Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado)
9. Metaphysics IX: Refuting the Megarians on Ability and Act
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[0:00] einai. No, because logos could be translated as thought too, but we use the translation definition. The definition of what was to be. And the definition, is the statement, in words of what it is, definition. In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. God our enlightenment. Guardian angels strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly.

[0:34] Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, help us to understand all that you have written. In the Name of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. So this morning we will look at the third reading from the ninth book of wisdom.

[0:57] And what's the logical and understandable division of the third reading? Is it into two parts or into three parts? Well, as Thomas explains, it's into two parts, according to two mistakes or errors that Aristotle is going to reason against. And the more important of the error is the one that says that nothing is an ability until it's an act, and so it's almost denying the distinction of ability and act, as we'll see.

[1:40] The other one says that everything's possible, but not everything will take place, even the impossible. That's a lesser thing. Okay, so let's look at the first error. error, and since that error kind of involves a rejection of the distinction between act and ability, after Aristotle takes up the error and refutes it, and and draws the conclusion from that, then he has a second part there where he talks about what it is to be an ability and what it is to be an act, at least so far as this first part of the book is concerned.

[2:29] So he says there are some who say, such as the Megarians. I don't know too much about the Megarian. Does anybody here know much about the? Their name is soon from their city Megara. Only Megarian I've heard of is Euclid of Megara, who has the dubious distinction of being confused with Euclid of Alexandria by people. The one anecdote I know about Euclid of Megara was, I guess the city was attacked and many of the citizens fled to the hills, and the city was kind of ransacked, and finally after the enemy departed, the citizens came back and they were um bemoaning their losses and so on, and going around, what did you lose and what did you lose and so on, and you can imagine, of

[3:17] course, the chaos when an army takes a city. They're grabbing that gold, the money, you know, and the daughters, and so on, and so on. And so, you know, I I lost my money, in my bag of gold, or I lost my daughter, or something. Finally, came to Euclid. He said, "What did you lose, Euclid?" He says, "I didn't see anybody carrying off wisdom."

[3:42] Of course, we had this Hollywood picture, you know, of the riots going on, and the soldiers, you know, are ransacking the city. The last thing anybody's going to be carrying off is wisdom, right? If they can find it, the gold, the dollars, and so on.

[3:58] So, first of all, Aristotle is going to give the the error, and then he's going to attack the error. There are some, he says, who say, such as the Megarians say, that something

[4:14] only then is an ability when it what acts, or when it is an act, and when it does not act, it's not able. As for example, that the one not building, when he's not building, is not able to build a house. The one not building a house, he's not doing that; he's not able to build a house. Likewise, in other things, same point.

[4:45] Aristotle doesn't give here any reason why the Megarians came to this conclusion. Thomas, though in the commentary, you may have noticed, says that it probably comes from the thought that all things happen necessarily, and therefore nothing is really possible except what has actually happened, and so it's only possible when actually happens. So the kind of reasoning, I suppose, from what we call the principle of determinism, or something of that sort, and it's leading them to say that nothing is possible, nothing is able to be except what actually is.

[5:28] So they're almost denying, in that way, the distinction between ability and act, or really, in a sense, denying ability and having only act. Kind of interesting the connection there between the necessity of

[5:49] from which they're reasoning to there being no ability, and the way Thomas reasons in the sixteenth chapter, the first book of Summa Contra Gentiles, where I believe one of the six arguments, I think it's the third argument, he reasons from God being the one who's necessary through itself that God has no what passive ability.

[6:19] As you may recall, in the Summa Theologiae, one of the five arguments for existence of God, it is the third one, is the one from necessity and possibility and so on. And that argument is not one of the ones in the chapter on thirteen of the Summa Contra Gentiles, proving that God exists, but it's given in the sixteenth chapter. So he has the argument from the Summa, that's used in Summa Theologiae later on, in the sixteenth chapter.

[6:48] You know how that argument proceeds. It says that there are some things that can be and not be, right? And therefore, of themselves or from themselves, they have no more to be than not to be. So if they have to be rather than not to be, it's because of something else that is necessary to be. And then Aristotle saw that what is necessary to be can have a cause, just like the conclusion of a demonstration is necessary, but it has a cause.

[7:18] And therefore, if it's not necessary through itself, but through another, there's going to have to be something necessary through itself, and that's God. And then he reasons from God being necessary to be through himself that there can't be any what ability to be or not be in God, in this passive ability. Well, Magarians, of course, are doing something different. But they're reasoning from a kind of necessity to there being no ability.

[7:46] Not reasoning to God, they're reasoning about the universe, right? And so Thomas is not doing that, right? He's reasoning to God having no passive ability in him. But they're reasoning that nothing is able to be except what actually is. So they're kind of denying the existence of ability. So it's an appropriate mistake to take up and refute a bit in this part of the ninth book, which is about ability mainly.

[8:20] Now Aristotle is going to show the kind of absurd consequences that follow from this position. And so he says now in the next line there thirty two,

[8:33] the atopa, the unsuitable, the unfitting, the actually impossible things that follow are not hard to see about this thing. And now, as Thomas points out, he's going to have four different what arguments against this.

[8:54] And the first argument is taken from what the art of building a house. And the second argument is taken from the sensible, right? And the third argument is taken from the senses.

[9:14] The fourth argument is a different kind of argument. Let's examine to get there. But do you see a certain order in the arguments of Aristotle?

[9:31] Yeah. I reminded that passage I was referring to in Thomas the other day. The first day it's the one where he, following Avicenna, right, Where, Avicenna says that ability was first what used in talking about powerful men and so on, talking about human things, and then it was carried over and applied to to natural things. So he begins with what the human here, right, with the art of house building, huh, and then he goes to something that's more natural, the sensible, and the senses themselves, the second and the third arguments.

[10:11] Okay, so there's a little confirmation there of the order that Thomas had pointed out there from Avicenna. Okay. Now, how does he reason from the art of house building? Well, as Thomas points out, he's going to talk about you can't get the art of house building without learning it from somebody, right, or discovering it by yourself, and both of these take some time, right? And you don't lose the art of house building in one day, right?

[10:43] If you went off and did something else for the rest of your life, you might, you know, gradually forget something of the art, or if you got an accident or something, you might lose the art of house building. You don't lose it like that, huh? So according to this position, huh, when you before the man starts to build a house, he's what doesn't have the art of house building, and he gets it like that, right?

[11:10] And the minute he stops building a house, he's lost the art of house building, huh? Well, does that agree with our experience of how the art of house building or any art, that matter, art of cooking, you know, art of making bacon and so on, art of cooking, the way you acquire it or the way you lose such an art, huh? It's like that, huh? Okay.

[11:34] It's clear from this position, right, that one will not be a house builder unless he builds, right? Okay. But to be a house builder is to be able to build a house, right? And likewise in the case of the other arts. If then he says it's impossible to have these arts of this sort, not learning, right, as it were, from someone or taking in some way, and to not have it without losing it, like through forgetfulness or some disease or time and so on, huh?

[12:16] Because you don't lose an art, he says, by the object being destroyed, because that is always there. Thomas makes the point that if I think you're sitting truly, I can lose that true knowledge when you stand up, right? But the art really needs the raw material there, and that's always there, so it doesn't have to worry about the thing not being there. So, likewise, he says, then in the case of the other arts,

[13:00] so when he seizes, then he would not have the art, and again, right away he would, when he builds, how would he be taking it? Okay, so that's the first criticism Aristotle gives. huh. Of acquiring or losing an art, right? We don't acquire or lose the art of house building all at once, and so I can't. The minute I start to build a house, I acquire the art of house building, and the minute I stop, I lose it.

[13:33] Neither one is true. Therefore, it must be that even before I start to build a house, and even after I write stop immediately stop, I still have the art of house building, and therefore I am able, right? Even though I'm not actually building a house. So before I build and after I build, I possess the art of house building, and therefore I'm able to do this. And therefore, you have ability without act, because by the art of house building, I'm able to do that.

[14:07] We can call upon this man over here that made the bacon this morning, right? And has something of the art of cooking, huh? And did you suddenly acquire the art of cooking this morning when you turned down the stove, huh? Is that your experience? And and now you you you lost it the minute you you you distributed the bacon, huh? You lost the art of. Someone else has to cook tomorrow because.

[14:40] Or no, if someone has acquired the art of playing the piano, it takes some time to acquire the art of playing the piano and playing it well, right? And do you acquire just like that? You sit down at the piano, and then you stop playing, you've lost the art of. That starts from scratch again. Take my brother Mark, just talking about the guy who taught Greek, and of course he didn't teach it very often.

[15:06] Every time he taught, he had to learn it again. Was that true of the concert pianists? You know, every time. No, no. So he possesses the art of playing the piano before he begins his concert tonight, right? And he possesses it after he finishes his concert tonight, huh? Walter Gieseking you know, finished his twelfth encore, huh? And bowed, had he lost now the art of playing the piano?

[15:33] No. I suppose the absurdity would be that he had to have lost and gained it twelve times to play those twelve. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is all this ridiculous, right? So Aristotle is really using what's most known to us, huh? This sort of thing. So the art of playing the piano then is something that Walter Gieseking possesses, even when he's not playing the piano. So he's, but by that art of playing the piano, he's able to play the piano, right?

[16:04] So he's able to play the piano when he's not actually doing it. That's refuted by the Bulgarians, right? Okay. But Aristotle's going to give us another argument. They would probably say that also there's no such thing as art. He can't explain the piano Even though he's playing the piano. it's just, yeah, just an action. Yeah, yeah. And is it? But I mean, there's obviously a difference between the man who has the art and can play the piano and the man who doesn't have the art, right?

[16:35] Okay. So Aristotle, you know, it's common sense here, but he's appealing to our experience there of acquiring one of these arts or losing them, right? And obviously, it's not this instantaneous thing, right? Okay. And so, if he possesses the art before and after he plays, and by the art he's able to play, then the ability to play exists independently of the actual playing.

[17:04] Okay. Someone might say that the ability is really something actual, because his nerves or something are different. No, but they're saying he can play the piano only when he's actually playing it. Otherwise, there'd be contingency, and the world would not be completely necessary.

[17:28] Now, he could have played tonight, but he didn't, right? Well, then there's contingency now in this case, right? And they don't want to admit the contingency if you have this complete determinism. You know, we have a fragment of Leucippus there, right? Which says nothing happens by chance, but there's a reason, and everything happens by necessity. And I point out to students that this was the absolute principle of modern science in the 17th, 18th, and 19th century, and even to some extent beyond.

[18:05] It wasn't seriously challenged until perhaps quantum theory. But I sometimes point out as a witness to this being the absolute principle of modern science. I take Claude Bernard in the introduction to the study of experimental medicine. It's written about 1860, I guess. And biology was not as scientific as the physical sciences, and Bernard is trying to get the biologists to be more scientific and more like the physical scientists.

[18:43] And this is one book he wrote. He's one of the fathers of modern physiology, and the book has three parts. The first part is a description of the experimental method in general. The second part is about the experimental method in biology in particular. The third part is concrete examples from his own experiments and observations of that experimental method in biology. Right. But then you go back to the the first part there when he's talking about the scientific method in general.

[19:16] He understands very well that the scientific hypothesis never becomes known for sure, and the scientific hypothesis, even after it's been confirmed many times, can still be tested again, right? And and so he makes the statement that doubt is intrinsic to the experimental what method, huh? And so he has a very good understanding in that respect of the experimental method. And Einstein says that the for the physicists the success of Newtonian physics, so many things it kept on predicting that were shown to be so that they begin to think that this must be the truth, right?

[20:03] And then Einstein showed with the relativity theory that he could predict the same things as Newton with a different theory, and some things maybe Newton couldn't predict, huh? And then he said it became crystal clear to the physicists that you never know that the and of course from elementary logic you know that the confirmation of an hypothesis is not a syllogism. You're saying if A is so, B is so, B is so, therefore A is so, right?

[20:35] That's not a syllogism. My stock example is if If Burke was dropped dead last night, then he will be absent from class today. And he's absent from class today. Never dropped dead. That's wishful thinking, I say, but it's not logical thinking. It's not logical thinking. So Bernard sees that very well, right? The doubt is intrinsic to the experimental method. But then he says, but you cannot doubt determinism.

[21:05] To doubt determinism would be to doubt science. So that's like the absolute principle. You can't doubt that thing. And so you can see when they're trying to make things like biology more scientific that the unshakable thing for them is determinism. Even a man who says that doubt is intrinsic to the method, you can't doubt that. It's not allowed. Or the other example is there when Freud is trying to make psychology more scientific, right?

[21:38] The one thing he insists upon is determinism. And so something that's apparently without reason, unnecessary, like our dreams, huh? When I was in graduate school, my cousin Donald often had these crazy dreams and recounted them. And I remember one dream where he was being chased by a tiger, huh? And he's running and running and running and trying to get away from the tiger, and finally he gets down a dead end and there's no place to go, right?

[22:07] So he turns around to face the tiger, and as the tiger comes up, the tiger says, "How would you like to buy a raffle ticket?" Well, anything sounds irrational. That sounds, you know, crazy. We just laugh, and you know, ha ha ha. But you know, Freud comes along and says, "No, no, there's a reason why you dreamt that last night, huh? You had to dream that last night, and it does tell something about you.

[22:29] And we're going to find out what it is about you that made you dream that last night. So even something as apparently irrational as dreams, huh, and crazy and without reason, huh, even those are going to be what subject to determinism, huh, that absolute necessity. You had to dream that last night. With the idea of determinism, you find that in the ancient men, and perhaps in people like Leucippus and Democritus, who are influenced by the mathematical science of nature.

[23:03] Aristotle sometimes refers to the causality in mathematics as necessity, and that's kind of interesting, huh? So if you study the natural world mathematically, then you kind of carry over this determinism and necessity of mathematics to the natural world, and then you end up denying ability, huh? And then you end up acquiring and losing the art of cooking many times a day if you cook several times a day, or the art of playing the piano many times a day, huh?

[23:36] Do you really have to deny ability? I mean, it's not if you say there's cause and necessity. Yeah, well, it seems to be a kind of a an opposition between necessity and and ability, right? And I'll say even in a different way there when Thomas is arguing that there's in this passive ability in God, he argues from God being necessary to himself

[24:05] by something that is able to be and not be makes possible contingency, and therefore, so necessity seems to exclude that contingency, and therefore to exclude the ability. In 1047a1 you were saying the the. Not, not by the thing being destroyed. Yeah, Thomas explains that in the commentary when he says that

[24:36] if I think truly that you are sitting, my true knowledge can be destroyed by your getting up, right? But in the case of art, it seems you always have the raw materials there somewhere, right? And so the art can always operate on these raw materials. It's a different situation there, right? The matter is always there, so it's not a question of losing the art of playing the piano because the piano has disappeared, or lose the art of housebuilding because wood has disappeared or something of that sort.

[25:10] So it's not like I losing true knowledge of your sitting because you stood up and I don't know it. Okay. So Thomas. Now the second argument Thomas has against this.

[25:28] He's taking apsuchē. For neither, he says, the cold or the what, hot or the sweet, nor anything sensible, huh, will be not being what sensed, huh. Okay. You know the old idea of is there a sound in the forest? You know, and nobody there to hear it, right? And is the sugar sweet when no one is tasting its sweetness?

[26:02] Well, this is the way Protagoras apparently had spoken, huh? And kind of like the Berkeley, you know, esse est percipi right? To be is to be perceived, huh? Where they made in a sense no distinction between the sensible inability and the sensible in act huh. And Aristotle has reasoned against this

[26:25] in the fourth book of wisdom, huh? Because in the fourth book of wisdom, in the latter part, he's defending the axiom of being and non-being against the sophists and people who have arguments against it. And some arguments come from motion, and other arguments come from Protagoras, saying that whatever appears, right, is so and so on. And what he's saying is that sweet doesn't exist except in the what tasting it, huh?

[27:03] And hot and cold don't exist except in the feeling the hot and the cold. So if your friend says I feel cold and you don't feel cold, well then both is and is not cold, huh? And so Aristotle has argued against that in the fourth book, and so he's just saying this falls back in that same difficulty that we criticized Protagoras for having in the fourth book, huh?

[27:27] So we want to go back to the fourth book here, but that's what he's referring back to the previous refutation, an argument against Protagoras.

[27:39] But that that distinction between the sensible, ability and the sensible in act act is made in the De Anima too. If you go back and study that De Anima

[27:53] so Aristotle is taking that for granted here that sugar is sweet, even though you don't taste it. So it's able to be tasted, but it's not actually being tasted. So it's a difference between the ability and act, right?

[28:15] Now the third argument is taken. From the what senses, huh? And notice again another distinction there, that the first two arguments, the one from the art of building a house or any of the arts for that matter, and the one from the sensible, is taken more from the ability to act upon something, huh? So the art of house building is able to act upon the wood, and the sensible is able to act upon the what senses, huh?

[28:46] But now the third kind of argument here, the third argument rather, is taken from an ability to what be acted upon, huh? To undergo, huh? Now it's interesting that Aristotle brings it in here because we'll find out in the middle part of the book that sensing is not really a motion in the original sense of the word, huh? But he hasn't brought that out yet, right? So he's speaking a little bit like the Greeks might speak, where sensing is just another kind of motion, an alteration, huh?

[29:25] But the point he's making here is that if I have the sense of sight, let's say, if I have the ability to see only when I'm actually seeing, then when I'm not seeing, I must be what blind, huh? Because I'm lacking the ability that man is able to have, we should have it, and so on, and therefore I'm blind many times a day, right? As I close my eyes and then I suddenly acquire sight, right?

[29:57] What's the big deal about Christ restoring the blind man to sight? I'm doing this all day long as I close my eyes and open them, I'm I'm I'm bringing myself from blindness to, to to to sight. There's also that's that's not true, right? Huh? It's just I don't acquire the art of of building a house and lose it like that. So likewise, I'm not becoming blind and then having sight and then being blind and having sight.

[30:26] And that's what you'd have to say if I'm able to see when I'm actually seeing. And when I'm not seeing. if. I get my eyes closed now. I'm blind. And now I'm no longer blind.

[30:43] Um. In the same way about being deaf, huh? I plug my ears I'm deaf, and now when I unplug my ears, I have now recovered the what ability to hear.

[30:58] Now obviously that's not true. So even when my eyes are closed, I have the ability to see, huh? And when my ears are plugged, I have the ability to hear, right? And so ability is something quite different from act, huh? So kind of defending the existence of what of ability.

[31:23] So that's the third argument that he has against the Megarians and people like them. Now the fourth argument is a different kind of argument from the first three.

[31:38] It's not as as concrete, but it's still quite strong. He's saying that if I have the ability to stand only when I'm actually standing, then when I'm sitting, I don't have the ability to stand. Therefore, I will never stand. And likewise, when I'm standing, if I don't have the ability to sit. I only have the ability to sit when I'm actually sitting. Then, when I'm standing, I don't have the ability to sit, and therefore, it's impossible for me to sit.

[32:18] And therefore, I'm standing will always be standing. If you gentlemen are sitting right now, you'll always be sitting in case you follow the Megarian position. So that's a very good argument, right? If you're not able to do something, you you can't do it. If you're not able to do it unless you're doing it, then you'll never be able to do it. That's a very convincing argument, seems to me.

[32:45] Further, he says at line ten, where it starts there, it is impossible for what is deprived of power. What is not come to be, it will be impossible for it to what come to be.

[33:05] And what is impossible to come to be, the one speaking of that as being or coming to be, will be lying. For he will will signify something in fact impossible, because he has no ability to do this.

[33:23] So that these arguments or these speeches of the Megarians, these positions, take away both what motion and generation. And always the thing what standing will be standing, and the one sitting will be what sitting, right? And he will not be able to stand up or resurrect. I guess that's because of the word resurrection, there for Christ. he will not be able to resurrect if he sits, right?

[33:59] And it would be impossible to stand up the thing that is not what able to stand up. He doesn't have the ability to stand up until he's what standing up, right?

[34:17] So these are the four arguments that Aristotle gives against the position of the Megarians and people who like that who say that something is able only when it's what actual, right? They seem to be denying ability. Okay, or you could also say they seem to be denying the distinction between ability and act.

[34:42] So he says now in line eighteen. Now this kind of conclusion now of the critique of them. If it is not possible then to say these things, that I'm blind and but deaf many times a day, right? And that I acquire and lose the art of building a house, the art of cooking many times a day, and so on.

[35:07] Then he says, it is clear that dunamis, power, ability, potency, and energeia, act, is what, or other, right? Okay. Now notice, there's a distinction between ability and act, which you have to see in the earlier parts of Book Nine, in the first part and maybe the second part to some extent. Before, in the third part, you can talk about the order of act and ability. So he's spoken before how nothing is before or after itself,

[35:58] and so there must be some distinction between what is before and what is after. And if there is no distinction, one couldn't be before and the other after it. Just like that axiom we said about beginning, there must always be some distinction between the beginning and that of which it is the beginning.

[36:27] What what does distinction mean? What does it mean to say that two things are distinct? Drawn apart Hmm Drawn apart Well, yeah, in a way they're thought apart, but to be more, a little more, you say as to what it is to say that they're distinct. What do you mean? One is not the other. Yeah, one is not the other. To say two things are distinct, in the sense, with all something negative, that one is not the other.

[37:04] Okay. So to say now that act and ability are distinct means that you see that one is not the other. And the Megarians didn't see that one is not the other.

[37:21] And you have to see the distinction of act and ability before you can see the distinction. Before you can see the order of them, which will be the main thing in the third part of the ninth book.

[37:39] Sometimes you know you have students who you know would deny the objectivity of say judgment about wine. Let's say that this wine is better than that wine, huh? And I sometimes mention how in some of the better wine tasting things, the judges have to pass a test, right? And so they bring you out a glass of dry red wine without the bottle and so on, and you sniff it and taste it, and they say, "Now, what is that?

[38:19] " Well, if you can't identify it, you cannot be a judge this year. Simple as that, right? So if you can't see the distinction between let's say Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir, you don't know when you're drinking Cabernet and when you're drinking Pinot Noir. Then are you able to judge whether this is a better Pinot Noir than that one, or this is a better Cabernet than that?

[38:48] If you don't know what you're drinking, huh? And notice, I'm not saying the reverse. I'm not saying that if you can distinguish, right, between this wine and that wine, huh? I want to take even a simple example. You know, there are people who say, you know, well Budweiser is better than Miller's, right, or vice versa. And sometimes they give these guys a glass of one of the two, and which, and then they give them a glass of the other one, and which does he prefer?

[39:20] He ends up preferring the other one, right? So he doesn't know whether he's drinking Budweiser or a Miller. So if you don't, if you can't distinguish between a glass of Budweiser and Miller, are you able to say that Budweiser is better than Miller's or vice versa? No, no. I'm not saying the reverse and saying that if you can distinguish between Budweiser and Miller, right, then you're able to to see which is better.

[39:50] That doesn't follow, right? But if you're able to see which is better, you must be able to see the distinction of the two, right? Okay.

[40:02] So next point: if those who can taste the distinction between the two agree that one is better than the other, right, then that's somewhat convincing, right? But those who can't taste or tell the distinction, can't see the distinction, their judgment is worthless.

[40:30] And so if there's five guys who can Recognize the distinction. Can see the distinction. And those five guys say A is better than B. I don't care whether B has, you know, is sold twice as much in the market or or what, huh? I don't care. Those people can't judge because they don't know the difference. Is your middle way for in Vino Veritas? Well, that's it's a step in the right direction.

[41:04] So it doesn't hurt. So you can apply that a lot. I think maybe to those judgments that people regard as very subjective. So can see the necessary order here in the ninth book that you must be clear. About the distinction of act and ability, before you consider which is before or after the other, right? Or if one is before or after the other, but that has to come after seeing the distinction.

[41:55] And in a way that that's in the description in an oversimplified way, the first two parts, the first parts about ability, the second is about act. You're seeing the distinction, right? But now, even within the interior of the tractatus here, with act and ability, you're seeing the distinction being defended here against this Megarian position that would tend to confuse the two.

[42:26] So let's come back to Aristotle's words here now, which is kind of the conclusion of the critique of the Megarians. Huh? He stayed their position. He gave four arguments against their position. Now he's saying, huh? If then this is line 17 or 18 there. If then it happens, if it's not possible, right, to say these things, all these absurd things follow from the position. It is clear that ability and act are other, right?

[42:57] But those speeches, those positions, make ability and act the same, right? Whence Aristotle, it is no little thing they seek to destroy, huh? And of course, when you see later on the before and after of act and ability, and how important and universal important that is, right? And how necessary it is to get to God for among most of all, then you say, hey, it's no little thing they're destroying.

[43:36] Because the distinction disappears, then the order disappears, and everything that the order and seeing the order leads to, huh? He's got a marvelous Aristotle stuff on on something as

[43:55] basic as that, huh? I think that that's something really necessary for philosopher to see what's important. Yeah. I remember MacArthur telling me that he noticed that he was different from other people who may appear quicker or brighter that they wouldn't ever seem to get that what was riding on their position. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[44:22] So Aristotle continuing now at the conclusion of this whole discourse against the Megarians, so that it is possible for something what? To be, something is able to be, but it isn't, right?

[44:41] And it's possible for something to not be that is. See, that's very interesting, huh? Okay. And likewise, he said in the other categories, huh? It is possible, what, to be walking when you're not walking, right?

[45:09] To not walk when you're able to walk, right? Okay. Now there's a second part now where Aristotle is going to come back.