Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
28. Substance, Accident and Dialectical Probability: Resolving the Apparent Contradiction in Physics I
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[0:00] call it, I guess. Yeah. And you have someone who would, you know, kind of get his wages from the endowment or something, and and who would say yes for you, you know, and make a deal.

[0:18] Okay. so. Let's say our little prayer. In the Name of the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. God our enlightenment, guardian angels strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, and help us to understand all that you've written. Name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen.

[0:49] So we're on the sec the bottom paragraph on page four, reading eleven here, and in that bottom paragraph you have the second argument for there being a third thing in change besides the two contraries.

[1:15] Now, as we saw last time, emphasize the first argument because of two things. One, I think it is has more strength, right, or more necessity than the second and third arguments, and secondly, because it illustrates the role of what contradiction, right, in development of our knowledge, and that seems to be important according to the great minds of philosophy and of science and of theology. Now the second and the third arguments depend upon the distinction between substance and accident among other things.

[1:58] So you recall it from logic a bit, huh? Just recall it. Substance here means a thing that exists not in another, not in another subject, and Aristotle always gives us his first example a man.

[2:36] The second example will be an animal, like a dog, because the unity of a man or a dog is more clear than, say, the unity of a plant. And I can only say a rock. Is a rock a substance? Well, you might think it to be a substance, but maybe it's actually a combination of what substances kind of fuse together, right? So that's what a substance is.

[3:09] Now an accident, as many words, but accident here, as distinguished from substance, is a thing that exists. In another subject, and cannot exist apart from it.

[3:42] Okay. So we might take as an example the health of a man or a dog, right? That exists in the man or the dog. You can't put the man in one room and his health in the next room. His health can't exist without the man. You could put a man in one room and the dog in the next room. Always put the cat in another place at night time so she won't do her her business.

[4:13] But I can't put my what health in one room and me in another, right? Or let's say the shape of a man, right? Or the knowledge, right? I have to take my knowledge with me when I go home today. Can't leave it up here.

[4:35] Okay. And but these are examples of accidents. Now, the word "substance," of course, is a Latin-derived word, and comes from to stand under, right? And it gets its name because, in a way, it's the first subject underlying all the accidents. So it's well named in the sense substance. And what's interesting too, in terms of our what my native language is anyway, English, that the English word "understanding" has the same etymology as the word "substance."

[5:31] And that's not simply by chance, because the senses know only accidents, but it's reason or the mind or the understanding, if you call it sometimes, which knows what substance.

[5:53] So interesting word, huh? Okay. That's it. The Latin etymology. The Greek word, of course, is "ousia." right? Doesn't have quite the same. Yeah. Now, the second thing that these two arguments are based on is the idea that contraries are accidents. Rather than substances, huh?

[6:26] And once you see that contraries are accidents, we say wasn't substance more fundamental than what? Accidents? Yeah, yeah. And so if the two contraries, as we've been in the previous reading, right, the two contrary accidents are beginnings or causes, even more so should what? The substance underlying them be a beginning? Okay.

[6:58] In addition to these things, Aristotle says then, someone might have doubts if no one placed another nature on the contraries, for we see that no substance is what? Contrary, huh? So man or dog, what's the contrary to or horse or plant, right? But it seems that the contraries accidents like health and sickness, huh? Virtue and vice and so on. But the beginning, meaning the cause, ought not to be said of any subject, for there would be a beginning of the beginning.

[7:33] Substance seems more fundamental. For the subject is a beginning, and seems to be before that which is said of it, like healthy or colored or whatever it might be, right? Okay. That's an interesting reason, right, to think that there's going to be now a third thing, right? You know, unless we accept what was said in the tenth reading that the beginnings are contraries, and everybody's saying that, right?

[7:57] And then you add to that that the contraries accidents, and you realize that accidents substances are. But doesn't the underlying substance have to be a beginning just as much, if not more so? It seems more fundamental, right, than the accidents, and so those contraries are in some sense beginnings, even more so as a substance, huh? Okay.

[8:21] And then again in the top of page five, he gives another argument, and again it's based upon the idea that one substance is not contrary another, but it's accident to accident. And so how then would substance be from what is not substance? If you said everything comes to be from the contraries and the contraries accidents, you'd have the body coming to be from health or sickness. Doesn't seem to make any sense, would it?

[8:53] Or the butter coming to be from hardness or from softness, right? Okay. Or how could none-substance be before substance, right? Nothing is non-substance. Besides, substance accidents. How could accidents be the origin of substance? So the second and third arguments, you see, the need for a third thing, right? Okay.

[9:18] Now in the next two paragraphs here, Aristotle is going to kind of conclude now that there are three things, right? The contraries and the subject underlying the contraries, and in the second paragraph here, in page five,

[9:38] and in the third paragraph there, he's going to say that his predecessors in a way saw this too, right? Whence if someone should hold the former reason, meaning the reason that there are what contraries, right? The changes by contraries, changes between contraries, changes from one contrary to another, right? We even stated in change one contrary becomes another, right? And then this to be true, the three arguments we just given is necessary if both of them are to be saved that some third thing underlie as.

[10:19] well. Water or fire or something in between these, huh? It seems more the in between, huh? It's just in between because something that would be more what unlimited as far as qualities are concerned, huh? For fire and earth and air and water are twined together with contrarieties like hot and cold and dry and wet. Hence, those making the underlying other than these do not act unreasonably. Of the others, those saying air, for air has the least sensible differences of the other.

[10:53] Then water is better, right? Than to say fire, which is very definitely right. Okay. But now in the next paragraph, he's indicating that in a way his predecessors saw that. But all shaped this one thing by contraries. So besides density and rarerness, they had something that was made dense or made rare, like water or air or mother earth or something else, and by the more or less.

[11:24] Okay. Now in the rest of this paragraph, he's kind of alluding there to a difference between Plato and the natural philosophers, huh? Because Plato would speak of of

[11:40] contraries, too, in a way, excess and defect. But he puts them on the side of matter. Sounds kind of strange, huh? Well, the other guys would see unity on the side of matter more, and then the contraries, the two what opposite forms that the matter can what assume, huh? Okay. But you got to realize that Plato, in a way, is what a logician and a metaphysician, and he's what thinking of forms separated from matter, right?

[12:14] Which matter is partaking of, right? And when you look at it that way, then you see the what multiplicity in the side of matter.

[12:32] Yeah. So the form man could be shared in by many pieces of matter, right? In the same way if a woman's making Christmas cookies, right? Huh? And she got the idea of Christmas tree, right? That's something one, right? That one shape, huh? But then she realized that one shape in this piece of dough, this piece of dough, this piece of dough, right? And you see multiplicity on the side of what matter, right?

[12:59] Okay. But then you're kind of looking at it from the point of view of the what extrinsic cause, right? See. Okay, rather than the matter itself in the way the matter is what formed, huh? Because you look at you start with a piece of clay like that and say, okay. This clay can be molded into a sphere, or molded into a, you know, a square, or something else, right?

[13:23] And then you see the matter as being something one, the clay, and the form, like the spherical shape, or the cubical shape, or the cylindrical shape, or the pyramid shape, and so on. You see multiplicity in the side of what form, and unity in the side of matter, right? Okay. Because then you are looking at from the point of view of matter and the transformation of matter, right?

[13:46] And the same matter can take on many different forms, just like you look at my body, right? My body can be healthy one day and be sick the next day and be healthy again another day, right? You see. So there, when you look at it from the point of view of of matter and the transformation of matter, matter seems to be something one, in which different what forms can succeed each other, right?

[14:14] So matter is one, but the forms are many. But if you look at it from the point of view of a maker it's kind of an extrinsic cause, right? You know, I am going to make what many glasses that same shape, right? So you got this matter down there, and I get one form. I am going to realize in what many glasses like all those window panes, right?

[14:39] Right, the same shape has been put into this matter, this matter, this matter, and this matter, right? And so the multiplicity seems to come in that case from the what matter, right? See, how many cookies can I make? It's like I've got a little, you know, Christmas tree shaped thing, you know. And we roll the dough out here and jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump. All of a sudden, I run out of dough, right?

[15:08] But the multiplicity of cookies comes from the shape that I am trying to impose upon them. No, it's because there is many pieces, many separate pieces of matter that can all receive one in the same what? Yeah, so then I think of the form as something one, and the matter as something what? Yeah, yeah. That's what Plato's looking at, right? Yeah, you said Plato's view is the one that shape form was one.

[15:36] Yeah, he thought of the forms, especially you know what a man is, what a dog is, is existing in the world by themselves, right? So sphere anything of a spherical shared that one form.

[15:50] As if there was a part for matter, right? One form of this kind, another form of that kind, and many pieces of matter could share the same form, right? That must be an interesting world because everything would be absolutely unique. Yeah. You only have one sphere. Well, yeah, but you could you could be many different pieces of matter partaking of it, right? But so you you partake of of the form of man, and you do too, and you do too, right?

[16:15] So what a man is is something one, but individual men who. Share that nature. They are many, right? So the multiplicity is in the side of matter. See, and and there's some truth in that way of speaking too, right? But it's more appropriate to the natural philosopher who's talking about things that change, as we saw in the definition of nature, right? To look at that from the point of view of of the matter that's being changed or transformed, right?

[16:43] And then we see the matter as something one, in the forms as something what many, right? Okay. In a sense, Plato's coming in from the outside, so to speak, right? Because he was shook up by his teacher Cratylus, and Cratylus says everything in the world around us is changing. Well, how can you understand something that is always changing? See, and that led to kind of you know almost despairing Plato's part, right?

[17:17] So you have to find some things somewhere that are unchanging, right? So we can understand. And he thought that the definitions of Socrates, right, which are definitions of the universal, right, he thought that they were what giving us a true knowledge, right, and a knowledge of something that's unchanging. So he thought what a man is is existing apart from the material world. That's partly because of what we saw in that reading from earlier, where he touched upon the central question.

[17:53] Plato thought that truth required that the way you know things what be the way they are, right? So if the mind truly knows universal in separation from the singulars, we don't put Socrates or Plato or you or me in the definition of man, do we? So if we truly know man apart from you and me and Socrates and Plato, then man must truly exist apart from you and me.

[18:22] That's that world of forms they call it falsely translated in English ideas Greek word is eidos which means what form in Greek and so the world of forms

[18:36] is in large part Plato comes to this because he he's convinced that we get truth through definitions and he's answered yes to the central question or he's thinking yes to the central question anyway so that must be the way things are

[18:56] but it's a little bit like you know when you got to Pythagoras remember Pythagoras came into natural philosophy from mathematics and therefore he started talking about things he was accustomed to in mathematics like ratios and things that sort or the natural place to begin if you start from natural things is with matter he said and natural philosophers and even modern natural scientists they tend to be materialists or at least to start out what they are You see, because that's what stands out in matter.

[19:26] It's matter that changes, huh? So, but things coming even more from outside. You might say that Pythagoras thinks that that way. Notice Aristotle's modesty in the fourth paragraph. To say then that the elements are three would seem to have some reason, But a lot of reasons for thinking so, right? For those considering from these and other such things as we have said, huh? Okay. So notice what he's doing now.

[19:59] Let's recall the context here, in which he developed was just developed here. He asked how many beginnings there were at the beginning of this chapter, right? And he eliminated there being just one because of the previous reading, which said there were. Contraries and contraries, and then general opposites have to be two. Then you eliminated by those four brief arguments, that there's a unlimited, or if you want to speak Latin, infinite multitude of them, right?

[20:40] Now it can't be just one because the beginnings are contraries, and so there has to be two of them. Now does something force us to say, or is there some reason to think there must be a third thing? Well, we just got through with three reasons, right? Why there must be a third thing, huh? So we've got up to three.

[21:01] Now, does anything force you to say there's more than three, right? See. But now again, here the principle of fewness is what we're looking to apply here, right? And that principle is not fewer are better. Period. Because two is fewer than three, but fewer are better if they're enough, right? Well, two was not enough to explain change. You'd be in a contradiction, change without that third thing.

[21:31] Plus those other arguments he gave from substance and accident, right? Okay. But now he's going to stop and say three is enough. That's all you need, right? Okay.

[21:43] And he's going to give a couple arguments. Three is enough. Three is all, okay? Now the first argument is apart from contrariety in a sense, but to say more than three would seem no longer to have a reason, for one is enough to undergo. If you have two contraries, right, and a underlying subject, then change is what possible, right? Okay. So that's as we're enough to explain change, right?

[22:24] Okay. If our fourth thing exists, there will be two contrarieties, and necessary that another in between nature exists separately for each. Then you'd end up with what six things, right? But that isn't what necessary, right? See, Aristotle is looking for something that in a way forces you to say that there's more than three, right? Like there was something that forced us to say there's more than two.

[22:49] But in this case, there's nothing that what seems to force us to say there's more than three. Once you have three, then you can have change. So the hard butter can become soft, right? Not because hard is soft, or because hardness becomes softness, but because the butter can lose the hardness and acquire the opposite what softness, right? Okay.

[23:16] So there you can see he's kind of applying the the Principle of fewness, huh? And then he gives another argument based upon contrarieties, and it goes back to the thing we saw in the arguments against the unlimited. At the same time, it is impossible for there to be many first contrarieties, for what? For substance is one genus of being. Okay. Now, in saying substance is one genus of being, it's also the genus of being that underlies all the rest, right?

[23:52] And in one genus, you have only one what? Pair of contraries, right? Okay. Now, most what that argument is based upon, right? It's based upon substance being before all the genera of accidents, right? So the beginnings would have to be in substance rather than elsewhere, right? And then that in one genus, so one kind of thing, you have only one contrariety, because they are the species that are what?

[24:26] Furthest apart, right? Okay. Okay. Now, that's why he says three is enough. He stops, right? Okay. But now, if you use your reason, which I guess means you look before and after, right? Ah, um. If you look at the three arguments whereby he, especially the second and the third arguments, where he argued that there must be a third thing besides the contraries, right? If you look at that, and then you look before at the arguments against what?

[25:02] An unlimited multitude, and now after at the argument, and especially the second argument here for saying three is enough, right? You'll notice an apparent contradiction.

[25:19] Something he says both before and after, or in the arguments before and after those middle arguments, right? Something he says in the arguments against there being an unlimited multitude, and something he says here in the arguments to say three is enough, right? Contradicts something he apparently used in his second and third arguments to say there must be a third thing besides the two contraries.

[25:49] There's no contraries in substance. in the genus of substance Yeah, yeah. In the second and third arguments in the middle, right? He reasoned that contraries are accidents. There's no contrariety in substance. And if the contraries are accidents, and accidents are not as fundamental, as substance only if they're beginnings, substance even more so has to be a beginning, right? Okay. But in the arguments. One of the arguments against there being unlimited principles, he argued, like he did right now in this last argument, that substance is more fundamental, right?

[26:26] It's the fundamental kind of thing, the fundamental genus, and in one genus, there's only one contrariety. So in substance, only one contrariety. He's arguing that there is contrariety in substance, right? Or from there being only one contrariety in substance, right? In the second argument here, you see, there's no more than what

[26:49] three, right? And in the argument, one of the arguments for there being against there being unlimited multitude, right? In fact, it was the second argument against the unlimited, right? And there's one contrariety, one genus, back in page four, and substance is one genus, right? Okay.

[27:09] Does he mean though, when he says, "as there is always one contrariety and one genus," is he referring to the particular accident that would be limited in the chain? No, no. Now he's saying substance is one genus, right? And there's always one contrariety in one genus. He's arguing from there being one contrariety only in substance. While in the second, third arguments for a third thing besides the contraries, right?

[27:37] He reasons from only accidents are contraries, right? Now, how can he have his cake and eat it, right? You see? No, I don't understand what he means by this contrariety and genus, though. Well, we're showing you. We're showing you. Remember the other day, we took examples of genera of accidents, right? I took color, and I took habit. Okay. Oh, that's where. Oh, okay. So this is an equivocation then.

[28:09] No, it's not an equivocation. No, it's an contradiction. Okay, we have white and black, which are the contraries of color, right? I have many other colors in there. I just took, for example, yellow, right? Which is, and say blue, right? Now, blue is closer to black than yellow, and yellow is closer to white than blue. Yeah. But yellow and blue are not as far apart as white and black Yeah.

[28:37] So contraries are the species furthest apart in the same genus. So white and black are the species that are furthest apart, right? Okay, but I was thinking of color as an accident. Yeah, I know it is an accident. But I mean, for genus, though. Yeah, it's just exemplifying the fact that in one genus there's only one contrariety, because there's only one pair that are furthest apart, right?

[29:05] Okay. Now, in the genus of habit, let's say we have virtue and we have continence, and. Incontinence and then vice, right? Okay. Now, in the virtuous man, the vicious man, his will and his emotions are going the same direction, right? Okay. But in the case of the virtuous man, his will is going in the right direction towards the good, right? His emotions are obeying him without any real trouble, right?

[29:43] The vicious man, right? His will now has chosen what is bad, right? And his emotions are perfectly in agreement with the choice of the will, right? See, well, in these cases, there's a what, conflict, right? His reason and his will are urging him towards one thing, and his emotions are terribly going the other direction, right? And the the kind of man, he contains, he controls himself, right?

[30:11] But it would be difficult like a alcoholic, right? Who's who's got a real urge to drink, right? But he he he he holds on, right? See, okay, he calls his buddy you know? His buddy holds him Okay, And uh with the incontinent man, the emotions went out, right? You know, whether it be lust or the desire to drink or anger, whatever it may be, right? Okay, you see.

[30:38] So the incontinent man, he's not as good as the virtuous man, right? But he's he's better than the incontinent man. But the incontinent man, he regrets that he gave in to his temptation, right? The vicious man does that, right? The Don Giovanni, he seduces somebody, and somebody's wife is bothered. He rejoices in the fact that he's he's he's done this, right? Okay, okay. So virtue and vice are the contraries; they're what's furthest apart, right?

[31:12] Okay. In the same way, like say in drama, right? In drama, they say that tragedy and what comedy are the contraries. They didn't have a good name, but the Renaissance used to call certain plays tragedy-comedies. But there's something in between. Now they call them romance, but in the Greek sense of the romance, or in the medieval sense, the romance—not just romantic in the sense of of a love story, right?

[31:42] So Shakespeare's plays there's four last plays. there, leaving aside in the eighth. I mean, they're called romances now in the standard edition of Shakespeare. Right? They're not classified as the tragedies or the comedies, but the romances, right? There was actually two kinds of romances in there. So the romances are more serious than the comedies, right? But they're not tragic in their ending, right? And with their, you might say, a serious play that ends happily is opposed to, you know, laughable.

[32:14] The tragedy and comedy are what what furthest apart; therefore, they are the contraries, right? Okay, but how about like something like a substance, the genus animal? But he just takes the genus substance. You're not talking about the particular genus, okay? So he'd go to the absolute, universal. Yeah, yeah, Alright, so then you'd have the material and immaterial at that point. Yeah, yeah, but okay, yeah, or living and non-living, or something like that, right?

[32:41] Okay, okay, so that's right. But anyway, he's arguing that substance is one genus, right? And it's before all the other genera, so it makes sense to look for the beginnings of things in substance. And if the beginnings are contraries, as he said in the previous reading, and there's only one pair of contraries in each genus, right? Then we don't need more than one pair of contraries, right?

[33:05] Okay, but in the middle arguments, right, we're saying there's a third thing. there be reason for there being no contrariety in substance, right? But only accidents are contraries. To the fact that you need a third thing, namely the substance underlying them. Okay. So, in fact, in the second and third arguments, in the middle of the three groups of arguments, the middle group arguments, the arguments that there need to have a third thing besides the two contraries, he reasons from there being no contrariate in substance, but only in accidents.

[33:45] But in the second argument against there being unlimited multitude, and the second argument here to say we don't have to have you know one pair of contraries and so on, he reasons from substance being one genus and in one genus, like substance, there's only one pair of contraries. So he's reasoning from there being contrariety in substance, right? So, so how can he have his cake and eat it, right?

[34:11] Well, he's doing this for a reason, right? He knows what he's doing. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. But we need a teacher, right? Yeah. The teacher is not me, but the teacher is Thomas, yeah. But this is where I say there's like this equivocation. I'm seeing it because there's a contradiction there, so our minds equivocating. It seems a couple different things there. Yeah, but there can be apparent contradictions even without what?

[34:37] Equivocation. Yeah, based on other things, right? You know. Okay. The per se and the per accidens right? Well, it seems that when he's arguing with the contraries and and then with substance as the third thing, that's as opposed to like color is already kind of an accident now. But it is an accident, yeah. Yeah. Here, I was exemplifying in different genera of accidents. The statement that there's only one contrariety in each genus, right?

[35:12] And you know, they always compare, you know, they say to kind of a spectrum there, like you know, you could arrange on a line all the different species. Well, there can be many points in a line equidistant, right? But only one pair of points that are furthest apart, right? Okay. So contraries are like the points furthest apart on a line. There can only be one pair of them.

[35:39] Okay. But he seems to be contradicting himself because in the arguments against there being unlimited multitude, and in the arguments that there, you don't need to have one contrariety, he's reasoning from there being contrariety in substance. But in the middle arguments, where he's arguing there must be a third thing besides the two contraries, he's reasoning from there being no contrariety in substance, but only in accidents. You see.

[36:12] Okay. Of course, Thomas Aquinas fixes up, right? Okay. But he explains what Aristotle is doing here. Is proceeding what? Dialectically, okay, from probable what opinions, okay. Now he's not yet determined the truth with complete what necessity, right? There's some necessity here. That's why I emphasized that first argument in the third, in the middle group, right? Okay, but there is some probability here and not complete necessity.

[36:53] So he's reasoning from probable opinions, huh? Now, if you want to understand what a probable opinion is, as opposed to a necessary premise that you have in demonstration, right? You've got to go back to your logic and to the logic of the second act and to what contradiction is, right? Okay. And if you go back to what we mean by contradictory statements, like Socrates is a man and Socrates is not a man, right?

[37:33] Or every man is wise and some man is not wise, or no man is wise and some man is wise, right? Contradictory statements are statements with the same subject and predicate, right? One affirmative and one negative, right? But they're opposed such that both cannot be true, both cannot be false, but one must be true and the other must be false, right? And that's regardless of whether you know which is the true, which is the false one.

[38:12] So take the two statements here: President George Bush is standing now. President George Bush is not standing now. Can they both be true? Can they both be false now? No. One is true and the other is false. But we don't know you and I which is true, or which is false, right? Okay. But now, likewise on the statement, Berkwist is standing now. Berkwist is not standing now, right?

[38:46] One must be true and one must be false, right? But now in this case, you know which one is true, don't you? You know it's true that Berkwist is standing. And if you know that's true, you must know that the contradictory is what false, false, yeah. So when one is ready to demonstrate, he's got to know which half of the contradiction is true, right? And then necessarily has to know that the other half is what false, right?

[39:18] So in geometry, right, huh? If I know that no odd, let's let's take that. If I know that. An obtuse angle is greater than an acute angle, right? I must know that the opposite is what false, right? Okay. If I know that all right angles are equal, right? I must know that the opposite that some right angles are not equal must be false, right? If I know that every whole is more than one of its parts is true, I must know that the opposite that some whole is not more than one of its parts must be what false, right?

[39:59] Okay. So Aristotle describes demonstration. He says the demonstrator takes one half of the contradiction, right? The one that is either obviously true or at least proven to be true, and he lays that down, right? And discards the other half, right? And he proceeds in the true one, right? Now, in the case of dialectic. then um Sometimes Aristotle speaks of dialectic premise as the asking about the probable, right?

[40:33] And you ask the man that you're speaking with which side seems to him to be so, right? Okay. But if you don't see that side that you think is probably so as being necessarily true, in which case you'd be ready to demonstrate, right? If you see a notion is probable, then can the contradictory be in no way probable? See? Because if the contradictory in no way was probable, nothing is said for it, right?

[41:07] Then the contradictory would be clearly false, and then the contradictory one would be more improbable When Aristotle defines a probable opinion, you can see something of this too, because he says it's the opinions either of all men, right? Or the opinions of most men, or the opinions of all or most men in a given art or science, you know, talking about the matter of that area of science, or the most famous ones, right?

[41:39] Okay. So it might be though that the opinions of most men might disagree with the opinions of those in art or science. So most men might say sense pleasure is the best thing in life, and moral philosophers might say no, that's not so, right? Huh? So there's some probability to saying that sense pleasure is the best thing in life, because most men seem to think this, right?

[42:08] There's some probability maybe that isn't so, because the moral philosophers say it isn't so, right? Huh? Okay. And sometimes most scientists disagree with the greatest scientists, and vice versa, right? Huh? You see? So you see a little bit of probability in both sides, huh? But another way of looking at this is, and this is going to be especially relevant to Thomas's comments of this, in order to be probable, a statement doesn't have to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, right?

[42:46] In order to be probable, a statement needs some part of the truth, right? Okay. And so the man who says that the best thing in life is sense pleasure, right? He's mistaken, right? But undoubtedly the best thing in life will be something pleasant to have. So it's not as if? There's no element of truth in what he's saying, right? But he's mistaking the lower pleasures for the higher pleasures, and so on.

[43:15] You see? Okay. Now, what's in question here is the statement: there is and there is not contrariety in substance. Okay. And of course, corresponding to the statement that there is not contrariety in substance, is this contrariety in what? In accidents, right? Okay. Now, the distinction Thomas sees is this: that there are

[44:05] contrary differences in substance, in substance but there are not contrary species in substance. Okay. But in accidents, if you want to contrast with accidents, son? But in accidents,

[44:41] there are both contrary differences and contrary species. let me exemplify both of those just to give an idea. Let's take the example here of virtue and vice, right? Now, virtue and vice are two species of what habit, right? Okay. So here you have two contrary species that are accidents, right? Okay. Now, if you define virtue and vice, I don't want to get too profound here, right? You might define virtue as a good habit and vice as a what?

[45:39] Bad habit, right? Okay. And good and bad there, or reasonable and unreasonable, would be contrary as well, right? Did you see that? So, in virtue and vice, there you have contrary species because they are species of habit, and their differences are contrary. Okay. But now, does man, for example, and stone, right, or even man and beast? Do they seem to be contraries, like virtue and vice are contraries?

[46:25] No, no. But someone might say, "But man is a living body, and the stone is a non-living body right or you might say that man is a non-living body, right? " Or you might say that man is a rational animal, and the beast is an irrational, animal. right? So living and non-living, and rational and irrational, would seem to be what contraries, right? But they're contrary differences, huh?

[46:55] But the species don't seem to be contrary, like man and stone, right? Or man and beast, right? They're two contraries, the same thing, right? Okay. So there are contrary differences, it seems, in substance, but they're not contrary what species in substance. So there's an element of truth in saying there is, and there is not, right? Contrariety in what substance, right? There are contrary differences, but not contrary species.

[47:34] Okay. While accidents, we have both contrary differences and contrary species, right? So there's an element of truth, a part of the truth, right, in saying there's contrariety in accidents and not in substance, right? If you're looking at at species, right, and that's how we usually define contrariety in terms of species, huh? But if you think about differences, then there seems to be contrariety in substance as well as in what accidents, right?

[48:11] So Aristotle is reasoning from the statement as contrariety in substance as a probable thing, right? And it does have an element of truth in it. He's reasoning from there's not contrariety in substance because there are not contrary species, right? So both statements have a part of the truth, right? And therefore they are probable, but they are what not altogether what certain, right? Not demonstrative in that sense, huh?

[48:47] Okay. So Aristotle here is not proceeding with complete necessity yet. Okay. I say I think there's necessity in that first of those three middle arguments, huh unless there's a third thing can change, right? Besides the two contrary forms, right? Change would be impossible. Okay. And we say sometimes that love turns into hate, right? Sometimes hate into love, right? But can love itself really become hate? That would be a contradiction, right?

[49:25] But if there is a third thing, like let's say a heart, right? There is not the same thing as either love or hate. A heart that is capable of loving, but is also capable of hating, right? Well, then it can be loved in this heart for somebody or for something, right?

[49:44] And that heart could lose that love, right? And acquire a hate for someone or something, right? Or vice versa, right? There could be a hate in a in a heart for something or someone, right? You know, and then what? You lose that hate, right? And you start to love that person or that thing, right?

[50:10] Sometimes you hate the food when you are young, and then you've got to love it later on, right? The world is filled with people, you know, who, if not hate, you dislike somebody, right? And then they, you know, okay, and then they what? Start to like this person or something, right? Okay, so does disliking become liking? No, no.

[50:37] And so, if my heart and love were the same thing, could my heart ever hate? Could love itself become hate? No, see. So unless there is a real distinction between my heart and the love that is in my heart, my heart could never cease to love, right? Unless there is a real distinction between hate and my heart, between my heart and the hate that is in my heart for someone or something, right?

[51:17] I could never stop what, hating, right? Do you see that? And so, when Saint John says, like, say in the epistles, there that God is love, right? Right. Well, he's speaking, you know, properly there, right? Huh? There is no distinction in God between Himself and His what? Love, so it's impossible for God to what? Hate, huh? And so, if hate is ever said of God in Scripture, it's said metaphorically, right?

[51:52] Okay. So I think there is a necessity, and that's one reason why I emphasize that argument, right? And that's why you can use the idea that you learned there that what changes is always composed of the contrary in the strict sense, right? And the subject, right? Of that, and then when you syllogize in, say, that question three of the Summa that God is not composed, right? Then you can syllogize later on in the question on the.

[52:28] On God and change, right? You can syllogize that God is unchanging because He's not composed, and what changes composed, right? But if you compare the second and the third arguments, they say with the was it the second argument? Do you know against the unlimited there, and then the second argument down here against there being more than three, right? Then you say, well, gee, this is a contradiction, right?

[52:51] And then you realize that Aristotle is proceeding to some extent what dialectically here, and that means he's proceeding not from simply false statements, no, but he's proceeding from statements that are probable. And if what

[53:12] one half of the contradiction is probable, right, there must be some probability in the other half. It seems, because if the other half was in no way probable, it would be manifestly false. And if you know that one half is manifestly true or one half is manifestly false, you know the other side, right? You see, that's why in the Prior Analytics, in Aristotle, you know, beginning to talk about syllogism there, and he says that the dialectician and the demonstrator they syllogize formally speaking in a similar way, right, but. It's possible to reason from what contradictory statements, and even to contradictory then conclusions.

[53:55] Now, Socrates comes back upon his arguments, right? And he says he finally finds a premise that he thinks is not necessarily true, and that is that what directs us to the good is knowledge, right? He says, "Well, one could also be directed to the good by by right opinion," he says. See, okay? And you've heard me give you know I always get a simple example in class of the man coming down to the fork in the road, and one fork goes to Providence, the other one goes to Boston.

[54:29] He wants to go to Boston, right? Now, if he knows the right one here, fork is the road to Boston, he will take that. He will turn right, the fork. If he doesn't know that that is the road to Boston, but he thinks that is the road to Boston, in fact it is, but he doesn't know it. He's also going to take the one, isn't he? Right?

[54:51] And he'll get to Boston just as much as the guy who knew the road. So Socrates is saying you don't necessarily have to know

[55:04] which road to take, which thing to do, to do the right thing or take the right road. It might be just that you had a hunch, even right? See, you know, since I take you know MacArthur's what you know the Inchon Landing, right? It's kind of interesting to read all the accounts of MacArthur first proposed it, and Washington was opposed to it because they thought it was too dangerous, right?

[55:32] And they sent the chief of staff of the army down to try to convince him not to do it, and they sent the top Admiral down, right? And the admiral and the chief of staff both spoke against it, right? And MacArthur got up, you know, started very slowly and kind of persuaded them to do it, right? And but then, as he's about to do it, Washington sent him a telegram saying, "You're on your own."

[55:59] I don't want you to end, right? Yeah, and and MacArthur's going out. He called up his his next in line officer and he went over the thing, you know, the reasons for against, and he says, "What's the right decision?" He said, "Right." But then he sat down and started reading the Bible, MacArthur. You see, so did MacArthur know that the Inchon Landing was going to succeed? It was a wonderful thing what he did at that time, you know.

[56:26] As after Inchon Landing, you know, the people were being pushed into the ocean down there. They saw the enemy starting to weaken and just kind of fall back, you know, and so on. And but do these great men like MacArthur who who make the right decisions? Do they always know this is the right decision?

[56:46] No. MacArthur had a con you know plan to withdraw if it didn't work you know he said we'll lose it, it will be lost except my reputation he says you know but the point is um

[57:06] you know was the time when Richard Nixon was down in South America and there was you know a lot of turmoil down there and I forget which country is in now but uh his his his van was going down his car right the American position was going down this street in one of the big cities there in South America and the crowd was getting a little more boisterous and so on right and Nixon had just the hunch that this was kind of the situation right and so he ordered the driver to turn off and right up the road there was a bomb was set to go off to blow him to pieces okay did he know there was a bomb there no that was discovered

[57:44] afterwards right but they had planted the bomb and they had all ready to blow Nixon up when he got to that point huh for the sake of his reputation though that glorious man

[57:57] okay I guess you know you know they they discovered Saddam Hussein had planned to to assassinate you know the elder Bush you know and when he came back you know visiting in the East there and they they they foiled the plan you know but I mean you know so why it was Kennedy's decision you know to go in an open car you know down that road right see okay so I mean you can have hunches right that are correct right but just not the same thing as knowing is it see Nixon had no way of knowing there was a bomb down there right Kennedy had no way of knowing right okay so he made the wrong guess right Nixon made the right guess huh okay

[58:40] but it's it's hard to know I mean some of these men you know get very you know military men they get very what let's see they have sixth sense you know what's going on the battlefield huh okay but notice is the statement then that what directs us to the good is knowledge is that has no basis in truth at all

[59:06] well men can be directed to the good by knowledge right and that's the safest way to be directed to the good right but it isn't the whole truth and nothing but the truth is it see you see that so Socrates is reasoning there when he first reasoned he wasn't reasoning from something simply false right he's reasoning from something that had some probability to it same it can't be both true that that what virtue can be taught and virtue cannot be taught, huh?

[59:37] Okay. now in another dialogue the Protagoras the thing is solved in another way right there's not one person who teaches you Greek. You know, your mother, your father, everybody who spoke, reek around you as your little child, right?

[59:57] So I can't point to the teacher that I chose to teach my child how to speak English. Like I can point to who I chose to teach them how to play the piano. You see, so there might be, you know, a distinction there, right? You know, which there are, are not teachers, right? So to some extent, you know, your mother and your father and anybody who watched over you was kind of teaching you, we hope, a little bit of morality, right?

[1:00:24] You see, but you don't really have, you know, who's your teacher of justice? Who did your parents choose to teach you justice? Well, no, I think my father and my mother and my brothers and uncles and aunts, right? And my teachers, they all taught me a little bit about what justice, right? So it's not, you know, I can point to my first French teacher or my first you know teacher calculus or something, right?

[1:00:49] Yes, I. Okay. Um. So Thomas notes the apparent contradiction there, and but he puts Aristotle is doing here. He's not, you know, stupidly contradicting himself like people, but he's reasoning what was dialectically. He's reasoning with probability, right? And a probable statement doesn't have to be the whole truth, but should have some element of the truth in it. And you know, I think we mentioned before how the second road in our knowledge is the road from what reasonable guesses, huh, towards reasoned out knowledge, huh?

[1:01:36] Okay, and that's why dialectica comes before demonstration. But it also fits the nature of our mind, as Empedocles taught us, among others, that we tend to see what a part of the truth, huh, before we see the whole truth, huh? I mentioned that fragment of Empedocles. you know, he says that men don't live very long, and having seen a part of life, they boast of having seen the whole, right?

[1:02:13] Out of pride, right? But that pride there is what exaggerating how much you know, right? That you don't know more. But I mean, it also is touching upon the fact that we tend to know or to see a part of the truth before we see the whole truth. Um. Niels Bohr, in one of those, it's like three volumes. You know, atomic physics and human knowledge. There's three volumes of Bohr's essays, and I was mentioning the other day.

[1:02:47] There's a nice one that we gives. You know, account this conversation with Einstein, despite the disingratitude, kind of interesting account. He's very respectful of Einstein there. You know,

[1:03:03] but he has another essay on quantum theory and how no one of the men who got the Nobel Prize and so on, who got to quantum theory, saw the whole truth by themselves, right? But Max Planck saw one part of truth in 1900, and Einstein saw another part in 1905, and Niels Bohr himself saw another part in 1913, and then Heisenberg saw another part, and Louis de Broglie saw another part, and Wolfgang Paul, you know, but he's showing how this was not the work of what one man, right?

[1:03:36] See, and that's one reason also why dialectic tends to come first, right? Because when you have these opposite sides clashing, there may be parts of the truth that are on both sides, but it's like two armies clashing. and I compare it to the Trojans and the Greeks, the Achaeans, clashing, right? And the weak men would tend to what? Go down on both sides, huh? And the stronger men to emerge.

[1:04:05] If you could stop the fight, you can't always do. you'd stop the fight and gather up those who remain and make one army out of them. You'd have a better army than the Greek or the Trojan army. You'd have Hector and Achilles in your one army, right? See, so dialectic is a way of bringing out a part of the truth at a time, and that's why, when you read through, Plato's dialogues—there's 36 of them at least—you know, you don't see the whole truth in any one of these dialogues.

[1:04:43] But you know, it's not the nature of our mind to see the whole truth at once, anyway. And but as you read this dialogue and the dialogue, then you start to see

[1:05:03] different parts of the truth. It seems he has a little bit of a distinction in the way he says this, because he says, "For we see that no substance is contrary, but as the other side says, as there is also one contrariety in one genus, so a genus can be, I guess, a substance, but at the same time, the differences are in some way in there too.

[1:05:28] You mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now notice Aristotle's kind of hesitation here at the end and the bottom of page five.