Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
48. Metaphysics IX, Readings 1–3: Kinds of Ability, the Megarian Error, and Why Motion Seems Most Real
Class of 2005-11-05
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/048-metaphysics-ix-readings-1-3-kinds-of-ability-the-megarian/

[0:05] Is he coming? Maybe we should wait a couple minutes. and start officially What? We're talking about waiting for Brother Richard. Okay. In the. Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. God our enlightened, guardian angel, strengthen the lights of our minds, enlighten and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Pray for us and help us to understand all that you have written.

[0:37] In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. So in the first reading, we distinguished at least five meanings of ability.

[0:56] The fundamental meaning was the ability to what? Act upon another, or the ability to move another, the active ability, which is a beginning or source of motion or change in another as other.

[1:14] And then there's a second meaning, which is the reverse of that. In a sense, the ability to be moved by another, the ability to be acted upon,

[1:28] and that refers back to the first ability, because the ability to be acted upon by the active ability. And then there is another sense of ability, the kind of ability we have in mind. We have in mind when we say something is durable, right? And that's an ability to what? Resist, right? Being acted upon by something that would corrupt you.

[1:58] And then going back to the first two meanings we just gave, there's a couple additional meanings where you can say the ability to do something well, right? Or the ability to undergo well, right? So if the fire, if the wood, say, is moist or something, it's not burnable, right? Well, it is maybe to some extent, but not burnable well, right? Okay.

[2:28] Am I able to speak French? Well, in the first sense, yes. In the second sense, no. Right. So my friend says, "Duane, when are you going to learn how to speak French?" And so, in one sense, I don't have the ability to speak French, right? Okay. But in some sense, I do. Aristotle points out at the end of one of the readings, there, the first reading, I guess, that you can have the ability to do something.

[2:59] Without having the ability to do it well, right? But you can't have the ability to do it well without having the ability to do it. What's the kind of obvious before and after there?

[3:12] Now, in the second reading, he was coming back to that first ability, and he was, you might say, distinguishing between the natural ability and the what rational ability. And the difference that he gives between the two is that the natural ability is limited to one of two contraries or opposites. So you put the paper in front of the fire, and the fire is not going to hesitate as to whether to heat or to cool the paper; it's just going to what heat or burn the paper, huh?

[3:50] But you put the patient in front of the what doctor, right? Huh? And he has rational ability, the art of the medical art, and the medical art could be used to heal you or to make you what sick, right? Huh? Like those Nazi doctors, right? huh? Inoculating prisoners and watching the effect of these diseases upon them and so on, huh? Or abortion, things of this, sort. So,

[4:24] I possessing the art of logic, right? I could make a good argument, and I could make a sophistical argument, huh? Happiness is the end of life. The end of life is death. Therefore, happiness is death, right? So, I can do contrary things, huh? And Shakespeare, by his poetic art, can write a tragedy or a what comedy, huh?

[4:52] And Mozart can write a happy melody and a a sad melody, okay? So the rational ability is open to contraries or opposites. But then, to complicate things a bit, I want to point something out that Aristotle doesn't particularly point out in that text there, and that is that a rational ability is founded in a nature. And the rational ability, like say at least the reason and say the will, has a nature.

[5:35] You can say what it is to some extent, and therefore it's not impossible. In fact, it's it's actually true that the reason and the will are determined to something. Not open to all opposites.

[6:00] So there are some statements, there are some contradictory statements where reason naturally adheres to one half of the contradiction, and it's not open to both. And some things that the will, by natural necessity, wills, like the will, by natural necessity, wills happiness and not misery. It doesn't choose between happiness and misery. Now that might seem to what contradict the distinction Aristotle is making between the two, but as we mentioned before,

[6:46] many people and many of the moderns especially, they misunderstand the distinction between reason and nature, and between will and nature, and they make it a kind of absolute distinction, like the distinction between, let's say, sweet and bitter, right? But the distinction is actually more than the distinction between two and what three, where two is just two, and three is two plus one.

[7:25] So that reason and the will contain something of what nature has, but something in addition, right? And we distinguish them by reason of what they have in addition. And a little bit like that kind of equivocation we spoke of before, where sometimes when a name is said somewhat univocally of two things, but one of the two things has nothing but what is meant by the common name, and the other one has something in addition to it.

[8:02] The one that has nothing noteworthy in addition keeps the common name, and the other one gets the new name, right? So sometimes we distinguish man against animal, but it would be to misunderstand the distinction to not realize that man is an animal. But he's an animal that has reason, right? And this is a very noteworthy addition to what just an animal would be, right? But the beasts that are just animals, they keep the name animal, right?

[8:37] But you shouldn't understand the distinction between animal and man as if man has nothing like what the the beast has, huh? Because he's a living body with sensation, right? And Or as I say, you compare it to numbers, going back to our analogy there in the eighth book, that the natures of things are like numbers, right? And you say, well, in some way there's a two and three, right?

[9:07] But you distinguish two against three because three is not just two; it's something more, right? Okay, so you got to understand Aristotle's distinction there. Now, I mentioned let's take the example from modern philosophers. For Sartre, the will is completely what Undetermined, huh? completely free. So, even according to the end, it's completely free You choose to

[9:35] want this or not want it, right? And for Mill, the reason is like that. Reason is never determined naturally to anything. So this is a very serious mistake, right? But it comes from misunderstanding the character of that what distinction.

[9:56] Okay, now in the third and fourth reading, which we'll look at. Today Aristotle is going to talk about ability and act in the same subject, but in the third reading he's going to address himself to a couple of mistakes. I don't think he's going to be arguing against. And the first one is more

[10:21] in need of being refuted. He's going to be very thorough about refuting that. The second one is a little different, but in the course of this too, he'll also touch upon the fact that the first meaning of act is really motion, and how motion seems to be the most real thing. That's where the kids want to go. Where the action is, right? That seems to be real, right?

[10:50] And we'll have some other examples to show that this is where we are. So the first mistake is those who say what that nothing is really possible or able. This is kind of a funny position, huh? And he mentions the Megarians, huh? Megara is a city in Greece, huh? He says there are some who say, as the Megarians do, that a thing is able to act only when it is acting, and when it is not acting, it is not able.

[11:29] For example, that he who is not building is not able to build, but only the one building when he is building, and likewise in other ways. Now we think, and Thomas kind of suggests this, that Megarians might be influenced by what in modern science we call determinism, right? Where everything is what completely necessary. There's no what contingency. I think I might have mentioned before how this was the absolute principle of modern science,

[12:07] and that, but it first arose in what we call the physical sciences, the most mathematical part of modern science. And it arose, I think, in part because you're applying pure mathematics to the natural world, and so you're carrying over what you find in pure mathematics to the natural world. And in pure mathematics, like Euclidean geometry, you're always talking about what is necessarily so, right? Interior angles of a triangle are necessarily the right angles, right?

[12:43] And there's one thing that is necessary after another, right? So you seem to have complete necessity. So if you think you can understand the natural world simply mathematically, you're going to Be believing in complete what determinism, right? Aristotle argued against that in Book Six, you may recall. But

[13:12] so if you have this complete determinism, you believe in that, and this was what you find maybe in Galileo and Copernicus and Newton to some extent. And when the biologists and the psychologists tried to be more scientific, right, they thought this was a thing they had to what hold on to, right? And so I gave the example before, I think, one time of how even Freud would try to see the dreams are what completely determined.

[13:41] You had a dream that you dropped last night. How every irate Freudian might have seen your dream might have seen your dream. Crazy, huh? It was something necessary. And if we're Turing for other things, it seems yeah less

[13:55] chancey than dreams do. So I'm sitting now, and you're sitting now. Well, most of you are. But if we were completely determined, I would not be able to be standing now, right? That

[14:19] I had to be sitting now. So partly because you're seeing everything as being pretty necessary, there's no ability for anything other than you are. Because that would be to deny what Be necessity. Yeah. So when I'm sitting, I'm. It was not possible for me to be not sitting or to be standing or lying down or something else, right? Okay. Aristotle's going to have about four absurdities that follow from this position of the Megarians.

[14:55] So he says, starting the second paragraph, it is not hard to see the absurd things that follow upon such opinions. And the first absurdity he's going to talk about would be that a man would have the what acquire and lose the art of building many times a day as he builds or does not build, right? For it's clear that a man, when his opinion will not be a builder unless he's building.

[15:24] For to be a builder is to be able to build, and likewise in the other arts, huh? If then he says it is impossible to have such arts if one has not at some time learned and acquired them. And not to have them if one has not sometimes lost them, either by forgetfulness or by some undergoing some ill or something or by time. For it cannot be by the thing being destroyed.

[15:53] For it always is. If you always have the raw material, you can always make something. When a man pauses, he will not have the art, right? And the pianist pauses; he loses the ability. He's not able to play the piano at that time when he's not actually playing it, right? And then he starts to play again. He suddenly acquires the ability to play the piano, and this is obviously what absurd, right?

[16:19] It takes a while to acquire an art to learn it, and so on, right? And it takes some kind of time or some sickness or something to lose an art that you have, right? Okay.

[16:36] So when a man pauses, he would not have the art. How will he get it right away when he builds again? So they're denying that he's able to build when he's not building, right? Because if he's able to build when he's not building, then he could what be building when he's not building, and wouldn't be determined to not build that time, right? Okay, so on. And likewise, with regard to soulless things, son.

[17:06] For nothing will be either cold or hot or sweet or sensible at all when no one is sensing. So do I have to assert the position of Protagoras Protagoras is

[17:19] almost like what Berkeley says. 'Esse est percipi' right? To be is to be perceived, right? " We now hear people saying these things. You know, is there a sound in the forest? Is nobody there to hear it? Right.

[17:36] Well, if you say there isn't, you're kind of denying that there's an ability there, right? Okay, able to be heard, but nobody's hearing it, and they're denying that that's true, right? But then you have some contingency, so they're going to be denying then that the sugar is sweet when no one is what tasting the the sweetness of the sugar. And the birds are not singing if no one's listening, right?

[18:08] Okay. And then the third objection, which is even stronger, but indeed neither will anything have sense if it is not sensing or active. So I'm not able to see. They're saying when I don't see, right?

[18:31] So therefore, I'm blind when I don't see, right? Um. So it goes on to say then the same thing will be blind many times in the day, and deaf many times. This will undo the miracles of our Lord, right?

[18:53] One miracle after another, right? So what they're denying is that you're. Able to be something other than you actually are, so in a way they're denying abilities. There's no little thing they're denying.

[19:14] Again, he says, if that which lacks ability—this is the fourth objection now, fourth absurdity. Again, if that which lacks ability is impossible, that which has not come to be will not be able to come to be. But one saying that what is impossible to come to be either is or will be is speaking falsely saying that what is impossible to come to be either is or will be is speaking falsely.

[19:38] What impossible means this? Therefore, these thoughts take away both motion and what becoming. This is perhaps the reason why Aristotle will emphasize that motion or becoming is the reality that seems the most real to us, even though it's the least real. For the standing will always stand, and the sitting will always sit. For it will not stand up if it is sitting, because to stand up is impossible for what is unable to stand up.

[20:13] Am I able to stand up now or not? No, you're not standing up. If I am not able to stand up now, I will never succeed in standing up because I don't have the ability to stand up. Okay. So Aristotle is maintaining that it's a real distinction between ability and act, and I have an ability for what I don't actually what have now, right? Have an ability to stand up and to be standing right now.

[20:43] Even though I am actually what sitting, okay? If I have no such ability, I am going to get away with all motion and all what becoming.

[20:56] So he concludes then: if then such things cannot be said, it is clear that ability and act are other, right? But these thoughts make ability and act the same thing. Hence,

[21:11] it is no small thing they are seeking to take away. Thus, something is able to be when it is not, right? And able not to be when it is. So even though I am actually sitting now, I am able to be standing now, right? And even though I am actually sitting, I am able to not be what sitting now, right?

[21:42] Likewise, he says in the other predicates, be able to walk and not walk. Now it's kind of a little corollary at the end there. In the next two little paragraphs, he says a little bit more about ability and act.

[22:05] He says, and that is possible in which, if the act which it is said to have the ability exists, nothing will be impossible. Well, there is nothing impossible about my what standing now. If I had been standing now instead of sitting, there is nothing impossible about that. No, no. But down the next paragraph is very important here because he's talking about how act is what

[22:39] seems to be first referring to what motion. The word "act," which is placed later on upon perfection, upon other things, has come most of all from motion. For act seems to be especially motion. Now you know what Shakespeare says there, huh?

[23:03] Things in motion. sooner catch the eye than what not stirs huh. So motion is the act that really what catches the senses, huh? It's kind of interesting because you know when you take the other division of being according to figures of predication,

[23:24] you're being helped by logic, right? Because the ways in which things can be said of individual substances, right, correspond to different ways of being, right? Well, it's kind of a little more abstractly approaching the distinction of being, huh? And eventually you see substance as a fundamental meaning of being when you distinguish being according to figures of predication. But is substance something sensible as such? No. What you sense as such is qualities and maybe what quantities, huh?

[24:03] Okay. You don't sense substance as such, huh? And that's why you know one reason why the moderns have kind of difficulty with that, huh? And Descartes, the so-called father of modern philosophy, he identifies what material substance with extension, huh? So he's really identifying what substance with quantity, and there was a tendency, you know, some of the Pythagoreans in ancient times, and maybe even the Platonists, huh? Those who were into mathematics, huh?

[24:40] And then that's why I have my little joke, you know, that Descartes never grew up because the idea of growing up is that you, an individual substance, an individual man, right, acquire different what sizes, right? Your quantity changes, but you're still the same man, right? That's when you go to your relative's house and little Johnny or little Mary has mildly grown, right? But then Johnny or Mary is something more fundamental than the size of Johnny or Mary or the height of Johnny or Mary, right?

[25:18] There's little marks on the wall as he as he gets taller, you know, to stand here and you will mark, you know, when you're here and they make a mark and you're higher. So

[25:33] it's kind of interesting to compare these two, right? Because kind of the fundamental meaning of of being when you divide it according to ability and act is act, right? We'll see it more clearly in the middle in the third part. But ability is set reference to act, huh? Okay. And when you say being of act and ability, it's not said equally of these like a genus, say like animals said equally of dog and cat.

[26:07] A dog is not more an animal than a cat, and you don't say animal dog before cat, right? They said they're equally them, but being instead of act before ability, huh? Okay, and you can see that even in our way of speaking, right? Huh? You would say I am sitting, right? You wouldn't say I am standing, but you, but you have to qualify. You say I'm, I'm able to be standing, or I'm standing in ability, but you wouldn't say I am standing.

[26:41] Period. Huh? And so, but then among the different meanings of act, the one that's most known is motion, right? And that's a that's a common sensible as we learn in the

[26:56] second book about the soul, right? But it's something that's very striking to the what the senses, right? Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs. So you're starting very much with what's most sensible, right? But the first meaning of being, when you divide being according to figure predication, is substance. Well, substance is not what's most what sensible, right? And you kind of follow the modern philosophers, and substance has to disappear, right?

[27:31] The famous remark of Lord Bertrand Russell, you know, that the accidents of Mister Smith have no more need of a substance to exist in, and the earth has need of an elephant to rest upon. That's a cleverly, but then, but then, what you have is a collection of accidents, right? With no unity really, huh? And that kind runs through the modern mind. Even Einstein is puzzled by it because he comes back to think about this as a scientist who's used to hypotheses, right?

[28:10] And so, for Einstein, substance is like an hypothesis. So my joke about Einstein is that his wife is an hypothesis to unite a number of sounds and sensations and so on that he has perhaps experienced and get hypothesized to life. So

[28:35] someone called his wife. So that's what I'm always joking about Einstein. There, but it's kind of reflection of the confusion in modern mind, and you know, Berkeley of course ends up by denying material substance exists, right? S. A. S. But chiefly he just says spiritual substance, whatever that is. But then you go on to human soul, even that disappears, right? And so.

[29:08] But as far as motion is concerned, the moderns don't deny motion, right? In fact, it's so impressed upon them that they seem to be back in Heraclitus's thinking that all things flow and nothing abides, and this is the kind of the meaning of dialectics in Hegel and in Karl Marx that reality is what fluid, right? And there's nothing permanent. And sometimes they summarize, you know, the existentialist position as saying that man has no nature.

[29:45] Could that be something, you know, Richard? You know, and they say man has no nature; is only a history, right? So that reality is just, you know, yeah, what they call process philosophy and so on. So. Motion is reality, right? And seems most real to us. And that's why I was saying. that you know, the kids want to go where the action is, right? Where the motion is, huh?

[30:13] And in one little joke, there, they're saying if you're applying for a grant as a professor, right, you're going to have a semester or a year off like that, and you want to take some money to support your research, right? Well, if your research involves traveling from one place to another and traveling to this library or this university in order to get a a grant, then you're going to stay in your room and think, because you presume you're not doing anything, right?

[30:42] But if you're traveling, you know, from conference to conference or university to university or one place to another, then then you're doing something, right? And it seems like you're doing something more, right?

[30:58] I told you this one philosopher I knew was remarking about when his wife, you know, coming through small talk, right? If he if he's sitting in the living room there reading a book and his eyes are going, you know, over the lines as your eyes move, right? She knows enough not to disturb him, right? Because he's doing something, right? But when he looks up from the book, you know, is he doing any kind of thing about what you read, right?

[31:25] Well, there's no apparent motion going on, right? And then that's your opportunity to come in through small talk, what you want to say. And that's probably the most important moment, right? For what you read is kind of sinking in, and you may be thinking about it and and developing what you thought about it. And but because there's no outward sign of motion, now you're you're pausing your activity, right?

[31:52] And and now there's an opportunity where to come in. with your latest news of where it is. I guess that's funny, but it shows you how people actually think, right?

[32:09] Actually, people, you know, the kind of danger to do computer, you know, I keep on jumping from thing to thing, you know, you keep on doing things, right? And rather than sitting in front of a page there and looking over and over at a paragraph or a sentence, I remember coming out of Monsignor Dionne's class, you know, maybe remembering a key line and that same sentence staying in my head for a day or so, you know, just thinking about that one sentence.

[32:36] Well, I'm not going from one sentence to other sentence, I'm doing it, right? And another thing you notice as a student too, or in classes, or as a professor too,

[32:53] sometimes people think they're not doing anything unless they're doing a lot of reading, right? Unless they're going from page to page and turning the page fairly frequently, so. And if you,

[33:10] I can take you know one fragment of the early Greek philosophers. I gave a famous fragment of Heraclitus. I gave it a nickname, the Royal Fragment, right? So the analysis of really you know speaking the Royal Fragment of Heraclitus and of course everybody's you know scrambling around trying to find out what the Royal Fragment is sounds pretty good. But it's one sentence, right? But If I spend a whole you know hour just explaining this one sentence, I wasn't going anywhere, obviously, right?

[33:40] I wasn't doing anything, right? And sometimes you know students, you know, if they read a whole novel or something like that, you know, they've really done something, right? Because a lot of motion of the eyes, a lot of turning of pages, and so on, right? And

[34:03] but they're not saying too much, huh? A long time. So motion seems to be very real, and you read the Marxists, you know, and the and the the emphasis upon history in the modern thinkers, huh? And it's motion, it's process, huh? That to them seems real, and anything that isn't in motion is kind of abstraction from the real. But actually, motion is the least actual of acts.

[34:43] If I get up here and I walk from here to the wall over there, right? Part of my motion is always over, and part of my motion is always to come. But how much of my motion is ever actual?

[35:01] Nothing. Nothing. I was at being two places at the same time. If any part of my motion was was ever fully actual, right? So you find out when you define motion that it's the least actual of acts, huh? And yet it seems to us most what most real. Aristotle goes on to say that, for act seems to be especially motion to us, right? Hence, we do not attribute motion to what does not exist, but we might say other things of what does not exist.

[35:37] For example, non-beings are said to be understood, right? You can think about something that is not, right? It's thinkable, What is not, right? And it can be desired. We often desire things that are not, right? But

[35:56] does what is not move around or do anything? That seems to be impossible, right? Okay. Because it seems that if if what is not moved, it really would be right.

[36:16] So that seems to be kind of the first meaning of reality for us. You know, a kid wants to be moving all the time. Aristotle talks about the rattle was a good invention, right? Keeps them occupied. And I mean, you've probably seen this, you know, on the baby cradle cribber, you know, the bars and so on. This thing you put up over here, they call it mobilia.

[36:45] You spin it. Oh, oh. And you watch it going around, you know, Okay? But you know how you kind of, you know, get dressed together, you know, in an effort to shake the baby. I mean, I'll love it, you know. I don't worry about about really shaking the baby, but you know, people do it too much. But but but that will calm down somewhat, right? Okay.

[37:12] So motion is the act which is most known to us, but at least actual. And when you go, as you do, see in the first argument for the sense of God, when you reason from the effect motion all the way to the unmoved mover, right? You are going from the act which is most known to us, but least actual, to the act which is most actual, which is pure act, but but least known to us, son.

[37:43] And it's kind of the supreme example of what Aristotle says that what is more known to us, right, is more knowable to us. You might say it's less knowable because it's less actual, and what is least knowable to us is most knowable because it's most actual. The exact contrariety of those two.

[38:08] This is an important observation that Aristotle is making here, and it's a famous statement of Hegel. The history of philosophy is philosophy, right? Well, then you are thinking of this, this motion, right? The historical process—that's the reality, right? Did Carl Reiner get into that theology? Could be. I think so.

[38:43] He would say you have to understand the whole history of theology to really be a theologian. Yeah. You have to hide. All, that he says so. The rest of us are really just dilettantes. We're not really theologians. Yeah. Nobody can do that. Yeah.

[38:58] You might say, American universities a lot. Those who are not into, say, you know, symbiotic logic or mathematical logic, which has its own problems, but it's stories of philosophy, right? And so they're kind of, you know, they're talking about the history of it, the emotion of it, the succeeding, of, succeeding. but never succeeding. That's exactly theologian. Yeah. Now, in the next paragraph, he goes to the other mistake, which he's more briefer with, because not as plausible or not as kind of any supporters to it.

[39:48] And he's talking about how there's some who say that kind of the opposite error: everything's possible, even though. Some things will never be, and so even these contradictory things, right? They would say, you know, a square is able to be a circle, but it will never be so. And Aristotle says they don't really understand what ability is, right? And if something is possible, as we said before, it means that if it takes place, nothing impossible will result.

[40:28] So something that's really involved in contradiction is not really what possible, because if it was, something impossible would take place. Okay. And so he goes on the next paragraph.

[40:48] Why, actually, stick to that first paragraph for a moment here. If the able is that which has been said to which something follows, it is clear that it cannot be true to say, as some people say, right, that the able is this but will not be, so that the things unable to be would escape. I say, for example, someone who does not think that there is the unable to be should say, and this is a famous example from Greek geometry, that the diagonal is able to be measured, right?

[41:18] Okay, now this is the famous thing that they show that the diagonal of the square is not commensurable with the what side, yeah. But some people say that's possible too, but it'll never be. So it's kinda stupid, not to to see the the difficulty in there, huh?

[41:41] But he goes on to say there the false and the impossible are not the same thing, right? Okay. It is false that you stand now, but not what impossible, right? But then he goes on to say in the last paragraph, there in page four, that

[42:07] if the if then statement is true, if A is so, then B is so, right? If that's true, and then A is possible, then what? B. B is possible, right? Okay. But you're using possible" here now in the broad sense, as Thomas explains. Okay. Now what does that mean? Well, if you're talking about

[42:42] the possible as opposed to necessary, and the possible as it includes the necessary, well, the possible that is opposed to necessary is what is possible to be and not be, right? So what is able to be and not be? Is opposed to the necessary, right? Because the necessary is not able to be. not to be, right? So it's opposed to what is able to be and not be, but then there's a broader sense of able, right?

[43:11] We have to say that what is necessary is able to be, because if it's not able to be, then it's impossible to be, and that's obviously a contradiction. That what is necessary to be is impossible to be, right? So there's an equivocation there at the word "what" Impossible, right? Okay.

[43:34] But see, that error is not so important as, or to refute, as the the first one. Okay. We would take a little break here, but just one thing: we're a little break here because we