Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado)
8. Names Equivocal by Reason: Six Kinds and the Senses of 'Nature'
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[0:00] Have all kinds of names are equivocal by reason and wisdom, and they are equivocal by reason in different ways. I don't think there is a one text in Thomas, right? Whereas as universal as I am trying to be now in my distinction,

[0:21] but but just kind of piecing together things that he says in different places, and I would not be so presumptuous to say that I've exhausted all the kinds of name equivocal by reason in my division, but it's more complete than anyone I've seen, okay? And I take as a beginning, Aristotle's beginning in the Posterior in the Politics, right? That the man who considers something from its beginning will get the best understanding of it,

[0:56] and so I think that there are six main kinds of name equivocal by reason, but you have to follow the rule of two or three, right? And so I begin by dividing into two and say there is two ways in which a name comes to be equivocal by reason.

[1:23] And one way is when a name said of two or more things with more or less the same meaning, right, is kept by one of them as its own name, and a new name is given to the other.

[1:44] The other way in which a name becomes equivocal by reason is when a name that is placed upon one thing, right, is picked up and carried over and placed upon another thing for some reason, okay? That's the first distinction. Now going back to the first part of the first distinction, it seems to me to be two ways, right, in which a name said of let's take the simplest case, two ways in which a name said of two things with more or less the same meaning, right,

[2:30] is kept by one of them as its own name, and the other gets a new name. One is the way that I've been talking about here recently, and that is when one of the two things has nothing that stands out or is noteworthy in addition to that common meaning, right? While the other has something noteworthy that separates it from the other.

[2:59] So, for example, the word "doing," right? Sometimes you do something, you have nothing to show for it. Other times there is a product, right? Well, that's noteworthy, right? It stands out. So, if there is a product, we give it a new name. We call it making. If there isn't, we keep the name doing. So when we say that prudence or foresight is right reason about doing, and art is right reason about making, we're distinguishing foresight and art by distinguishing doing and making.

[3:44] But making something is doing something, in another sense of the word, isn't it? See, so doing is said of both doing and making, but making gets the new name because it has something that stands out as a product in addition to the doing, right? Okay, but the doing that has no product keeps the name doing. Okay. We saw the examples, episteme, which means what? A reason out understanding or a knowledge of things through their causes.

[4:19] That name is kept by say geometry, but wisdom, the reason out understanding of all things through the first causes, has something noteworthy in addition to the common meaning of that. So it gets a new name, Sophia, right? Okay. Or disposition, right?

[4:44] Habit has something noteworthy in addition, huh? Permanence, the stability, so it gets a new name, habit, and the other keeps the name disposition, huh? Okay. Or animal, right? Okay. Animal means a living body with sensation. That's all the beast has, so it sometimes keeps animal as its name. But man has an addition, reason and will, and so on. So it gets a new name, man.

[5:11] So it, you know, if you look around, you see this is extremely common. Okay. Ah. Now the other way that one of the two keeps the common name

[5:28] is when it has fully or completely or perfectly the meaning of the common name, and the other has it imperfectly. Take the word understanding in the sense now the ability to understand. That's said of the divine under, of the human or the angelic understanding, instead of the human understanding, right? But is man really able to understand Not very much? huh? He's got to think an awful lot to understand just a tiny bit?

[5:58] So man has the ability to understand in a very imperfect way. And so sometimes the angelic understanding keeps the name understanding as its own. And so in Latin they say the angel has intellectus, and the human understanding gets a new name, which would be reason. So sometimes they say the angel has intellectus and man has ratio, although sometimes we say ratio is intellectus too, right? See, that's a different way, you see, because the imperfect gets a new name.

[6:33] Now, if my child says to me, "What's the difference between a kitten and a puppy? " I'd say, "Well, a kitten is a little cat, immature cat. He's a cat, little immature cat. What's a puppy? He's a little immature dog. " Okay, so in that sense, I say that a kitten is a cat and a puppy is a dog. But sometimes we might divide cat against kitten, dog against what puppy.

[7:03] So dog keeps the name dog, and the immature little dog gets its new name puppy, right? Okay. We might say that a boy is a man and a girl is a woman, right? Then you might say he's not really a man; he's just a boy, you know. She's not really a woman; she's a girl, right? And and so the mature man keeps the name man, and the undeveloped and you know imperfect one gets a new name boy, in the same way girl and and woman, huh?

[7:48] Because we distinguish between the man and woman, we do so in terms of their ability to reproduce and so on, and the the boy and the girl don't have that ability fully yet, right? And so they have defectively what's meant by the common name, so they get they get the new name, right? See, so there's two different ways that a name becomes equivocal by reason of being kept by one of the two things of which it is said,

[8:17] and that's very common, you see. But this is a particularly difficult example of it, where nature is said of nature and reason, you see. And reason gets a new name because it adds something noteworthy, right? Instead of that, okay. We used to give examples. Yeah, no, not example that example of the

[8:43] first kind, right? Okay, they add something noteworthy that stands out. That's the same way of naming that is so common. If you're familiar with that naming, it doesn't throw you this, you know, or doesn't seem like you know a Aristotle or Thomas is simply what you know odd ad hoc, you know, inventing a new way of naming things, inventing new things never done anybody in the world.

[9:02] No, we naturally in our daily speech we adopt those ways of naming, right? You know. You find it again and again, right? So, this is the guy selling things at the nursery, right? He might say, "Well, you want a tree or a plant, you know?" I mean, but if the plant's not a tree, right? He he'll might get indignant about it, right? I mean, it's very much in the way of naming.

[9:25] You know, it's nothing private here in Aristotle's philosophy at all. Now, the other way that a name becomes equivocal by reason is by being carried over, right? And again, there's two ways that a name is carried over.

[9:49] One way is by dropping part of its meaning or generalizing it. Now, I was giving the example of the word "property," right? You know, you can carry the property, the first meaning of property there, and in in Porphyry is what belongs to only one species, to every member of it, and always, right? And then you carry it over to what belongs to every member of this species, and always, but not only to this species, right?

[10:21] So on. So you're dropping out part of the meaning of it. Aristotle says that understanding is undergoing, right? He moves from the first meaning of undergoing, which is to be acted upon in a way that is destructive of you, right? To suffer, in other words, the first meaning of it. And then it's carried over to being acted upon and changed, but not necessarily for the worst, right?

[10:53] And then finally something to what receives it, right? Okay, so you keep on dropping out part of the meaning. Or as Thomas explains in the Summa Contra Gentiles, the names of the emotions are carried over to the acts of the will, but you drop the bodily aspect of emotion and keep the formal aspect.

[11:17] So this is a way in which a name is carried over by dropping out part of its meaning and kind of generalizing. As Thomas often points out, when the name is carried over to God, you drop the genus; you're taking over what is more potential and imperfect, right? And you keep the what the difference.

[11:48] So God doesn't have in his mind syllogisms making him know the cause, but he damn well knows the cause. So you drop out all that other part, right? You skip the idea of knowing the cause. And

[12:02] now, the other way a name becomes equivocal by reason of being carried over. Or the reason why it's carried over is by reason of ratios, right? And there there seems to be at least three ways or three kinds of this. Sometimes a name is carried over from the first thing to the second thing by the ratio of the second thing to the first. So political is placed first of all upon the polis, right?

[12:39] The polis is something political. Then it's carried over and placed upon government, which is something political too, not because it's a polis, not for the same reason, but for a reason that has a connection, a ratio to the polis. The

[12:57] government rules the polis, right? And it might be carried over to revolution. That's something political too. But that's by its ratio to government. It's the change of government, which rules the polis. So you see what you are doing? You are carrying a name over by the ratio of the second to the first. And that's the way Thomas says the name being is carried over from substance to quantity, as quantity is the size of substance, the measure of substance.

[13:33] Okay. Or it's carried over to quality because it's a disposition. Or philosophy is carried over from looking philosophy to logic, because logic is the tool of philosophy. So we call the tool philosophy, philosophy. Well,

[13:57] that's equivocal, right? But there is a connection there, right? It has a ratio to philosophy. It's the tool of philosophy, so it's not by chance we call logic philosophy. It's not for the same reason we call geometry or natural philosophy or wisdom philosophy.

[14:26] Don't pursue logic out of the love of wisdom primarily, in order to get the get the wisdom. Now the next way by ratios, next way is in fact where you have two ratios,

[14:49] and you can carry a name over from one thing to another by other ratios to the same thing. And Thomas's example of that is when the name being is carried over from quantity to quality. Well, it's not carried over to quality, the reason of the ratio of quality to quantity. But just as quantity is the measure of substance, quality is the disposition of substance. So quantity and quality have other ratios to the same thing, namely substance.

[15:34] Or if you carry the word healthy over from let's say my complexion, right, to my exercise or diet, right, and well, my complexion is a sign, let's say, of my health, right, and my exercise or diet is a cause of my health, right. So it's not purely equivocally said healthy in these two cases, right? Because they have other ratios to the same thing. Now, if they had other ratios to other things, then there'd be no reason to do that, right?

[16:12] You know, you say seeing is to the eye, let's say, and two is to three. Well, seeing has a ratio to the eye, and two has a ratio to three.

[16:35] But they don't have what? Don't have they don't have other ratios to the same thing? Do they? No, no. So there'd be no reason to give two and and seeing a name together, would they?

[16:51] Then the third way, and this is the most difficult way, and in a sense, the word analogy, you know, taken in this third way, is where two things have like ratios to other things.

[17:09] And that's going to come up in in the fifth reading there when he carries the word act over from motion to form. He's going to see that they have like ratios to other things.

[17:25] And that's that's that's the most stretched, you might say. You can see that in the word before that we talked about before. When you carried the word before over from from let's say before in being to before in knowing, right? We can say just as some things can be without other things, but not vice versa. So some things can be known without other things, but not vice versa.

[18:04] So we can say that the things that can be, without other things, and not vice versa, are before those other things, right? And the things that can be known without other things, and not vice versa, are before them. It's not the same meaning of before, right? But there is a like ratio. Because sometimes they're very close, you might say, you know, a square can be without a cube, but a cube cannot be without a square.

[18:34] A square can be known without knowing a cube, not vice versa. So just as square is before cube in being, so square is before cube in knowing.

[18:48] So, but it if the proportion get too far, apart, it would be more like a metaphorical likeness. So there is therefore at least six kinds of name equivocal by reason that you can arrive at those six by two or three, right? The name becomes equivocal either by being kept, right, the one of the two things of which it is said, or by being carried over. And if it's kept, there is two ways, right?

[19:24] If it's carried over, there are two ways: either by dropping part of the meaning and generalizing it, or by ratios. And as by ratio, either by the ratio one to the other, or by them having what other ratios to the same thing, or by having like ratios to other things. But if they have other ratios to other things, there is no reason to say that they have the same name.

[19:50] Right? If they had the same ratio to the same thing, then that'd be more like univocal than equivocal, right? So there is only those other ways of doing it.

[20:02] Now, if you examine these things, that first way we spoke about, where one keeps the common name because there is nothing addition, that's the closest to univocal And my teacher Monsignor Dionne would not admit that that's, you know, an analogous name, right? It seems to me you've got to say that if you sometimes

[20:28] divide, let's say, Sophia against episteme, right? You'd say they're two different virtues, and then another time you say that Sophia is an episteme. If you are not contradicting yourself, you must be using two different senses. And I think there is a danger in calling the name equivocal by reason analogous, because that means originally proportional, which means originally a likeness of ratios, and that's just one of the six, right?

[21:01] You might think, well, that's really, you know, the only one, or you know, so it's an endangering, right? I mean, I don't say it's impossible to name things that way. I mean, virtue is the Latin word for manhood, right? And manhood names first of all courage, and then it's what generalized. And you see, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, the master of English language, will usually use manhood to mean what courage, right?

[21:39] But you can see in Henry the Fifth, Shakespeare moves the word manhood to justice and so on. And so he's he's he's moving the word, right? Knows how to move the word. But you know, some might say, "Well, manhood, you know, moderation is manhood. " I don't know about that. That's kinda sissy stuff. Moderation,

[22:06] We might get kinda hung up on the word, right? Well, we we don't get hung up on the word because we use the word virtue, not realize that virtue meant manhood, right? That's really etymologically there, and not a man. And

[22:19] well, analogous there, you tend to tend to think a little bit of this is to that, is that is to that, you know, and that's the only kind or something, and not that. So that's extended by dropping. What call all names equivocal by reason analogous? It's because you're dropping. Yeah, yes, here's an example. You see, when equivocal is used as equivocal by chance as its own name, right?

[22:50] And you give a new name to equivocal by reason, named analogous, right? Which kind of equivocation by reason is that? Well, it's the one where one of the two keeps the common name as its own, because it seems to add nothing beyond it, right? What does equivocal name in general mean? It means simply a name that has more than one meaning, a name that has many meanings, right?

[23:21] Now the name equivocal by chance that's all it has, many meanings, huh? Nothing really there besides that, but the name equivocal by reason has a connection among those meanings, an order among those meanings, and that's very important for the life of the mind to take that account. So sometimes we let them keep the name equivocal, and we'll give this a new name, and the only name that they come up with analogous, right?

[23:49] But this is sort of danger, you know, and I think people tend to shortcut a bit the teaching about names equivocal by reason of using that name analogous. And I don't think Thomas gets into that exactly, but. A lot of people do, huh? Because we think analogous as well What Because it also is used for the sixth meaning. Yeah. Well, I say, see, analogy is the Greek word "proportion," those Latin word, but then "proportion" in in in Latin has or in English even has come to mean ratio, right?

[24:37] And I like to go use it. You can sense a likeness of ratios, but if you use the word "proportion" to mean sometimes a likeness of ratios, sometimes to mean a proportion, right? Then the name "proportion" has become equivocal by reason. Now, I say by reason because there is a connection between those two senses, proportion and a likeness of, I mean, ratio and a likeness of ratios.

[25:02] I think it gets kind of you know messy because in Thomas's Latin, there proportion seems to mean ratio, and then to use proportion in the sense of a likeness of ratio, he has to invent a word, just kind of clumsy, and he has proportionality.

[25:21] Thomas should have been more docile to Euclid, you know, and got into those. But I mean, that problem has arisen, right? And in modern science, they use proportion using ratio. And so. So when

[25:48] we talked about the beginning of this reading here today, our first reading, we talked about being from the physics predication that, well, the word being was carried over from substance to quantity quality by their ratio to that, right? Aristotle seemed to be taking ability in that same way, right? Ability is carried over from the active ability to the passive ability. Has the passibility is the ability to be acted upon by that first ability, right?

[26:24] So it has a certain connection with that first ability, right? Of course, carried over to the durable because that resists being acted upon by that same ability, but it has some inner ratio to that.

[26:38] But when you get to the the fifth reading there with act, Aristotle is going to be talking about the word "act" being carried over by analogy, which seems to mean there a likeness of ratios. It's a certain likeness between, say, how my eye is to seeing when I am not blind, but I have my eyes closed, right? And open them up, right? And the way the wood is before it's been shaped or formed, and then when it's been formed by the carpenter, right?

[27:16] So just as my eye is able to see, it doesn't actually see until my eye, right? Likewise, the wood is able to be a chair or a table like this, right? But it's not actually one until it receives its form. So the form is an act, just as the seeing is an act. Not the same kind of an act, no. It's just an likeness of proportions, huh?

[27:44] You see, that's a that's a difficult thing. Now there are other ways in which you can see that act is equivocal by reason. Do this in the

[28:02] notion. But now tomorrow we have to go into the third reading and the fourth reading, right? And Thomas is saying that he's dealing with act and ability there in regard to the subject, but the third reading is really about a mistake that people make, and it's kind of a denial that there is ability, which I suppose is appropriate to the to the treatise on ability, right? It takes the mistake that says there is no there is no ability really, right?

[28:40] Doesn't really, or at least clouds the distinction between ability and act. And then, then in the fourth one, he goes on to the truth, right? But we'll see how far we get here. So don't misunderstand this distinction between the different abilities. When you say the temperature is healthy and the medicine is healthy, you have two ratios to the same. Is that are you really carrying over healthy between those two, or is it really just the doubling of the other sense of just written on the ratio?

[29:28] You do both. You see, Thomas gives in the example of the Summa Contra Gentiles, he'll say that the word being is carried over from substance to quantity by the ratio of substance of quantity to substance, right? It's carried over from quantity to what? Quality, right? By reason of another ratio to the same thing. He doesn't take up the case. It's carried over from substance to quality. It'd be done by the ratio of quality to substance, right?

[30:02] It's carried over from quantity to quality by the ratio by another ratio, right? When you have the word political, so when political is carried over from the polis to the government, it's because the government has a ratio to the polis. But when you carried over now to, well, revolution, it doesn't seem that because revolution has another ratio to the polis, but it's because revolution has a ratio to government, as it's the change of government, the overthrow of government, which has a ratio to that, right?

[30:48] You see, so you can, you can, you know, as you go to many ones, you can, you can kind of complicate things, right? That's it And Aristotle has has ways too of of

[31:03] very subtle things where he ties up the one thing to which others have a ratio to the kinds of causes, right? So when the word healthy is said of those things, right, it's all related to one end, which is the health of the body, right? But when medical is said of the man, instead of the art, instead of the operation, so on, it's one mover related. But when being is said of substance and quality, it's really by reason of one subject, huh?

[31:38] It's a little bit like more like matter in sense, huh? You see, so it ties up with the different kinds of what of causes, but that's

[31:51] still in some way comes under the idea that these things are said by ratio to to that thing, right? But then he's bringing out the connection between that and cause.

[32:06] Someone might say, "Government is for the sake of the city." Everyone knows it all the time. The city is not for the sake of the government. I mean, that's a disorder, right? Politicians might think that the the city exists for the sake of them, but their life. But strictly speaking, the government is for the sake of the of the city, huh? And so we say the government is good or bad, as long as it's aiming at the good of that whole city or or not.

[32:45] So, fire acts by nature. Is nature is equivocal in that first sense of the sense we discussed the way? I want to see nature. If you look in the fifth book of wisdom, which is the most complete.

[33:10] Distinction of the senses of nature, right? It's one of the most difficult words in the world, right? Because the first meaning of nature is what birth, right? Okay. Then the word birth, the word nature, rather, or b birth the same word, is carried over to the source of the baby within the mother, right? Okay. And there it seems by the ratio of that to the first, right?

[33:38] It's the source of the birth, right? Then the third sense, second sense, is then carried over to the any intrinsic source, right? Not only of birth, but of any motion, right? And you get the sense of nature in the second book of natural hearing,

[34:05] and that's done a different way, right? It's not by the ratio of the third to the second, as the ratio of the second to the first, right? But you seem to be what generalizing, right? You seem to be dropping out part of the meaning, right? You're carrying over the name of the source of birth, right, which is within the woman, right, to any source within, not just a birth, but a falling down or growing or you know, in any operation.

[34:43] So it seems like that first one where you carried over by dropping out part of the meaning, right, and generalizing it. Okay, and that is said of reason and of. No, no, but then then there's there's further movement, right?

[35:11] Because then you have to see distinction between nature in the sense of matter, nature in the sense of what form, right? Because they're parts of the thing? Yeah, that's a difficult thing. This may be something a little different than than my six, you know. And then it's through form that it comes to what a thing is. So that's one of the most complicated, you might say, right?

[35:47] Words, one of the most complicated cases of name equivocal by reason, because there seems to be more than one kind of reason, right? In the word being carried over. So once you have it, what it is, what it is is said of reason and of fire. But then you divide it, and you give a special name reason against nature. Well why do you carry the word nature over from form to what it is?

[36:24] What's the what's the form makes it to be what it is? Yeah, okay. There's a connection between the two, right? Maybe maybe there's something, you know, proportional there too. Maybe more than one connection there.

[36:54] Even Aristotle's definition of form as a cause is kind of strange as a definition of what it was to be. So what? What's the second connection? Well, I say I say the connection between form and what it is, right, seems to be different than the connection between birth and the source of birth, right?

[37:44] A different ratio or one's another ratio. Well, is is nature carried over from form to what a thing is? by reason of the ratio of what a thing is to form.

[38:10] Isn't form a. It's at least the principle of it's a cause, really, right? Of yeah, of what it is. It's one of the causes, right? Matter and form together make what it is. Yeah.

[38:26] I think it's form. I think it's form that gets to the sense of nature as what a thing is. But you asked whether. But you know the same the same what it is can be realized in different matters, right? Yes. Okay. So therefore, what it is seems to be something like form is to matter, and therefore it seems to be partly by proportion there.

[39:07] But there seems to be another connection there too, that the form completes the nature of the thing, or what it is. And I think nothing prevents, you know, sometimes a name being said of two things for more than one reason, right? Right. You say one is one reason is because form completes the nature. I said, "There's any connection there, right? " And that's kind of seen in Aristotle's definition of nature.

[39:51] What does he call it? The logos. Yeah Let me just get the exact words here. The logos of what was to be, right? Isn't that the definition of form as a cause? Yeah. ho logos to ti ên