Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
56. Metaphysics IX, Chapter 10: Truth and Falsity in the Mind's Composing and Dividing
Class of 2005-12-06
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/056-metaphysics-ix-chapter-10-truth-and-falsity-in-the-minds/

[0:00] Angels strengthen the lights of our minds, ordain 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.

[0:21] Used to say Nicholas, huh? Yes. Yes. Let your stockings out, I see. Okay. So now we're down to the eleventh reading, kind of continuation of the thing begun in the last paragraph, the last reading, where Aristotle showed that something is knowable or understandable to the extent it is an act.

[0:54] And now he's going to talk about truth. Huh? Now it's interesting that this consideration of goodness in the last reading, and now the consideration of truth here, follows upon the consideration of the perfection of being, and how act is more perfect than what than ability, huh? The passive ability, and therefore it's also better, huh? And also, we'll see here more true. Um, but notice the order here, huh?

[1:35] That Aristotle immediately after perfect takes up good before what true, huh? Okay. And I think it casts some light upon what Thomas does in the Summa Theologiae, because when he takes up the so-called substance of God, right? He takes up that he's simple, and that he's perfect, and that he's infinite, and that he's unchanging, and that he's one in that order, right? Those five things, but to some of them or most of them, he attaches another question, or some more than one question in some cases,

[2:22] something that follows upon that particular attribute. So, following upon, say, the unchangeableness of God is his being eternal. So, the question on the eternity of God follows upon his being unchangeable, just like in natural philosophy, the consideration of time follows upon the consideration of motion, and so the negation of motion is followed by the negation of time and eternity. Or on the infinity of God, he takes up his being ubique, everywhere, huh?

[2:54] Okay. Well, what does he take up? Following the perfection of God, his goodness, his goodness, the goodness of God, right? He doesn't take up truth there, okay? Although Aristotle sees a certain connection here, huh? But notice the order. Aristotle takes up goodness first, or better, and then he takes up truth of what is more true, as if good is more closely connected with perfect, huh? And this looks back.

[3:29] Well, let's finish my my comparison first. Where does Thomas take up truth that God is true or truth itself, huh? In the prima pars, huh? Well, it's not until he gets into the consideration of the operations of God, right? And it's talked about his understanding and so on, right? Well, this looks back to what we saw in the sixth book of wisdom that good and bad are chiefly in what things, but truth and falsity are primarily in the mind, okay?

[4:05] So Thomas is very close to what Aristotle says in Book Six. So he talks about the substance of God. He talks about the perfection of God's substance, and then about the goodness of God's. Before he's ever even talked about the what will, he doesn't talk about the will until after he talks about the understanding of God, huh?

[4:26] But he talks about the truth of God after he talks about the understanding of God. That shows a real understanding of what Aristotle taught us in the sixth book of of wisdom, huh? That good and bad are primarily in things, right? And true and false primarily in the mind, and that's the reason why there can be the same knowledge of opposites, as we said before, but not the same love of opposite.

[5:03] So it's the same science of ethics that is about virtue that also tells you about the vices opposed to virtue, and knowing what virtue is helps you to know what vice is, huh? Just like knowing what health is helps you to know in medical art what sickness is, huh? But there isn't the same love of virtue and vice, and that's because love goes out to the thing in itself, and one opposite excludes the other in things.

[5:37] But knowing brings you into the mind, and the understanding of one opposite helps you to understand the other opposite. That's why our pages are black and white, huh? Because it's easier to see it, huh? Opposites stand out in contrast to each other, but it's not true about love, right? So the love of virtue impedes the love of vice, and vice vice versa. Okay.

[6:08] Now here Aristotle doesn't bring that out, you know, because he's looking at kind of the basis of truth in things, huh? But nevertheless, it's significant, I think, that he takes up truth. Act is taking up goodness here, right? He's done perfection, then goodness, and then what? Truth, right? Huh? Because goodness is more closely connected with perfection, huh? And that'll come out in the way Thomas will proceed in the Summa Theologiae.

[6:41] I'll remind you of it when we get there. But I mean, when I first read the the the Summa Theologiae, the first part anyway, used to have a wonderful course, and I was in college called Natural Theology, and we do the questions in the Summa up up to the Trinity, right? You know, in philosophy, because you know the substance what Thomas is doing there is is taken from arguments that reason can can come up with.

[7:10] But I didn't realize the significance of goodness being taken up with perfection of God in the treatise on substance before he even talked about his will, right? And truth not being taken up until you're in the treatise on the operation of God and after is understanding. But when I saw the sixth book of wisdom, then a light broke upon me. Aristotle illuminated me, right? But you see how Thomas understood those things, huh?

[7:40] Okay. It's interesting, you know, when Plato approaches the beginning of things in the Republic, when he touches upon this, and then in the Symposium, he speaks of the first thing as being the good itself, right? And the beautiful itself, right? He doesn't define it as the true itself, although it is the true itself too. But you wouldn't maybe see that so clearly until you'd seen that the first thing understands, and therefore there's what truth in the first cause, huh?

[8:22] Okay. So let's look here at the eleventh reading here. Since being and non-being are set according to the figures of predicates, huh? That refers back to the ten what categories, right? And of course, category is a Greek word for being what? Set up, right? Okay. And sometimes Thomas speaks of the logic of the first act as being about the predicate, and certainly the part that's come down to us from Aristotle in that first part is just the book called the Categories, huh?

[8:57] But in Latin they'll call it the predicamenta. huh? But it's taken from this word predicate, and I used to call it the ten sit ups to speak English for change.

[9:18] But also, he says, by ability or act of these, so you can speak of something in each of the ten genera, ten predicates, ten figures, an ability or an act. Right? I'm able to be five foot ten. Now I'm actually five foot ten. Right?

[9:38] Something is able to be a man or a dog, and now it's actually a man or a dog. Right? But act can be applied even to God, right? Who's not in one of these ten. So the distinction of ability and act, in some way, is more universal than that of the distinction of being according to the figures as a predicate, And we even. speak of

[10:00] ability and act maybe in the mind, mental being. So it's a very universal division of being. He says this being is chiefly true or false. Now he begins from where it's obvious. He ties it up with the mind here.

[10:22] This is first of all, as far as we know about it, is in things to be put together or divided. Now, what do you call the first two acts of reason? huh?

[10:36] Apprehension. Now, sometimes you call the first act simple apprehension, or to speak English, simple grasping, right? But the grasping of what something is, however imperfect that may be. Sometimes I call the first act understanding what a thing is, and then what's the second act? Composition and division. Thomas always goes back to Aristotle's text in the third book about the soul, where he speaks of composition and division.

[11:13] I have to understand what you mean by division there, right? He's talking about the division that you have a negative statement. You say man is not a stone, right? That's dividing man and stone. Man is an animal. It's putting together man and animal in some way, right? But he always uses those words composing and dividing, and he's very true to Aristotle, right? Now, sometimes I call the second act understanding the true or the false, but Thomas, why does he go back and use the word composing and what dividing?

[11:49] What were we thinking about with the two about grasping and judging? What were we thinking about? Well, I mean, a lot of times you see this in logic books, you know. But actually, when you study the logic of the second act,

[12:07] it doesn't use the word judgment. It just talks really about what a statement is, and for the most part, in order to judge, we need to what reason, right? Yeah. And so, in the tradition, they will use the word judgment, scientia judicandi in Latin, the science of judging, to refer to the prior and the posterior analytics, where judgment is taken now not in the contemporary sense of judgmental, but judge in the sense of of certitude, right?

[12:43] Okay. And so they'll talk about that because for the most part it takes place as a result of reasoning. So if you take all these theorems in Book One of Euclid, you know, forty-eight theorems there, you judge. This to be true, right? By some kind of demonstration, okay. So

[13:08] it's only those few statements that are obvious, right? That we judge to be true without going through reasoning, okay. But actually, the the logic of the second act doesn't make that what distinction.

[13:27] It talks about mainly what a statement is, and divides statement into affirmative and negative, and then it tries to find out exactly what statements are opposed contradictorily, right? And statements are opposed contradictorily, which have the same subject and the same predicate, right? One affirmative, one negative. But they're opposed such that they can't both be true and they can't both be false. But one must be true and the other must be false.

[14:02] Whether you know which one is the true one, which is the false one. But the logic of the second act doesn't give you any help as to decide which is the true side, which is the false side, right? And when you come from a universal point of view, you say, well, sometimes it's obvious that the affirmative or the negative is true, but most cases it's not obvious and has to be shown in some way, right?

[14:32] And this would be very important when you try to come to understand what it is to believe, right? When Thomas in the Secunda Secundae takes up the act of faith to believe, and in the De Veritate he takes up that same article, or in the sentences, huh? Those are three main places where he takes it up. Although also in the Epistle of the Hebrews when they get the definition of faith, but he he goes back to Augustine in the I think it's predestination of the saints, huh?

[15:12] In the second chapter of that book, where Augustine says that to believe is assentire cum cogitatione to assent while thinking about it, huh? And Thomas will go back and all the way back to distinction in the first act and the second act of reason, and to show how to believe is in the second act, right? But then he'll show how the definition of Augustine separates it from every other thing in the second act.

[15:42] And we'll have to see that sometime, maybe, huh? Because sometimes you what think about something without assenting, and sometimes you assent to something. Without thinking about it, because it's obvious. Sometimes you assent to something as result of thinking about it and thinking it out, right? But none of that is belief. But in the belief, you assent firmly, right? Your reason, though being moved not by the evidence, right, but by the will, right, and being helped by this gift of that God has infused into your reason, in fact.

[16:30] And because you don't have evidence, you think about it. So you assent while thinking about it. What's kind of interesting about that definition of belief is that you see you're respecting the nature of reason itself, right? Because reason doesn't really understand what it's assenting to, and we have the evidence; it naturally thinks about what it understands, huh? You can kind of see how Anselm's definition of theology starts in there, right?

[17:05] Because he says it's belief seeking understanding, right? So you're assenting to something while thinking about it, and if you don't think about it, you're not really assenting, right? But your thinking about it is not the cause of your assent.

[17:22] But in geometry, right, you're thinking about the Pythagorean theorem and so on, and finally thinking it out is the cause of your assent, huh? So you have to go back then to the two sides of a contradiction that are taught in the second the logic of the second act of reason, and Thomas will distinguish all the possibilities we have, right? Sometimes the mind is what in doubt whether to affirm or deny, either because it has no reason to affirm or deny, right, or because the reasons kind of equally balance each other, and that's the doubting mind, right?

[18:07] Sometimes you what incline more to one side of the contradiction, the other, but you don't have a reason to show you it must be so, and then you have an opinion or a suspicion, but you have fear that the opposite might nevertheless be so. Sometimes, though, you what assent in the full sense, but you got to distinguish the assent of natural understanding, like I assent that the whole is more than a part, and my assent to the Pythagorean theorem, and then the assent of faith, a few different assents, and the one is to assent without having to think about it really, another is to assent as result of thinking about it and thinking it out, and the third is to assent while thinking about it.

[18:56] Okay, what was your first example again? Well, we have the mind that that is not inclined more to the affirmative or the negative, the doubting mind, right? Either because you have no reason, right, to affirm or deny, right, or because if I do have reasons, they're more or less equal, right, and so my mind is kind of in suspense between the two, right. But then you have where the mind is more inclined to one than the other, right?

[19:26] And sometimes Thomas will do like he does in the *Peri Hermeneias Logic*, distinguish between suspicion, right, and opinion, right. But in both cases, you have a fear, right, of the opposite might be so, and so you don't have really a full assent to one half the contradiction. So that's a difference condition, right? When you are equally in between, when you are inclined to one with fear of the other, right, and then the third is where you are completely assenting to one half of the contradiction as being the truth, right?

[19:59] But then. There's three different what Assents huh? One is the ascent of nous, of intellectus, of natural understanding, right? The ascent to the obvious, huh? And then the other is the ascent that's result of some demonstration, right? And then finally, there is the ascent of faith, huh?

[20:25] And that definition of Augustine to assent while thinking about it separates the act of faith from natural understanding's ascent and from the ascent of science or demonstration. okay. If you didn't think about what you assent to because you're moved by the will, then you would not be respecting the nature of reason, huh? Okay. And people should, you know, think about what it is that they believe, huh?

[21:00] That's why people read the Catechism, of the Catholic Church, and that's, eventually why you do theology if you're doing it in the sense that Anselm says, right? Belief, seeking what, and understanding, yeah, yeah. Even though Thomas always quotes Hillary, you know that I know I should never arrive, but I keep on making progress, right? Trying to understand these things. So Thomas likes to go back to this kind of thing we're speaking, about.

[21:34] So he thinks truly who thinks the divided to be divided, right? So if I think that man is not a stone, right, I'm thinking truly, and to put together to be put together, right? So if I say that Socrates is a man, right, I'm thinking truly, but he thinks falsely who is in the contrary.

[22:03] There should be more of there. When is there is not what is called true or false, huh? What we say says should be investigated. It is not because we think truly that you are white that you are white, but because you are white, we who say this speak what truly, huh?

[22:29] Now he's thinking here first of all of material things, right? Where there's a composition, right, of matter and form, right, or a composition of substance and accident, right? Okay. And so if you put together in your mind things that are together in reality, you're being true, and if you divide in your mind things that are divided and separated in reality, right, then you're speaking truly, right? If you do the reverse, you're speaking what falsely, right?

[22:58] You might recall using this as an example. of Before and after, in the sense of cause and effect, and the categories, we take the same example, right? That at the same time you are sitting, it's true to say you are sitting, right?

[23:16] So that you are sitting is not before it's being true that you are sitting. In the second sense of before, they're together, right? And yet, one is in some sense before the other because it's the cause of the other. Okay.

[23:38] Now, then, in the next paragraph, he makes a threefold distinction here. There are some things that are what always together, right? And some things are never together, impossible to be together. And some things sometimes are, and some ones are not, right? If then he says, some things are always put together and unable to be divided, huh? Like man and animal, right? Man is always an animal, and others are always divided and unable to be put together.

[24:16] Like man is a stone, right? They're always divided. While others can be contraries, for being is to be put together and be one, while non-being is not to be put together but to be many. The same opinion and the same thought, he says, about contingent things becomes false and true. So breakfast is sitting. Sometimes it's true, sometimes it's false, right? But man is an animal is always true, and man is a stone is always what always false, yeah.

[24:55] But about things unable to be otherwise, about things necessary, it does not become sometimes true and other times false. But the same are always true or false. So man is always an animal necessarily, and man is never a what stone, yeah. Or man is a stone will always be false. Have no fear, except that if I mistake, yes.

[25:33] So are the contingent things as true as the necessary things? Is it as true that breakfast is sitting as it is that man is an animal? Because man is an animal will always be true, but breakfast is sitting will not always be true,

[25:59] and he touched. Upon this, back in the what, second book, when he's saying the necessary things are more true than the contingent things, he was talking about how consideration of truth belongs more to looking philosophy than to practical knowledge, and practical knowledge in many cases is a question of what, contingency, right? Okay, where is Zarqawi, right? Okay, that's what you want to know, right? He's a terrorist, I guess.

[26:33] But Zarqawi is always changing his address apparently. We haven't caught up to him yet, huh? Okay, but that's very important for practical reasons, huh? To know where he is, huh? Okay. So the practical man is interested in these contingent truths, huh? And his action requires that, right? Where can I buy cheap and sell dear? Well, it's not the same place maybe every year, right? And you know, if you if you buy wine or something like that, huh?

[27:04] There are some countries that are well established in the wine market and so on, and reputation so on, and then lesser countries, you know, are developing their wines and they're trying to get a share of the market, so they put out their wines at a good, you know, or reasonable price. And so you start buying their wines, and then as soon as they get established, the price goes up, and then you start buying somebody else's wine, right?

[27:29] So you go to Chile or Australia or someplace, right? Or? Eastern Europe, you know, they try to get recovered from the communist days, huh? And so on. But those contingent truths are always what changing, huh? When do you sell your stock? When do you buy, right? You know, while it's going to go up, you might want to hold on to it. It's Going to go down, you might want to sell.

[27:53] But that's always changing, huh? So Aristotle, you know, argued that the looking philosophy is more concerned with the truth than the practical, not only because its what end or purpose is the truth, while the end or purpose of the practical is action, not a truth, right? But even the concern that the practical science has of truth is more about those contingent truths, which will be what?

[28:24] Yeah, sometimes true, sometimes not, huh? But notice up to this point he's been seeing truth and falsity in material things more, where there's a real what composition of matter and form or substance or accident. Now, what about these simple things?

[28:50] What about the simple things are not composed of matter and form, like the separated substances, right? And even more so, God, right? What does truth mean then, right? Is saying these things are together or these things are separated? Well, no, they're simple.

[29:09] But about things not put together, what is it to be or not to be, and the true and the false? For it is not put together so as to be when it is put together, but not to be when it is divided, like the wood is white or the diameter is incommensurable. Nor will true and false belong still in the same way as in those, or just as true is not the same in these, so neither is to be.

[29:38] Now he had talked in the second book about the connection between being and what truth. Remember that, and he had argued, you know, from the famous statement that

[29:52] I expand on, huh? Popter quod un quod queri lud magis on account of which more so. That. on. account of Which more so? That's what Plato and Aristotle say, but the Aristotle and Thomas here, the brevity of wisdom. But I expanded, as you know, when the same belongs to two things, but to one of them because of the other, it belongs more to the cause. So if true belongs to the cause and the effect, but to the effect because of the cause, right?

[30:27] Then the cause is what more true, right? And if being, if to be, belongs to the cause and to the effect, right? But to the effect because of the cause, then to be belongs more fully to the cause. So he points out that there's the same order in being and in what truth, you know. And that's why I kind of speculate as to would Aristotle be like Hilary of Poitiers, right?

[30:59] Who who spoke of how he first picked up the Bible as a as a pagan, I guess, or you know, and he was he read the Exodus, I guess. I am who am, right? And he heard, you know, God saying to Moses, "I am who am." He was very impressed. But if Aristotle was to see "I am who am," right, in Exodus, and then turn to the New Testament and say, "I'm truth itself," say, "Well, that makes sense, right?"

[31:27] That would be a motive of credibility for a philosopher, because the order in being and the order in truth is the what same, okay? So these simple things are going to be what have more being; they're going to be more necessary, right? They're not going to be contingent like these composed things are sometimes put together and sometimes separated, right? And therefore, they're going to have more truth, right?

[31:55] Okay. But again, you're going to see the idea that truth is tied up with act more than what ability. But true or false is as follows, he says in the next paragraph.

[32:15] To grasp or understand and say is true. Now, as Thomas points out in the commentary, and Aristotle points out in the parentheses there, when I say "say," I don't mean "say" in the sense of an affirmation. Then you say one thing of another; there's a composition of the thing, huh? But you simply what

[32:41] understand what something is, huh? And this, incidentally, is the way that eventually we find out that God understands, right? God understands by knowing what He Himself is, and by knowing what He Himself is, He knows all the things, because He is among other things the cause of everything else. But He understands in a way like we do in the. First act, but if, my understanding what a triangle is, I saw in understanding what a triangle is, the two triangles of the triangle make the two right angles.

[33:19] I wouldn't have to put together this would I? but in understanding what a triangle is, my little mind is so weak, it doesn't see everything that belongs to a triangle, right? And so I have to reason, right? And eventually put together triangle and has interior angles equal to right angles. Huh? I put them together in my mind, huh? As a result of some kind of reasoning, huh?

[33:47] But now you have simple things, right? Which are not a result of matter and form coming together, right? What does truth mean? huh? Well it means to understand what these things are, right? And say what you understand, but would not be a what? A statement. In case the very subtle Aristotle is saying here,

[34:11] and you are not deceived, he says, in understanding what something is, except by happening, okay? Insofar as there is some putting together when we form it, like a definition, let's say, right? Or when we say the definition of something, huh? Then we can make a mistake, huh? But just in understanding what something is, there is no possibility of a mistake, huh?

[34:39] So either you understand them or you or you don't. And to understand them is to what? Have truth. To not understand it is just to miss out on that. Okay.

[34:59] And all exist in act, these simple things, not in ability, right? Okay. He's thinking now that ability to be and not to be, right? Well, is there in the angel, in the separated substances, an ability to be and not to be?

[35:20] Well, then they would be material, right? Okay. So they don't have this ability to be and not to be, right? So they're always true in their nature.

[35:35] And all exist in act, not in ability, for otherwise they would have come to be and ceased to be. But now being itself does not come to be, nor is it corrupted, for it would have come to be from something, huh?

[35:54] Whatever things then are in what itself and in act about these, it is not possible to be deceived, but either one understands. Or not. You either know, or you're simply ignorant.

[36:11] But the what it is is sought about them, if they are such or not. So, as regards being as true now, and non-being as false, one is thus. If it is put together, it is true, and if it is not put together, it is false. And the other one, if it is a being, it is thus. If it is not thus, it is not. But the true, in this case, is to understand these.

[36:42] The false is not, nor is there deception, but ignorance, huh? And not as blindness, huh? Thomas is very subtle. This what was Aristotle saying?

[36:55] We're saying that man is not completely what blind as far as knowing what the angels are, what God is, because then you can never come to know what they are, right?

[37:12] For blindness is as if one was wholly lacking the ability to understand, huh? That's comforting to know, right? Maybe we'll see God someday as He is, right, huh? And Aristotle is leaving it to open here. It's interesting, huh? These can go that far, huh?

[37:39] Now it's clear also that there is no deception about unchangeable things, according to him, because they're not in what time, right? If someone takes them to be unchangeable, for example, if we think the triangle does not change, it would not be thought that sometimes it has angles It has two right angles and sometimes not, for it would change.

[38:11] Okay. So we'll let Aristotle rest here. Okay. That's kind of a preliminary reading of Book Nine, right? Okay. But we're not going to put away philosophy, right? Huh? We're going to use it, right, in our study of theology. But sometimes, as you study theology, you have a desire to go back to the what philosophical works, right? Okay. But sometimes you appreciate more the need for those philosophical works when you see the use that Thomas will make of them in what theology.

[38:57] But sometimes Thomas will go back a little to the philosophy, even the theological work, and kind of. Recall some things for you, right? Or maybe develop some things.

[39:07] So sometimes, even in theological work, you get help in philosophical work. Okay. Now, do you have a chance to look at the other documents? We should take a little break now because we're going to. Did you guys come out last time.