Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
Lecture 20: Highest Genera and the Distinction Between Substance and Accident

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For a week down, and I change my suit at school about once a week, see, and then I, but, you know, we certainly do need different clothing, right, and especially women does, right, you know, these pairs of shoes, but, you know, apart from that, I mean, we do certainly need a different, you know, clothing, let's say, on the day of the wedding and graduation and different occasions, right, you see, so man, again, it shows something of that infinity of him, right, he needs different clothing for different occasions, right, and different with us, huh, so the other animals don't really have this unless they come into the service of man, like we put a, you know, saddle on a horse or something like that sort, right, or sometimes, you know, they would protect the horse, right, going into battle with something, but this is the one that's private to man, so man is said to be shot with shoes or clothes, they're considered dangerous, huh, but they're talking about this guy here, right, he's armed, they're considered dangerous, huh, it kind of used to give a public talk about this category here, right, it says, it brings out something about man, the fact that this is man, category, in a sense, I mean, you know, when the Pope and so on, you know, talking about the importance of priests and religious and so on, wearing their, what, their testaments, right, huh, it says something to people, right, huh, it says something to the world, and so on, so I mean, this is important for man, right, huh, and it's important, you know, for soldiers to have their own, what, particular thing, right, huh, and so you're fitting the bride, you're decked out, you know, you take this as a pearl, like the spring, you know. Now, how does he distinguish the phi common to man and other things, right, well, he says there are really two ways this takes place, right, either by an extrinsic measure or by extrinsic cause or effect. Atomist here is usually his vast knowledge of natural philosophy here, right, talking about these things. In natural philosophy, we get to the third book of natural philosophy, third book of natural hearing, or the physics as we're translating it. Aristotle talks about motion and place and what? Time, right, huh, and place and time are the two, what, extrinsic measures, right? So, either it's taken from place or from time, huh? So, not only in my clothes, but I am in the, what, 21st century, right, okay, and I am in, what, Massachusetts, I am in this room, right, huh, okay, so you get from time when and from place, what, where, right, okay, I am said to be in Massachusetts, right, I am said to be in the 20th century, right? Now, there's another way we get something from place, huh, and that is from the order of parts in place, huh, and this gives rise to what they call the Greek position, order of parts in place. So, I am, what, standing, right, I am, what, sitting, right, okay, now, my parts are arranged in places or in a way, huh, now, am I sitting? My body could be. You used to work with one guy who, back on Thanksgiving, you know, he took a couple cases of beer, right? And sometimes he'd come to work and have you up all night in the beginning. But he didn't eat to excess, right? You know, I think he kind of drank too much. So, although, you know, one vicer might contribute to another one, right? They seem to be a little different. One guy who drank too much, I said to him, one day, which is better, a woman or a bottle? At least there's a bottle. Well, let's see what his problem is, right? So, maybe temperance is not a lowest species. Temperance, in general, is about, you know, pleasurable to the senses, especially, you know, touch and taste. A decent kind of touch. But maybe it has, you know, different species, right? But maybe courage is the lowest species, huh? At least the way Aristotle speaks of courage, huh? We're limited, you know, to the battlefield balance, huh? But that's kind of an interesting thing, because you might think, as you divide a genus, you know, finally you get down to the bottom, and you get to a lowest species, that all those on the same level would be lowest species. But is that so? Well, I was mentioning there, you know, triangle, right? You divide triangle into equilateral, isosceles, and scalene, right? Equilateral, I think, is the lowest species. But isosceles, there could be different kinds, yeah. And you might have to get down to the ratio of the equal sides to the unequal side, right? You know, like two to one. And then that would have all the same shape, but they're different sizes, the same shape, right? So maybe equilateral triangle is the lowest species, but not what? Yeah. Oblong, right? Okay, you see that? That's kind of, you know, a surprise, right? That as you divide, if you don't reach the bottom, or across the board, maybe, if you divide animal into man and beast, suddenly man is maybe the lowest species, but not beast, right? I mentioned how, when you divide plays, are tragedy and comedy, the lowest species, huh? Well, it seems to me that there are really two kinds of comedy, which I call the good-natured comedy, and then the, what, satire item. I think the good-natured comedy is a more attractive, a better, more healthy form of life. But, you have to have a lot of experience of satire and good-natured comedy before you'd be able to decide that there are really different kinds of comedy, right? And, if you take a tragedy like Macbeth, let's say, and a tragedy like Othello, right? Well, Macbeth seems to choose evil knowingly, right? In a way that Othello does it, right? So there are King Lear and so on, right? So I think, really, tragedy is in exactly the same sense, huh? So, the logician is going to leave to the student of drama, right? To the student of comedy, to decide when you come to a lower species, right? And to the zoologist, when you get to a lower species, is it a dog or is it a motor retriever or something, right? In the same way with plants, right? I'm a tea drinker and I'm not sure if there's one kind of tea plant really or not. Okay, so there are definitely lower species, right? But, now it's clear when you've come to a lower species, no great deal about a subject, right? Aristotle and the Greeks, you know, they divide government into monarchy and oligarchy and democracy and so on. But, is there really only one kind of oligarchy, huh? And, you know, if you compare it to the American government to the British government, at least, you know, there are some differences that everybody knows about between parliament and prime minister and, you know, you see it on the TV, you know, and it's kind of funny to watch, because the prime minister comes in and anybody wants to ask the question, right? And it's kind of like, back and forth, kind of good nature, you know, kind of kidding each other, right? And these guys get very, what, quick on their feet, right? I mean, I'll just take the example there of that, uh, Wilson, I think, was a friend of this year. But, you know, I'll tell you the story, he was, he was at some kind of rally, he was speaking at how some guy there was yelling, garbage, did I tell you that story? No. How do you handle that, right? You know, you're giving a speech. You get some, the stripper's got to say, garbage, you know, everything is, you know. Well, he, he turned to the guy and he says, I'll come to your specialty development, sir. Shut up, right? I don't know how to handle it, because I, you know, probably be talking louder or quicker or something, right? And ruining my speech, see, huh? But he knows how to just, I'll come to your specialty development, sir. And he gets so quick, you know, he's kind of fun to watch. One time in Promette, where Churchill was speaking, see, and he was being opposed to a lot of people writing his ideas, right? And finally he says, but he says, I'm not going to cast my pearls, and everybody's expecting him to say, and the whole, the whole part is froze. He says, before those who don't want them, he says. So, I mean, is the American form of government and the British form of government really different kinds of government, huh? Obscurely, right, huh? Aristotle speaks, you know, of the best government for most men, considering the virtue that most not capable of, as being middle-class government, right? And in a way, the American government has been that to some extent, but it kind of swings a little bit, you know, towards the oligarchic, and then towards the democratic, but never completely gets unbalanced, you know? So those things are not as clear. So we leave, maybe, as a political philosopher to say whether the British government and the American government differ only accidentally, right? Whether there's an essential difference, right? But there certainly are lower species, right? And in a sense, if there weren't, how would you ever get to the individuals? Because you see, it's not always clear when you've come to lower species, come to a species that is still a genus, huh? But the reverse is the question the magician is going to answer more universally, right? Does every genus have a genus before it, huh? Well, if that were so, would you ever really know anything? Because I have to know what a quadrilateral is, what it is to be foresighted, before I can know what a square is, right? And if quadrilateral is a rectilineal plane figure, it's another genus you don't have a name for, right? I have to know what it is to be contained by straight lines before I can know what it is to be contained by four as opposed to three or five or six and so on, right? So you have to know the genus before you can know the species. So if every genus had a genus before it, you'd have to know an infinity of things before you could know what? Anything. You wouldn't know anything, right? Is that true? You don't know anything? Even the man who says, we don't know anything, he claims to know that we don't know anything, and therefore he claims to know what knowing is, right? And he couldn't know what that is, correct his position, right? Okay. So. Again, could you ever come to know anything by definition? Because you have to define quadrilateral, say, before you define a square like people does, and you have to define rectilineal plane figure before quadrilateral, right? There'd be an infinity of definitions, in this case, right, before any definition, so you would never know anything by definition. And yet we all know we've come to know what an odd number is, what an even number is, and even what a perfect number is, and what a square is, and what an oblong is, by definition, right? And what blank verse is, right? I came to know that by definition. But you would never come to know anything by definition if every genus had a genus above it. There'd be an infinity of definitions, we suppose. This is very much like the argument in the logic of the third act, that not every statement is, what, a conclusion, right? Not every premise is a conclusion. You couldn't even begin to know anything, right? Now, there's also an argument that you can give that's peculiar to the genus, and that is that the genus is always said of more than the species, right? So if every genus had a genus before, or a genus above it, then there'd always be a name said of more than any word or name, right? And in that case, you would never come to a most universal name, would you? But do we come to most universal words or names? And examples of those, the most best examples would be words like being, or thing, or something. Can there be something that is not a being? Being something, not a being? No, being is the word to be itself, right? So whatever is, in any way whatsoever, right, is a being, right? So can there be anything anywhere that isn't a being? No. So there's nothing more universal than a being, is there? Can there be something that isn't something? No. No. There'd be nothing, right? Nothing that isn't something, right? So something is completely universal, right? Yeah. So you'd never come to most universal names if every genus had a genus above it. There'd always be a more universal name than any name. There'd always be a more universal name, right? Now, the fact that you come, though, to these most universal names is a sign that there must be a highest genus, right? But it doesn't really tell you whether there's one or more than one, right? And someone might say, if you have these most universal names, do you have one genus of everything? Right? Well, now you can see the importance of knowing definitions, right? If the word being or thing was said of everything, uniquely, that is to say, with one meaning in mind, right? It meant exactly the same thing, like quadrivato means exactly the same thing, instead of square and oblong and rhombus and rhombus. Then you would have one genus of all things, right? But if being or thing is not said with one meaning of everything, right? Then you don't have one genus of all things, right? Now, Plato's somewhat anticipatory, but mainly Aristotle, who saw that the word being and the word thing are equivocal. And they're, as you can point out, they're equivocal by reason, but nevertheless they're equivocal. Now, take a very simple example to manifest this. Suppose you have a man and a dog in the room, nothing else, right? We'd say we have two things in the room, right? A man and a dog, right? Now, you take the dog out of the room, right? And you're left with one thing, right? Now, suppose someone came back and says, Oh, you've got two things in there. You've got the man, and you have the shape of the man. Or you have the man and the health of the man. Are they the same thing, the man and his shape? Sometimes his shape changes, right? They're just eyes and eyes. And is a man and his health the same thing? No. But now, are the man and his health two things? Like the man and the dog are two things? No. At first you wouldn't think of them as being two things, would you? Okay? Because the health of the man, or the shape of the man, is something of the man, right? While the dog is really, what, another thing, right? It's nothing of the man, huh? And yet you wouldn't want to say that the health of the man is nothing, that when a man is concerned about his health, or a woman is concerned about his shape, that they're concerned about nothing, right? Or if you take the working man, right? And you say to him, Now, is my nose and my ear the same thing? What would he say? No. Two different things, right? Okay. How about my nose and the shape of my nose? Are they two things, too? What would he say, probably, at first? Or it would be no. Maybe more no. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But if he doesn't admit that they're two things, we'd say, well, want me to flatten your nose? Huh? You know? Oh, yeah. There's a difference between the nose and its shape, right? Yeah. But the nose and its shape don't seem to be two things, like the nose and the ear are, do they? The nose and the ear are more like the man and the dog, right? Well, this is the distinction the philosopher makes between what we call a substance, right? Like a man or a dog, and an accident, like the health of the man or the shape of the man. Okay? So, is a substance an accident a thing in the same sense? No. No. Now, a man gets up on the stage and he says, to be or not to be? That is the question, right? What's he thinking about? Yeah. Yeah, he's thinking of suicide, right? Hamlet there, right, huh? Going on living or not, right, huh? To be or not to be, that is the question, huh? That's been set on the stage for centuries now, right? And people understand that to refer to his living, going on living or dying, right? Okay? Now, if he had meant, you know, to be married to Ophelia or not to be married to Ophelia, right? Or to be a student or not to be a student, he'd have to do what? Qualify it, yeah. If you just use the word to be, period, we're going to think of his substantial being, his very life, right? Okay? If I say to the student now, if you leave this room, you will cease to be. That sounds like a, what? Threat, right? Okay? Now, in this litigants society, right? Yeah. They charge me as threatening the student, right? I said, I say to the judge, well, I meant, Your Honor, that if so-and-so left the room, he would cease to be in the room. He said, well, nobody would have understood that, what you said, Mr. Berkwester. And I said, you'll cease to be, that sounds like a threat to your life, right? Mm-hmm. In other words, when you say to be, without qualifying it, right? You think of substantial being, in the case of a man, his very life, right? Okay? Um, he has to be. When did I come to be, right? I was born on January 18th, 1936, but I guess I came to be somewhat before that time, right? Year 1935, right? My mother's womb, right? I came to be. I wouldn't talk about when I came to be in Massachusetts or when I came to be at the monastery, right? If you wanted to know when I came to be in Massachusetts or when I came to be at the monastery here, you'd have to add Massachusetts in the monastery, right? If you said, would you come to be, Mr. Purposed? In the same way if you say, when, why, it ceased to be at the time, I don't know. Okay. Then you ask me when I'm going to die, right? Now notice, with the univocal word, right, you don't think of one necessarily before the other, right? If I say, for example, we have a pet at home, right? Okay. We have an animal. Do you think of dog before cat or cat before dog or bird before, you know? Because it's said equally of those, right? I've got a habit. Do you think of it as a good or a bad thing? Could be good or a bad habit, right? Because they're equally a habit, right? But to die and to leave this room is not to cease to be equally, is it? So he says to be or not to be, he's using being in the sense of life or death, right? Substantial being, right? So obviously the word being and the word thing are not said univocally, substance, accident, right? Okay. So although there is therefore one word, which could be being or a thing or even something, although there is one word said of all things, it's not said of one meaning of all things. Therefore, it doesn't fit the definition of what? Genus, right? Okay? And if you were to call being or a thing a genus, you'd use the word genus in another sense, right? Not in the sense in which we first defined it, right? Sometimes we do use the word in that looser sense, but in the strict sense of genus, being or a thing or something is not. So this leaves us now with the conclusion that there is more than one highest but genus, right? The fact that there are most universal names shows that there's not always a more universal name. And there always had to be a more universal name if every genus had a genus, because a genus has always said of more than a species. So you never come to a most universal name if you do come to a most universal name. Therefore, there must be, you know, not every genus is a species, right? But then it's a one or a minute, right? Well, then you examine these words that are said of all things, and you see they're not said of all things in every cleaver with one meaning. And therefore, there's got to be more than one, what? Two highest but genus. Now, the first book that has come down to us from Aristotle, who's called historically the father of logic, right? The first book in logic that's come down to us, the categories, is about the highest genus. Now, you can say the highest genus, what do you mean by the highest genera? The genera, that's a plural genus, obviously, that have no genera above them, right? The highest genus is a genus that has no genus above it. Or you could also describe it as a genus that is not a, what? Species. Okay? Just like the first father, if he's Adam, let's say, right? You could say he's a father who doesn't have a father, or he's a father who is not a, what, son, right? Just like you could say the first cause, huh? It's a cause that doesn't have a cause. Or it's a cause that is not a, what, a fact, yeah. See, those are your ways of speaking. But it became the same thing. So the highest genera are genera that are not species, right? Which is a little bit. Same way of speaking, right? Now, how should the highest genera be distinguished? That's the question. Say we could spend, you know, a whole semester talking about Aristotle's book, the categories, huh? But how do you think Aristotle distinguished these? But in general, how do you think he goes about distinguishing the highest genera? That's kind of an interesting question, right, then? We got down to the point now where we say that there are many, meaning what? More than one, right? There are many highest genera. There are many genera that are not species of any genes, right? There are many genera that have no genes above them, right? Okay. But how would you go about distinguishing these? Try to examine meanings of those most universal. Why, ductilely you mean? Yeah, because, well, like you were saying, that being or something is different when it's set of substance or acts, then you'd say, well, is it said you never could have substance? Okay. Notice that. Kind of interesting thing here, right? If you look at this in terms also of what's gone before, right? We're looking for a distinction that is both a distinction of many kinds of things. Because a genus is signifying each other kind of thing, like a species is a name of a particular kind of thing, right? Okay. We're going to be distinguishing a number of kinds of things, right? And at the same time, we're going to be distinguishing meanings of the word what being or thing. That's kind of interesting that those two should come together. Now, I'm going to contrast that. When I distinguish over and out, and I don't, but when Euclid distinguishes quadrilateral into square, and you've done this, right? Into square and oblong and rhombus and rhomboid and trapezium, right? And later on, we find out these first four are parallelograms, right? He doesn't know enough at that point to know they're parallelograms. Or the talking about parallelogram comes up later on in the first one. Okay. He's distinguished four or five kinds, actually, or five kinds of quadrilateral, right? Has he distinguished five meanings of the word quadrilateral? He distinguished, you know, square, oblong, rhombus, rhomboid, trapezium. He distinguished five kinds of quadrilateral. Or if you just take the first four, he distinguished four kinds of parallelogram. Okay. But in the case, have you distinguished five senses of quadrilateral? Or in the other case, have you distinguished four senses of parallelogram? Or take another example here, huh? When I distinguish between odd number and even number, right? Two kinds of number, right? Are these two senses or meanings of the word number? This is something, you know, that is kind of a subtle difference here, huh? It doesn't mean... No, no. An odd number, an even number, is a number in exactly the same sense. A multitude composed of units, as Euclid says, or a multitude measured by the unit, as Aristotle says sometimes. Okay. And likewise... And likewise... quadrilato right a square and a oblong and so on each of these is a quadrilato in exactly the same sense it's a plain figure contained by four straight lines tragedy and comedy the different kinds of drama what yeah are they two different meanings of the word drama but notice the word being or the word thing or the word something those words are equivocal it's going to have many senses right and when we distinguish those many senses we are going to be at the same time distinguishing many kinds of things right so at the same time we have a distinction here of many kinds and the many what senses i'm usually thinking i think about that this year and i was thinking again about the distinction aristotle makes it will meet in philosophy of nature between four kinds of causes right matter form over in and he distinguishes these four kinds of cause but at the same time he's distinguishing four meanings of the word what cause interesting so look look at the word seeing there right now i distinguish between the act of the eye and imagining and understanding right these are three meanings of the word to see right my mother used to always say you know i see said the blind man but he couldn't see at all i know why she thought this was clever but she always repeated it to me right okay it's always in the back of me right okay there's a kind of a play there the two meanings of the word to see right now but could you also say that these are three kinds to see take take king lear right in the famous play there right you know how not king lear but uh the father's name foster right okay you know foster gets blinded right evil too right you know you know king lear huh what um but anyway he begins to understand after he's been blind right he's seeing now in a what yeah i know what he'd never seen before right in a much better way right another kind of seeing right these two different kinds of seeing as well as being sensitive to the word to see if you see me now right with your eyes right now and i go home and remember me picture me in your imagination right you remember right you in a way seeing me again right but different kind of seeing it depends on what i said that's the kind of thing isn't it i see what you mean with this purpose so how would one go about distinguishing these highest genera you see what comes to mind at first and you saw this already when we're pointing out that the word being or thing didn't mean what have one meaning right what we first began to see was that man and dog are a thing are things in a different way than a man and his wife hell right now and this is the distinction that the philosopher makes between substance and what accident right and substance comes from the latin word to what stand under right and accident comes from the latin word to happen to something right okay you can kind of see why we call man or dog a substance and the health or the shape of the man accident right because the accidents happen to substance right now aristotle in his book called the categories he points out this distinction between substance and accident accident is something that exists in another right as in a subject like health exists in my body right and you can't it can't exist by itself okay or my shape exists in me right or my virtues or my vices exist in me right okay you can't put me here in one room and my health in the next room or me in this room and my shape in the next room or me in this room one of my advice is next from that and they say you do that right you know um make the way it is but you can put me in this room and the dog in the next room right so the accident is something exists in another and it's incapable of existing except in another as a subject but the substance does not exist in another so man and dog would be examples of substance and maybe the tree right and uh other things um but the shape of the man they help the man and so on the examples of accidents aristotle just crosses this with another division and that is between the what universal what is said of many and the individual or singular right universal and the singular individual so that's going to give you a chart with how many memories huh yeah what would be an example of a singular individual substance socrates socrates is the example of this right did you ever see ginocchi's horse champion when i grew up like he was a horse champion he was a horse he came to saint paul and uh had a rodeo right kind of things but at the end you know ginocchi you know got a champion and he went around you know waving his head waving his head and the horse would sidestep like that all around the hole putting it down in so he goes to play the horse but and uh so socrates is an individual substance right an individual man champion is a what individual horse right okay lassie was a famous lassie in movies right okay i know it's been 10 10 or something like that okay but man or dog here would be examples of universal substance right you can go even more universal you go up to animal right now examples of accidents ones you mentioned were things like health let's say a sheep but if you take the health of socrates right of the shape of champions this would be an individual accident right now the way our style of the students use these he says that um some things are said of something right but they don't exist in something else right like a man or a dog right now other things he says exist in something like the health of socrates but they're not said of anything right some things are both what exist in another and they're said of another and finally there are some things that are neither said of another nor do they exist another right so you have two negatives to describe the individual substance right two affirmatives to describe this one negative and one affirmative to describe this and one here i remember it's always you know i've got to create it in the first study he takes up uh these two first then that and then that and i think it's kind of clever what he does right because um you see the difference between what being said of another and existing another you take something said of another but not existing another and something existing another but not said another you can't do the same thing can they and then you combine the two you realize you're combining two different things instead of another instead of another and existing another don't mean the same thing and first firm to be the four right okay so it distinguishes the four right universal substance universal accident okay notice when Aristotle enumerates these right he enumerates first um universal substance um universal substance and individual accident right okay because universal substance you say man and dog are said of something right man is said of socrates and plato and aristotle right dog like the monkey should be hard right horses said a champion and okay or righteous horse or his name was a female champion right but but we would say man and dog the sort of thing that exists another is in the subject right the health of socrates exists in another that's not said of anything else right then universal accident these are sort of things that exist in another like health exists in the body shape in the body and so on maybe the soul but they are said of another that's universal right socrates are champion they are neither said of another nor do they exist in another if i remember right then he talks about parts of a plot right can be before something and not after something or after something and not before or both before and after right yeah no way of doing that so uh you get this fundamental distinction right but as you'll point out in the chapter on substance the categories everything else is said of individual substances right or they what exist individual substance right so the way everything the way the highest grammar can be distinguished is by something that in a way everything has reference to and that's the what individual substances right everything else is either said of them or eventually exists in them right okay so we can distinguish the highest genera by the way something can be like said of individual substances now that's everybody distinguish them when you say that the way something can be said of do you mean the way a name can be said of