Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado)
25. Before and After in the Acts of Reason: Guessing, Thinking Out, and Discourse
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[0:00] There were three things: the order, and acts, and the acts of reason. Okay, you want to come back to that, and then we'll get to the fourth. Yeah. okay. Now, i, is there another very important order in the acts of reason? We talked first of all about the

[0:22] act of understanding what something is, coming before the putting together, dividing of these things and statements. And the putting together, dividing these things and statements comes before the putting together of statements to reason, right? And then we said that reason what guesses before it knows. And incidentally, when when I do the first the Greek natural philosophers a little before we do Aristotle, the fragments there, I try to present them as making at least reasonable guesses, huh?

[1:04] And I usually say that a guess can be reasonable in one of two ways, or for one of two reasons. Either because you have a reason for the guess, and a good reason, of some sort, or because reason is naturally inclined in that way, huh? And so I give a little dichotomy there, a little two ways that a guess can be reasonable, huh? But anyway, that's one thing that's very important to see: that reason guesses before it knows, and very often reason gets no further than a good guess or a guess.

[1:43] Sometimes it's as far as we get, then. And you know what Socrates says there in the dialogue, the the Phaedo, where he's investigating a very important question: is the human soul immortal or not? He's got this guy there, Simmias, who's pushing him to come up with an argument that shows one way or the other that it must be so, right? And Socrates says, "Now, let's try to get the best argument we can, right?

[2:19] If we can find a necessary argument about this matter, that would be the best of all," he said. If you can only get a probable argument, you know, let's try to get the most probable one and go through life on this probability. It's kind of interesting, huh? Kind of shows you that looking back to the Meno right because the Meno was saying,

[2:47] "Is knowledge the only thing that directs you to the good?" And Socrates at first said that knowledge directs you to the good, but then he says, "But sometimes it's just the right opinion, right? Could even be a hunch that directs you towards the good, right? So." As you go through life, if we can have knowledge of what to do, that's the best, huh? To know what to do and what not to do, huh?

[3:14] But if you can't get knowledge, right, in strict sense, of what to do and what not to do, get the most reasonable guess of what to do, huh? Right.

[3:28] I always love these accounts, you know, of MacArthur when he was going to do the Inchon landing. You've heard the stories. They sent the military colonel, I guess his name was the chief of staff, you know, of the army to um create to try to convince MacArthur not to do it. And they sent the admiral and so on, and of course everybody speaking against it, you know.

[3:50] And people who've been there, you know, describe the tension in the room. People, you know, kind of fiddling with their pencils and so on. And then MacArthur gets up, you know, and he starts out very slowly, and he says, "I'm going to do what Wolfe did at Montcalm, did it? Wolfe did it with Montcalm in Quebec. No one thought he could land, where he did, you know.

[4:06] And he surprised them, you know, and so on. And he he told the admiral there, you know, I have more confidence in the Navy he says, "than you have, you know, and so. And he just broke them down, you know, and you know it's either me or fire me, you know, and so they finally, you know, agreed reluctantly, you know. And so they went back to Washington, so on.

[4:29] And just before they did it, they sent him a letter: "You're on your own, " you know. They completely covered themselves, right? So nothing went wrong, All in the thing, you know. And then, a, then of course, you know, tremendous success because they they got he landed there. They started to cut the supply lines and so on. And then the guys who were almost in the ocean down there, they saw that you know the enemy started to fold and just like that, and so on.

[4:52] And then all these congratulatory letters coming to MacArthur, you know, even for the guys, who had opposed him, you know. But to MacArthur, no, it was going to work, huh? You know, historians, you know, debate these things, you know. And some people say, you know, it was too great a risk to take, you know, and so on. But in retrospect, we can say if MacArthur didn't know this was the thing to do, he studied very carefully.

[5:13] But he certainly made a very good guess, right? You made the right guess, huh? So that's what Socrates is saying, right? If you can know, fine, right? That's best, huh? But if you can't, get the best guess, huh? Of course, in experimental science, Einstein kind of insists that you can't really know, but you can get to make a better guess than somebody else. Now

[5:39] the second thing we said was what? Thinking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Huh? Well, you you think about something before you understand it, and I think that's part of our experience, isn't it? And you go from thinking about something to understanding it by thinking it out, huh? And then they say you can elaborate on that by going back to the eight senses in and out. That kind of helps you to see different senses of thinking out.

[6:10] So it's a different kind of thinking out when I think out the definition of quadrilateral, let's say, and when I think out the kinds of quadrilateral there are. Not the same kind of thinking out. Because thinking out the definition of quadrilateral goes back to the third sense of in and out, and thinking out the kinds of triangle goes back to the what fourth sense? So there's, you know, that distinction of the eight senses of in and out.

[6:45] It's kind of a help to see different senses of thinking out. They're all they're all necessary. What's What's curious about it too, when I was thinking about it, is that the order of the senses of in and out is somewhat the order in which you have to think things out.

[7:07] Because the second sense of in and out is the whole has parts, right? And of course, Aristotle will say, maybe think out that a statement is composed of noun and verb before he goes further, right? So he's thinking out the parts of it, right? And then what does he do? He thinks out the definition of statement. That's the third sense of of in and out. Then he thinks out the species of it.

[7:35] That's the fourth sense, right? Is it? And of course, I would just the last thing you think out really is to think out a conclusion, and that's the the seventh sense of thinking out. I've got you in my power, right? The conclusion is in the power of the premises. So when I syllogize, I'm thinking out the what conclusion? I'm bringing the conclusion out of the premises, it was contained in the power of the premises.

[8:08] In a sense, when Socrates talks to the the slave boy and helps the slave boy to think out the way to double a square, that's the thinking out in the sense corresponding to the seventh sense, right? So in in a way, it always kind of struck me that the

[8:29] order in which we have to think things out in philosophy somewhat very much in fact corresponds to the order in the senses of in and out. So it shows you how much mileage you get out of those senses of in and out, huh? I mean, you get mileage out of them in all kinds of other ways because all these mistakes from mixing up the senses of words and especially the common words, well, in and out.

[8:57] What is Anaxagoras in a sense doing when he when he when he's saying you can't get something out of nothing? Okay, it's got to be in there, but what senses it in there, right? And he puts it in there like a part in a whole, really. That's what he does, right? But he puts it in there actually, right? And and the

[9:22] all these things that come out of matter are in there only in ability in another sense, in the fifth sense. You have it something like that in John Locke, you know, where he's trying to understand the general idea of triangle and scaling his sizes and equilateral and right angle and obtuse angle. It's all of these and none of these, huh? So, in a sense, he's imagining all the species to be in the genus, right?

[9:53] It's like you take the species and you're rubbing together like this and make a big ball, and you get a fuzzy idea known as triangle in general, right? Well, he's imagining the species to be in the genus and act. Well, of course, the first three meanings of in, what is in something is actually in it. But you get to the fourth sense, the species in the genus and in form and matter, you're getting now, and even I catch you in my power, right?

[10:20] You're getting something that's in something, but not actually at first. And but you tend to fall back upon the other ones as being what more known, huh? When you study the early Greeks, they can't. You see explicitly in Empedocles and Anaxagoras, they can't understand how any change is possible but change of place. It's because they can't understand ability. So the thing you do is move things around.

[10:48] And Empedocles says they'll always be there where you put them. but they never go in or out of existence because they can't understand what intrinsic ability. And you seem to be something out of nothing, right? So they say to the students, that what's going on? when you're teaching. If you aren't able to know something you didn't know before, if all you can do is have locomotion. I must be losing my knowledge, going out, you know, to your people, the change of place of my knowledge, and the more I teach, the less I know.

[11:25] So that in the end, I end up knowing nothing, and they should pay me less and less. You know, you know these these financial plans. You know, we you have less and less credit as time goes on. You know, you you know insurance policy. You know, the more dangerous your family's young. You know, you need more money, then keeps on diminishing the value. That of a teacher, right?

[11:47] And and and I suppose when these moderns, you know, we try to while you're rearranging, you know, spatially the atoms in your head or something. That's what it is. They try to hold on, you know, to the idea of no ability and just act, just act.

[12:06] But now, what's what's the other way? What's the others? Say a little more about what you mean by thinking about, as opposed to thinking out.

[12:16] I think what Marv's about the word about is, it's like you're going around something, right, without penetrating it. So you you go about something, and you want to bring out something that's. Inside, right? Okay. So

[12:33] that's why we use that expression to think out, right? Okay. So, but you kind of know things in an outward way first, because your senses know things in an outward way, and in English, outward is almost a synonym for what sensible. When I was a little boy, we memorized the definition of sacrament as an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace. The old catechism definition. What what did outward mean there?

[13:04] You know, something you know to the senses, huh? And opposed to inward. So, so you're trying to bring something out that is within. And sometimes when I when I define

[13:22] definition, I say definition is speech bringing out what a thing is. And of course, one of the meanings of nature is what a thing is. But in all the meanings of nature, nature is within that. You know, it starts off as De Koninck would point out. The first meaning of nature is birth, right? And so the woman is making an apple pie in the kitchen. There, she's acting upon the dough and the apple, something outside of herself, but the baby comes from within.

[14:02] And then the source, the baby within the mother, is the second sense. And then the third sense, the more general sense that is defined in the second book of Natural Hearing, is that the it's the beginning and cause of motion and arrest in that which it is, right, as such, and so on. First, as such, not by happening, and then you have Heraclitus saying nature loves to hide.

[14:28] So I ask my colleagues, why does he say nature loves to hide? You get some weird answer, but but the the first answer is what? Why does nature love to hide? It's within. Yeah, and what's within is hidden, right? And so when you apply nature, even eventually the last meaning to what a thing is, what a thing is is what within, right? And you know how Thomas takes the the etymology of intelligere, right?

[14:58] Instead of inter, he takes it from intus, right? To read within, to read within, because you're getting inside, right? So when I define definition as speech bringing out what a thing is, bringing out the nature of a thing, that's what it does.

[15:20] It's like the idea of thinking out, right? But what was it within? When you divide a genus into species, right? The species are in some sense in the genus; they're in the genus inability, and you have to bring out from that, right, what the species would be. In a sense, Euclid and anybody who's dividing a genus into species will what do that, right?

[15:49] So, but before you you bring it out, before you think it out, your mind, in a sense, is going around it, okay? And then when it thinks it out, it brings it out. So it's very concrete, but it's very very good, right? And we do say in daily life, we do use expression to think about something, right? You know, I don't understand that. And he said, "Well, we've been thinking about it.

[16:16] Yeah, we still don't understand it. " Well, it's like I said about guessing and knowing. I mean, sometimes you think about something; that's as far as you get. You don't, you know. But if you're able to think it out, then you come to some kind of of understanding.

[16:36] Okay, that answer your question or not? Can you give some examples of thinking about that's not thinking out? Thinking about. Well, in a sense, thinking about

[16:59] always has a sense of something kind of outside, right? But when Aristotle say is asking what is wisdom about, right? And in the proemium we learn that wisdom is about causes, and in the end, about the first causes, right? Okay. Then, as I mentioned before, beginning in the fourth book, we learn that wisdom is about being as being, and it's about the one and the many. And then a little bit later on in book four, we learn that wisdom is about the axioms, right?

[17:39] Okay. So, but is it about these three in the same way? When you say that wisdom is about the first causes, it's a little bit like saying ethics is about happiness, right? That's the goal; that's all about. When you say wisdom is about being as being and the one, the many, you're saying what it's about as a what subject, right? But when you say it's about the axioms, well, that's not the goal.

[18:13] That's not the subject, right? But then you realize that wisdom is something more than just an episteme, right? That it's the head of natural understanding as well as reasoned out understanding, so it's not. Reducible to reasoned out understanding or to natural understanding, that stands at the head of both of them, and so it gets a more

[18:39] distinct knowledge of the axioms than natural understanding has, and it's able to defend the axioms against the sophistical objections that are always being raised against these. You heard De Koninck there resolved Brie Russell's attack upon the axiom of whole and part, huh? And he did so by understanding the wisdom. It would be kind of beautiful to see the way he did it. But that's

[19:14] something that wisdom is about, not insofar as it's just an epistame right, or reasoned out knowledge, because every reasoned out knowledge is about a subject and the causes of that subject, right? But wisdom is not just reducible to episteme. It's something, you know, at the peak there, you know, it's it's the head of all understanding. Aristotle says the kephalaion, you know, and so it

[19:42] has a more perfect understanding of causes than uh reasoned out understanding does because it knows the cause of the cause, it knows many of the first causes, but it has a more perfect understanding of the axioms than natural understanding does because it's a much more distinct knowledge of the axioms because you distinguish the senses of the words in the axioms, and because you're able to defend the axioms against the attacks upon them.

[20:11] One example that kind of strikes me very much is the the axiom and the first word there in the fifth book there, the axiom of of beginning, right? Aristotle uses in the first book of natural hearing. I mentioned that before, I think. You know, when he's considering the opinions about beginnings, and he says, "Well, if everything is one, like Parmenides Melissus says, there's no beginning, because nothing is the beginning itself.

[20:36] There's always a distinction between the beginning and that which it is a beginning, right? Well, now you got to be careful about that because the word beginning has at least six meanings there in the thing, and somebody might say, "Well,

[20:52] the foundation of a house is the beginning of the house, right? " Yeah, but the foundation of the house is a part of the house, huh? So it's a beginning of itself, right? You see. Well, if you distinguish the senses of beginning, the sense in which the foundation of the house is beginning of the house is distinct from the fourth sense of beginning, where the carpenter is a beginning here at the table, right?

[21:21] The fourth sense, the beginning, is outside that of which it is a beginning, right? But in the first sense of beginning, like the the edge of the table is beginning the table, or the point is beginning the line, the point or the edge is in the the line, right? And the third sense there, where the fundamental part, like the keel of the ship or the foundation of the thing, that's a beginning still inside that which is the beginning, and that's why it's closer to the first meaning of beginning than than the carpenter, right?

[21:53] But still, there's a distinction between the what the foundation of the house and the house, because one is a part and the other is a whole, and there's a distinction between the whole and the part; they're not the same, right? But the distinction is not exactly the same there as between the carpenter and the house, right? The carpenter is not a part of the house at all, right?

[22:14] Okay, so there's a different kind of distinction between the beginning and that which is the beginning in the fourth sense of beginning, right? Where the beginning is in no way a part of what is the beginning, and the third sense where it's supposed to be a part, right, of the whole, and the distinction is between the part and the whole, not between the whole and something outside of it, right?

[22:38] You see, so you have a much more distinct understanding what it means to say that the beginning is not nothing is a beginning of itself, right? You know, it's not the distinction is not the same in every meaning of it exactly, right? But there's always a distinction, right? That's appropriate to that sense, huh? And in the third sense, where the beginning is is the fundamental part of the thing, you're not looking for a distinction where the beginning is something entirely outside of that which is the beginning.

[23:11] But it's a distinction of part and whole, and that's a real distinction, unless you think that the part is equal to the whole or something, you know? So

[23:25] okay, so what's what's the other way of what's the other before and after? There, the acts of reason. You consider the way before you actually the way of a science. Okay, but that's that's kind of a distinction there in what you're considering or knowing, right? Huh?

[23:53] As opposed to knowing. I mean, like a different kind of act, right? Do you know? It doesn't name a different actor, right? Knowing, knowing the subject and knowing the the road, right? Those two different things to know, right? Okay, I was not talking about a different kind of act, like we were saying that guessing is really different than knowing, right? Different act of reason, and thinking about something is really something different than understanding it, isn't it?

[24:19] Even though it might be something on the way to understanding it, huh? See this, this. Well, let let you people think first. The one you made that was

[24:58] like love, desire, joy, natural understanding, reasoning out. You you speak of of natural understanding being before reason, not understanding, right? Okay, although I'd probably put that more with the the natural road, right? You know, and the natural road is the first road, but then you have the road of a reason as reason, you might say, right? And there, the before and after is based on the before and after in the very acts of reason itself, right?

[25:33] But is there another important before and after, or there's some kind of distinction the acts of reason a little bit, right? That's important, somewhat like the two we mentioned already, or the three actually. Let me give us a clue. Who's my favorite poet?

[26:00] Does he give you a clue? Looking and seeing. Yeah. In a way, when he when he defines, huh, reason as the ability for large discourses, looking before and after. Sometimes, I say that last part is bringing out what the end or purpose is of the discourse of reason, huh? The end or purpose of the discourse of reason is to see a before and after you didn't see before, right?

[26:44] And so Shakespeare says that reason is ability for large discourse, looking before and after. He's in a sense saying that in its very discourse, right? Reason is what looking before and after. But is the discourse of reason seeing the before and after?

[27:03] Or is that a result of the discourse of reason? Why does Shakespeare define it as the ability for large discourse seeing the before and after? It doesn't define it that way because that would imply that you are at the end, right? Why discourse is like a motion where you are kind of seeking knowledge, huh? So the word looking does not imply that you've already seen the before and after.

[27:30] What does the word looking mean? Trying to see. Trying to see, yeah. So it's like you are saying, what is the end or purpose? What is reason trying to accomplish in its discourse? It's trying to see a before and after, huh? But that's not the same thing as a discourse, right? But the discourse is coming before you are seeing the before and after, huh?

[28:01] But the looking is the and the discourse. How are they different? Because the the. Well, in a sense, no, but I wouldn't want to separate them too much, because

[28:17] that's kind of giving you what what you are trying to accomplish in your discourse, right? That you are seeking the before and after. Now, give an example, you know, from from the ethical part of my course.

[28:34] I'd say to the students, huh? With the other experience of Socrates, I say. Now suppose Socrates had the slave boy or an American boy, and he says, "What's good? What did the slave boy say, or the American? What did the American boy say? What's good? Well, candy's good, pizza's good, baseball's good, right? Okay. He do like everybody does in the dialogues, gives examples of the good, and doesn't give any definition, right?

[29:02] And then Socrates would say, "Well, now all these things are good, but I was looking for just one thing. What the good was, right? What's common to all these things? Why do you call these things good, right? And the little boy might, you know, if he thought about, say, "Well, I don't know. What the you mean the candy and the pizza you can eat, but the baseball you can't eat, you know?

[29:25] But what what does these all have in common? Well, these are all the things that he, as a boy. Normal, healthy boy wants, right? Okay. I remember my son Paul. One time, you know, you know the way the kids react. Some differently sometimes. What you are having for dinner, right? If you are having pizza, that'll be one thing. Having fish, that'll be something else, right? And Paul, he's only a little boy, you know.

[29:47] If you like it, it's good, you know. If you want it, it's good. If it's not, you don't want it. It's bad. But I mean, I mean, what you got to do is, you know, becoming a child again and see what the first thought about good is. After examples, right? So you are kind of imitating Socrates, and almost all the dialogues, even the Meno and Euthyphro, right, and Theaetetus, and so on.

[30:09] When you ask somebody what something is, they give examples, but they can't bring out what's common, right? They can't think out what's common to the examples, right? The examples thinking out, right? And so,

[30:25] what the slave boy probably comes up with is the idea that these are all the things he wants, right? So now he has what is, in fact, the first definition: the good. The good is what all want,

[30:38] okay? But then you have to do what Socrates does in the Euthyphro, and Heisenberg is very good about that. That the Greeks taught us how to ask questions of principle, and they gave us the most powerful tool that there is in Western thinking. And so, Socrates, during the Euthyphro taught me how to ask the right question. You know, you know, in Euthyphro, after he goes through his examples, and then he tries to see what they have in common, and he comes up with something like, "The pious is what the gods approve of," right?

[31:12] And then Socrates says, "Well, do the gods approve of it because it is pious, or is it pious because the gods approve of it?" Okay, that's actually a question of before and after, right? And before and after in the crowning sense of before and after, which is the cause is before the effect. And I remember seeing, and I think it was De Vera Religione there, where Augustine quotes the common definition of the beautiful: the beautiful is that which pleases when seen.

[31:41] And Augustine says, "Now, is it beautiful because it pleases us, or does it please us because it's beautiful?" He's been taught by Plato that they ask the right question, as Heisenberg says. They ask the right questions that go more than halfway to the truth. And Augustine says, "I have no doubt that it pleases us because it is beautiful." Right? His mind right away went in the right direction.

[32:03] So now you've got the question here, right? Is it good because we want it, or do you want it because it is good? And you are looking before and after when you ask that question, but can you see which is which, right? Can you see the before and after there, which is cause and which is effect, without going through a what discourse?

[32:34] Can you? Well, what I I do at first, though, you see, is a little bit of dialectic, huh? and I say, well, now if something is good because you want it, then the fact you want something would make it good. But my stock example is, you know, you at the party there, and they say you want another drink, and you say yes, and it makes you sick, of course, right?

[33:08] And so you want that last drink didn't make that last drink good for you, right? Or the kid wanting to drive his car 100 miles an hour down the road and ends up, you know, the car smashed around the tree and he's in traction. So it was it good to drive 100 miles an hour? No, but he wanted to do it, right? Okay, so there are obvious objections to saying that something is good because you want it, right?

[33:31] Okay, but now if you take the opposite thing and say, well, no, you want it because it is good, right? Well, then you're saying good is the cause of wanting, and then you bring in the probable statement that contrary causes have contrary effects. Therefore, if the good is a cause of wanting, the bad should be the cause of aversion, right? But you know the the very examples of people wanting something bad, right?

[33:58] How could they want something bad if if that's a cause of aversion and good is the cause of wanting? See. And so we kind of you know argue in both sides a little bit, right? Okay.

[34:13] And then you say we're going to try to answer the question, but whatever side we come down in our answer, we can't be sure about until we answer the objections on the other side, right? Okay. Well, then I start to make an induction, right? Because that's the argument most appropriate to us as beginners, and so I make a list of desires and the goods corresponding to them, but taking the natural desires.

[34:47] So you take hunger and food and thirst and water and desire to sleep and sleep, and you go through all these, right? Okay. Then you look at each one in particular, and you say, is food good for an animal because they want to eat?

[35:06] Or can you see, you know, apart from the desire to eat, a reason why food is good for an animal? And they all say, yeah, yeah, of course. And is water good for an animal because they want to drink water? Or can you see the water is good and indeed necessary for the animal, right? And so you go through these things one by one, and they see that.

[35:31] Water is not good for them because they want it, but it's good apart from that. So nature didn't give the animals a desire for water to make water good for them, but because it is good and indeed necessary for their life, that nature has given them the desire for water. And then I come to reproduction, desire to reproduce, right? And I say, now, can you see any good reproduction apart from your desire to reproduce?

[35:58] You see, and of course, I can see a very great good that that this type of animal or plant, whatever it is, would not continue in existence, right? So it's not the desire to reproduce that makes reproduction the great good it is for animals, the preservation of their species. I can see how what a tremendous good it is apart from that. So therefore, nature has given animals a desire to reproduce so that they will pursue such a great good for their species or kind.

[36:27] Then I take the you know desire to sleep. You see, some good in sleep apart from your desire to sleep. And then now you take the example, you know, of how my mom and daddy know best, you know, they might tell you to go to sleep, you know, even though you don't want to go to sleep at this time, right? But they know you're going to be in trouble.

[36:44] Or even with food, I sometimes take an example, you know, of how, you know, when you've kind of lost your appetite when you're sick, sometimes and your mother says, well, try to eat something, you know, to maintain your strength. So you see this as good for you, even though you temporarily have lost your your desire for food, right? And sometimes we feed people to eat this and so on.

[37:03] So you make a beautiful induction to these things, and I say, you know, how about the desire to know? You know, is it good to know the way home? Oh yeah, yeah. So is it your desire to know the way home that makes it good to know the way home? Obviously not. So, okay, but notice the result of this discourse is that. Something is not good because we want it, but we want it, or nature has given us a want for it because it is in fact good for us, right?

[37:33] Okay. And then I go over to to answer the objection on the on the opposite side, right? But but notice just the first part here. I'm going through a discourse, induction, to discourse, and I had a discourse here when I had intellectual discourse first, right? So, but all of this all this discourse, I'm looking before and after. I'm trying to see is good before desire, or is desire before good as a cause before an effect, right?

[38:08] So Shakespeare is is teaching us the before and after there that a discourse of reason, right, is necessary comes before you seeing a before and after, okay? In this case, the before and after is is what of cause and effect.

[38:34] I see that it's very important, huh? And and Aristotle has to go through a discourse here before he sees that act is before ability, right? In this or that sense, and especially what we'll see now tomorrow, I guess, that act is before ability in substance, that is to say, in perfection, right? Okay. And Aristotle is going to reason, right? This out in a number reason it out, a number of ways, right?

[39:12] So he's by a discourse coming to see a what before and and after. So is is that important? You know, is that an important before and after that

[39:29] a discourse of reason is before seeing a before and after, right? That we need a discourse of reason to do that. Later on, I think I we talked about the other day about, but

[39:48] what strikes me when when I read the symposium, among other things, is that Socrates, after he first says he's been going around examining people, then later on he says he's been examining the Athenians mainly about their preferring the goods of the body and exterior goods to the goods of the soul. Well, now I ask the students who's right, Socrates or the Athenians, because Socrates thinks the goods of the soul are before, right, are better, and the Athenians think the rest.

[40:16] And I say, what do the Americans say? They say the only good, Athenians, right? Okay. So now again, we're looking before and after, right? And I think I talked the other day today about how I reason that reason about that, but you have to go through a reasoning process, right? And the first thing, you know, actually before I get to this, after we they know what the good is, right?

[40:38] Then they go the next step and say, now what's what's better? Say, in general, what's better? And this is a question about before and after, right? And what I want to eventually bring out is that the end is better than what is for the sake of the end. Okay. In order to arrive at that, one discourse I do is inductive again. Which is better, health or medicine?

[41:04] Which is better, knowing or studying? You know, and and all these admit that the end is better than what is for the sake of it, right? So you you induce the general proposition. Now notice you're seeing it before and after now, right? In the fourth sense of before. Right. The sense in which which is better. So the end is always better than what is for the sake of it.

[41:27] And then I get a little more difficult, and I give kind of some induction. I go back to the famous beginning there in Aristotle that

[41:42] when the same belongs to two things, but to one of them because of the other belongs more to the cause. And so I kind of you know bring that out by induction, but then I apply it to this, right? If good or desirable, said of the end and the means, but the means because of the end, which is better, you know, okay. So now once they know that the end is better, okay, then then now we get the big disagreement between Socrates and the Athenians.

[42:08] And one thing that made me think about this, of course, besides Socrates, was in the seventh book of the Politics, Aristotle raises the same thing. And he says everybody agrees there are these three kinds of goods. Everybody agrees we need some of them, right? But they disagree as to which are better. And most men think, you know, like the Athenians, and and and some of these philosophers think the reverse, right?

[42:34] Okay. So now what I do, since they they know what what what is better in general, the first thing I do is to show that the goods of the soul and the goods of the body are better than the outside goods. And by induction I show that the outside goods are for the sake of the inside goods. Okay. Your book is for the sake of your mind.

[43:01] Your food is for the sake of your body, and so on. Your medicine, your shoes are for the sake of your feet, right? Your clothing and so on. So inductively we establish that the outside is for the sake of the inside. And then you add the premise they've seen or before that the end is always better, right? And so we award third place to the outside goods and like you know Olympic you know say the bronze medal, right?

[43:27] Now, who gets the gold? Who gets the silver medal? Of the goods of the soul and the goods of the body. Well, there's many ways to argue from that. If you had Shakespeare's exhortation, there's many ways to argue from that. And

[43:42] actually, before I do it too, I talk about the end of man. So, the goods of the soul are better, closer to the end of man. They're better, right? But there's many ways of doing it. The goods of the soul are more divine. The goods of the body are more bestial, and so on. So, so I reason out, right? That's a long discourse, right? But the end result of that is that the goods of the soul gets the gold prize.

[44:05] The goods of the body, the silver prize, and the outside goods, right? Now I see the before and after of these three. But I could not see it really without this long discourse I went through. But Shakespeare is teaching us.

[44:22] Not if you want doctrine anymore. Shakespeare is teaching us that that the discourse of reason comes before. Before seeing the before and after, right? Yeah, yeah. But because the discourse, the discourse itself, you're striving to to see which of these is better, right? And this is a before the fourth sense.

[44:47] So that seems to be rather rather important that that ordinary thinking, huh? See, and as I say, that the ninth book of wisdom was to me kind of the the most striking witness, right, to the truth of of Shakespeare's definition, huh? You know, the importance of looking before and after, right? Just incredible how when I get through it with with all the before and after he's going to see there, but it's incredible how universally important this is, huh?

[45:18] And Shakespeare just hit the nail on the head there, you know. And but but but he's also teaching us that you can't just see the before and after in most cases without a discourse of reason. And you see it very much when you get into these things that I mentioned in ethics and so on. But you see it here when you're talking about knowing the first cause, right?

[45:42] You know, or even knowing this before and after. So is that worthy to be with the yeah? You're saying the discourse of reason is can it can be the cause of our looking before and after? No, I'm saying that that this that looking before and after is a cause of our discourse.

[46:03] See, you're not looking before and after, right? See, I'm saying that the looking before and after brings out the end or purpose of the discourse of reason. Okay. Okay. But the discourse of reason is a cause of your eventually seeing, but now a cause in the sense of the mover, right? The maker. It's a cause of my actually seeing. That the goods of the soul are better than the goods of the body, right, and so on, or seeing that the good is the cause of desire rather than desire making something good, right?

[46:41] So the cause, in the sense of the mover or maker, of my seeing the before and after, is the discourse I've gone through, right? Say, but to see that before and after is why I went through the discourse, so that's the cause in the sense of the end. As Aristotle says, that's the second corollary about the four kinds of causes: the two things can be causes of each other if they're different kinds of causes, right?

[47:09] So exercise can be the cause of health as a maker or producer of health, but health is the cause of exercise in the sense of that for the sake of which you're doing it. Okay, so you could say the discourse of reason is a cause if you're seeing the before and after by one kind of cause, and seeing the before and after is the cause of the discourse.

[47:33] Say, I go, I go through these discourses not for the fun of it, but so that one or two students at least will see this or that before and after, right? You know, kind of funny. On the last semester, this guy comes up, you know, he kind of, you know, fixed his opinion, you know, and it's kind of amused, you know, that that we have such such

[47:59] undemocratic or such uncommon opinions, right, about these things, because everybody knows that you know booze and food, booze and sex, the rest of it is drugs and so on. That's where it's that's the good things in life, right? Everybody knows this. I must know this, you know. About that way, he's

[48:25] kind of amused that I should be defending or proclaiming or teaching such obviously absurd opinions. So you realize he's not going to get across to all of them.

[48:42] So that fits with it. Belongs to reason to order because that's the final person, I'm going to, that when you see the order, you're done. Yeah, in a sense, you want to see what the first cause is, what is before all the rest, right? And but you want to see

[49:06] in what way God is before all the rest, right? And the first thing you really see is that God is before all the rest as a cause, right? Okay, but then Thomas Aquinas there. In the second book of the Summa Contra Gentiles, my favorite book,

[49:31] he really is coming back upon the neo-Platonists and the people who want to say that God. Has to make the universe right, and you know it has in natural necessity that God made things. And there, Thomas spends a long time showing that God is before creatures in the second sense of before, right? He can be without them, but they cannot be without Him. That's something different than He's the cause of them, right?

[50:00] Because you might say, "Well, the cause can't be without the effect," and vice versa, right? But but he also shows that God is before them in the sense that he's what better than them, you know.

[50:12] But again, you can do that thing I was talking about that the end is better, than what's the sake of the end. That's one way that you show that God is better than creatures; that He's the end of the universe. So

[50:27] there's many senses in which God is before creatures, but to see each of these befores requires a what? A different discourse. But you can't see though, the guys before in any of these ways, except by going through a discourse. That's that's very important. Of course, the average guy thinks he knows that this is better than that without making any discourse.

[50:58] And if most men are like the Athenians, which they are, right? You know. Well, that's a sign they're not using reason, but sensation, which immediately. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But but sensing is not going to enable you to see the before and after. You got to have a discourse of reason to see the before and after. So, because they're used to sensing for knowing, they don't expect any discourse.

[51:23] I know what they think. Sometimes I I told you you know by by amusement, kind of a pet peeve too, you know, is that any time you you try to bring out a distinction in class, right, it's difficult to understand. They invariably call that that confusing, right? Which which I you know, essentially call it the sin against the Holy Spirit because if the very way to get out of confusion is confusing, you mustn't give up, right?

[51:55] So I tell them, This is the way out of out of your confusion. That's what it is. It's not confusing. You're confused. But it's hard to tell them that. Salty though.

[52:17] So, any other before and after the acts of reason? We start with the one from Thomas on in the two. Proemium to logic, right? And then we add this, these, these what, three, right?

[52:37] Reason guesses before it knows. Reason thinks about something before understanding it, and reason discourses before it sees the, before and after, right? But in all those, you can say sometimes it doesn't get to the, you know, it can discourse and not arrive at the before and after, right? Okay,

[53:00] it can guess and not arrive at knowing it. You. Can think about something and still not understand it. We also have it distinguishes before it finds order. Yeah, you could do that, but like I was saying to your other suggestion there, and that's important to see because that's kind of like a corollary almost of this third thing here. Of, but there you're talking about knowing two different things, right?

[53:23] So it's more in the subject than the reasoning. Well, no, no, you could say seeing a distinction is before seeing an order, right? Maybe before and after. But now you're talking about two different things. You're seeing, right? Rather than two different kinds of acts of reason, huh? Okay.

[53:44] You don't want to say, that, you know, because you're knowing something different. There's a different act of reason, exactly, huh? You know. Right. But I, I would kind of bring that in as, as a, I can do it through the definition. Why is he defining as looking before and after? Why not looking for distinctions? You know. But that's presupposed, right? That you define these things by the utmost.

[54:09] But that, that's true. That's a very important before and after, right? Never a standard thinking, like you say. But, but it seems to be more on the side of what you're seeing, right? A different act. So you put distinction on the third. one? Yeah, kind of a footnote. Yeah. Yes. A part of discourse. Necessary part of discourse.

[54:35] Well, I would say that a discourse starting from scratch will not arrive at seeing a before and after unless you first see a distinction, right? Okay. And in a way, you know, these guys that Aristotle was talking about in the third reading that are making a mistake, and they're kind of denying the distinction between act and ability, right? And Aristotle is kind of refuting them, huh? Right.

[55:01] He gives four arguments against it, so he's distinguishing, right? I mean, by by discourse, by arguments, right? He's rejecting the the but at the same time clarifying the distinction. He rejects their opinion, but clarifying that there is a distinction between these, right? Okay, between act and ability. So he has to see that there is a distinction and see the distinction between act and ability. Before he gets into what we are in now, where he sees the before and after of them, but that's true of of of anywhere, right?

[55:39] Yeah, yeah, Even the things we said it's like uh wine, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't distinguish between two wines. You can't say this wine is better than that.

[55:57] So we're getting electrical storm out there. Right. Some big boats out there Safe to go make a telephone call or what? We could probably make it from inside the car. if it starts really pouring Yeah, yeah, Yeah. I could report it to my, call my better half, you know.

[56:26] Ladies always like it, you know. When I refer to my wife as my better half, they always, you know, smile with approval, you know. So I try to keep those faces. Speaking ways of speaking. What time is dinner here? Do you know? It'd be after the five o'clock thing, or what? Yeah, five hundred. What? Five fifty? Yeah. Five fifty about.

[56:55] No more listening kids No, I've been trying to get a telephone call to my better half.