De Anima (On the Soul)
36. Imagination as a Moved Mover: Deception in the Senses (Reading 6)
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[0:00] Okay, let's look at the sixth reading now in Thomas here, which is starting in 318 and going to the end here on page 35.

[0:19] Now, perhaps there's some confusion in English there when you read the text there, because when you use the word imagination in English, right, what are we usually thinking of?

[0:38] Yeah, we're kind of thinking of the ability that we have to come back upon our images and to what manipulate them, right? Okay. So I can imagine a gold mountain, right?

[0:55] I remember a fairy tale there. I'm reading the kids' fairy tales, and there's a what glass mountain, right? And how can the prince and his horse get up the glass mountain? Well, you see, I've seen gold or I've seen glass, right? And I've seen mountains, right? But I've never seen a gold mountain or a glass mountain, right? But I can combine these and make a new what image, right?

[1:22] That's not really what he's talking about here, right? Okay. He's talking about when I look at you, let's say for a moment, right? Then I close my eyes and I still kind of what? You're still there in front of me, right? Yeah. But you're a little bit what faded compared to when I was looking at you, huh? But if you look at something for a while and then you close your eyes, you you continue to see it.

[1:52] It appears still to you, right? And that's what he's really talking about here, right? He's not talking about the preservation of images and the memory where we're going to say it's kept, right? And then our ability to come back upon those preserved images, right, and to what manipulate them in the way that a poet can do, right? Okay. He's talking about what something that's very close to the senses, huh?

[2:22] And that's why he begins the way he does here, huh? But since a thing having been moved, another is moved by this, huh? Now he's recalling something we saw back in the books of natural hearing that there's a moved mover, right? As well as the unmoved mover, huh? And so if you play pool, right, and you can have a what moved mover, right? Okay, so if I push this case over here, this text is a what?

[3:00] Moved mover, right? Okay. He's going to say that imagining is a result of what? The senses being moved by an object outside of them, right? And the senses in turn moving what? Something more within.

[3:22] And so the senses there are a what? Moved mover. Okay, so you act upon my eye now when I see you. But that my eye being moved by you sets up a what? Another motion in me, right? And because you move a thing in a similar way to the way you've been moved, right? That's why this image is going to resemble what? The sensing of you. Well it's going to be weaker, right?

[3:58] Just like if I throw a ball and it hits something down there, it's going to move that thing, but maybe that thing will be what? Not as vigorous in its motion as the original thing. Okay.

[4:13] So he says, having recalled the idea that there's a moved mover as well as an unmoved mover, while imagination seems to be a certain what? Motion, huh?

[4:26] One is being moved in some way, right? And not to come to be without sense, huh? But it is in what senses and is of what there is a sensation, right? It's of the same object, right? Okay.

[4:50] But motion can come to be from the act of sense. Now the act of senses of being moved by the exterior object, right? But in being moved, it can move what? Something else. And it's going to move it in a way like it itself has been moved.

[5:12] So the movement caused by the moved mover will be like the movement of the moved mover. And therefore, imagining, as a result of being moved by the senses, will be a little bit like sensing, right? So when I close my eyes, I still kind of see you, right? But my eyes are not being acted upon by you, right? But that has moved something else in me, more inwardly.

[5:42] And you still kind of persist in a way, huh? You just think with the billiard ball, you hit one ball and this ball stops, that one keeps moving, right? It hits another one, keeps on moving, right?

[5:59] But motion can come to be from the act of sense. That's going back to the idea that sensing is a being moved, it's a being acted upon, right? And what is a moved can be also a mover, right? And it's necessary that the same motion, the motion caused by the sense when it's moved, the motion caused by the sense as a moved mover, would be similar to the sensation, right?

[6:29] This imagination would be a motion, neither occurring without sense, huh? Nor present in what does not have sense. But the one having imagination does and suffers many things due to it, huh? He acts upon it sometimes as if he was what? Sensing, huh? Okay. And is both what, true and false, huh? He's going to start to explain why this should be so. And now he goes back to the senses and to we have to recall the division of the sensible.

[7:12] Remember that? Now he's going to talk about deception even in the senses, but much more so in the case of imagining. But regarding the three sensibles that we talked about before, we talked about the sensible as such

[7:38] and the sensible by happening, huh? And the first we divided into two. If you recall, the private sensibles that are known only by one sense, right?

[7:59] Sometimes you see the proper sensibles, the proper sensible, proper or private to one, right? And then the common sensibles that are known by more than one sense.

[8:15] Now remember, huh? In daily life, huh, we'll say we see all these and not distinguish between them. I see the color of your robes, right? Okay, I see your shape, right? And I see a man, right? Now we don't make any distinction dramatically, right, in a way of speech. But do I see the blackness of your robe? Do I see your shape? And do I see you, a man?

[8:53] Are these all objects of my eye in the same way? See, no. The blackness of your clothing is seen only by my eye. I can't hear that blackness. I can't smell it or taste it or touch it, right? But your shape, I can see your shape. I could feel your shape, right? Okay.

[9:19] Um, so that shape would be called a common sensible. It's sensed by more than one sense, okay? And your extension, right, huh? Okay. I can feel the surface of the desk. I can see the surface of the desk. So the surface of the desk or the table here is a common what sensible, right?

[9:45] But now, do I see a man as such? Or do I just see the color and the shape of a man and his size? And none of this is the man himself.

[10:00] You can see why Descartes got mixed up, right? Because in material things, he said their substance is their what—length and width and depth. Is that what's most fundamental in a body, in a man or a dog or a tree or a stone? It's length, width, and depth.

[10:28] I make a joke, and I say Descartes never grew up. Because if your size was what's most fundamental in you, if that's you, your size,

[10:45] then you couldn't grow up, could you? Growing up means that the same person has what a different size, right? So the person is something more fundamental than his what size, but the senses know nothing more fundamental than size, length, and width, and what depth, right? So

[11:13] when we use the word body, say in geometry, we say a sphere is a what body, right? We use the word body in the genus of substance. The word is equivocal, but there is a connection between the two meanings.

[11:32] So as far as these three are concerned, Aristotle is going to go on now and talk a bit about deception. Of these three, which is the senses hardly ever deceived about?

[11:50] First. Yeah, yeah. It's only if the sense organ is in some way what maybe injured or affected, right? If you're eating a lot of candy or eating a lot of hot stuff, right? You know, you can't taste other things properly. If you're sick, something might not taste right or something, right? But unless the sense organ is what

[12:18] injured or sick or something like that, it's going. The sweet is going to taste sweet, right? Salt is going to taste salty, right? And so you give somebody a potato chip or a potato chip or something, you know. He's like, "Oh, this is sweet." You know, I mean, how do you ever see anybody in that situation? Do you give them a piece of candy? Oh, this is salty.

[12:42] They don't seem to make any mistake about that. Okay. But we know, like, I always heard my mother saying, you know, eat your orange before you eat your candy, right? If you eat the candy first, your tongue is affected, and the orange seems what bitter. See. Okay. So, and wine tasters sometimes talk about, well, if you have this kind of food or material, right, before the wine's going to taste a little bit what different, right?

[13:14] So if your organ is already affected. But generally speaking, you could say that the senses, the most part, are not deceived about their own private what objects. The heart is not going to feel soft, right? If you lay your head on a stone, it's not going to feel soft. If you lay your head on the soft pillow, it's not going to feel hard, right? But now, of these other two, which one is more apt to deceive us?

[13:49] Third one, which, for example, well, we are deceived by that often, but as much as we are deceived by the commonsensible. I see a man, or a dog, or a cat. You know, I saw a dog in here, a little wild dog, right? And sometimes I see a cat in here, right? Am I deceived very often about those things?

[14:30] A fish, right? I've been giving that simple example before, right? A commonsensible, right? Where length you're easily deceived, right, by appearance or something like that. And you know how people say, you know, you've been sitting some time, maybe at a train station waiting for the train to go out. and suddenly you think your train's in motion, or the train. next. to you You're confused, right? So that you're easily deceived by those things and think that at distance you know it's small, and you get closer.

[15:08] I remember being down in down the southwest there, 290, down Las Vegas, you know, right across the plains. It was not very far away. Seems to drive, drive, drive. You know, so you're easily deceived as to how far something is away, right?

[15:27] How tall it is and so on. So, so Aristotle's going to talk first about sensing, and then about imagining, but in reference to these three things.

[15:47] So in 319, he says, "Huh, the sensation of the proper sensibles, if it proper now in the sense of private to one's sense, is true, or at least it's what has least falsity, right? Okay. If your tongue is infected or you're sick and fever and so on, might be affected a bit. Second, however, is sensing those things which are accidents of the sensibles, and here one can already be deceived.

[16:19] For one is not deceived; the white is, but one is deceived as to whether the white is this or something else. So if I put the what sugar in the salt, salt in the sugar bowl, you might be deceived temporarily, right? Okay, but not for too long, right?

[16:38] Third is sensation of the common sensibles, the things following upon the accidental sensibles, which the proper are present, and he means motion and magnitude and the other five of what we spoke, right? Shape and so on. There have been some of these 18th century houses; they had real sense of symmetry, huh? We don't have, I guess. A lot of rooms would have to have what? We're not just one door there; you have a door on either side, right, to make it symmetrical.

[17:07] Well, sometimes they'd have a real door here and a parent door over there, right? Kind of interesting, right? But but they might be deceiving you even about whether it's what engraved or you know has depth and so on. So you're more easily deceived by the common sensibles than by the accidental sensibles.

[17:35] Concerning which, right away, erring according to sense is greatest, and that's kind of strange because you'd think the accidental would be what we're more easily deceived because these are sensed as such. I suppose it's because of the reason being present, huh? And so when I see the shape of a man or the shape of a dog or the shape of a cat. I recognize this as a a man or a dog or a cat or something.

[18:00] It's found sensible, very easily to see. I'm sorry, sensible by happening What is that again? Something is not sensed as such, but it's known by something else in us, like reason, when we sense. Okay, so that's what you say when we. I see. I see. We think it's sugar when it's salt. That's what you're saying. Yeah, sugar is is not perceived as such. The color of the sugar, right, or the shape of the sugar is seen, right.

[18:34] Okay, so yeah, yeah. There's a lesser sense in which we speak of what's known by one sense as being accidental to another sense, right? Okay. Shakespeare says in the sonnet, "I love to hear my mistress's voice," he says, "Although I know that music hath a far more pleasant sound." Okay. She's not rejoicing in the sound of her voice as such, right? So if I the telephone rings, I pick it up, and it's someone I love, and I recognize their tone of their voice right away, right?

[19:09] I rejoice more than if I have Pavarotti maybe at the other end of the line or somebody that has a beautiful voice, right? But it's not as voice that I'm delighting in this, right? Was that person, right? I'm now in some kind of communication with, right? You see.

[19:32] And of course, we notice that happens a lot, you know, where people will associate sometimes a song, right, with a certain place where they heard that song. Or they associate even a smell, right, with a certain place, right, where that smell was predominant, right, and make them think of a certain place when they come across the smell again. So, but it's accidental, right? Yeah. To that, huh?

[20:06] I remember mother mother saying, "You know, sometimes, you know, I never liked that name. " You see, you know, you know how people like some names. and others you don't like. but then you get or meet somebody who has a name, and you like the person. All of a sudden, you start to like the name, right? Are you really liking the name as such, huh? See. No, but but you don't realize that it's kind of what accidental now that you rejoice in that name.

[20:35] I mean the the list of the names yesterday, and there was a girl whose name was last name is Champagne. I said, "Do you like it? " I said. She must have a lot of jokes about this name, eh? He means champagne.

[20:58] But you get a little, you know, different. Names kind of funny in some ways, huh? But uh, it was quite accidental to person, right? You see? But it kind of attracts me. The name Champagne can't help but notice this person.

[21:17] But accidental in the strict sense is something that none of the senses as such know, but reason, right? I mentioned before how the Latin word substance has the same etymology as English word what? Understanding. Understanding, yeah.

[21:47] And that's a kind of a sign that substance is known only by the what? Understanding. It's a proper object of understanding. It's very significant.

[22:03] Substance is named because it stands under all the what? Accidents. And the private sensibles—they're all accidents in the third species of quality, right? And the common sensibles are tied up with the continuous, but that's quantity, right? So the senses as such don't know what substance, right? It's the understanding that knows substance, huh? So that's a marvelous word, understanding in English. huh It's one of the, you know, Monsignor Dionne used to say you know when he talked about Greek and Latin and French and English and so on used to say, you know, when he talked about Greek and Latin and French and English and so on, those common languages up there.

[22:50] Now sometimes one language has a better word than the other languages do, and sometimes vice versa. I think the you know the Latin word for wisdom, sapientia, is marvelous because it comes from the idea of savor, right? Something to savor.

[23:09] Um, and I don't think the English word wisdom has that same what? Kind of creepiness, huh? Something in the Latin. We also speak of the cause as what underlying. You hear this phrase, the underlying cause, right?

[23:35] So, what does it mean to understand Stand in effect? It means to know the cause that is said to stand under that, right? What does it mean to understand a word?

[23:57] You see, we speak as if the name was placed upon something. Even Latin, they'll say that, "infusitio nominis," the placing upon the name, right? And even English will speak of putting a label upon something, putting a name upon it, right? Placing a name upon it. So the thing named is said to stand under the name, right? So to understand the name is to what? Know the meaning or the thing that stands under that name.

[24:32] And the English word for cause we mentioned before, that Shakespeare puns on a couple times at least, is the word ground, right? Ground of course stands under other things, huh?

[24:50] So it's a marvelous word, the English word understanding, huh? So different languages sometimes, different words have something very good about them. You have to kind of at least, come and buy the word itself, you can go to the language where it's most

[25:19] revealing. So in the beginning of three nineteen, there, and on page thirty four, in the first line there, and thirty five, he's saying that the senses are hardly ever deceived about their own proper or private sensibles, huh? Because that's what they're what designed to know, right? But about the accidental sensibles, they're sometimes deceived, huh? But most commonly, if they're deceived at all, they're deceived as regards the what common sensibles, huh?

[25:53] And that's interesting, huh? Let me just compare it to private and common, here. because sometimes when they compare reason to the senses, they'll say if reason knows something immediately, it's pretty sure about it. But if it knows or has to know one thing to another, it's more apt to be what mistaken, right? And the more things to which you have to come know something, the more possibility of what a mistake, right?

[26:24] A chain is no stronger than its weakest link I guess that's a problem with computers now. You see, they're getting so complicated, right? That if one thing goes wrong, you know, everything can be what affected, right? I almost have to install a whole program again because something has slipped out of place. See, but it's something like that here. See, because the senses know the common sensibles, not by discourse, but in a way, it knows the common sensibles as a modification of the proper sensibles.

[27:04] So I know the surface of the desk and the shape of the desk, um, through the color of the desk, right? That the color is spread out, right? And it ends here, ends there, and so on, right? So it's not really that the senses are are reasoning from one to the other, right? but it's something like that, right? And so the fact that you are more deceived about the common sensibles than about the private sensibles, right, It's like the fact that reason is more deceived about those things it has to reason to, from other things than those things it knows without having to reason at all.

[27:48] Okay. So one would not be so easily deceived that a whole is more than a part, right? But there are theorems in geometry where a student might be deceived. You might say, you know, if a rectangle has more perimeter, does it have more area? Of course, right. Now, if you know my favorite theorem, there, in Book Five, and I mean Proposition five in Book Two, right? You can have less perimeter and more area, right?

[28:21] But it would seem to most people, maybe everybody in the beginning, that if you have more perimeter, if you use more fence, you must have enclosed more area. And they say the old crooked geometers, you know, in the old days, they'd sell land by perimeter. So they gave you a piece of land that has more perimeter. You think you are getting more land, right? You don't know in geometry.

[28:47] and he's getting more land, even though he's getting less perimeter. That's amazing, isn't it? Yeah. So you have you have let's say five by five, and the perimeter is what twenty, and the area is twenty five. And you have take an obvious example here, two by ten, and the perimeter is what more than twenty is twenty four. That the area is only what twenty. So I have more area.

[29:27] Twenty-five is more area than twenty, but down here the perimeter is what ten to twenty-four. So with more fence, I have less what area? of land, Less area. But one might easily be deceived about this before he studies geometry. You might think if you, you know, I've got more fence than you. I should have imposed more land than you did.

[30:00] What's that famous example? You know, it's a Russian story where the guy is given the offer. He can have all the land he can run around in the course of the day. Yeah, of course he gets greedy, you know. So he he runs more than he has stamina, and he just gets back, you know. And of course he collapses and dies. So it's got a moral to the story, right?

[30:25] I mean, suppose you were told, right, you know, as much land as you can run around. Well, some of you might run at the same speed longer and yet get less land than someone else, right? Who knows geometry? I mean, you and I were equally fast, let's say, as runners, huh? And and and you you got more land. You ran less than me. There must be something crooked here.

[30:55] No. I get the land. I ran around in less time, going at the same speed. Yeah, but you took more time, right? Who could that be?

[31:14] They said even some of the ship pilots in the old days they would estimate the size of an island by how long it took to sail around it. Right. Of course, in those days they were afraid to leave the land very much because they did not have any navigation. Well, that's kind of absurd because they in and out and you know like the fjords or something, right?

[31:32] And so it takes you longer to get around this island. Therefore, it must be bigger than that island, but it ain't necessarily so. Now notice, if the senses are deceived, huh? Especially as regards the common sensibles, less so by the accidental sensibles, and least or not at all the private sensibles, Then, in this imagining that follows upon sense, right, when the senses move us within, you will be deceived in the same way, but even what more so.

[32:16] Because your emotion is what weaker, right? Okay. That's what he's thinking of. He's thinking of the fact that when I look at you and I see your shape and your color and so on, but when I close my eyes, you're no longer acting upon my eyes, but I still see you and your color and your shape. Isn't that true? But it's not quite as what vivid, or you see.

[32:45] So there's more possibility of what deception, and especially if I walk away for a while. When I was a little boy there in grade school, huh? I remember we'd walk home from grade school and several blocks, and we used to play a game. I remember, and you'd what stop in front of a house, and you'd have what a few seconds to look at the house, right? You had to close your eyes, and the other kids would what ask you how many windows does it have?

[33:15] Does it have shutters? And they go through these things, right? And you would be often mistaken as to what you had what. Just seen. Yeah, yeah, but you have some impression of that house left in you once you close your eyes, but it's kind of what weak, huh? And the further you get away from it, the weaker it becomes, huh? Yeah. As I mentioned, how Hume thinks that what thoughts are faded sensations.

[33:48] He's really thinking of what imagining, right? You see, he's back in the confusion of thinking that thought is a kind of what sensing, but a kind of inward sensing, huh? So it's faded senses. He puts the senses down, puts the reason down, kind of a lower level, right? Faded, dull senses, huh?

[34:22] Okay. But the motion, top of page thirty-five now. But the motion coming to be from the act of sense will differ. The motion will differ from these three sensings, and the first sensation being present is true, but the others may be false, both in the presence and the absence of sensation, and mostly when the sensible is far away. If therefore nothing else has the above mentioned characteristics except imagining, well, this is what was said.

[34:55] Imagination would be a motion coming to be from sense according to act. He's kind of coming back to the definition of what imagining is, right? Through this property of it, right, that it's weaker, right, and more easily deceived, right, by the what?

[35:15] In the absence of sensing, right. So I'm looking at that house. I'm not so easily deceived as to how many windows there are, and that's a common sensible, right? If I close my eyes, I am what?

[35:30] More easily deceived, huh? May a fortiori, if I, if the image, image, you know, lingers for a day or so, right, huh? When I recall what I saw, I often what? Discover falsity in my image if I go back to the what? Original.

[35:50] Of course, you notice something like that in in in memorizing something. I'll memorize things, a passage in Shakespeare, and so on, and I'll recite it more or less perfectly, and then maybe I don't think about it for a while, and it gets fake, and then I start to play with the the words, and I end up getting things a little bit what? Wrong, and I go back and look at the text again, and I say, gee whiz, I'm imagining.

[36:17] Shakespeare would have said it a little differently than he did. I find that happens all the time, right? Very common thing, right? On three twenty, he's explaining the Greek word there.

[36:41] I was looking the Greek dictionary there. You know, phos is kind of a contraction of phaos, which has the idea of light, huh? And you get the verb form for fantasia, and the first meaning of it is to bring to light, huh? I think in English too, we'll say you know that appears to be so, that seems to be so, right? We use a word that seems to be tied up with what the eye, right?

[37:07] And the eye is the most what spiritual of the senses, and seems to be the closest to what imagining, huh? We generally think of of the image as being something more what like a picture than we do of anything else, huh? Although it's not really limited to that sense, huh? But it seems more spiritual. And Shakespeare says, you know, my eye has played the painter. Interesting metaphor, right?

[37:37] You know, his eye has painted the beloved. Okay. But notice the the painter there is in between the what the person and what's stored now inside, right?

[37:55] That's kind of metaphor. What's actually taking place is that the senses are being moved by the exterior object, and they move something further within. And they move it in a way like the way they've been moved, except that the motion they communicate to something within is weaker than their own motion, and therefore it's faded, as Hume says, and therefore you're more apt to what be deceived, huh?

[38:28] Okay. And so I know some people look at a text, you know, they often what. I know some church, you know, when they get up to to read, sometime you know, a person who's not a professor, they often you know are kind of afraid to look up in the audience for fear that they're going to lose their place, right? You see, and sometimes people, you know, they can't when they look up and they and they recite the words that they've just seen, they what?

[39:04] Have something out of place or you know not exactly right, huh? Sometimes it's funny, it's an intentional mistake, but you do have that, huh? Well, if they just you know read it, you know, using their senses, they wouldn't make quite so many mistakes. But they they seem to read, you know, not even see altogether what they're they're reading. You find that, huh? They make mistake in in reading it.

[39:37] Now, in the last paragraph, he's talking about how the other animals, especially, but also men sometimes live and act on these images, huh? The animals because they have nothing better, in a sense, than the images to go by, and men when their reason is what eclipsed, huh? And he'll talk about how reason is eclipsed a bit there, but this will come up again later on in the after he takes up reason, huh?

[40:10] And because what remains is also similar to the sensations, animals do many things according to these images, just as they do many things according to their what senses, right? Some because they do not have understanding or reason like the beasts, right? Some like men because the understanding is eclipsed by passion by some strong what emotion or feeling, right? Or disease, right? Like in the madman, right? Or sleep, right?

[40:44] Huh? So people sometimes do in sleep what they wouldn't do when they're awake, right? Because their reason seems to be what eclipsed, right? They don't have the full use of reason there in their dreams, huh?

[41:06] So you see the way Shakespeare presents Othello there when he kills his wife, you know, huh? Or the way he presents Romeo when he comes back to take his life, right? They seem to be what dominated by the imagination, right?

[41:25] Because their reason has been what eclipsed by what in this case passion, right? Huh? When you read about these you know sick people who do these horrible things in the newspaper and so on, they're diseased, right? Huh?

[41:42] Or then people in sleep sometimes do things, right? Okay, that they wouldn't do awake, huh? But again, their reason is eclipsed in one of these ways.

[41:56] So when they talk about what the means of persuasion there in the Rhetoric, huh? And Aristotle distinguishes three means of persuasion, but the most important is what.

[42:14] The image, right, of the speaker. The second is the way he moves the emotions, right, prejudices of his audience. And the third, and least important, is the arguments or apparent arguments he gives. And so, if you read

[42:36] Othello, Iago's persuasion of Othello, right, it follows those three means of persuasion. And because he projects a certain image of himself, right, Othello trusts him and trusts his judgment, right, and then he's more apt to, you know, be suspicious of his wife because he sees Iago, a very careful man who doesn't like to state his suspicions, right, you know, and who hates to say anything bad about other people, right.

[43:11] But all these things, you see, and. The same way with Mark Anthony's speech there. I had a student in class, yesterday. his name was Mark Anthony. Oh yeah. There's two names, yeah.

[43:33] I was telling you how my father had said when he came to the hospital, "about my brother Mark. Let's call him Marcus Aurelius. " Well, Marcus Aurelius, but but when I was in grade school there, we used to play with a boy that had come in the summer there, to visit his grandmother. what was his name was Marcus Aurelius. So, kind of interesting name. This guy Mark Mark Antony, I couldn't help but think of the Roman plays and Plutarch and so on.

[44:06] So his definition of imagination is that last line of three nineteen, or? Yeah, yeah, and that that's kind of you know said before that, but he's coming back to it there, right? It's a motion made by the sense and act, he says. Okay. But you got to realize what he's talking about there, right? Huh? He's talking about what you can experience now if you look intensely at me or something else in this room, or look at Father Charbel charbel over there or something, right?

[44:37] And you close your eyes, and I still see him, but not as clearly as I see him when open my eyes. But he continues there inside me, right? But in a somewhat you know faded compared to the way I see him with my eyes open, huh? So my eyes have been moved by his picture there, and then the eye becomes a moved mover. And that motion that it causes more within us, right?

[45:06] When it's actually moved itself, that's the original what? Imagining, right? Okay. But because we can to some extent what retain these images afterwards, right?

[45:23] We can also come back upon them and what manipulate them, right? And that's the way in which we sometimes use, in a different sense, the word imagination. Okay. That would be another power. Yeah, yeah. I see. In Thomas, you see, you'd have two types of common sense: disimagining them. But but the preservation of these images is a what another right power, right? And the reason why they think is another power, the reason that Thomas gives or Aristotle gives goes back to earlier thinkers, is that what easily receives something and matter doesn't easily doesn't retain it well, right?

[46:16] And what retains something well doesn't easily receive, right? So we see this as requiring a different type of body, right? then? Easily receive these things and preserve them, right? Huh? Okay. If you look sometime at at the Summa Theologiae where Thomas considers the soul, We'll see it taking up some questions, you know, about the inward senses and other things that Aristotle doesn't take up here explicitly, huh?

[46:48] And we may do that sometime, okay? No, I'm not being deceived in the common senses. Where exactly is the deception? Like I say, you look bigger than the tree back there, isn't it? I mean, the colors that I'm getting from you and the tree are

[47:13] in that proportion. That's what I'm really seeing. Yeah. Is there is deception in the judgment or in the in the senses itself? Well, in a sense, it appears that way to the senses, right?

[47:33] So when I draw those lines there, right, doesn't the one below seem longer than the one above? But this is going to be even more to the what to imagination, huh? Because you're further removed from the thing.

[48:06] You think there's something else in us that is judging that, huh? You're talking about you know statements you might make about that's another question, right? Okay. But then there'd be reason being what deceived by following imagination.

[48:29] If my reason were it was to follow the way it seems to me, right, then my reason could be deceived, but that would be reason being deceived by imagination.

[48:51] But the more you get removed from the senses, we can easily imagine things to be other than they are. That's involving what maybe something of the images that we already have retained, right? That uses the word imagination in a somewhat different sense, huh? Let me say

[49:23] the size of the color, the white color of those two lines, hasn't changed at all, even for my eyes. No, I mean, if they were, if one of those is a yellow line, one is a blue line, your eyes probably wouldn't take, you know, confuse those two, right? Yellow would look like a yellow line, the blue like a blue line, right? When you get to the idea of the length, the, common sensible, then you are more easily deceived.

[50:03] And these whole these optical illusions are all based on the common sensibles, aren't they? Because there are other ways they draw so the line would appear bent when it's not bent. I've seen these done, and someone saw me if you know, somebody sent him the computer a diagram there where it looks like it's what going around a circle, and it's not. So they see they have motion and there's no motion, huh?

[50:30] And uh so one it seems to be true that these optical illusions are tied up with the common sensibles. That's kind of a confirmation what Aristotle is what saying,

[50:47] and it seems to deceive it as regards the private sensibles. You'd have to affect the organ or else put on what, like in the Wizard of Oz, put on these green glasses or something, right? But then, in sense, you're kind of what? It's like changing the eye in a sense, right? So it doesn't we see things as they are. I know some of you get this beautiful fall foliage later on, of course it always looks better in a bright day and the fall foliage, but if I have my sunglasses on and I'm driving to school, it's much more brilliant, than it is.

[51:23] It's beautiful. I just take it off, It's still beautiful, but it's not quite as beautiful. It kind of bothers me. Sunglasses should be able to do this for me, but

[51:36] I'm not going to start wearing special glasses just to make everything look better. Remember a guy though who was had been a steady, you know, several packs a day smoker, and he'd given up smoking, right? And I was was a bachelor, and I was eating out in restaurants with him, and I was a bachelor, and he was discovering the taste of all these foods again, right? You know, I forgot how this tasted.

[52:11] You know, I can really it affected his sense of taste, all that smoking, huh? And all of a sudden he was, you know. Taste of these things.

[52:23] In the old days, when I taught at Saint Mary's, there, you know, you'd have these some nice Christian brothers. Oh, they had these nice dinners. The Christian brothers' wines, you know, and because in those days, you know, it wasn't all this propaganda against smoking. You know, so smoking was fairly common, and often, you know, you'd be offered a cigarette or something there, one of these social things before dinner, and Father Mark had always, you know, warning me, you know, not to.

[52:46] My sense of taste don't fail to, but the smoking might affect that. See, the same way if you eat hot stuff, right? You see, I mean, you know, if I was eating a pepperoni pizza, I wouldn't ever serve a Cabernet Sauvignon with that because you couldn't taste. it You could a Chianti could kind of cut through it, but but a Cabernet Sauvignon would be lost on pepperoni.

[53:11] And see, we had some kind of a hot, you know, Chinese dish of some sort. Your sense of taste is kind of ruined. The doctor Wallet there, who does some wine tasting, you know, he was going to a real expensive wine tasting, you know, you pay, you know, fifteen hundred dollars something like that, you know, and and he was in a hurry in the hospital and he drank a cup of hot coffee and burnt his tongue right.

[53:37] Oh, what am I going to do? At least I can sniff the wine. But you know, but apart from those injuries like that, right, or if you're sick or something, right, your senses are not going to be deceived hardly ever about their own proper object, private objects.

[53:54] Okay. Now next time we'll start here with chapter four. The first reading there, reading seven, and Thomas is almost the first page, and then reading eight starts at three twenty-eight and goes over to three thirty. So I think two readings is usually in most cases and enough to try to do a one one session here, you know, take a break between the first and the second readings.

[54:22] But here he's going to begin to talk about what reason, right? Universal reason, and we'll see how he proceeds next time. Okay. You had another question. You said if we had a little time before, you wanted to talk about what was that now?

[54:43] Oh yeah. Just one thing that. And so they miss so much of what scripture is saying Yeah, yeah. I was thinking about the the Latin word compose, or composition. As you perhaps know, the the third question in the Summa Theologiae is about the simplicity of God, right? But like most things in theology, you proceed in the via negativa. So what Thomas is showing there is that God is not composed in any way, right?

[55:36] And what he does in the question three is the first six articles are dealing with six different kinds of composition found in the creature. And he gives reasons to negate each of these kinds of composition. Okay. So the first article is God is not a body, right? Okay. Is not composed of quantity of parts. Second article is that God is not composed of body and soul, right, or matter and form, right?

[56:12] There's no composition of matter and form in God. And the third article is that there is no composition in God of what nature, what He is, and individual, right, or the subject. And the fourth article is there is no composition in God of substance and existence, huh? And then the fifth one is there is no composition of genus and difference in God. God doesn't have any. That's more than mine, right?

[56:42] But there is no genus. God's not in any genus. Have any differences? And the sixth article is there is no composition of substance and what accident, right? And then the seventh article he shows universally there is no composition in God, right? Okay. Now, incidentally, if you ever read the Summa Contra Gentiles, the order is just the reverse. In the Summa Contra Gentiles, he shows in general that God is not composed, and then he shows each of these particular kinds of composition.

[57:19] Well, there is one exception there, but you have to look into that detail right now. Okay, then the eighth article is that God doesn't enter into composition of anything else, right? Okay. Now, I was thinking about that, and

[57:40] thinking about how similar this would be if you had a question whereby you show God has no parts, and He's not a part of anything. Okay. Instead of saying God is what not composed, and He doesn't enter into composition of anything, right? Okay. Now, going back to what we were saying before, that the names of what the continuous or what is found to be continuous are carried over to other things that are not continuous.

[58:29] I mentioned how the first meaning of beginning and the first meaning of end, the first meaning of before, right, even the first meaning of part—they're all names of something continuous or something that is in the continuous, huh? And then they're carried over to things that are not continuous.

[58:54] Now, give an example here. Take a simple example: the body and soul. But get the thing across. If you ask somebody what are the parts of the word "cat," what the average person say?

[59:18] C A and T. Yeah. And now if you ask him, is any other part besides those three? Probably say no, right? And it seems to be right because you take away the C, A, and T, there's no part left, is there? So it's the only parts, right? Okay. Now,

[59:45] likewise, you'd say with the word dog, right? The parts of the word dog are D, O, and G, right? But then someone comes along and says, yeah, but what about the word act? How about the word God?

[1:00:03] Same letters, right? So isn't there something in the word cat besides the three letters? Is that a part of the word? But now, when you say there's something else, which is not too hard to see in this case, it's an order, right? Order those. You seem to be using the word part in a different meaning, aren't you?

[1:00:34] Now, so the first meaning of the word part is the quantitative parts. So if I, you know, divide up this table, right, into its parts, cut something up into parts, take the pie and cut it up, right? Okay. But these parts, they what? Come together, right? Have a common boundary.

[1:01:02] But now, when you come to the letters and the order of the letters, do they meet at a common boundary? You can make the letters continuous,

[1:01:17] right? Okay. The C, that's the A, that's the T, right? Continuous. But is the order of the letters and the letters continuous? No. Now, what does the word composed mean? What's the etymology of the word composed? Placed together? Yeah, put together, really, huh? Placed together, yeah. Compositio

[1:01:53] When you speak of putting together something, what kind of parts are you first thinking of? Yeah, you're thinking of of parts that can exist maybe independently one of the other, right? And you bring them together and you put them together, right? You put together a lot of things in your life, right? You buy something, you got this, all these parts, and you got these directions that you're supposed to try to follow, right?

[1:02:23] And I notice now in in the in Spags and you know Spags down there, places like that, where they sell outdoor grills, right? And they have one price for unassembled grill, another one. And and having experience trying to assemble one of these bills before, you know, you say it's almost worth the the difference in price to assemble one rather than the other one, right? But no, you're putting together something in a kind of what continuous or contiguous at least way, right?

[1:03:00] But now, is that the way you put together matter in form? You know, if I have rubber here, I have a rubber ball, so I take some rubber and I take, you know, spherical shape and I put them together, right? See?