Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
Lecture 14: Names Before Definition: The Art of Naming in Logic

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Learning is through the foreknown, right? Both that by demonstration and that by definition, right? The complex unknown statement, right, by demonstration. The simple unknown, what it is, or something, by definition. That kind of corresponds, right? So the great divides it according to the simple unknown and the complex unknown. And the one is answered by defining the other by reasoning. Okay. Declare. Now let's just get a little bit what we're going to do next time. We're going to find out Thomas' division, though. We're going to talk about the art of definition, and then the art of the statement, and then the art of what? Art, right? Okay. So this is the first part of the art of definition. I'm going to have to make some copies of these, I think. Something like something here. Yeah, you want to win? You want to win or win? No, I give it. Oh, okay. I should win the one just for you. Where can I copy? Yeah, I'm going to copy, but it's okay. Now, the first part of the art of definition is not about definition, but about what? Names, huh? Okay. I begin with the question there. Why names should be considered before definition? We should consider a name before definition. For we name things before we define them. Now, the reason for that goes back to the natural road we talked about, huh? And one before and after there is that we know things in a confused way before, what? Distinctly. And so in order to name something, you don't have to know it as distinctly as you have to in order to, what? Define it. So for the most part, at least, we'll name things before we define them, yeah. Further, we use the name of the thing to be defined in the question which seeks its definition, as when Socrates asks, what is virtue? But one must understand the question before one tries to answer it. You see that? And most of all, it's necessary to understand name before definition, because every definition is composed of names, and a whole that is composed of parts cannot be understood without knowing its parts. That's true of every speech, huh? So Aristotle takes up noun and verb before he takes up statement, right? Because the statement is composed of the noun and the verb, huh? Okay? So these are three reasons why we should take up name before definition, huh? I mentioned how the Book of Porphyry is sometimes called the Book of the Five Names, and the categories that are established are the Book of the Ten Names, and those are considered in the tradition, the fundamental books, huh, in logic, but they're about names, okay? We should first consider what a name is and define it, okay? And since the name of the thing to be defined should not be used in its definition, we must also distinguish between the name of the thing to be defined and the names used in its definition. And since there are many names in the definition, we must also see what is the difference among these names and their order. So each of these, I broke the text a lot, each of these titles, and see what each one is doing, right? Okay? So we're starting the logic of the first act, right? The first act of reason is understanding what a thing is. The chief tool, right, for understanding what a thing is, is definition, right? Okay? But the definition is a speech composed of names, right? So we have to talk about names before we talk about this, huh? Okay? Asked by definition, we use a name, right? Okay? And we name a thing before we define it, right? These are all reasons to take up, okay? We have to not only say what a name is, but we must also distinguish among names, because is the name of the thing defined when the name is in the definition? In a way, you learned a rule in logic, right? When you said that the name of the thing being defined should not be put in its definition, huh? That's something we learned in grade school or high school, right? And that's, in a sense, a rule of logic, isn't it? So you have to talk about names, we can talk about definition. You have to distinguish somehow between the name of the thing defined and the names used in the definition, but there's going to be more than one. There's going to be a distinction among those names, huh? Okay? I've already given you the definition of a name there. A name is a vocal sound signifying by custom, no part of which signifies by itself, huh? And then I explain each one of those parts, right? Starting with sound, huh? Signifying by custom. You notice that four parts of the definition are common to the definition of name and speech. It's only the fifth part that separates the two, right? Okay? And I contrast a bit the grammarian and the poet and so on with the magician, right? Sometimes they'd call these sermos and now the scientiae, the sciences that talk about words, right? Speech, right? But the grammarian doesn't talk about words in the same way the magician does. And the poet looks at the language differently, too, huh? What's the difference between these, huh? What's the difference? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he's concerned, you know, with the fact that the sounds are, what? Pleasing, right? Huh? So he's going to try to rhyme things and alliterate things, right? And he's going to try to have meter. It's this sort, right? Okay? But he's also going to use, we'll see, things like metaphors that the magician will try to avoid, huh? Okay? But because it's in their purposes to make a pleasing representation that he uses all these things. The magician is not interested in making a pleasing representation. He's trying to come to know what he doesn't know, right? Yeah. The grammarian is concerned with, what? Making a sentence in some language. So how do you make a sentence in Greek? Make a sentence in Latin. Make a sentence in English, right? And he's concerned with all sentences, not just the statements, right? With commands and prayers and so on, right? The magician doesn't care about commands and prayers and exhortations, right? Shut the door. The grammarian says, well, that's a command, right? The magician doesn't talk about those sort of things. Help me. Oh! The grammarian would talk about that. Yeah, we always contrast these, you know, if you say... which is better man is a stone or men are an animal well man is a stone is correct right good grammar men are an animal incorrect right socrates is a dog good socrates am a man socrates are a man that's bad magician would say well socrates am a man huh i feel like she's speaking grammatically but he ain't a stone right you know it's not the truth or falsity of these things and knowing whether they're true or false the marion couldn't care less right as long as you see it properly right okay so that's things we somewhat met but you know before that right okay but now towards the bottom of page two there i make the distinction there between calling a thing by its own name or the name of another thing now what is that distinction no if i call a man who eats too much a glutton i'm calling him by his own name right if i call him a pig i'm calling him by the name of another thing yeah yeah if romeo calls juliet juliet right he's calling her by her own name if he calls her honey or sweet or something he's calling her by the name of another thing right no that's the example of metaphor right okay but now is there a reason why we call something by the name of another thing but is it more with regard to knowing that thing that we call it by the name of another thing or do we um so more to express our emotion right or to arouse emotion right yeah if the person who um yeah you want to arouse emotion or express emotion you want to be you know colorful in your speech right then you might call something by the name of another thing nixon called the democratic programs retreads of the new deal that's a unsavory metaphor right you know retread it doesn't yeah so when you know you know arouse an image right but but more so emotion right but but romeo's called juliet sweet or honey more to what because it was only emotion right now would the logician want to when he asked the definition of a thing would he call the thing by its own name or by the name of another thing yeah its own name right okay so this seems to be an exhaustive division huh call something by its own name or by the name of another thing right now the question is what names would you use in the definition but if you call it a thing by its own name but you're not supposed to use the name of the thing you're defining in the definition right if you use the name of another thing how does that help you to define it i mean would the word pig um uh be a name the definition of glutton yeah so you're kind of a little bit ahead of this don't see no so you made a distinction we can call a thing by its own name or by the name of another thing right okay and there's a reason why we do both right okay what's more appropriate you know to the the poet right or the rhetorician or to people in daily life to call something by the name of another thing right because they want the poet or the rhetorician or people in daily life they want to express their emotions right they want to arouse emotion right okay so i say you rat you know or something like that you know and it makes you kind of bristle and so on you snake you know and these sort of names right now but the magician wants to kind of avoid that right now okay so it seems you have only two possibilities to call a thing by its own name or by the name of another thing so when you ask for the definition we call the thing by its own name right that means it can't use its own name in its definition then right we can use the name of another thing in its definition but that's useless for defining the word pig doesn't really tell you what a glutton is does it so it's a little presented in form of a little problem there right huh you're going to define a thing by its own name or by the name of another thing either either alternative seems to be what one is the violation of the rule you learned in grade school right there's a reason for that rule right you define something by itself and you aren't making anything known are you purpose of the definition is to make known something that you don't know what it is so i say a dog is a dog i don't make it known anymore right it's true that a dog is a dog but it doesn't make it known any more than the word dog did right say a dog is a dog you know more i'm better off than where you said dog but you can't define it by the name of another thing right it's not really what a glutton is a pig it's not really a four-footed animal the tail is now you have a problem there right in the beginning right yeah what's the solution to that right it's not to pay for me to raise the problem there right the problem should be defined a thing by its own name or by the name of another thing you have a dilemma there right then you get the solution to the problem right right okay so you see you can see it with that problem when you think about it a little bit how you really got to think about names for a while before you can what understand definition right you finally get to the distinction of porphyry he distinguishes between the name of the thing being defined the name that begins the definition the name that completes a perfect definition the name that completes an imperfect definition and the name that's useless for naming the thing or for defining it he distinguishes all five five names and of course as he points out these five distinction to five is useful not only for definition but for division and for demonstration porphyry's work you know was originally called the the isagoge meaning introduction in greek the isagoge to the uh categories of aristotle right but as time went on it is called the isagoge by tona messia it is the introduction it's the introduction to sense to logic which is the introduction to the whole philosophy yeah then you get the next problem there in page five but that second problem arises because the solution of the first problem you get the difficulty about the thing yeah you get the solution to that in page six right and you're gradually sneaking up to what porphy's going to talk about you know I got a hint years ago from Thomas Aquinas there, because he uses Porphyry's distinction of the five names in the Summa Contagentiles to show that no name is said unitically of God and creatures. So he pointed out something about Porphyry's division that's usually not pointed out, not even by Porphyry. That's why I incorporated it here. One of the problems for the modern philosophers, and it's a very basic problem, is they don't know how to use names. They don't know how to use names. And the Greeks really thought out how to use names in a way that helps the mind, right? And the moderns had just lost that. In fact, it's kind of democratic customs kind of exacerbate this problem, how to use names. Use names any way you want to. It's a free country, you know? Well, it's a free country. You can't stop people from using names any way they want to. I mean, you can't stop them. But it's not really very helpful in the long run. When you say they don't know how to use names, using metaphors, or...? Well, basically, they don't know how we use names to define. They don't know how we name things, how we carry over names, right? Like we've seen there with the word before, right? One of those propositions I was giving you before is saying that if a man doesn't understand the names he uses, is he wise? Now, if he understands the names he uses, is he wise? I would say, understand the names you use is before being wise in the second sense there of before, right? You can understand the names you're using without being wise, but you can't be wise without understanding the names you're using, right? Therefore, I say, if you don't understand the names you're using, you're not wise. If you do, I don't say you are wise. Because before in that second sense, this can be without that, but not vice versa, right? When Aristotle begins the subject of wisdom there in book five of the first philosophy, he has a whole book devoted to the names used in the science. I had a couple of people at my house last night for doing one of the words there in book five, and I said to them, I said, you know, they give them the same proposition, right? If you don't understand the words you're using, right, you're not wise. So book five is not going to make you wise, but if you don't know book five, you're not wise. A lot of chronic used to say, that every respectable word in philosophy is equivocal by reason. Others don't understand what a word equivocal by reason is. Which is why they have a little hint of it, you know? Like when Bertie Russell talks about systematic ambiguity. But they don't understand the various ways that we use words equivocally. There are reasons for doing it. This is too below them, you know? It's too below them to descend to this kind of talking about the names they use. I was listening to a guy give a talk based on his doctoral thesis on Heidegger, you know? And of course, the word they love to use is process or proceeding, right? So I said to him, you know, as far as I know, you know, something proceeds from something, right? So what are you saying is proceeding from what? No response, right? Well, I'm using the word, right? Well, I said, let's go out, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I don't even understand the word whole and part. So if you asked him on philosophy, what are the four basic meanings of the word part? They wouldn't be able to tell you. And they confuse the parts, the senses. I give the students sometimes a little sophisticated argument, I'll say. What is man, huh? He's an animal, right? Yeah, man's an animal. But is he just an animal? No. He's an animal with reason. Yeah. So animal's only a part of what man is, right? Yeah, okay. But animal includes besides man, dog, cat, horse, elephant, right? Therefore, the part sometimes is more than the whole. Gee whiz, yeah. Well, this is the most common kind of mistake made in thinking, right? From mixing up two senses of the word, right? And Aristotle, in the chapter on part and whole, right? The chapter on part in particular, he says that the genus is a part of the species in one sense, and the species is a part of the genus in another sense. And you're confusing the two senses, right? Animal is a part of the definition of man, right? But a man, horse, elephant, dog are not parts of the definition of animal. They're particular kinds, parts in the sense of particular kinds of, right? So you're confusing two different senses of whole and part there. And the definition of man contains more than animal. An animal is said of more than man. There's two different senses of part there. But the average student, when he gives it in class, that student can't. Seems like a good argument, right? Seems to call in question the axiom that the whole is more than the part. In cutting up bodies, the medical man says, Adamus says, I've never found a soul there. You know, he finds the lung and the heart and the, I've never found this thing he called a soul. Was the soul part of us in the way that the lungs and the brain and the heart and the liver are part of us? The sense is the soul part of us. There's different sense. So that's how it distinguishes all these senses, huh? They don't know what you're saying in a sense, right? Once in a while, the moderns, they realize there's something to this, you know? And you can see that in the essay of Human Understanding by John Locke, huh? You know, where he says, you know, that I've noticed in conversation, you know, they've been really thinking about the same thing as well as using the same word. You know, see? But he doesn't really develop the doctrine, you see? You know, but he sees somehow, you know, this is really behind a lot of this confusion, right? But it takes a long time, you know, to understand these words that are equivocal by reason. And the care, which Aristotle did those, or even the care, you know, Thomas learned it from Aristotle, you know, but I think I mentioned how the word in, you know? Aristotle, we don't have an explicit text where Aristotle orders the meanings of in. But Thomas says, we'll order them in the way that Aristotle taught us in the Fifth Book of Metaphysics. He orders them from, what, in the room, right? Part in the whole, right? Genus in the species, species in the genus, form in matter, the whole in the parts. I've got you in my power. I left my parents in San Francisco. He orders them privately, right? You know? But you're never finding life in the minds. You know? In a sense, what does Shakespeare, you know, compare it to a proud man, you know, he climbs to the heights on a ladder, right, and he just stays to look down from where he started, you know. In other words, to say that you don't have to distinguish and see the order of the senses of these words is equivocal by reason that dominate our whole siege. It's kind of like a pride in a sense, right? I mean, the angels don't have to do this, right? This man has to do this, huh? It goes back to the fact that we're so tied to our senses, huh? And the most common mistake in thinking is what? Due to mixing up the senses of a word. It's the most common mistake. I asked my students, you know, we discussed the question whether nature acts for an end, right? For a purpose. And artists were against them. One student on his paper is saying, you know, if nature acted for an end, all things would come to an end, but they haven't, therefore. It's always a confusing end in the sense of the instruction thing, right? With the end in the sense of purpose to act the sake of which, right? With the end in the sense of purpose to act the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the sake of the Well, the first one is more the quantitative sense of the part, right? And then, as you distinguish back, that's the most known composed whole, right? With what they call the universal whole, right? And later on, we'll use logic. The composed whole is put together from its parts, right? But not set of its parts. And the universal whole is set of its parts, but not put together from them. But the first meaning of whole and part is the composed whole. So we might say that the word cat is composed of C, A, and T, right? And we might say, if the chemists are right, that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen, right? The family is composed of the mother and the father and the children, right? But then the universal whole is set of its parts, right? Like numbers set of odd number and even number, right? There are parts of number, right? So you're talking about the general and the particular, but the word particular is taken from the very part. It's a different sense of part, huh? So number is not put together from odd and even number. But number is set of odd and even, right? An animal is not put together from dog, cat, and horse, but it's set of number, right? Otherwise, to say a dog is an animal, if you say that a dog is composed of cat, dog, horse, and elven, are you? Now, you know, if you look, you know, going back to my friend there, John Locke, he's talking about the general idea of triangle. He says that it's scalene, isosies, acrylateral. He says, well, it's all and none of these. He's looking at the universal whole as if it were composed of the, what? The things that it's set of is confusing the, what, composed whole with the, what, universal whole, okay? Then Aristotle goes on to distinguish two other kinds of, what, of composed whole. And one, of course, is the definition, okay? And the other is the composition of, what, matter and form, huh? Okay? Now, take a very simple example of that. If you had the word cat here on the board, I don't like this today. Sure. If you had the word cat here, what are the parts of the word cat? Yeah. And that might seem to be the only parts of the word cat, right? Because you take away the C and the A and the T, nothing's left, right? So nothing is the word cat except C, A, and T, right? That's right. But then, when you look at the word act, same word, are exactly the same letters, right? Not the same word, right? Same letters, right? Same word? But there's something in the word cat besides the letters, isn't there? So you might say that the word cat is put together from the letters and the order of the letters. Okay? And the word act is put together from the same letters, but in a different order. So you can speak of the letters and the order as being parts of the word cat, but you obviously use the word part in a different sense than you can start off with. Okay? You wouldn't think of the order of the letters as being part of the word, would you? Of course. Did you? In the end, it's intrinsic to the thing. That's what you mean by part of the way, right? You wouldn't have the word cat without that order, wouldn't you? So the way, the word cat involves the letters and the order of the letters, right? The rubber ball involves what? Put the parts of a ball. Rubber and the other part, right? Those are, in a sense, parts, but not parts in the way in which you see A and T are parts, in a different sense. So what Aristotle does is distinguish three senses of the whole and whole. The first one is kind of the quantitating one, right? And then the one that mattered before, for the broad sense to prove them in shape and order. Right. And then parts of the different. Or different senses of the part. No, it goes through the Aristotle. The fifth book of the Metaphysics. It talks about all the words that are mainly used in the wisdom because of its generality, but they're used in the axiots, right? And used to some extent everywhere. So basically, there's the two parts, composed and universal, that they compose as three parts. Three senses, yeah. Three senses. Yeah. The quantitative one is most known to us, right? Yeah, and then quantitative, oh, okay, yeah. So like all the parts of the body make up the body. Yeah. Yeah. That's why it's more known to us. You could divide up the body, put the liver here and the heart here and the lungs here, right? I have. You know, I had to take the word cat and cut it up, you know, put the C here and the A here and the T. But you can't put the letters here and the order of the letters here. So it's less manifest to us that these are distinct. When you compare cat and ax, or dog and god, I don't know, then you realize there's something in the word cat besides the three letters. What is that? In this case, it's the order, right? Again, the form. The form in general. The form is used not just for shape, right? But for the act, the order. Parts of the definition, that would be third. Two of these senses of heart are found in the real world, outside the mind, right? Yeah. Quantitative parts and the matter in form. But the parts of definition are more in the mind. And the general in particular, right? Universal is only in the mind. And what Gwethys was saying, I think a singular would sensed and universal would understood. So when you divide the general into particular, you're talking about universal. That's in the mind, that things are universal. And the parts of the definition are universal. What's defined as universal. However, the great says the first thing to be considered in logic is universal. Yeah. I'm going to make that a little more sensible and say that the first thing to be considered in logic is names said of many things. And you see, I'm not getting up to that here in the first reading, you know, names said of many things. So that... But the name of what is defined is a name said of many things. And the names and the definition are names said of many things. But something's universal only in the mind, see? So two of those senses, parts of definition, and then the general in particular, the genus in the species is divided into, that's in the mind too. Although it has a foundation in things. But the foundation in things for those ones in the mind is matter to form, basically. We'll see that as we get on, because the genus is the differences like matter is to form, as Paul said. The universal, that's the sense of how we can speak of dog and... Yeah, but all of these are said of many things, so they're all universal, right? And of course, and was more general than name, even more universal.