may dawn upon me that a square is a what, Quadrilateral.

[17:13] yeah, and it's true, right? And so I understand the square is a quadrilateral. I make the statement. But if I said a square is not a quadrilateral, then it would be what false, right? But if I said that the square is a circle, then the affirmative would be false, right?

[17:36] While the negative, the square is not a circle, right, would be what true. So here you have the second what act, understanding true or the false. And sometimes Aristotle calls that composition and division because you're putting together or separating the things you understood with the first act. So you have to, yeah, so you have to understand what a a square is and what a circle is to understand that a square is not a what circle.

[18:08] And you have to understand what a square is and what a quadrilateral is to understand that a square is a quadrilateral and so on, right? So this is obviously the first act, and this is the second act, but they're both a kind of what understanding, right?

[18:27] Now, the third act would be what reasoning, right? And reasoning, we put together two or more statements, right, and get another statement what from them, right, by some kind of argument, right? So you have these three acts there, right?

[18:53] I reason as far as what knowing are concerned, right? So if logic is the art that directs the acts of reason. Knowing, there should be three parts of what logic, right? Ah, see how important that is. Light dawn. You may be a fanatic about this. You didn't see a few years ago. He was kind of a fanatic about this. Two or three. I didn't take him too seriously, you know, but it seemed to have a lot of truth to it, nevertheless.

[19:29] You know, I don't think he's completely all wet. You know, you think so? So in his proemium to the Posterior Analytics right. Thomas wants to introduce us to logic, right? and to the Posterior Analytics in particular, but he divides or he orders these three acts, distinguishes and orders these three acts of reason. Right? Do you see the order there a little bit? Okay. And so he divides logic into three parts, right?

[20:06] And the book called the Categories, right, pertains to this first act of reason. The book called the Peri Hermeneias the Interpretation, is in Latin, is concerned with the second act, right? And all the other ones, right? The Prior and Posterior Analytics and the Book on Places, right? Even the Sophistical Refutations and so on, and to some extent rhetoric, right? And Thomas says a little way to say even fiction, right?

[20:42] Some kind of reasoning. They're all concerned with the third act, right? Okay. Okay. So this is the way Thomas divides logic, right? Now, my other teacher in logic is Albert the Great, right? And he divides logic into two parts, right?

[21:14] You mentioned those two parts before, right? He speaks of the art of what defining, right? And the art of what reasoning, right? But it goes back to the idea of what we call discourse, right? Now, my friend Shakespeare, right? He defined reason as the ability for large discourse, right? And discourse could have a kind of a loose meaning, you know, going from one thing to another, right?

[21:45] But the discourse that really defines reason is something much more than that. It could be defined as coming to know what you don't know through what you do know, right? Okay. And then my teacher Albert the Great divides that or distinguishes. He sees a distinction between the simple unknown, like what is a what is reason or what is a square, right? And that's answered by a what definition, right?

[22:16] And then the complex unknown is a statement, right? That's unknown, and then you need some kind of an argument, reasoning, right? So the famous book there of Oesterle right? He studied under Deconick and so on. It's kind of a bestseller. You know, when I was in college there, it was kind of textbook-like. Osterley's logic is probably still in print, is it? Yeah, no, probably not in print, but we use it.

[22:46] Osterley's a pretty good businessman, you know. But you know, logic being the subtext of the the art of defining and reasoning, right? Now, but you divide it into two, right? But then he puts together these two in the area of reasoning, right? Thomas divides into three. Well, both divisions, I think, make sense, right? That's why he gives us the rule. Sometimes the rule of two or three, or both, is sometimes asked, right?

[23:19] Because sometimes you know you can do both, right? Now my favorite example is Aristotle talks about what the plot, right? He praises Homer for seeing the plot should have a course of action as a beginning, middle, and end. That's a division into three. But then he takes in another place in the book on the Poetic Art and says that the the plot consists of what tying knots and then untying them.

[23:50] That's a division to two, right? So both make what sense, huh? And we see that same thing in the division of the our father, right? Now makes sense to divide him into the petitions about the good, right? And then the bad, or to divide it right away into the end, the means, and the impediments. You know, how many supposed to stop? I don't forget. Four thirty, I guess.

[24:16] Four thirty. Okay, we go on to four thirty then. I can continue to torture you till. But you can't enjoy it. Okay. Now this distinction of these three and their order is very fundamental for logic, right? Now

[24:39] you've got to obviously have a distinction of two that's very important too, then, right? Okay. Now what distinction of two is very basic for logic?

[24:56] Well. Subject predicate. Okay. Distinction between the name and what they usually call ratio, or we translate as speech, right? Since you heard the term in grammar, or parts of speech, right? Okay. Now

[25:32] name and speech are both defined in general as vocal sound, right? Okay. And as vocal sound signifies something, right? Vocal sound signifies. And then

[25:52] signifying by what custom, right? And not by nature, right? Okay. Okay. So both name and speech are vocal sound that signify, but signify by custom or by institution, institution, as opposed to by nature, right? So a baby's cry is what a vocal sound that signifies some need, right? But it's by nature, right? You don't have to teach a baby to cry, right? As you may or may not know.

[26:31] Okay. So let's put this down. No, vocal says something about how the sound is produced, right? Vocal sound signifying by, let's say, custom or agreement, right? You hear people say agreement. It's kind of by custom, right? Okay. But sometimes, you know, they discover a new particle. They might call it berkelium, you know, because they discovered the University of California at Berkeley, right? So they agree to caught that, right?

[27:23] Huh? You know, sometimes scientists, people do that, right? They discover something new. So, so it's a vocal sound signifying by custom or agreement, distinguished from signifying by by nature, right? Okay.

[27:40] But then the distinction between name and speech, and this is the next part. Having no part that signifies by itself. Okay. Or having parts that signify by themselves, right?

[28:20] Okay. And the one is called the name, and the other is called the what? Speech. Okay. Now it doesn't mean every part of the speech has to signify something, right? There's got to be at least two parts, right? Huh? So if you take a name, like my first name is Duane, and that means me, okay? So people call me sometimes by my name. Um. That's better than my other sentence, right?

[28:57] But does do and in two parts, two syllables, do they mean something different? Does one mean my head and the other my my body, or maybe my? No, it's just the whole sound. Duane means me, right? But the Du doesn't mean something in A, right? Now, my last name is was originally Bergquist, right? And my father dropped the g out, right? For some reason, no one of his sisters did too, I think.

[29:29] So they tend to put in a K that isn't really there in the name, right? Bergquist, you know, tends to do that. But take the name Bergquist originally, right? Berg means mountain, I guess, in Swedish, like in German, and quest means branch, right? So Berg and quest both have a meaning, right? But if Bergquist is used as a name, does it mean mountain branch? See, see, no, see, yeah. The Berg and the quist don't signify separately when it functions as a name, right?

[30:08] Okay. Or I take the example, you know, when when my Richard's little boy, he'd play with a little girl next door, right? And her last name was Johnson. Now, was she the son of John? Did Johnson mean the son of John?

[30:31] Yeah. And etymology of a word is, as Thomas says, not the same as its meaning, right? You know, a lot of times people, you know, take the word philosophy to mean the love of wisdom. Well, the word philosopher does mean a lover of wisdom, right? But Aristotle doesn't use the word philosophy to name the love of wisdom, but the knowledge that a lover of wisdom would pursue.

[31:00] So he doesn't define philosophy or say philosophy is is is a love, kind of love, the love of wisdom, but he calls it a methodos, usually, right? Knowledge over a road, right? So he uses the meaning is not the same as the etymology, right? People look at the etymology and confuse it too, as Thomas says sometimes, right? Okay.

[31:25] So sometimes a name is in etymology come from parts that means something separately, right? But when it functions as a name, only the whole means something, right? But now if I say

[31:44] you're a white man, that's an example of what speech, right? Because man means something and white means something, right? You say black man, black means something and white means something, and man means something, right? Okay. Um. So this is a very fundamental distinction for logic.

[32:11] Now sometimes they'll talk about the speech that is necessary to perfect each of the three acts of reason, right? So understanding what a thing is, right?

[32:30] Understanding what a thing is. If you don't know what something is, you need a what? Definition, right? So Shakespeare's sonnets written in iambic pentameter. What's an iamb? See, an iamb is two syllables in English with the accent on the second syllable, right? That time of year thou mayst in me behold. Okay.

[32:59] Um. Pentameter? What does that mean? Well, there's five of those feet, huh? It's a five-footed line, right? Okay. Okay. I ask my students, "Do you know what a odd number is? Yeah. Yeah. An even number? Yeah. You know what a perfect number is? Well, no, no, my students don't seem to know what a perfect number is, right? Okay. Well, a perfect number is a number equal to the sum of everything that measures it.

[33:42] Since I say measures evenly, you know, to not get confused at the bottom and stop using the word. Well, I say two is measured only by one. Does that add up to two? Three is measured only by one. Does that add up to three? Four is measured by one and two, not by three, and one and two add up to only what? Yeah. Five is measured only by one.

[34:10] Now what about six? It's measured by one, by two, by three, not by four or five, though. So one plus two plus three equals six, right? That is the first perfect number, right? But you see there, and twenty-eight is the second perfect number, right? I told you my little mnemonic device there, right? Thomas talks about perfection of God in chapter twenty-eight. of the Summa Contra Gentiles Well, maybe by chance, but I always remember it as the second perfect number, right?

[34:43] You know. What's the third one? I forgot. But there's something they keep trying to you know calculate them, you know. So Saint Augustine and Thomas, you know, talked about the significance of the number of six being used in talking about God with the universe, right? And the things that measure one, two, three are perfectly ordered, too, right? So it's the idea that there's something perfect about what God has made, right?

[35:13] Okay. So definition is the speech that perfects understanding what something is and understand it distinctly, right? And if you don't know what it is, right? Okay. Now, if you want to understand the true or the false, what do you have to? What speech must you make? Statement. Statement, yeah. Yeah. Now these were statements. Sometimes they call it a proposition, but originally a proposition was a statement proponi placed before for reasoning.

[35:53] But a statement is either true or false. A statement can be affirmative or negative, right? And if the affirmative is true, the negative opposed to it is false, and the false is true. The true, I mean, the affirmative statement is false, and so on. Okay. Now, what is the speech that perfects reasoning?

[36:20] Syllogism, or if you say in general, argument, right? Syllogism would be the main argument, right? Argument or syllogism. That's really kind of argument, right? Basically, Aristotle distinguishes at least four kinds of arguments, but we don't see them. So,

[36:45] but now a a speech, whether it be a definition or a statement or an argument, will be made up eventually of what of names, right? So, in the definition, you have the name called a genus, right? And then the name called a a difference, right? And it's made up of those kind of names, right? In the book on statements, the Prairie Hermeneus, Aristotle will say that a statement is made of the noun and the verb, right?

[37:15] Okay. And the syllogism is made up of statements, very much into speech there, right? Okay. So, definition is to the first act, but statement is to the second act, but argument is to the third act. This kind of proportion there, right?

[37:43] But you have to go back to find what the names are eventually. So this is a very important distinction to two, right? Name and speech, right?

[37:54] So if you look at Aristotle's Prior Analytics, he's talking about what the syllogism is, and when you have a syllogism and don't have a syllogism, right? And this is the key argument there, right? Okay. He'll distinguish later on between the demonstrative syllogism and the dialectical syllogism, right? And the sophistical syllogism, which Berkowitz uses, and so on.

[38:23] He was deceiving us in class, even about the axioms. He was destroying the whole foundation of our thinking. Serious, serious. Now we'll begin next time by recalling the brevity of Thomas's wisdom there in the

[38:54] Metaphysics, there, his exposition. Where he's contrasting logic and natural philosophy, and he says that logic proceeds by way of predication, while natural philosophy proceeds by way of motion. By motion. Motion. Yeah, yeah. In fact, nature is defined, right? The beginning and cause of motion, arrest, and that which it is. as such and not by accident. But you kind of get to know the natures of things, right, by what they do, right?

[39:34] And so you get to know, as Aristotle, as Thomas will point out, Aristotle talks about matter. He knows matter through motion. So you study natural philosophy, you see that motion is central, right? And since things in motion, sooner catch the eye than what not stirs, is kind of the starting point, right? But logic proceeds by way of predication. Now, when I was first up in logic, my teacher in logic—I won't mention the one at Laval, who was my, teacher in logic—but but the teacher you're reading was a guy named Albert the Great, right?

[40:19] He was the teacher of Thomas. But the first two books of Albert, there in logic, are called De Predicabilibus and De Predicamentis. They're both taken from the word for predication, being said of. And so it strikes you, hey, it's interesting, right? Then you get into talking about the syllogism. You say, well, syllogism in the strict sense, of, the word is based upon the set of all and the set of none.

[40:56] Set of, set of instead of—that's what predication means. huh? Now we're speaking English to be understood, right? Okay. So natural philosophy proceeds by way of what motion? Logic by way of what being said of? By predication, just one word Thomas uses to say how to proceed, right? You know how wise the guy is.

[41:30] So.