Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
23. Metaphysics III, Second Reading: Which Causes Wisdom Studies, the Axioms, and Whether the Way We Know Must Be the Way Things Are
Class of 2005-03-31
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/023-metaphysics-iii-second-reading-which-causes-wisdom-studies/

[0:00] Let's start to look at the second reading now. Now, the distinction between the questions in the second reading and the third reading, right, is explained by Thomas. From what Aristotle shows us at the end of the second book, right? At the end of the second book,

[0:31] he says that you can't at the same time learn reasoned-out knowledge and the way of reasoned-out knowledge, and it's not easy to get either one, right? And the way of reasoned-out knowledge has to fit what that reasoned-out knowledge is about,

[0:54] and therefore the questions about what wisdom is about come before the questions about the things themselves. Do you follow me a little bit there? Okay. So the second reading is for the most part. There'll be a couple exceptions to that, but for the most part, the second reading is questions as regards what wisdom is about, right? Questions that have to be answered before you can know the way or the road of a wisdom, and then the third reading is questions about the things themselves.

[1:38] Okay. So the distinction of the questions here is based upon that distinction at the end of of the second book. Okay. Now, let's come back upon that distinction for a minute again. You could say, in all of our knowledge, you can distinguish between what we know and how we know, right?

[2:03] It's kind of funny. Yesterday, I was had the students at the house there, you know, and we're touching upon this, because it's in a different context. And I just happened that day to be reading the tenth chapter of the Gospel of Saint Matthew, and that's the chapter where we learn the names of the twelve apostles, and they're being sent forth now by Christ to preach and heal, so on, and Christ's giving them instructions and advice, right?

[2:38] And also how they're going to be persecuted and so on, and drawn in front of courts and so on, and he says, "But don't be disturbed or worry about what you're going to say." Okay. But if you look at the actual text there, it says two things Christ says. How are you going to speak? And what you going to say? And in the Greek, it's it's pos, how you know, which the Latin text sometimes like quomodo right, in what way?

[3:12] And then quid right? Okay. Well, I was making that distinction and talking about custom, right? You know, saying how custom has a great influence both upon how we think and what we think.

[3:32] And in that fifth reading, there of the second book of wisdom, Aristotle is talking about the influence of custom upon how we think, right? So men, some men he says, are accustomed to think mathematically, right? And they want to proceed mathematically everywhere, right? Okay. You see that very much in the Pythagoreans and the moderns because of the physical sciences, huh? That's why we have this confusion there of mathematical logic, right?

[4:04] Everything's got to be mathematical, symbolic logic. But Thomas, in the beginning, said the Summa contra Gentiles when he's talking about the existence of God being in need of proof, right, and not being obvious. That people think it's obvious because of custom, you know, from the time they're little children. So, or I speak to my students, and I say, "is water H2O? No, yeah, definitely, no doubt about it.

[4:33] And but they they have no proof of this. They can't even describe the experiments that someone might have used to guess this. Okay. So you can distinguish then between what you know and how you know, right? And Aristotle says, in the case of reasoned out knowledge, it's not easy either one of these.

[4:54] So the things that we're going to learn about in wisdom are difficult to know, but it's also difficult to know how we should know these things. Okay.

[5:15] It's difficult to know God, even the way we can know him, and it's difficult to know how we should know God. There's problems about both, right? Okay. So there's problems about the things, and that will be the third reading, right? And problems about how we should know, right? But presupposed to how we should know is is what it is we're trying to know, and that how we know should, in some sense, fit what we're what trying to know trying to know, right?

[5:49] Okay. So you see that Thomas uses the end of the second book, right? With the distinction Aristotle makes there and so on, to explain the difference between the second reading and the third reading. Okay.

[6:10] Now I divided it like Thomas does the second reading into nine questions, right? Although some of them can be subdivided, right? And then in the third reading there'll be fourteen questions, right? Okay. Now, how are the, yeah?

[6:38] Or did you get the first one? This is from the last time. That's quite a lot. We're on book three, there. yeah. Okay. Now, in the second reading here, notice we we know from the proemium a little bit about what wisdom is about, right? We know that wisdom is about causes, right? Eventually, the first causes. We also said that the wise man knows all things, in some way, right?

[7:09] Okay. So this first question is about the causes that wisdom is about, right? Okay. And then the other questions are about the things. Okay. Well, maybe

[7:29] there's another question that's going to be a little surprising there in between, okay? Okay. But the first two questions are about the causes or the beginnings, and then the the other ones about the things, right? I mean, about the things that's about. So let's look at the first one here, and then we'll kind of unfold this a bit. here. Because Aristotle's just stated the question here, and then you go in.

[7:51] You know, later on to the dialectic about it, but we'll kind of combine those two. The first difficulty is that about which we doubted in paving the way, whether it belongs to one or many forms or reasoned out knowledge to consider the causes. Now, if you recall, and this is something we learned in the first book in the Natural Philosophy, there are four kinds of causes. Hmm.

[8:16] Now, causes that which something depends upon, something that is responsible for things' existence or coming into existence. So this wooden table, in some way, wood is responsible for this wooden table, right? Mm-hmm. But in another way, the shape of the table is responsible for the wooden table, and yet another way, the mover, the carpenter, is responsible for this, right?

[8:44] Having something to sit our papers upon or or lunch on or whatever it is, is another reason, another cause, right? So you have matter, form, mover, and end; those four causes, huh? Now. Which causes would wisdom be about?

[9:05] Now, if you go to the natural philosophers before Aristotle, what causes do they talk about? I'm talking about matter all the time. Matter, yeah, they all talk about some kind of matter. And then when you get to, especially in Empedocles and Anaxagoras, you talk about the mover too, right? So you might say, well, the natural philosopher he talks about matter and what? Mover, right? Okay. Now you go to the geometer.

[9:34] what does he talk about? just form? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you go to the what? Moral philosopher. he's talking about end or purpose, right? Okay. So it seems the different sciences talk about different causes, right? So which cause should the wise men talk about? What's this thing? The first cause. All of them, yeah, but it didn't seem that the same science talks about all. See, because the natural philosophers are only talking about matter and mover.

[10:12] See, like the modern physicists are talking about mass and force, you know, a little bit like that, right? But that's what they seem to talk about.

[10:23] The mathematician about form, the more philosopher about purpose. It seems that one science can't talk about all causes, right? So, which one should the wise men talk about? Can you talk about all causes? No science does that. You know, all all of them were brought in in physics. Aristotle talked about form along with, matter and also fire, yeah. But he's perceived as some kind of probability, right?

[10:53] And the probability is that the natural philosophers talking just about matter and mover, right? That's what the guys in the form did, right? And so these mathematicians like Pythagoras try to bring in form or something like that, right? And they talk about that kind of cause, and then they, you know, Socrates wants to talk about the purpose of man and so on And ethics. huh? You guys said earlier, wouldn't you make a strong argument that metaphysics would talk about all all causes or at least matter or not?

[11:28] I mean, form into that. Well, see, someone might say if everything is material, then matter is a cause of everything, right? But if everything is material, maybe wisdom would be the natural philosophy, wouldn't it Metaphysica, would be after natural philosophy, wouldn't it? Yeah, yeah. it'd be part of it, and in natural philosophy, Aristotle proved you had an unmoved mover, something, if something immaterial, totally. Okay, okay, and in the De Anima, right?

[11:59] The soul is immortal, right? Okay, but of course that's going to be another question they'll come up here, right? Are there immaterial substances, right? Okay, that's going to be involved, right? What wisdom is about. Now that's going to be the exception. We'll see when we get into the next page. That Aristotle asked those questions not because they're questions about what wisdom is about. Until you answer the question whether there are immaterial substances or not, you can't say what the wisdom is just about.

[12:30] That's going to influence this question here too, right? How important is matter for the wise man? If everything is material and comes out of some kind of matter, then matter can be very important. But if there are immaterial things, and matter is only a particular cause, a cause of material things, and not a cause of these separate, these separate, yeah, yeah. Okay. And also, when you're talking about these other sciences like ethics and and.

[12:57] Or geometry and form. Yeah. There you're using form in just a limited way. Likewise, then you're talking about the particular end of man, not the end of yeah all of everything. Yeah, yeah. So you see some problems here about which causes wisdom to be about it. Now, the second question Aristotle asks, I think this is one that occurred more to Aristotle than to his predecessors, right?

[13:25] Because going back again to that first question, again, the the the Platonists, right, somewhat and the Pythagoreans, they wanted to reduce everything to numbers, right? They wanted to make form the only cause.

[13:42] So they disagree, right? There's a disagreement already between the thinkers. When modern mathematical physics became more and more mathematical, Schrodinger, right? Schrodinger, who's very important physicist in terms of the mathematical theories of the atom, right? Um, he perfected the mathematics of wave mechanics, huh? And then Heisenberg came out same year with his quantum mechanics with different mathematics. And then Schrodinger showed the equivalence of his two mathematical formalisms.

[14:24] But he says, you know, the modern atom consists of no stuff at all. And he compares it to Plato's theory of the four elements in the Timaeus, which is all in terms of geometrical figures and so on. There's no matter there. That's kind of funny, you know, when the communists were still in power in Moscow, and they were kind of you know looking a little bit at modern science kind of strangely because it seemed to be denying that there's any matter.

[14:50] But that's part of the disagreement there, right? Is matter really a cause then, right? You see, so the disagreement among the people as to and reasons maybe to think, right, that there is or is not these causes. Okay. Now, the second question he raises, and whether it belongs to this reasoned-out knowledge called wisdom, to consider only the beginnings of substance, substance being the fundamental things, or also the beginnings of which I'll demonstrate, as whether the same can be affirmed and denied at the same time or not, and about other such things.

[15:28] Now, sometimes we state the first beginning in our thinking, at least as far as statements are concerned, that it's what something cannot both be and not be. Since we say more precisely at the same time, the same way. And sometimes, you know, Thomas and Aristotle speak of there being two of them, right?

[15:52] Guy gets up on the stage and he says, "To be or not to be, that is the question, " right? And it's a question because. First of all, because you can't both be and not be.

[16:06] If I said, you know, to breathe or to eat, that is the question. So that's not a question. You can do both, right? And you better do both, right? You're going to go on living. But to be or not to be—that's a question because you can't both be and not be, right? But also because either you must be or not be. So sometimes they'll they'll give these two beginnings.

[16:30] It's impossible to be and not be. And you must either be or not be. Okay. But sometimes they'll state it with the help of logic. You can't affirm and deny the same or the same, the same time. Okay.

[16:49] Of course, there's many other what we call axioms, right? Like the whole is larger than one of its parts, right? Nothing is before itself. Nothing is the beginning of itself, and so on.

[17:07] What Aristotle is saying now is that should the wise men consider only the beginnings or the causes of things, of substances, primarily the fundamental things, or should they also consider these statements on which all the sciences reason?

[17:25] Okay. Now, I think you have to divide this question when you discuss it into two questions. What Aristotle is talking about here, really, is these statements like the one he gives there. Statements that Boethius says are known by themselves or through themselves, unproven, and they're known by everybody. Okay. Everybody knows that a whole is more than a part, don't they? Know that.

[18:03] And somebody says they don't know that a whole is more than a part. We give him a part of his dinner tonight. We give him part of the car he bought. We give him part of his salary. He'll scream and rave and rant, right? Because he does know that the whole is more than the part, right? Everybody knows that, right? Okay.

[18:25] So right away there's a problem. Is it necessary to consider what everybody knows? If everybody knows it, all you have to do is use it, right? Okay. So this is one question, right?

[18:48] Is it necessary to consider the axioms? Of the axioms, in Aristotle's sense, meaning the statements. Known to themselves, the statements that are obvious, right? And obvious to all men.

[19:24] Okay. And these statements are the beginnings of all reasoned-out knowledge. Euclid gives us some of the axioms at the beginning of the elements. The whole is larger than a part. If equals added to equals the results, are equal. Quantities equal to the same, equal to each other, right? In fact, the same height as you, and he's the same height as you. And what about us? Everybody can figure that out, can't they?

[19:57] Is it necessary to consider? The axioms—that's the question itself, right? And the objection to considering the axioms is that they're known by everybody, right? So, why bother them? Just, just use them, right?

[20:19] But there are people who sometimes deny the axioms in words, right? And sometimes even give a reason for denying it. Now, I've given you my example there, kind of the stock example of such a statement as a whole is larger than one of its parts, right? I give you the argument whereby I convince my students that the whole is not always greater than the part; sometimes the part is greater than the whole.

[21:00] Let me repeat it, huh? You know, what's a man, right? Well, a man's an animal, right? Okay. And I remarked, my mother didn't like me saying that, and said, "Well, Mama, I don't mean that he's just an animal. He's an animal that has reason. Well, that's better to weigh. Okay. So, an animal is not the whole of what a man is, right? It's a part of what we are, okay?

[21:29] But it's not the whole, right? Okay. So that gets them to admit that animal is a part of man, right? But man is more than that, right? But then I say, but animal includes besides man, dog, cat, horse, elephant. Yeah, it does. Yeah, yeah. So, it's only a part of man, includes more than man. Gee, sometimes the part is more than the whole. Then, okay.

[22:01] See? Now, my students, I tell my students down at this fine group here, they're convinced, at least for the time being, by that argument, right? Okay.

[22:16] And therefore, they think they don't know what they do know. Say. Now, Lord Bertrand Russell, right, in the twentieth century, he gave another argument to show that the part is equal to the whole. And my teacher Charles De Koninck was the one who showed the defect in his argument. It's a more difficult one than the one I'm giving, but even what I'm giving is enough to stop most people.

[22:42] So there are people who do deny the axioms in words, right? I don't say in sight they're doing it, but in words they do, right? And they give a reason for denying it. That most people can't answer.

[23:06] You know, Zeno gave arguments, you know, against you being able to walk out the door, even though we know you can walk out the door. But even obvious things, you can walk out the door. People like Zeno can give arguments that make it seem impossible, right? Arguments that most people can't what answer? Answer, yeah. So this is a reason to think, well, maybe you do have to consider the axioms, right?

[23:37] Because someone's got to defend the axioms against these kinds of what objections, right? Now, the objection that I gave against the axiom that the whole is more than a part

[23:53] is based upon mixing up different senses of whole and part. Because when I say that animal is a part of man, right? I mean that animal is a part of the definition of man, and the definition of man is what we call a composed whole—a whole put together from its parts. And the definition of man is put together from more than just what animal. Okay, got to bring reason in there as well.

[24:29] But when I say that animal includes besides man, dog, cat, and horse, I don't mean that animal is put together from these, but it's said of all these. And this is whole in a different meaning now. What they call universal whole. So one of the fundamental distinctions that we make in the fifth book of wisdom is between the composed whole, the whole put together from its parts, and the universal whole, which is set of its parts.

[25:05] And so you're confusing now these two senses, aren't you? Okay. And that points out a second thing, right? That maybe the words in the axioms are equivocal,

[25:21] not purely equivocal, but there is a what related meaning and connected meaning, yeah. Okay. So sometimes in talking about the universal whole, we speak of the and its parts. We use the word general and particular, but the word particular comes from the word parts. It's like a part. And the Greek word for general, katholou, comes from holos, meaning whole. So we get the word catholic, by the way, katholou.

[25:57] So maybe. The words in the axioms are equivocal by reason, but most people aren't aware of this, and they have a kind of confused knowledge of the axioms. And so, for a distinct knowledge of the axioms, you need someone to distinguish the meanings of the words in the axioms. But that's especially necessary to meet those very common objections, which are based on mixing up the different senses.

[26:32] huh? Take another example of an axiom here. Nothing is before itself, right? So today is before tomorrow, right? And yesterday is before today, right? But can today be before itself? Something can't be before itself. No, no.

[26:58] Okay. Now, if A is before B, and B is before C, then A is before C, right? And Chaucer came before Shakespeare, right? But all the critics put Shakespeare before Chaucer.

[27:20] So Chaucer is before Shakespeare, but Shakespeare is before Chaucer. Therefore, Chaucer must be before Chaucer, right? Except that was impossible. It can't be before itself, right?

[27:34] Well, I think for a slight qualification, one of the long sets. Yeah, yeah. Because Chaucer can be before Shakespeare in time, right? But Shakespeare can be better than Chaucer, right? And be before him in excellence, yeah. So it seems it is necessary then, right, to distinguish the senses, and maybe see the order of the senses of the words in the axioms, right? Both to have a distinct knowledge of the axioms, and to have a what?

[28:16] To answer the objections, right? Yeah, yeah. Or take the axiom that Aristotle gives in the first book of the Physics there, that nothing is a beginning of itself.

[28:32] So he says there is a distinction between the beginning and that of which it is a beginning, right? And someone says, "Well, isn't the foundation of a house the beginning of a house? " That's one of the meanings of it, yeah. Okay, so the foundation of the house is the beginning of the house, but the foundation is a part of the house, right? Therefore, it's a beginning of itself, right?

[29:01] Well, there's always a distinction between the beginning and that of which it is a beginning, right? But in the case of that sense of beginning, right, or the fundamental part of the thing, like the keel of the ship, as Aristotle's other example, or the foundation of the house, you're taking the fundamental part of the whole. So distinction between the part and the whole, right, not between the part in itself.

[29:28] When you take an extrinsic beginning, like your father's beginning of you, right, then your father's not a part of you, right? So there's more of a distinction there. But distinction will be different in the case of that different sense of beginning.

[29:51] So you can see how a person could go back and forth in this, right? Say, well, gee whiz, if these are the Statements that everybody knows, and they're obvious to everybody. You don't go around trying to prove what is obvious, right? You know, you just use what is obvious to prove things are not obvious, right? See, so why bother to consider these things, right? You can't equivocate on them, and you can't confuse people obviously.

[30:20] Yeah, but then you know there are people who do object to them, and do give a reason that most people can't answer, and someone has to reply to that objection. But in realizing that some of those objections, not all of them, some of them are based upon equivocating on the senses of those axioms,

[30:39] well then you realize that people don't have a completely distinct knowledge of the axioms. That there is some advance from a confused knowledge to a more distinct knowledge, right? So you say, for example, that the whole is more than a part, right?

[30:58] Um, in the case of a composed whole, that means that the composed whole is put together for more than just one of its parts. When you talk about universal whole, you mean that the universal whole is set of more than any one of its parts, like animal is set of more than dog is set of. Okay, or animal is set of more than cat is set of, or quadrilateral is set of more than square is set of, and so on.

[31:28] Right. Okay, so more doesn't have exactly the same meaning, does it? Okay, so you say that man is more than an animal, and you say animal is more than man. Well, in a sense to say animal is more than man is to say that animal is set of more than man is set of, but to say that man is more than an animal is to say that man is put together from what?

[32:00] And reason, yeah, yeah. Okay, so he's not set of more, but he's put together for more. Then, okay, so you're mixing up two different senses of of whole and part, and two different senses of more, right? But there's some likeness in the two, huh? That's why we use the word particular sometimes. Um,

[32:25] okay. Aristotle will come down the idea that you do have to consider the axioms, right? Because those reasons we just gave, right? But then the next question is: Does it belong to the wise man to consider, or does you know whom does it belong to consider the axioms, right? Okay. We might either ask it: Does it belong to the wise man?

[32:59] More than others who consider the axioms. Okay, and someone might say, "Well, everybody knows these. Everybody uses these, right? But it seems to be particularly about the wise man, right? See, might say there's no more reason for him to consider them. Anybody else uses them, right? Okay.

[33:32] Well, when you get to the fourth book, Aristotle would give the reason why it belongs to the wise man to do this, right? But you can see a little difficulty right now, right? Why does it belong to him more than anybody else? Because everybody uses these things, right? Every reason out now is just based on them, right? Why should the wise man? why should it belong to him more than anybody else to do this?

[34:03] huh? Why not to the logician? Euclid considers the axioms. Yeah, yeah. Who's to say that he doesn't have much right to talk about them as the wise man? Okay. Well, you could just pause with some of the first principles, so he never goes into it. He never discusses them.

[34:32] He uses them. One of the few guys that tries to state the old axioms, right? huh? That's true. but It's funny, you know. I mean, even Aristotle and Thomas, when Thomas talks about axioms, they talk about you know those ones about being and unbeing, right? Yeah. But usually the common example is. The whole is more than a part, right? And that's about it. You know, they don't say.

[34:51] Here's another axiom. Here's another one. You know. And I don't think they could ever enumerate them all. But anyway, see, you see the problem in that second question, right? You know, there's a problem first of all in seeing that it's necessary to consider the axioms at all, right? Because there's reason to think that everybody knows them, right? Okay, so why bother to consider something everybody knows? Why not just use it, right?

[35:19] Why to investigate something everybody knows? And then, if you have some reason to say why we should investigate them, why should this investigation belong to the wise man rather than to the geometer or the logician or somebody else?

[35:38] In fact, the way he's got stated there, where the same can be affirmed and denied, well, the logician talks about affirmation, negation. Should be the logician to do this. Although there's a kind of a likeness between the logician and the what? Wise man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and Thomas, following Averroes, huh? In talking about the third book here of wisdom. He says, "For the reasons that Aristotle gives here in the first reading, you find in natural philosophy and ethics, you know, political philosophy, he'll have dialectical disputation, right, before he tries to determine the truth.

[36:15] But one of the differences between that here and in natural philosophy is that you have a kind of universal dialectic about all the problems, or main problems of wisdom, all in one book. The whole book is dialectical. While in natural philosophy, you have a little dialectic, say, about place in the beginning of Book Four, and then you determine the truth about place. Then you have a little dialectic about, you know, something else in Book One, right?

[36:44] And then you determine the truth. You have only particular dialectic, right? But here, dialectic seems to be a main what part, a whole book of wisdom, huh? And it shows kind of a affinity between logic and what and wisdom, huh? And of course, Plato, you know, in the Republic and so on, he identifies dialectic with wisdom, huh? Is a certain likeness between the two, huh? So it's interesting to think about those things.

[37:14] Now, so if you wanted to, you could put that those first two questions against the ones that coming up now, huh? Okay, the seven questions to come up now, because those are more about beginnings or causes, right, huh? Okay, the first one about causes, but the second one causes are beginnings too, and the second one about is it also about these kind of beginnings, right? I just okay.

[37:51] Now, the fundamental distinction of things that the philosopher makes, as you know, is between substance and accident, right? Okay, so substance is a thing that exists, right? Not in another as in a subject, huh? Like a man or a dog, say. While an accident is a thing that exists only in another subject, just apart from it, like the health of the man or the health of the dog, right?

[38:25] Or the shape of the man or the shape of the dog, or the knowledge of the man or the virtue of the man, right? Okay. So the first of these remaining questions, the first five, are about substance, and then he goes into questions about accidents. Or the first, maybe more, you'd say, yeah, four, yeah, then the last three are about accidents, okay?

[38:55] Now. As I said earlier, there's an exception to all these questions being about what, what wisdom is about, because he sticks in here two questions

[39:19] about substances themselves, and the reason why he does so is because they seem to be involved in the question of what wisdom is about.

[39:33] Now, skip a couple of paragraphs down there, down to the fourth paragraph, and it is also necessary to investigate whether only sensible or material substances exist, or others besides these, right? What the philosophers would call the separated substances, the immaterial substances.

[39:57] That's a question about the things, right? It's not a question about what wisdom is about. What things are there, in the sense of what substances? Right? Are there only these material substances like man and dog, or are these substances are there material substances?

[40:18] Which the Greeks would call separated substances, right? We might call angels or something, right? Okay, but angels is more a name taken from scripture, right? Because of their task and carrying messages to us and so on. But the philosopher more calls them separated substances. Okay, this is not a question about what wisdom is about, is it? But it's going to involve what wisdom is about because if there are immaterial substances, then the question arises: Well, is there the same knowledge about material substances, man and dog, and about the angels, right?

[41:00] Or are there two knowledges, one about material substances, another about immaterial substances? Then which is wisdom? Okay, you see, so there is kind of intertwining those questions where Aristotle sticks in those two questions there. But in the dialectic, in the part we're not going to read in this course, but in the dialectic, you'll pull those questions out and make them a separate part because they're really about the things rather than about what wisdom is about, right?

[41:31] But there is a connection between those and the questions, The answer to that has, to do with what wisdom is about, yeah, yeah, because if you say there are immaterial substances, then is it the same knowledge, wisdom that considers both of these, right? Okay.

[41:55] And then the second question is also assuming that there are immaterial substances, like the Platonists said, right? Or like Anaxagoras said, those are the guys who mainly spoke something immaterial besides Aristotle or before Aristotle, I mean. And whether there is one or many kinds of such substances. Now Anaxagoras speaks only of the greater mind, right? The one substance there that is not mixed with matter, right? But Plato speaks of all these what forms and these mathematical substances, right?

[42:35] Now there is more than one reason, maybe why Plato said that, but but it touches upon, as I think I maybe mentioned before, the central question of philosophy. Remember that we talked about that in here before.

[42:55] What's the central question of philosophy? So it's whether the way we know is what it says are. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. Does truth require right that the way we know be the way things are? Right. Let's just touch upon that again because that's a question that really

[43:22] is central to the whole philosophy. Does truth require that the way we know be the way things are? Now I call that the central question of philosophy because it unites or brings together what you might say is the end of philosophy, right? To know the truth with the two things the philosopher talks about. If you hang around me long enough, you'll find me talking either about the way things are, like in natural philosophy, I'll talk about the way natural things are, in political philosophy, I'll talk about the way political things are, in wisdom on the way all things are, right?

[44:37] But if you get me teaching logic, I'll be talking about the way we know, right? Or from talking about the the road and the way of knowing in this particular science, I'm talking about the way we know. So these are what the philosopher talks about: the way we know, the way things are. That's all he talks about. And it involves a lot. And the truth is, is end or goal, right?

[45:01] He wants to know the truth. So in a sense, it involves everything he talks about, and is end or purpose, right? Well, as I say to my students, there's two possible answers to this question. What are they? Yes or no. Yeah, yeah. They're looking for something very deep and obscure, and something very obvious. I'm looking for yes or no. Okay. Now, the chief philosopher, the Sophist, Pyrrhuius, Thomas says, right, or Plato, Aristotle, and Boethius would say that, Albert the Great would say that, the Arab philosophers would say that.

[45:43] It would be up until the modern time. Modern Europeans is old master. Okay. But Plato seems to be answering what? Yes. And Aristotle answers no.

[46:08] Now, if you went down the history of human thought, right through the moderns, son, it would seem to me, in my experience of the famous thinkers, that there is more who agree with Plato than Aristotle. They may not, you know, explicitly say this, but implicit in their way of thinking is the answer yes to this question. Now, of course, they reach very often different conclusions about things because of the other premises they add, right?

[46:46] But they they share this answer yes. Few would agree with crazy Aristotle, right? Okay. Now, I think the reason why people would tend to agree with Plato is because of a confused notion that they have at least of what truth is. The truth is the agreement of the mind with things. Truth is the harmony of the mind with things, right? If I say you are sitting now, my mind is true, right?

[47:20] Because what I am saying agrees with what's out there, right? If I say you are not sitting now, you are standing, then my mind is false; it doesn't agree with things, right? So you kind of tend to think the truth requires that the way we know be the way things are, and what can be said in favor of Aristotle, right? Well, I think you have to do like Thomas says in Summa Theologiae.

[47:49] You have to see this, and the question there on the teacher. You have to see this in particular that Aristotle is right, and gradually see it in a more universal way that he's right.

[48:02] And one place where Aristotle in particular brings this out in in the second book of Natural Hearing, he brings out that we can know in separation things that don't exist in separation. We can truly know in separation things that don't exist in separation, and you see this even in the senses, son.

[48:36] Sugar is both white and sweet, right? Can you know one without the other truly? So when the eye knows the whiteness of the sugar, leaving out that it's sweet. Is the eye false?

[48:57] So it's knowing the whiteness of the sugar and separation from its sweetness when they are both together in the sugar. And if I put sugar on my tongue, I can taste the sweetness of the sugar, but I can't taste the whiteness of it. Is my tongue false in knowing the sweetness? You can say it's knowledge incomplete of the sugar, just like the eye's knowledge of the sugar is incomplete.

[49:22] But is it false? Aristotle's saying is that if one can be known in separation from the other, it's not false to know it in separation. If you said now that this white thing is not sweet, or vice versa, this sweet thing is not white, then you would be false, right? Yeah, but knowing one without the other, you're not false.

[49:50] Um, when I, you know, example I was giving class there, my students might know me to be a philosopher. Leaving out that I'm a grandfather, right? The nurse at the hospital might know me to be the grandfather, leaving out that I'm a philosopher. Well, to my students are they false? See, in reality, I'm both of these,

[50:21] but one is knowable without the other, right? So Aristotle says there's no falsity in knowing one without the other, even though it doesn't exist without the other, because one is knowable without the other. What you say about the thing has got to agree with it, right? Yeah. So if you said this philosopher is not a grandfather, or this grandfather is not a philosopher, then you would be false, right?

[50:51] But in knowing one without the other, you're not false. Do you see the idea? And Aristotle brings it up when he's talking with Plato there. Um, I can know the shape cube without ice cube, sugar cube, wooden cube, or any other sensible cube, right? Is my mind false in knowing cube apart from sugar cube, wooden cube, ice cube, plastic cube? See, it's knowable without that. See, but Plato thought, and rightly so, that we that we know the truth in geometry, right?

[51:34] And since we know the truth in geometry, and we know cube in separation from ice and wood and anything sensible, he'd answer yes to this. Then there must really be what? A cube apart from. Yeah. So he had a mathematical world corresponding to geometry,

[51:59] in addition to the sensible world, right? But notice how he arrives at that, right? Through his mathematical studies with the Pythagoreans? He's convinced that we know the truth here. But because he's answered yes to this question,

[52:23] then he's forced to say that because we truly know cube in separation from wood and ice and everything else that might be more or less in a cubical shape here, right? It must, but exist in separation. Otherwise, the way we know would not be the way the thing is, and we'd be false. Aristotle says no, it's it's a mistake. He's right.

[52:47] You see the idea? Um. Perkus is a philosopher, That's all you need to know need to know. Are you false? You know Perkus is a philosopher. Hey, you left out. He's a grandfather. He's a husband. He's a old man.

[53:11] Maybe know that. You see the idea? The last one to be polite. What? We left the last one out to be polite. And now it might be incomplete of me if you don't know these other things about me. But are you mistaken?

[53:36] No. Now, after separation comes the idea of order, right? Now, as I say to students, I know you before your parents, and I probably know your parents if I do someday before I know your grandparents.

[54:00] So you are before your parents in my knowledge, right? And your parents are before your grandparents in my knowledge. Now, in things, what's the order? Just the reverse, right? Now, am I false in knowing you before your parents?

[54:25] I might not understand you fully why you are the way you are without knowing your parents, right? My knowledge might be imperfect of you, right? Not seeing the influence that your parents had upon you, and so on. Um,

[54:42] my father was a a businessman, huh? Sometimes people say Perkins, you think like a businessman. And that's funny. After my father had died, you know, people would say to me, "You know, it's just like your father." I say, "What?" I imitate my father without realizing it. You know, I'm kind of a no nonsense guy, a businessman, right?

[55:13] Or take another example here. Water is known by us before hydrogen, isn't it? That's why we name hydrogen from water, hydrogen. And hydrogen is in our knowledge before proton, right? But proton means first, right? So what is first in things among these three, anyway? Right. Is last in our knowledge, huh? Is my mind false in knowing water before hydrogen? You might say my knowledge of water is incomplete.

[55:49] I don't know about hydrogen. So be it. But is it false? See. So I take these examples here because, as the great Sherlock Holmes said, you know, to Watson, we have to what reason backwards. And Watson says, "What do you mean? We've got to reason from the effect back to the cause." So, in in these examples where the effect is in our knowledge before the cause, or water before hydrogen, and so on, the order in our knowing is actually the contrary, the exact reverse of the order in things.

[56:28] Is our mind false in knowing backwards? Our mind goes forward by going backwards. I mean, this might be a lousy mind, I suppose it is, considering that fact, right?

[56:50] But the order in which we know is obviously not the order which things are. Is our mind false for that reason? No. The falsity would come in Aristotle says if you attributed the order in our knowing to the order in things. If you said that because you come before your parents in my knowledge, therefore in reality you came before your parents, then see, it's by identifying the two that you get falsehood there.

[57:24] Um. Now Plato was influenced by the great Socrates, huh? And Socrates was seeing the role of definitions in knowing, huh? And of course, Socrates convinced Plato that through definition you can know the truth. That's why Socrates is always trying to get people to define. Well, now when you define, your mind knows universal in separation from the singulars. So when I define man as an animal that has reason, Socrates is not there, Plato's not there, Aristotle's not there.

[58:06] I'm not even there in that definition, right? And every man, past, present, and future, is not in the definition of man. So I'm knowing man, the universal, in separation from all individual men. Well, Plato said, "If we know truly through definitions, right, then we truly know the universal in separation from the singulars. " Since truth requires that the way we know be the way things are, therefore the universals must truly exist in separation, and that's what are called the what?

[58:42] The forms, right? Yeah. With a capital F, right? Huh? Now it's kind of badly translated as the ideas, right? Because it's not ideas. It's you know, in the English sense of what that word means, right? But "eidos" in Greek meaning form.

[59:00] Um. So because we know. Mathematical things in separation from sensible matter, and because we know the universal truly in separation from the singulars, right? And he's answered yes to this question, then he arrives at the strange conclusion that there are, in addition to the sensible world, this mathematical world and the world of forms, right? Aristotle says no, no, no. The answer is no to this question. Okay, but to say down to the ages, people tend to agree with Plato.

[59:38] Now they may, by the other premises they take, right, reach other conclusions. So they say William of Ockham in the 14th century said, "Well, there's no world of forms, right? There's no universals, right? But our analogy is universal? Therefore, we don't know anything. So you have this kind of universal skepticism running."through."there right, huh? Okay. Or Karl Marx say in the in the 19th century takes the way of knowing and experimental science as being the only way of knowing because that's custom, right?

[1:00:13] But in experimental science, we know only by making. And Kant point out we know in experimental sciences by making. Well, then if you answer yes to this, we know only by making. Therefore, we know only what we make. But I'm the beginning and end of what I make. Therefore, I'm God, right? I'm beginning and end of all that I could know. You see. Now Hegel, feels more like Plato in some ways.

[1:00:44] But he makes the beginning of everything correspond to the what beginning of all our thought. Well, the most confused thought of all is the thought of being. The most general thought. So he identifies that most confused thought of our mind with the one who says in the Bible, "I am who am."

[1:01:12] See, that's really terrible confusion, right? And it's going to lead to pantheism too, of course. like all the German thinkers following Hegel are pantheists.

[1:01:21] But in a sense he's answering yes to the question, right? That the way we know is the way things are. And Spinoza had said that before. Hegel, I mean, it's just Hegel. Spinoza says the order in our thoughts and the order of things are the same. And Aristotle says no. They're for the most part contrary, right?

[1:01:46] So if the order in our thoughts and the order of things is the same, right? And then what comes first in our thought corresponds to what's first in reality, and that's this most confused idea of what of being, right?

[1:02:02] Can't be more confused than that, huh? So. But notice, huh? Just I would say, you can talk about yesterday, today. You can remember the past now, right? Is that kind? Is that false to remember the past now? If you think the past is now, you're mistaken, right? But the now is in your known, right? Yeah. Yeah. Now one of the the first great thinkers to follow Aristotle explicitly is I think.

[1:02:46] Boethius right? Now Boethius in the Consolation of Philosophy, in the first book, he announces himself as a member of the Academy. Which is a member of what? The Academy. Okay. The School of Plato, right? Aristotle sometimes speaks that way too, because he learned a lot from Plato. And but in the way, Boethius talks about happiness there, in the early books, it's more Platonic in some ways than Aristotelian.

[1:03:14] But when he gets to the fifth book and he's trying to understand God's knowledge, right? And God's knowledge is eternal; it's not temporal. There's no past or future in God's knowledge. No, no, no, before and after. But he knows the before and the after in time, right? And the past and the present and the future of time are all present in God in His knowledge. But yet he truly knows these things.

[1:03:43] Well, in order to defend that and to understand that so far as we can, he has to what give up Plato and follow Aristotle. Well, the consolation of philosophy is written in the form of a dialogue between Boethius and Lady Wisdom, who's come down to console him right in prison. So at the beginning of the fifth book, Lady Wisdom introduces Aristotle as a true follower, which is a nice way of saying I'm going to follow Aristotle now and what Plato, right?

[1:04:13] You know, this old idea, of salva reverentia, you know. You know, when Thomas disagrees with Albert, you know, and some say he doesn't name him by name, you know. So he doesn't say you know Plato's mistaken here. Now we're going to follow Aristotle. But but he has Lady Wisdom introduce Aristotle as a true follower, and maybe we can see that he realizes he's got to follow Aristotle.

[1:04:36] So he goes back, you know, to the fact that we what even human knowing you can see that the way of knowing doesn't have to be the way we know.

[1:04:55] You know, when we know what a square is, for example, right? You know, I know fully what a square is by the definition of square, which is an equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral. But is the definition of square continuous?

[1:05:14] No. But the square is continuous, right? So you're knowing a continuous thing in a non-continuous way. Which is one of the ways we understand that the universal reason, the reason that knows universal, is not a body. It's not. It's not what continuous, right?

[1:05:36] Is the mind not knowing what a square is? Defines it. No, it's knowing very well what it is, right? But its way of knowing is not the way the thing is. What you say about the thing has to agree with it, right? You can see what a profound question that is, right? I think Aristotle's final. Refutation of Plato, you might say, is in the thirteenth and fourteenth books of wisdom, right?

[1:06:01] At the very end. you know? Where this question is finally decided by Aristotle, you know. But so there's a question then, right? Before this question has been answered, right? You know, is there one? If there are immaterial substances, is just this greater mind that Anaxagoras talks about, the sober man among drunk men, as Aristotle describes him, or are the all these different kinds that Plato talks about, right?

[1:06:31] So I guess we've got to stop now on this fourth reading. Those questions, they say, are not about what wisdom is about, but they're kind of intertwined because he's kind of, you know, I'm assuming that there must be immaterial substances here when he raises the other question, you know, would there be one knowledge about all these, right? So we'll come back to these questions here in this second reading, right?