Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
25. Aristotle's Physics I.11: Why Two Contraries Need a Third Thing
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[0:02] We can know anything if we want to because we have to know what we made anyway. You know, so they get kind of, you know, that way madness lies, of course.

[0:15] In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. God our enlightenment, guardian angels strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider them more correctly.

[0:30] Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, and help us to understand all the true written. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.

[0:46] So last time we saw how Aristotle found a common basis among all the Greek natural philosophers, that they all tried to explain change by what? Contraries. And unbeknownst to Aristotle, we noted that the Chinese at the same time spoke of contraries in the I Ching. And the modern scientists, like Helmholtz, for example, that Einstein quotes, right, is explaining everything by attraction and repulsion between multiple particles. So this seems to be a very solid, common understanding that change somehow is by contraries or by opposites.

[1:35] Then Aristotle, again following the advice of the central thinker in human thought, Heraclitus, he starts out to become strong in that common basis. And he, first of all, gave a reason, right? For what everybody's saying without giving a reason, huh? That was becoming stronger. And then he observed that this beginning was, their thought was forced on their mind by truth itself, rather than something freely imagined, as I contrast with Einstein.

[2:14] And then, well, what else did he do? We showed that they all tried to take what? The first contrary. Yeah, although some judge this more by the senses and some more by the what? Reason. Reason, huh? Okay.

[2:38] And then he showed that they're all saying the same thing, what? In general and proportional. Yeah, yeah. Of course, if they all agree in general, but disagree in particular, is a confirmation. It's a, uh, sign in the sense of the truth of what we learned before, that the general is more known to us than the particular. Okay?

[3:05] But he also points out that they're all saying the same proportionally, so that, uh, the full is to the empty as love is to hate, huh? As the, uh, dense is to the rare, and so on. And then he noticed that one of the two members of the, uh, ratio is imperfect or lacking in something compared to the other one. As the empty very obviously, when your glass is empty or your plate is empty, it's lacking something that the full plate or glass has.

[3:39] But even hate would seem to be lacking something in comparison to love, or, we even think of the cold as kind of involving a lack of heat, like privation of heat and so on. And later on we'll see when you get to the 13th reading, the importance of lack, you'll develop that more, okay? It's kind of hinted at when he says, and better and worse, right? And Thomas takes that as referring to the fact that one of the two contraries seems to be good and the other bad, and of course, the Pythagoreans have made long lists of contraries, the good on one side and the bad on the other side, huh?

[4:20] And it's interesting to see what they put in the good, what the bad side, but anyway. Okay. Now, in reading eleven, he continues now, but he

[4:35] is going to make the major step forward, right, in becoming strong in this common understanding. When he's going to show in the middle here that these two contraries are not enough, there must be a third thing, huh? Okay. And he's going to, you know, show that with three arguments, but we're going to emphasize the first one because it exemplifies the role of contradiction in coming to know.

[5:10] We're going to stop on that and talk about that, huh? But the first major example of how the human mind, ever since Heraclitus and Aristotle, has gone forward in its major steps

[5:27] by untying sometimes a contradiction in our own thinking, huh? Sometimes an apparent contradiction in the things, right? Or a contradiction between our thinking and things, right? And we an example of that already in the apparent contradiction there in the great fragment on the mind of Anaxagoras, where on one hand he said that the mind is self-ruling, and that seems to be true as the existence of logic shows.

[6:00] On the other hand, he said the ruler must be separated from the ruled. You can see in the army where the those who command and those who obey are separated. And how do you reconcile that, right? And the that apparent contradiction there, the untying of that apparent contradiction is the discovery of how the mind does in fact rule itself, and what is necessary for the mind to rule itself.

[6:32] That the mind, when it rules itself, there still is in a way a distinction between the ruler and the ruled. Say, but not that you have two minds, but that the one mind knows some things and doesn't know other things, and it's ruled in what it doesn't know by what it does know, huh? Or some things are more known to it and some things are less known to it, and it's ruled in what is less known to it by what is more known to it.

[7:05] But you have to be able to separate what you know from what you don't know, and that's no easy thing to do, as Socrates showed.

[7:15] But notice when Socrates shows somebody like the slave boy that he doesn't know, in the meaning of, there how to double a square. Socrates shows he doesn't know what he thinks he knows by showing the slave boy he's in a contradiction. Again, you have the what contradiction there being used to make a person aware of the fact that they've mixed up what they know what they don't know, and so it helps to separate the two, right?

[7:44] Okay. But the that major step forward is put in a broader context here in the eleventh reading, where he asks how many beginnings, how many causes are there? Right.

[8:04] The next to be said is whether there are two or three or more beginnings. So he raises that question. Now, what he does is to eliminate the extremes first.

[8:19] He's going to eliminate the idea that there's just one beginning, and he's going to be very quick about that. You'll see because from the previous reading we know beginnings are contraries, right? Contraries means at least what two, right? Okay. So he's going to reject the idea of being just one,

[8:44] and then he's going to eliminate the other extreme that there's a infinite. I want to use Latin or unlimited multitude of beginnings. This is all about how many beginnings,

[9:08] and so here he's going to be more expansive. He's going to give four arguments, but they're stated very briefly, the brevity of wit. Okay. Incidentally, I was reading Thomas's commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians, right? And of course, in the in the Latin, the Greek is in in oligo right? It's going to say in few, but you know I'm wise, and I say this in few, but of course in the Latin it comes out with the with the brevitas, right?

[9:43] Really, and then Thomas stops, you know, saying Paul is what, He had to get his wisdom right by touching upon many and great things in just a few words. So it's another example of that. As you read the text, sometimes it's not interesting that way. It's kind of striking, you know, Shakespeare is closer to the Latin than the Greek, and. And so he used the word brevity as a sole wit, but I think I mentioned how in the commentaries here in metaphysics, the Latin text of Aristotle, Aristotle says, "Well, that's a breve," and Thomas says, "He means this is something very small in size, but great in its power."

[10:27] But Aristotle is just such a familiar thought to him. That's a short you say. That's a brevis, but syntomos in Greek, you say. But in Latin, you might just Shakespeare because they have the word brevissima. And the same way in this particular text, I think the Greek was in oligo, in few, right? Okay. But you also find Shakespeare saying fewness and truth. I think we had that passage there in the readings I gave you.

[10:56] This is kind of interesting, huh? The Saint Paul in few words is manifesting his his wisdom. It's kind of a striking thing. So he's going to illuminate as were the two extremes, and then come back, huh? And say, well, then if there can't be one or an infinity, there's got to be at least two, right? And then he's going to say, but is that enough? Say. And then in the argument starting at the bottom of page there, the last paragraphs, he's going to say two is not enough.

[11:28] You need a third one. Begin. You're going to be forced to go from two to three, and especially by the first argument, because unless you go from two to three, you could end up in a contradiction. And that apparent contradiction that Heraclitus had been pointing out. Okay. But then he'll say, "But that's enough." And then he'll stop, right? And give a couple of reasons to say we don't have to go beyond three.

[11:59] Okay. Now, as I say, the main thing is what is it that forces reason to go from two to three? He's going to give three arguments, but the second and the third are to some extent dialectical because they're based on opinions that his predecessors would have in mind. But the first one, I think, has got more necessity. And but nothing forces us to go for more than three.

[12:26] So it's a beautiful example of that principle that we said of fewness, as they call it, sometimes. Some people call it the principle of simplicity, right? But Einstein says this underlies the whole of natural science, the whole of natural philosophy. Says from the Greeks all the way through my own work and beyond, that fewer causes are better if they are enough. We saw that before a little bit, and we'll see it several times here again.

[12:53] That's the underlying principle. That's the first rule of reasoning for Sir Isaac Newton. If you looked at the Principia, right? But it's also underlies Kepler's work and Galileo's work, as we saw. And he's finding the same thing all the way down to and including the great physicists of the 20th century.

[13:13] And this particular thing, though that three is enough, is something that takes place often enough that it's worthy to note. Okay, but we'll talk about that again when we get to why you have to have a third thing. Okay. So in the first sentence of the 11th reading, he raises the question, right? And then he eliminates very quickly that it's just one on the basis of the previous reading, right?

[13:43] Everybody seems to agree that change is by contraries and contraries or opposites are two. Now, in the next four little paragraphs, some which are just a sentence, he touches upon four reasons for saying they're not unlimited. Okay. But we might, you know, put the first and the third together because they both, in a way, are connected with the principle of what fewness, huh? Okay. And the second and the fourth are based more upon something peculiar to contrariety, huh?

[14:24] Okay. Let's look at the third argument first because there it's more obvious that he's reasoning from the principle of fewness, huh? And because it is possible from the limited, it is better from the limited as Empedocles does, as Empedocles, for he is thought to explain all things as much as Anaxagoras from the limited. What Aristotle is thinking of in particular is something that was a kind of common thought among the Greeks, and it seems probable from our experience.

[14:58] Things keep on coming to be in this world, right? Every spring, as the word indicates, new things spring into existence, huh? So the source of them, right, has got to explain the fact that things keep on coming to be forever. Now the way Empedocles explains this is with a limited multitude of beginnings. He has earth, air, fire, and water, the four elements, and love unites them, and then hate separates them, and love unites them, and can go on forever, huh?

[15:32] But that's kind of a cycle, okay? But Anaxagoras doesn't have a cycle. He has a straight line coming to be. He has the mixture of everything inside of everything, and then the greater mind begins to separate things out, and it keeps on separating things out. But in order to keep on separating things out, there has to be what an infinity of things in there, right? Okay. So isn't it better if you can explain how things keep on coming to be having a limited multitude of things, huh?

[16:11] Than if you have to use an infinite infinite multitude, right? Fewer are better if enough, right? And obviously a limited multitude like the four elements and earth and love and hate six is is fewer than infinite. Okay, do you see that? Yeah. Okay. Um. And sometimes, you know, in in in elaborating on that, I use kind of a simple example there, right? About the superiority of the circle, right?

[16:44] If I'm a rich man, I want to get some exercise. I want to run forever, right? Okay. Now, if I want to run forever on a straight road, straight forward, how long does that road have to be so I can run forever on a road? Forever. Yeah, I'm gonna have to lay down an infinite road, right? So I can run forever. Now someone come along and says, "Do you ever think, Burquist, of making your road a circle?

[17:10] Yeah, what's the advantage of that? You keep it running forward forever, but you can do it with a finite road, a little road. Hey, I can see that, right? Is it?

[17:24] And the other example is to give. You know, I'd lecture in this maybe around this time, and they say, "Now, when you go home and buy a present for that nephew or niece or something, or when you get to be a parent, you buy for the kids. " It's better to buy them a bag of blocks than to buy them a finished toy, because they can make something out of the bag of blocks, knock it down, build something else out of it, and go on forever.

[17:54] Why the finished toy gets broken in a week or so, right? If I always have something to play with, you got to buy another one, another one, another one. So I say this is the Empedoclean principle of buying Christmas gifts, huh?

[18:09] And that's you know why we I suppose we try to recycle a bit too, right? People say, huh? Okay, you know, is going and exhausting your resources, right? Go on recycling things. If

[18:25] you see how that involves then the principle of fewness or fewness in truth, if Shakespeare says, huh? And as I say to students, our mind naturally inclines to fewer, huh? So we try to explain 365 days a year with 365 suns.

[18:48] Well, if the sun is extinguished, as it used to say, in the ocean there at the end of the day, well, you might need a new sun every day, right? But if the sun can go around the earth in a circle again, right? Maybe you can explain 365 days with one what? Sun. Yeah, yeah. You don't even think. I said there's an old controversy as to whether the day and night is caused by the sun going around the earth, right?

[19:14] Or whether the earth is turning on its axis, right? And now we inclined to think it's the earth turning on its axis, huh? But notice in those two disagreeing hypotheses, neither one thinks of using more than one sun, do they? See? So in the absence of a reason to say you need, you know, 365 or 10 suns, or you know, we will try to explain with just one sun.

[19:39] Another example I give is, you know, how do you know I don't have a twin brother? Comes in here on Thursdays, and I teach on Tuesdays, you know. And they don't know about me, do you really? You know, I do have, you know, brothers who teach philosophy, tell them, you know. And how do you know that we don't have a deal that way, you know? And but notice in the absence of a reason to think there's two people teaching this course, which is kind of complicated, they have to look very much alike, and they have to have a But similar background and so on.

[20:12] And after any reason to think there is more than one person, you will naturally assume there is one, right? But if you got a class today and someone says, "You know, I was talking to Berkwest about Tsvaia Datchup in the cafeteria or something," you know, what time was that? You say, "Well, at two thirty, yeah." Well, no, no, it's a man who's in class here. Then you might begin to suspect that, like the English during the Second World War, when they found that actor that resembled Montgomery, yeah, yeah, he told that story, you know.

[20:41] But they found an actor that resembled Montgomery. and. They dressed him up like Montgomery, was there a big general, and being a good actor, he can imitate, you know, the way of speaking of Montgomery. And they'd send him down to Africa, so the Germans would think Montgomery is down in Africa when he's actually planning the Normandy invasion there in England. And so the Germans are deceived, right?

[21:06] And might think you know, they're going to come up to the, you know, soft underbelly, they call, you know, Italy or something. But if the Germans were getting reports, you know, at the same time that Montgomery was in Algeria and in England, right? Then they would what? Then they have a reason to think there might be two guys and not be the same guy. But in the absence of some reason, right, you just assume it's one man, don't you?

[21:31] Okay. Now, the first reason Aristotle gives is actually based upon this principle of fewness, because, as Sir Isaac Newton states when he brings out the principle, nature affects not the pomp. He says the superfluous causes, if you recall that, right? And and more is in vain when less will serve, right? So, what's underlying this argument of Aristotle's is that we have a natural desire to what? Know the causes, huh?

[22:15] And if the causes were unlimited, it would be impossible to know them, right? And therefore, our natural desire would be in vain. When nature would be doing what more than is necessary, and you see in the case of the other natural desires, like hunger and thirst, and so on, people don't always get food, right? They don't always get water to drink, but it's not in practice, in principle, impossible to get food, right?

[22:44] So nature wouldn't give animals hunger and thirst if there was no food possible in the world. Wouldn't serve any purpose, right? So if there is an infinity of beginnings of causes, it'd be like knowing a word with an infinity of letters. Well, not even the winner of the spelling bee could know such a word, could he? So you see how that, in a way, you know, some might say, "What's wrong with this?

[23:10] The unlimited is not possible because what is? " Would not be knowable, right? But he's assuming there, right, that our reason is able in some way to know the causes. Now, how can he assume that? Because it's a natural desire to know the causes, and nature does nothing in vain. So, so it must be in some way possible for us to know the causes of these things, but would be impossible if there was an infinity of causes.

[23:39] So you see how that first argument could also be said in a way to be based on the principle of fewness, on nature doing nothing to excess or nothing be in vain, as Shakespeare says and Hamlet says, "or strip not the modesty of nature." Say, nature is modest because it doesn't do more than is what necessary, huh? Okay, so. I. Put the first and the third argument kind of together because they do have some common connection there with the principle of what Fewness, right?

[24:12] And notice that those two arguments are not so much zeroing in on the idea of what the beginnings being contraries, right? But they're not being what infinite, right? Okay. But now in the second and the fourth argument, he takes it probable that the principles are contraries, and then if you say that the contraries are the principles and the principles are infinite, you're going to have some difficulty following from that.

[24:45] And one difficulty is in the fourth argument, and one in the second. Okay. Now let's take the so in a way it's more particular than the first and the third. He's saying that

[25:05] in any one genus, there's one pair of contraries. Now what do we mean by contraries? Contraries are sometimes defined as the species, when you distinguish the species or one of these English word or forms furthest apart in the same genus word or forms,

[25:24] furthest apart in the same genus, same what general kind of thing, right? So for example, in the genus of color, the contraries are white and black, not let's say blue and what Yellow, right? Or these ones that are in between. We wouldn't think of yellow and black as being contraries, but white and black, the ones that are furthest apart, right? Are in the genus of habit, huh?

[26:15] You know, in ethics you distinguish four. You have virtue, then you have vice, and then you have continence and incontinence, okay? In other words the virtuous man, right? He chooses to do what is good, and his passion and so on don't resist him much at all, right? So since the whole man is good, the continent man, huh? He chooses to do good, but he has a struggle, right, huh?

[26:52] Against his passion, like the alcoholic, let's say, right? Who's joined, you know, alcoholic anonymous, right? But he can't what? He still got struggle, right? He doesn't give in, right? The incontinent person he has a struggle, but he gives in, right, to his passions, and then he has what sadness or repentance, you know, because he couldn't, you know, control himself, right? The vicious man, that's no problem, right?

[27:19] Because not only is his passion disorder, but his will is sorted out too, right? And so he's like Don Giovanni, right? He's chosen, right? So he doesn't have any conflict because it's totally bad. So Richard Weiss are the contraries. They're the ones that are what furthest apart in the same genus, huh? So in any one kind of thing, it seems there's only one what contrariety, and sometimes, Thomas doing the commentary, they'll say like on a straight line, you can have many points that are equidistant, right?

[27:59] But how many points can you have that are furthest apart? Just one pair, two end points that are furthest apart. So like a spectrum of colors, right? You can have only one pair of contraries. That's part of what he's going to reason from here, okay? And then the second thing he has is that substance is one genus, huh? Now, if you've studied logic, you might know that substance is one of the ten genera.

[28:30] But substance is the genus that is what more fundamental than all other what genera? All the other genera are accidents, things that exist only in substance. So if you're looking for the beginnings of all things, you have to look for them in what substance, right? If the beginnings are contraries and substance is one genus, there can only be one pair of contraries, rather than infinity of pairs, huh?

[28:57] So that's notice that Aristotle is more particular because it assumes that the principles are contraries we saw before, right? And then that couldn't be infinity of them in the genus of substance, huh? Okay. Of course, in the beginning, substance and body to us seems to be almost the same thing, but actually, substance is broader than body. We know there are immaterial substances. Okay.

[29:33] So there's incompatibility in the second argument there between the principles being what contraries and them being infinite, right? Given that there's only one pair of contraries. Okay. Now in the fourth argument, huh?

[29:52] This is based upon the difficulty that if you make the principles contraries and you make the principles infinite, how many pairs of contraries will be the first beginnings of things? Yeah, but does every pair of contraries come first?

[30:15] We saw in our study of Empedocles, huh? That hot and cold, for example, are causes of hard and soft, of black and white, and so on, right? So some pairs of contraries are before other ones. So not every pair of contraries can be the first beginnings of things. Maybe only a couple pairs, between not all of them, because some pairs are causes of other ones. But if you make the principles contraries and infinite, you have to have infinite pairs.

[30:45] Pairs of contraries among first beginnings. You see that? So in a sense, reducing the ideas here to something what? Absurd, huh? You're saying the contraries are the principles, and the principles are infinite. Therefore, you have infinite pairs of contraries as your beginnings. Therefore, you seem to have to bring in all these different pairs of contraries and make them starting points. But some are before others, right?

[31:21] Okay. You see that? So these are the four arguments Aristotle does give here to eliminate the other extreme, right? Okay. So you got to have at least two because of contraries, but they're not unlimited. Now, does anything force us to go beyond two, right? Now, notice the principle of fewness is not fewer are better. Period. Fewer are better if not. Now you're getting kind of the heart of that.

[31:53] Two is fewer than three. He's going to argue that two is not enough. You need a third one, right? Okay. They conclude what we just seen there in the third from the bottom that sentence. Hence, it is clear from these things that they are neither one nor unlimited, right? Okay.

[32:22] Now he gives the first argument, which is the one we want to emphasize. Seeing that they are limited, there is some reason for making them not only two. Now that's said with philosophical modesty, as Thomas sometimes says, huh? There's much reason, right? In fact, a very necessary reason, huh? For someone might ask how either density is apt by its nature to make rarerness something or this density.

[32:53] Likewise, in any other contrariety. For love does not bring together hate and make something from the same, nor hate from that. But both some third thing, huh? Okay. Now notice what he's pointing out there. huh? Notice the apparent contradiction in our speaking about change.

[33:19] We say sometimes a day becomes night, don't we? We say the healthy becomes sick, right? We say that the hard becomes soft, and generally we do say that one contrary becomes the other, right? And seems we're necessitated to do that because if we say if we deny that the healthy can become sick, then we'd have to say if you're healthy, you'll always be healthy, right? And if we deny that the sick can become healthy, then if you're sick, you're going to be always sick.

[33:56] Tough luck. And if the hard doesn't become soft, right? Don't. Think of, you know, of the heart becoming soft, right? On the other hand, there seems to be a contradiction there, right? Because the word "becomes" means comes to be, right? Now, if the hard came to be soft, then the hard would be soft, and then the same thing would be hard and soft, and both be hard because it's hard, and not be hard because it's soft, and both be soft because it is soft, and not soft because it is hard, and that's impossible, right?

[34:41] Okay. And if the healthy became sick, and becomes means comes to be, right? Then the healthy would be sick, and the same thing would be healthy and sick, and therefore be healthy and not healthy because it's healthy because it's healthy, but because it's sick, it's not healthy, so it's healthy and not healthy, and because it's sick, it's sick, but because it's healthy, it's not sick, so it's both sick and not sick, and that's impossible, right?

[35:10] And that's why Parmenides reacted to Heraclitus and people who speak like that and said only a two-headed mortal could think this, because one head would think that it is, and one head would think that it's not, right? But one, the same head, couldn't think both, huh? And as I joke, you know, in this example, two heads is not better than one, huh? Two heads is something monstrous, huh?

[35:31] Something unnatural. You're going against the something naturally understood that something cannot both be and what not be, huh? Aristotle says this is the natural beginning of all the axioms, which are the most basic of all the statements. Okay.

[35:49] So, now likewise, if if density, huh? If density made rareness what dense, right? You again have a contradiction there, right? Because Rareness, that by which things are rare, would be itself dense, and if hardness made softness hard, right? Then that by which things are soft, namely softness, would be itself hard, huh? Okay. So there must be a what third thing, right? Apart from the hardness and softness that is made hard or softer.

[36:28] okay? Otherwise, change would involve a what contradiction, yeah. Now, you can describe this way of going forward, Aristotle, actually in another way too. Now let's put some examples here for you, some simple examples.

[36:56] You have this change between the hard and the soft. Okay. Well, he's saying it's not the softness that is being made hard; it's not the hardness that is being made soft, right? But it's a third thing, right? And let's just, for sake of being concrete, say the third thing might be what butter, right? Okay.

[37:28] And so, notice it's not the hard as such that becomes soft; it's the third thing, the butter, right, as such that becomes softer. If the hard as hard became soft, then the hard would be soft, and then you have a contradiction, right? But that third thing to which hard happens to belong, but it's not the same thing to be butter and to be hard, is it? And it's not the same thing to be butter and to be soft.

[38:02] huh So notice the kind of distinction that is important: distinction between as such and by what happening, right? That's a very important distinction, a very important kind of distinction in philosophy. You can't do philosophy without seeing that distinction.

[38:29] And here is one place where it comes in. Okay. Someone asked somebody, I'll take a simple example of the accidental. What do carpenters do? Would you say carpenters play violins? Well, I might know a carpenter who does play the violin, right? But still, I wouldn't say that's what carpenters do. Although this carpentry does it, right? But it's accidental to his being a carpenter, right? It's not as carpentry that he plays the violin, right?

[39:10] And so, when when little child asks mummy, "What do carpenters do? " Mummy should answer, "What carpenters as carpenters do, " right? Otherwise, the child's going to get very confused, right? Because carpenter could happen to be a violinist, he could happen to be a cook, he could happen to be a million what other things, right? But that would not be what the carpenter as such does. So that's a very you know common distinction that we don't stop and think about it.

[39:41] And when I when I talk to the the students there about the good, and as Socrates touches upon in the Meno, but Aristotle more explicitly at the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics, he does a little induction there, and then he concludes that the good is what all aim at, the good is what all want. And and he says, therefore, they define well the good is what all want, huh?

[40:08] And you say, well, gee, how can that be a good definition of good? Because sometimes people want what is bad, right? But in order to understand that, you have to understand that Aristotle is speaking as such, there, right? The good as such, the good as good, is what is wanted. The bad is sometimes wanted, but not as bad. The bad is wanted because it appears to be good, right?

[40:38] Say, somebody stop example in class is the last drink, right? Another drink, and you say yes. Now, if you take that last drink, you don't feel so good, right? And you recognize that this last drink was bad for you, in fact, huh? Okay, there was a drink that made you have to, Well, excuse yourself. But

[41:01] did you desire to drink that to what get sick? No, no, no. See, you want that last drink because it appeared to be a way of continuing the good time or increasing the good time. When in fact, it was the way of ending the good time, right? Okay, you see. But I didn't desire it as bad as to make me sick, right? If I had known it would do that, I wouldn't have done it, huh?

[41:30] It's as apparently, you know, keeping me in this state of false happiness, right? Okay. Or you know, if I drink a delicious poison, I don't drink it because it's poisonous, but because it's what delicious, yeah, yeah. So the good as such is what is desired, huh? And so if you don't see that distinction, you can't, you know, see that this is a good definition of good. It's a definition by effect, of course, but it's a good definition, and it's convertible with the good, huh?

[42:08] So that and there's actually in the book on Sophistical Refutations you know, when, Aristotle distinguishes the fallacies, huh? And the causes of them, common reasoning, and he gives 13 ways that we're deceived, right? And and six of them are from language, and seven are outside of language. And the first one on language is the fallacy of equivocation, which he notes is the most common mistake made, huh?

[42:37] And then the first one outside of language is the fallacy of the accident. Okay. And there he says that this deceives even the wise.

[42:51] And we'll come back to that later on. We get to the 15th reading. But even Plato was deceived by this, not to mention much lesser minds. So we could hardly state more strongly how, you know, that can sometimes deceive people.

[43:12] So that distinction is involved here, right? We don't realize that when we say the hard becomes soft, or the sick become healthy, or the good become bad, or any contrary becomes the other, day becomes night, right? We're speaking in a way, as you say, a like a prologue, right? Okay, you're not speaking as such, right? It's not really the hard becomes butter, and it's not, you know, really if, if say the carpenter happens to be a musician, right?

[43:47] Why could say the musician built my house, but it wouldn't be true as such, right? But you could say the musician built my house in some way, because to be a musician is something that happens to the carpenter, to the cause as such in my house. You see that? And because to be hard is something that happens to butter, right? We can say contradictions that hard becomes soft, right?

[44:12] So if we made it as such, it has a contradiction. And three, the butter is such it becomes soft, not the hard at all. Okay. Now,

[44:25] now that third thing, how's it related to the two contraries? Well, we say sometimes it's the what subject underlying it too. But you're also starting to be introduced a bit here to the idea of potency or ability, because the butter is able to be hard and to be soft, but it's not able to be both at the same time. And when it's actually one, it's able to be the what?

[44:56] Other, right? But if it actually became the other, it ceases to be the what? Former. Okay. They could also say that Aristotle is going forward, not only from two to three, right? He's also going forward from a confused or indistinct knowledge of the contraries, right, to more distinct one. Because in the hard, unless there is a distinction between the hardness and what the hardness is in, unless there is a real distinction between the butter and the hardness.

[45:35] Although the hardness is in the butter, the hardness is not the same thing as what butter is. And over here, the soft, unless there is a real distinction between the butter and the softness of the butter, right? So that even though the softness is in the butter, that's not what the butter is, right? Unless there really was a distinction, would there be any change possible between hard and soft?

[46:02] soft? If hardness and butter were really the same thing, and softness and butter were the same thing, they have no contradiction together, right? But if all there was in the hard then was hardness, and all in soft softness, could there be any change between hard and soft? No, because then hardness itself would become softness, right? Okay. Now the same way with any two. Let's say this change from day to night, because we sometimes say from night to day, one.

[46:38] Okay. Now Aristotle would say, well, does darkness become light now, or light become darkness? No, because that would involve a contradiction, right? The light becomes darkness because darkness is the lack of light, and how can light be the lack of light? Okay. So there must be a third thing involved, right? In which the light of the darkness exists, right? We might call that the air, right? And the air is able to be illuminated.

[47:19] The air is able to be dark, right? So they introduce the idea again of potency or ability. And when the air is actually illuminated, it's still able to be dark, right? But if it becomes actually dark, it will cease to be this, right? So the dark is never illuminated. So he's going forward again from two to a third thing, which is a subject that is an ability that is capable of both opposites, but not at the same time, right?

[47:55] But it also says going forward from a confused knowledge of the contraries, right, to a more distinct one. So you could say, in the day, there is both light and air, and in the night, there is both darkness and air. And there's a real distinction in the day between what the air itself and the light, or between the air and the what darkness at nighttime.

[48:30] Okay. And you go multiplying these examples until you see the point. See? So when the wet becomes dry, or vice versa, does wetness become dry? Does that make sense? Does dryness itself is that wet? No, dryness is that for which the dry is dry. So how could dryness itself be wet? So it must be a third thing that is made wet or dry, other than the wetness and the dryness.

[49:01] And that might be a cloth, right? Okay. And the cloth is able to be wet. The cloth is able to be dry, but not at the same time. And when it's actually one, it's capable of the other, right? But if it were to become actually the other, it would cease to be the former, right? So the wetness is never dryness, and the wet is never dry, right?

[49:22] What's the third thing? You see how you're being forced to avoid a contradiction, or you could say it, or precisely, to untie the apparent contradiction that Heraclitus pointed out in change. huh? I mean did Heraclitus really think the sleeping and the waking are the same, day and night are the same, as he makes fun of Hesiod you know, everybody thought Hesiod was wise. He didn't even understand day and night.

[49:45] He thought they're two different things, right? Is Heraclitus really so stupid? He doesn't know that day and night are something different. See? And I point to a fragment we have in the collection there about the sleeping and the waking, which he says are the same. Where he says we should not act and speak. speak like those asleep. Right? He very much knows the difference between. Being awake and being asleep.

[50:08] So why does he say that the sleeping are the waking? Because one becomes the other, right? If he's not trying to point out that there is an apparent contradiction in the way we all speak, and the average person could say, "Why I'm speaking pragmatically those words mean, let alone be able to, you know, unfold exactly in what sense he can defend that. Now, if you go back to the first reading we had in Book One, where Aristotle showed that we know things in a confused way before distinctly by three kinds of examples, right?

[50:43] Like we know the sensible whole before we distinguish its parts. But the second kind of example he gave was the name before the what? Definition, right? Well, this is like that, isn't it? Huh? In this other way of looking at this, because when I say hard, I don't distinguish between the hardness and what the hardness is in. But unless there was in the hard a real distinction between those two, in no way could the hard become soft, right?

[51:13] Because there'd be nothing in the hard that could be soft, because the hardness itself can't be soft. So there must be something in there besides the hardness. In the same way, in the day, something in there besides light, right? And in the wet, something in there besides wetness. See? So just like I was saying in that earlier reading, you know, he points out two things: that they're all saying the same in general; they're all saying the same proportionally, right?

[51:40] So here you could say that he's going forward from two to a third thing. That's one way of expressing it, right? He's also going forward from a confused knowledge in the corresponding to the one word hard or soft, right? To a distinct knowledge of the real distinction in the hard between the hardness and the butter, whatever the hardness is in. See? Do you follow me? Okay.

[52:18] So you could say that in order to untie, or put it even more exactly, the untying of the apparent contradiction and all change, which is between contraries, The untying of the apparent contradiction that Heraclitus, the central thinker, human thought was the first to really point out. The untying of that is the discovery that there is a third thing besides the contraries, right? Especially if you take the contraries purely in the abstract way, hardness and softness, huh?

[52:52] Okay. But it's also a discovery of the composite nature of the contraries, right? Between which there is change. That they're composed of the contrary in strict sense, and the subject underlying that contrary, in which that contrary exists, right, without being the same, right.