Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
38. Metaphysics VI: The Whole Truth, Contradiction, and Truth in the Mind, Good in Things; Predicates and Definition in Logic
Class of 2005-09-29
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/038-metaphysics-vi-the-whole-truth-contradiction-and-truth-in/

[0:01] Let's say our little prayer. Go. You dry? A little. Second, third, and fourth paragraphs. Huh? So somebody's in there. What? Eating some salty. Have two kinds of mistake, or two kinds of falsehood, right? And most people don't know what it means exactly, but when you swear in the courtroom, right, I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, right, are the second and the third phrases there just reiterating what the first one says?

[0:43] Say, I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Are just saying the same thing in a sense, slightly differently in words, emphasizing it, or is the second and third phrases more particular? One excluding, right, what you might call adding to the truth, and the other subtracting from the truth, huh?

[1:17] But as Faustus says, you know, if, they say more or less than the truth. They are villains, the sons of darkness. But when you say that what is not is, you seem to be what adding to the truth, right? When you say that what is is not, you seem to be subtracting from the truth, right? Now I always take a simple example there. If I'm the bartender and I am giving testimony in court, and they say who was at the bar between nine and ten, and let's say that Paul and John were at the bar between nine and ten, right?

[1:56] Okay. Now I swear to tell the truth. The truth is that Paul and John were there, right? The whole truth. Well, if I just said that Paul was there and left out John, then would I be telling the whole truth? No, and I'd be in a sense saying that who was there was not there. I'd be what subtracting the truth, okay, and nothing but the truth. Well, I could also depart from the truth by saying John and Paul and Tom were there, right?

[2:35] Well, now Tom was not there, and I am saying that he was there, so I am adding to the truth, right? So there is these two extremes, right?

[2:50] You see that, of course, in the great heresies about the Trinity and about the incarnation, right? There is two ways of departing from the truth about the Trinity, basically, and one is to say that because there are three persons, then there are three natures, and then you are what adding to the truth, right?

[3:18] And the other is to reverse the statement, say because there's one nature, there can only be one person there. So the truth is in between two extremes, like Kent there in King Lear says something. Says all my reports go with the modest truth, nor more nor less, but so. So, truth is in between two, as it were, contrary mistakes, two contrary falsehoods. Neither one of which can explain the other falsehood.

[3:58] But the truth is in between, and there's an element of truth, right? So those who say there's three persons and three natures in God have an element of the truth. There are three persons. And those who say there's one nature and one person have an element of the truth. There's one nature, but neither one has the whole truth, right? And it's just to reverse, of course, with the incarnation there, because some people said because you have one person, you have what?

[4:26] One nature, and they're subtracting from the truth. They're saying what is is not. And others say, well, because there's what, two natures there, there must be two persons there, and they're what? Adding, yeah, they say, okay.

[4:47] Aristotle goes on to say, as a whole, they are about the dividing of a contradiction. Now, what kind of opposition is contradiction, right? Well, it's between an affirmative and a what negative statement. But let's get a more precise.

[5:11] In the strict sense, contradictory statements are statements with the same subject, right? The same predicate, but one affirmative and then the negative, right? But they're opposed such that both cannot be true, and both cannot be false. But one must be true, and the other must be false.

[5:45] So President Bush is sitting. President Bush is not sitting. These are opposed contradictorily, right? They have the same subject, President Bush. The same predicate, sitting. One is affirmative. President Bush is sitting. One is negative. President Bush is not sitting. And can both of these be true now? No. Can they both be false? No. One must be true, and the other must be false. And in this case, I don't know which is the true one, which is the false one, right?

[6:27] Okay. Yes, I'm not trying to be cute. Suppose he's lying down. Okay. Well, then, then they'd both be false. No. No. Or then he's sitting. Then he's not sitting. Okay. Okay. So he's either sitting or not sitting, right? And this goes back to the axioms of being and non-being.

[6:49] In a way, there's two axioms about being and being. And one says it's impossible to both be and not be. Or you can say it more precisely: it's impossible to both be and not be at the same time in the same way.

[7:07] But then the other axiom is that it's necessary to be or not to be, right? At the same time, the same way, you've got to be one or the other. There's there's no middle ground. Okay. There's something middle between being black and white, between being hot and cold, like being lukewarm. But there's no middle between being hot or not being hot. Because whether you're cold or lukewarm, you're still not hot, right?

[7:42] Okay. And so sometimes I quote Hamlet there, you know, where he says, "To be or not to be, that is the question, right now. " But it's a question because you can't both be and not be.

[7:59] And because you must either be or not be, right? If I said you know to to breathe or to philosophize, that's a question. Or you can do both, right? Okay. So it's not really a question. And do both. Not a question. Got to be one or the other. but you can't do both. But to be or not to be is that way, right? Now, you may remember from logic that to see the contradictory of

[8:34] a statement with a universal subject is a little more involved than with a singular. They say Socrates is sitting. The contradictory is Socrates is not sitting. But now, if you took the universal subject like man, grammatically, man is sitting. Man is not sitting seems grammatically like Socrates is sitting. Socrates is not sitting, right? But Socrates is the name of an individual, one man.

[9:04] who retired, at the age of 70. But man is something said of many, right? So when you say man is sitting, someone might say, "Well, um, that's not altogether distinct what you're saying. Do you mean that every man is sitting? Or do you mean that some man is sitting? You say man is sitting. It's, you see, because the subject is indefinite, right? It's not clear what you what you mean exactly.

[9:37] It's indefinite. We say sometimes. Yeah. Now, what's the contradictory of man is sitting? What is the statement that would be? Let's let's say it. What's the contradictory of every man is sitting? No. Well, is no man is sitting opposed to every man is sitting such that one must be true and the other must be false? Some man is not sitting. Yeah, some man is not sitting, right? Because every man is sitting, and no man is sitting,

[10:24] could both be what? All false. Just looking around this room, you can see that both of these statements are false, right? So every man is sitting and no man is sitting. In logic, they sometimes call them contrary because that's about as far away as you can get from what you're saying, right? But are they contradictory? See, because contradictory statements are ones with the same subject and predicate, one affirmative and one negative, but opposed such that one must be true and the other must be false.

[10:57] They can't both be true. They can't both be false, right? Well these could both be false, right? Now, what every man is sitting is opposed to contradictory, is that some man is what? Not sitting. All you need is one man, okay? Some man is not sitting.

[11:26] So these statements, every man is sitting and some man is not sitting, are Aristotle would call the two halves of a contradiction. These two statements are opposed, right? And they're opposed such that one must be true and the other must be false. They can't both be true. They can't both be false, right? And you just stop and think about it. If it's true that every man is sitting, that means there's no exception, right?

[11:55] Well, then some man is not sitting would clearly be false. And if it's true that some man is not sitting, just one man, right? Then it must be false that every man is sitting. Do you see that? Okay.

[12:13] And if it's false that every man is sitting, it doesn't have to be that no man is sitting, but it must be that at least some man is not sitting. And you can't say that some man is not sitting, then you're forced to say that every man is sitting.

[12:31] Now, likewise, universal negative is opposed to some man is sitting, right? But some man is sitting and some man is not sitting. Although grammatically, it seems to be like Socrates is sitting, Socrates is not sitting. But because some man is indefinite, right? It's possible that it be true that some man is sitting and true that some man is not sitting. So the two particulars can both be true.

[13:12] The two universal statements can both be false, but the diagonals, the universal affirmative and the particular negative, and the universal negative, particular affirmative, they can't both be true. They can't both be false. But one must be true, and another one must be what false, huh? Aristotle's saying that they are what the affirmative and the negative statements divide a contradiction, right? Now,

[13:47] sometimes I'll say in grammar, of all possible statements, how many are true? How many are false? Well, for every affirmative statement, there is a contradictory negative statement, and for every negative statement, there is a contradictory affirmative statement, and that means that there's always a statement to every statement that's opposed such that one must be true, the other must be false. So, of all possible, the infinity of possible statements, how many are true?

[14:24] How many are false? I guess you got the same number. What? I guess you got the same number. Yeah, yeah, fifty percent of statements you could make are true. See, fifty percent are false, right? So, if you have some reason to think this is true and that's false, right? You can get over that half and half, right?

[14:50] See that? She loves me. She loves me now. You know, we'll bust it out. Well, one must be true, and the other must be false? Except you still don't know until you get to the last. Right. That's that's a classic way to say it. If I need absolutely certain, doesn't he?

[15:22] So he says, for the true has the affirmation to put together, right? Okay, so if man and animal are together, and you say man is an animal, then you have true, and man is not an animal would be what divided and false, huh? But the false would be the reverse, right? Okay.

[15:43] I didn't put that too well today. For the true has the affirmation to put together, and negation to divide it. So, if man and animal are together, the affirmative statement will be true, right? And if man and stone are divided, then the negative statement will be true, and the false would be just the reverse of that, right? Putting together what are divided, or dividing what are together.

[16:10] Now, the second little paragraph there is an allusion to the third book about the soul, right? And Aristotle, there in the third book, he says, when you think that man is an animal, at the same time you think of man and an animal. Or when you say man is not a stone, at the same time you think of man as stone. But it's possible for you to think of man, not thinking of stone, and to think of stone, not thinking of what man, right?

[16:38] But when I think that man is not a stone, I have to at the same time know man and stone, right? And this is something discussed in the third book about the soul and talking about our reason, right?

[16:53] So, in a sense, you made something one out of man and stone when you say man is not a stone. Okay. Now, to begin the third paragraph, this is an extremely important thing he says here, but he's extremely brief here. I think I mentioned how my old teacher Kasurik could say, you know, Aristotle wrote the book and then he scratched out every other sentence.

[17:20] But maybe a more reasonable thing is that what we have are kind of like the official notes, right? And you know how professors sometimes will have a very concise note. Sometimes they have little index cards, you know. They're giving a whole hour talk or something like that, right? And just you know, they don't have to expand it when they give their talk, right? So, in a sense,

[17:46] it's like looking at professor's notes almost, right? I mean, it's no more. I don't think he intentionally made it obscure, but you know, this is kind of an official record. But you expand upon it, right? Okay.

[18:01] And this sentence here is extremely important, and that could the whole point of it could be easily missed without Thomas Aquinas, right? Okay Monsignor Dionne said that one thing about Cajetan's mistake was trying to comment directly on Aristotle without going through Thomas.

[18:29] Of course, Dionne says, "You know, in a distant way, it's like the angels, right? Where this angel instructs the one immediately below him, and he, the one below him, right? So the order there is something like that in the mind.

[18:48] So you've got Aristotle there, and then Thomas understands Aristotle, and then Charles De Koninck understands Thomas, right? And I'm just going to show you how to read Thomas, he says, and then you can go on your own some extent, right? Okay. So you have to learn how to read the mind that is what closer to your mind and ascend to the greater mind. right? So he says the false and the true are not in things, as if the good is true and the bad false, but in the mind.

[19:24] Now this is a fundamental distinction between good and bad, and true and false. That true and false are found primarily in the mind, in the reason, right?

[19:59] But good and bad in things outside the mind. Now. In the, we'll come back to that in a moment. But in the rest of this third paragraph, he's talking about exactly where it's found in the mind.

[20:26] Nor is it in the mind about the simple, okay? So man, or animal, or stone are not yet true or false, right? Although you understand something by by man, or animal, or stone, okay? You might know what a man is, or what a dog is, or what an animal is, or what a stone is, right? But it's not yet true or false, okay?

[20:56] But you find it in the what? Putting together these things in affirmative statement, or the dividing the negative statement. When you say man is an animal, right? Or man is not an animal, then you have something true or false, right? When you say man is not a stone,

[21:16] or man is a stone, then you have something true or false, huh? Okay. So I sometimes ask students, you know, where do you find truth or falsity, right? If you dug down to the ground, you know, would you find truth or falsity?

[21:37] No, I think you'd find rocks in the soil, but you don't find truth or falsity, right? If you go into the ocean, you find some truth or falsity in the ocean. When you walk through the air, right? Okay. So where do you find truth or falsity? Where is it? In the mind, and not just any place in the mind, not in the simple, right? But in the putting together or dividing the general statement.

[22:07] So it's in statements you find it true or the what? False, huh? So something kind of funny about the Parmenidean system, right? Because because the parts of it are what simple, right? You have being, and you have non-being, and you have becoming, and all these things. None of them are statements. There's no truth or falsity in the Parmenidean system, right? Which which simplifies life, right? Not to worry about falsity, but you don't get any truth either.

[22:40] Okay. Now you contrast that with the what? Good. and bad. Yeah, the good and bad are chiefly in things, huh? Okay. And this is kind of a contrast that you have then between knowing, right? We're aiming at truth or falsity, and loving, right? That in knowing, knowing takes place because of the thing known being in the what? Knower, yeah. But love is more what the heart being in the thing loved.

[23:18] I left my heart in San Francisco, right? Our Lord says, "Where your treasure is, there your heart shall be." Right? Or Augustine says, "The soul is more ubi amata, where it loves, than ubi animata. " Okay, it's more in the in the love, right? But in the body that it animates, huh? So there

[23:49] is a kind of contrariety, not in strict sense, a contrariety, the kind of contrary way that love and knowing work. You know, you're trying to get something inside, and in love, you're trying to go up to it, right? So sometimes I take that example. You know, Augustine is supposed to have walked on the shore, right? He saw a little boy, you know, dug a hole in the sand.

[24:15] There was going down, getting water and putting it into the what hole, right? And he was distracted. Said, "What are you trying to do? " I'm trying to put, you know, the ocean here, right? And he said, "Well, you can't get the ocean into that little hole, right? Well, neither can you get the Trinity fully into your mind either. " And the little boy disappeared, right? But but notice, you're trying to what get the thing you're trying to know inside the mind, right?

[24:42] Is it okay? But although you couldn't get the ocean into the hole, even into yourself, right? Nevertheless, you could jump into the ocean, right? Okay, and that's what we do, and it says we love God, right? So a famous description there in Saint Teresa of Avila's

[25:04] life there when she first saw the ocean, right? Kind of metaphor for God, right? This infinity of God, divine being. But notice now, as Father Boulay would say, the will in that sense, at least in this life, is more proportionate to God. You can more easily go into the ocean, right? Then put the ocean in us, right? Okay? Okay.

[25:32] Now, in terms of knowing, the famous difference is that is based on this is that there's the same knowledge of what opposites are. So if you go through the different sciences, right? If the doctor knows what high blood pressure is, he must know in his knowledge of high blood pressure what proper blood pressure is, right? If one knows what virtue is, that helps one to know what vice is huh So the famous thing that Plato and Aristotle point out is this.

[26:15] The same knowledge of opposites, and I told you I had one clever student there, you know, made the argument against us teaching ethics, and all that Saint Marys. Have you heard about that? Well, the same knowledge of opposites, right? So you learn not only what virtue is ethics, but what vice is, huh? And you learn not only how to become virtuous, but how to become vicious. Since men are inclined to vicious, you're making them worse.

[26:44] That was the best argument I knew against, you know, teaching ethics. And it's a little bit like the question that Aristotle raises in the rhetoric, rhetoric enables you to persuade men, but you can persuade them to the good or to the bad, or you know, make the man seem just or unjust in the court, and so on. And so, you know, people say, "Well, they shouldn't teach this sort of thing, right?

[27:07] " And Aristotle, in the fifth book of the Politics, he teaches you how to preserve a government and how to overthrow it. Same knowledge of both, right? Well, people use this knowledge to overthrow governments. But that's the strange thing about knowledge. You can use the medical art to save the baby's life or to kill it. Nobody could kill it better maybe, than a doctor, right? So his knowledge does give him the the know-how, you know, to save your life, maybe or to end it, huh?

[27:41] And that's the idea of knowledge, huh? But is there the same love of opposites, huh? No. And that's a reflection of the fact, a result of the fact, that love goes to the thing in itself, right? Well, in itself, when one opposite excludes the other, and so you're observing the condition of opposites in things. And since in things one opposite excludes the other, then the love of one excludes the love of the other one.

[28:14] But knowing is putting the opposites in the mind, right? And in my definition of blindness, huh, is included sight. So blindness is a lack of sight, right? An animal apt to have sight, huh? So one opposite is in the knowledge of the other, it's a kind of amazing thing, right? But in things being blind excludes sight, huh? And having sight excludes blindness, you could say, I suppose.

[28:52] And if I love sight, I can't love blindness. It doesn't make any sense. You see, so love of one opposite excludes the love of the other one.

[29:05] And that's because, as I say, that's condition of things. huh? Okay. Now. when we start to do the Summas, like we do before in the year, you'll notice that Thomas talks about God being good, right? Goodness of God. He talks about God being truth itself, right? But where does he talk about these things?

[29:33] Well, the order in talking about God is you talk first of all about the substance of God, that God is simple, perfect, unchanging, infinite, and one. Okay, those five things—the substance of God—and then you talk about the operation of God, that God understands and wills and so on, right?

[30:05] And then you talk about the Trinity. So you have to understand that God understands Himself, right, and that God loves Himself before. you can. Understand the Trinity, right? How the Father, how the Son proceeds from the Father, and why He's called the Word, and so on, right? And how the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

[30:28] Um, but now where does he take up that God is good, and that God is truth itself, right? Well, he takes up the goodness of God. It's attached to the consideration of perfection of the divine substance, just like eternity is attached to the consideration of the unchangeableness of the divine substance.

[30:54] He doesn't take up truth at all on the substance of God, but he takes up the goodness of God. But he takes up the truth of God after he's taken up God's understanding. Okay, that's kind of striking, right? You first meet that God is good

[31:14] before you talk even about the divine what? Divine will, which has good as its object, right? But you don't talk about the divine truth. God is truth itself, and so on, until after you see that God the divine understands. That's a very interesting order,

[31:36] and it's interesting, you know, in that great the other chief philosopher there, Plato. Plato in the Republic he talks about the beginning of all things as being the good itself, right? The good itself, to itself, right? Which is the same as the beautiful itself, right? In the Symposium, and

[32:03] he doesn't explicitly seem to understand that the good itself and the beautiful itself, right, understands and wills, right? It's something after the good itself and beautiful itself, right? And that's a mistake, right? But nevertheless, notice the order, right? In a sense, he's seeing that God is the good itself, the beautiful itself,

[32:38] before, right? We see that God understands and what wills, right? Okay, just like in in the Thomas's treatise there, the goodness of God is considered under the substance of God, right? And truth only after you take up the

[33:02] what He understands and wills. right? Kind of interesting the order, right? That Plato would see first, right? He sees first at the beginning of all things, so to speak, is the good itself, right?

[33:20] Seeing that before he sees, or before Aristotle sees, at the beginning of all things, he says, is mind and will, right, understanding will. But the more fundamental point I want to make is that good and bad, being things, right, can be considered in the perfection, right, of God's substance. By truth being primarily in the mind of understanding, has to be brought in once you've understood something about God's understanding.

[33:54] You see the idea, so it goes back to this thing that Aristotle's pointing out here. We had a talk a few years ago at TAC there, and is about the contrariety of love and knowledge, right? But it goes back to this the contrariety of both, right? Not contrariety in the strict sense, but there is a contrariety kind of the way to work.

[34:20] You see a little bit that text Macbeth last week too. Remember the one about the speaking figuratively, right? is more appropriate to love, right?

[34:39] Of course, the perfect sign of love is music. Is the music, or you can even do without words, right? So, so that's kind of reflection of contrariety between the two.

[34:55] In order to know something well, you've got to what analyze it, which is a Greek or a Latin word meaning to take apart. See, What I love is not a taking apart, is it? That does not kind of, not the lover does exactly.

[35:20] So that's a very profound thing Aristotle says, but it's not unfolded here, right? But but the more you think about that, the more true you see that it is, and the more you see the consequences of that, right? I myself, you know, studied the treatise on the substance of God, and that's kind of struck me. He talks about the goodness of God in the treatise on the substance of God, but doesn't talk about truth in God until he gets to the treatise on the operations of God, right?

[35:50] Of course, the substance of God and the operations of God are the same thing, but because we start from creatures, you know, in creatures, you know, the example there, the circle, right? God is like the center, right? But the substance and the operation in creatures are two different points, two different things, right? But to drive one thing, God. But we we're going back to creatures, so we have two thoughts, no one.

[36:21] And neither thought describes God adequately, right? Okay, everyone is is imperfect, right? Okay. So that's what we have: the truth of the substance and the operation. But you have to do the substance first, and then you deal with the operation, right? So there is that distinction in theology. But as they say, the goodness comes into the treatise on the substance of God, and the truth and the operation.

[36:50] And so Plato, not yet seeing at the beginning of things, is a person, right? Or persons with mind and will and so on, right? Doesn't speak of the the true itself, right? But the good itself, and then the in the Republic, in the Symposium, he speaks of of it as the beautiful itself. Thomas will talk about you know, good and beautiful are basically the same thing here, right?

[37:22] In the Summa Theologia, they talk about good and beautiful, and you see that Dionysius, right, the consideration of divine goodness and divine beauty come together, right? That's interesting, huh? That before he sees the aberrations and the personal beauty, might say of God, right? Doesn't talk about truth itself. Something interesting, right? There, we'll back to what Aristotle's pointing out here.

[38:07] Now, since putting together the fourth paragraph and taking apart in the mind, but not in things, being in this way is other than being most properly speaking.

[38:25] For the mind joins together and takes away the what it is substance or the how quality or the how much quantity or other divisions of being according to figures of predication. So he's going to what? As he says now in the fifth paragraph, he's going to set aside now accidental being, what geometers, Euclid's geometers, all such things will be set aside. And we're going to set aside what being as true, right?

[38:59] For the cause of the one, meaning accidental being, is indeterminate, right? Or indeterminate, while the other being as true is some undergrowing of the what mind, but what fundamentally the being in things, right? Yeah, the being is such. So, though he's talked a bit about both,

[39:25] and both are about the remaining kind of being, and do not show outside some existing nature of being. Whence did these be set aside?

[39:37] That we get down to being now. Okay, the causes and the beginnings of beings as being should be considered. It is clear where we distinguish in how many ways each is said. That was in the fifth book, right? That being is said in many ways.

[39:58] Okay, I should bring bouquet, you know. Why didn't you book 8 here. did I. So Aristotle in books 7 and eight is going to talk about being according to the figures of predication, but mainly about what material substance, about substance and material substance, which is more known to us. But in book seven he will start from things said in logic about substance, and in book eight from things said in natural philosophy about substance.

[40:53] And then in book nine he's going to talk about the division of being into ability and act, and it's primarily the ninth book that you see how he's going to go all the way to the first cause from a knowledge of being as being. The ninth book is the book I usually take to you know, going through one of these books, right? We'll do something of book eight, but book nine is the one where you see how he's going to reason out the first cause and first cause being pure act and so on.

[41:39] Let's talk a little bit here, a little bit about the things in book seven, right? Okay. Now, do you remember how being was divided according to figures of predication?

[42:03] I mean, predication is just a Latin word for what being said of, right? Okay. But now you got to say what's being said of what? Subjects and accidents Yeah, But how were the these predicates, these said ofs as we call that? How were they being distinguished, right? Let's come back a little here to the statement. huh? When you say, for example, that man is an animal,

[42:42] the subject in this case, man, right? You could say man in this statement is said to be right something. In this case, an animal, right?

[43:03] But animal is said to be an animal. No. So yeah okay, I find you know students they can never get clear the difference between that which is said as something and that which is said to be something. They can't get it into their heads right okay.

[43:37] Now sometimes you know they'll call man here the subject of the statement, and they'll call animal the what predicate. But predicate is a Latin word for that which is said as something, right? Okay. But they'll call man the subject underlying, right? So you think of the subject as being under what is said of it, huh? And so usually when we you know divide say genus into species, we'll put you know even on the board the genus above the what species, right?

[44:15] Okay. Now this idea said of is very important in logic, huh? And there's a text of Thomas there in the Posterior Analytics which always kind of bothers me a bit, but he says logic is about syllogism statement pretty popular, you know, and

[44:54] use the word enunciation statement, and then predicate, right? Okay, what's a predicate The things said of. Yeah yeah. So use the term predicate. Now if you go to the division of logic for the three acts of reason, well syllogism corresponds to the third act, statement to the second act, and now predicate to the what first act, yeah. Now there are other texts though of Thomas where he says that syllogism or argument as syllogism or argument is to the third act, so statement is to the second act, and definition to the what first act, yeah.

[45:48] Now let's recall those three acts of logic a bit. The first act of reason you could say is understanding what a thing is, and the second act is understanding the true or the false, and the third act is. Reasoning, right? Okay. Now you reason by some argument, right? Syllogism being the most perfect of the arguments, right? Okay.

[46:22] You understand the true or the false in some statement. I make a statement, right? Because that's where truth and false they are statements. And you understand what a thing is fully by a definition.

[46:41] But in this text in the Posterior Analytics, instead of saying definition, he says predicate. Now, why does he say that? Why doesn't he say, you know, why doesn't he say definition? Because in other texts, right, he says that definition is to the first act, but statement is to the second act, but syllogism is to the what? Really, right? Would it be related to the fact that we predicate the definition of that of which it is a definition?

[47:16] Well, that's partly true, but in syllogism and statement, you say something of something too, right? Why doesn't he take the perfect thing, definition? Right. It's not predicate that perfects understanding something is. Socrates in the dialogues is always trying to get somebody to define something, right? So they could understand distinctly what something is. But the predicate doesn't do that. So it's the definition that does that. So why does he do that?

[47:54] Now, is he thinking of the books that have come down to us of the father of logic? Because the books that have come down to us of the father of logic,

[48:09] most of the books are in the third act, then. Dealing with demonstration, dialectic arguments, and so on, and fallacious arguments, and so on. But there's a book on the statement which is called the Peri Hermeneias.

[48:27] But in the logical first act, the only book that's come down to us is the Categories. A category is the Greek word for predicate, right? Okay. So sometimes I refer to ten categories. You might see a different size. This is the ten said-ofs. Kind of like that, say the ten said-ofs The other work that's come down to us of the ancients that has quite a deal of authority is the Isagoge of Porphyry.

[49:00] But those are all said-ofs too, aren't they? Okay. So maybe Thomas is thinking. Of what has come down to us from the great logicians of the past, right?

[49:16] And all that's come down to us, finding the first act, is books about predicata, predicatum. In Latin, they call the five. McPorring talks about genus, difference, species, property, accident. They call them the predicabilia, the predicables. We say in English. Okay, the the ten Aristotle talks about substance and quantity, quality, relation, and so on. They call those the predicamenta. But when you say predicable or predicamentum, you've got a word derived from the same root as predicam.

[49:56] So maybe Thomas is thinking of the books that have come down to us, right? Okay. Now, Albert the Great, the teacher of Thomas, when he talks about the logic of the first act, there the simple and unknown. as he. calls it? He has four parts, right? The predicables, the Isagoge of, porphyry, the categories of Aristotle, and then a consideration of division and a consideration of what definition, right?

[50:30] Now Aristotle passed down to us no book in the logic of the first act and definition, because he thought you didn't need a book on definition in the logic of the first act, or he just never got around to it, or if he did, the book has been lost. You know. What would you say?

[51:00] Certain reason to think, right? Both, huh? Now my suspicion is that Aristotle thought that it was not maybe necessary, right, to write a book on definition for the logic of the first act,

[51:35] that the consideration he makes of definition in the second book of the Posterior Analytics and the consideration of definition in the eight books of Places, the Topics, so called, was what all you need to know, right? You see.

[51:57] Aristotle takes up definition in the second book of the Posterior Analytics because definition is the beginning of what demonstration, right? And there he says many things about what definition is, right? And he distinguishes two ways of arriving at a definition. So that's quite special, right?

[52:24] And it's interesting that even in the Prior Analytics, when Aristotle talks about the syllogism in general, right, he sees a connection there between the syllogism and definition.

[52:41] And in the Metaphysics, one place where he's talking about Socrates, he takes Socrates' desire to define all the time, right, as a sign that Socrates wanted to syllogize, right. So he sees in the Prior and the Posterior Analytics definition as the beginning of syllogism, right, and especially the beginning of demonstration.

[53:16] And therefore, he considers definition right, especially in the second book of the Posterior Analytics, where he takes up the beginnings of demonstration. So maybe Aristotle would not have thought it necessary, right, to consider definition again in the logic of the first act.

[53:42] Um. Now, when you turn to the eight books of of uh places, huh? it's called topics in English, but it doesn't tell you what it really is. It's a, uh, it's a Greek word for a place, it's topas, but topics in English has nothing to do with that. But Aristotle will explain there, right? How the third and the fourth tools of dialectic, the tool of difference and the tool of likeness, are useful for definitions, right?

[54:14] Okay. And the first tool of dialectic is useful for gathering definitions that others have made, and so on. And then he gets into the places in books two through seven. He says that the places about all the problems all contribute to the examination of what definitions, right? Okay. So there are places about whether something belongs to something or not, whether something can be said of something or not.

[54:49] Now, obviously, definition has to be said of something, right? Okay. And then there are places for whether what is being said of something is said of it essentially. Now, obviously, what's the definition that is said essentially? And then there's another book about whether what is being said of something is convertible with it, and obviously, the definition has to be convertible. And then there are some things that definition has in addition to being said of, being essential, being convertible.

[55:16] It brings out through the nature, etc. Then you have this in the book on the places about definition, right? So the whole the whole book of the whole eight books of places almost is ordered to definition. Yeah. Yes. And Aristotle talks about how dialectic is useful in the beginning for the beginnings of reasoned out knowledge, which means especially what definition. What is Euclid doing at the beginning of the first book?

[55:46] It's definitions, right? And sometimes there are definitions that would be in the later books that they needed to. And so, I suspect that Aristotle did not write a book on definition for the logic of the first act. Not because he didn't get around to it, or because he wrote it and it's been lost, or something like that. But because he thought the consideration of definition in the Analytics and in the eight books on places.

[56:19] Was more than enough. On the other hand, right? I don't say that a consideration of definition in the logic of the first act is is out of place and shouldn't be there at all, right? You know, when I teach a general logic course, I talk about definition in the logic of the first act, right? Kind of following Albert in this regard, right?

[56:46] Okay, so I don't say that Albert is out of order talking about definition as the first act, any more than Thomas when he says the definition is the first act, but statement is the second act. You know, let's see if it's a point of view, right? But in fact, though he would say Aristotle talks only about the set of, and if he had Porphyry, as having great authority.

[57:14] you're still talking about something, said of something, right? And that's what we—that's where we are, okay. And when I talk about definition in the logic of the first act, I borrow things from the postulates and so on. So it's kind of uh, redundant in a sense, right? Okay? I'm not saying it's simply a mistake. It's like it was the logic of the first act. It's got to do with the first act very much, right?

[57:47] Understanding what something is, okay. Now,