Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
Lecture 44: Sophistical Refutations and the Fallacy of Equivocation

Transcript
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okay let's just a few more words about dialectic and we talked last time about the four tools of the dialectician and Aristotle in that first book of the dialectic, the so called topics as they call it in English, but it's about places he speaks of what dialectic is useful for, right? and he says it's useful, he says, to exercise your mind okay, the mind is exercised and looking at both sides of the question, right? and seeing what can be said for or against it, right? and then he says it's useful for meeting somebody in his own grasp, right? so when I encounter somebody and I try to reason with them I would take statements right, opinions that he had, right? and reason from them, with them okay, but then the third thing he says, it's useful for philosophy he says, you know, the ability to reason on both sides of the question helps you to, what? judge better, right? just as the jury is better able to judge if they've heard both sides, right? but he says it's also useful to find the beginnings of philosophy and he says in the Greek there that dialectic has a road and Plato touches upon that when he talks about dialectic in the, what? Republic, huh? but in a kind of formal way you could say dialectic is considered the question whether this is that, right? whether this is said of that, right? and Aristotle divides that question whether this is said of that whether this is said of that as being essential to what it is, right? whether this is said of that convertibly and whether as a property or as a definition and so the later books of the topics will give you places to look, right? to argue whether this should be said of that, right? whether this should be said of that as a genius or difference something essential, in other words whether this is said of that as a, what? definition or property, huh? he breaks it down according to those things okay? now going back to Socrates in the Phaedo there, you know where he distinguishes arguments and people into three there are those you can trust completely those you can't trust at all and those you can trust but up to a, what? point, huh? okay? and that's the way arguments are, right? a demonstration you can trust completely it's really a demonstration a dialectical argument or rhetorical argument you can trust up to a point dialectic more than a rhetorical argument okay? and then the sophistical refutations is about arguments you can't trust at all okay? it's simply a bad argument right? okay? now why did Aristotle title this book about sophistical refutations well we have to see what the word refutation means in this context and then what's the physical you say refutation means what? to show somebody that they are what? contradicting themselves right? in the sense to um take what somebody says and show that it's not consistent and it involves contradiction now people don't um always contradict themselves directly or immediately but some things they say right? lead to a contradiction of something else that they say now there is such a thing as a real refutation and the simplest example I can think of is when Socrates refutes the slave boy right? who thinks the way to double a square is to double the side right? okay? so Socrates is saying to a slave boy um if you have a square whose side is x and you want to get a square twice as big how much longer would the side have to be? well he says twice as long okay? now is that true or false? is the square whose side is 2x is that going to be twice as big as the square whose side is 2? well the side is twice as long why is it twice as big? okay? but then Socrates would take an example and the actual example is not important but let's take an example if this square was 2x2 then the square of each side is twice as long and the square would be 4 by what? 4, right? And now if you calculate this out, 2 by 2 has got an area of 4, and 4 by 4 of the area is 16. Well, even the slave boy can see that 16 is not double 4, but 4 is double 2, and he said that the side is twice as long as twice as big. Therefore, from something he says that the side is twice as long as twice as big, therefore, this is twice as big as that, but 16 is twice as big as 4? No. Four times as big, right? So they don't fit together, those things that he says, right? Okay? Or take a simple example. If Perkwist has an album on here, and he says the length is 10, and the width is 3, and the area is 40, you're going to show Perkwist that he has to say what? Conviction, right? Because 3 by 10 would be 30, and 30 is not 40, right? Or if I divide 40 by 10, I don't get 3, I get 4, right? So I'm going to contradict myself, and there's something screwy about what I'm saying here, right? These 3 cannot be all what? True, right? Now, you're going to find very often in the dialogues, it's dangerous to admit 3 things to Socrates, because usually those 3 things don't include a contradiction as such, right? But from 2 of them, you will deduce something that contradicts the 3rd, right? Just like here, right? From these 2, I could deduce 30, right? Which contradicts 40, because it's not 40, huh? Okay? So if you admit 3 things to Socrates, you know, he may have enough to put you in a contradiction, right? But notice, that's a real reputation, right? I really am inconsistent in my thinking, right? I think I can think that the length is 10, the width is 3, and the area is 40, and I don't realize that those don't harmonize, which is a Greek word being fit together there. It's incoherent, right? Now, if I can show that you contradict yourself, then I can, in a sense, overcome you, right? And the sophist, huh? He wants the glory of being superior to everybody else, right? And the best way to have the glory of being superior to everybody else is to what? Refuge him, right, huh? Then you seem to have put him in this below you, right? Okay? And just like, you know, in Shakespeare's play there on Prince Hell, you know, everybody's admiring Hotspur, right? And Prince Hell says, it'll mean to be on the battlefield, right? All his glory is going to come over to me. Because he's going to overcome the guy that everybody admires, right? Okay? So the sophist, and he likes to take, you know, even famous people and make them, what, at least appear to contradict themselves, right? So the sophist enters into a conversation not with a view to find the truth, but with a view to winning, right? Okay? And therefore, he's entering into the conversation as if there were a form of war, right? Well, as the old proverb says, all fair, love, and war, right? And so the sophist will even use, what, bad arguments if the person can't see through them, right? Okay? And, but sometimes we use a bad argument just to see if someone can see the defect in it, right? Or point something out, huh? Now, in his book about statistical refutations, Aristotle distinguishes 13 ways that the sophist, right? Deceives, right? And of course, we want to learn then to avoid being deceived by the sophist, but also to avoid falling into these errors by ourselves, right? I'm not going to go through all 13, but we're going to talk about a few of the most important ones, huh? But those 13 kinds of mistakes are divided into two groups, huh? And six of them come from words or language, huh? And seven of them come from things, huh? Okay? And Thomas touches upon this in his commentaries on the Epistles of St. Paul, right? Yeah, St. Paul alludes to these two ways of being deceived, huh? Six came from what? Language or words. And then seven outside of language, huh? And like you noticed in the little thing I gave you there, I emphasized one from language, the very first one, and the first two outside of language, huh? And I did so because these are the most common, but also because they correspond to three kinds of distinctions that are made again and again and again and again in philosophy, right? And the mind is deceived because it doesn't see a particular kind of distinction, okay? And so it's a way also of learning these kinds of distinctions, huh? Now, the first one that Aristotle gives, and it's from language, it's often called in the books the Fallacy of Equivocation, right? Okay? I might like to spell it out a little bit and say it's the mistake from mixing up the senses of a word, huh? Okay? Or you can say the mistake from not seeing the distinction of the senses of a word, huh? Or a name, huh? It's the mistake that comes to mixing up the senses of a word, huh? Now, sometimes we play upon the different senses of a word, and people, you know, know that they have different senses, right? Okay? And sometimes I, you know, illustrate this in the beginning with something very, what, easy, right, huh? Okay? So my stock example is, Roger Maris hits 61 homeruns of the bat. The bat is a flying rodent, huh? Mm-hmm. Therefore, Roger Maris hits 61 homeruns of the flying rodent. Is that an argument you can trust completely? Mm-hmm. Well, I can trust it to some point? Or is there an argument that's simply bad? Yeah. I know he's going to be deceived by that argument because they can see the two meanings of the word bat, right, huh? The pieces of wood used in baseball and the flying mouse, huh? The flader mouse, huh? Okay? But if someone put it, distinguish those two senses, right, then he might be, what, deceived, right? Okay? And when I'm teaching the first reading there in natural philosophy, there is a sophisticated argument based on this and I give it to the students, right? I tell them I'm going to be food or a style now, right? And when I get to do it with the argument, they think that I'm a food or a style. And that's enough. The old guy came up to the floor, right? I mean, I'll save it until we get there, okay? And see if you can see through it, right? Yeah. Okay? But your style would say, hey, Perkwist. I said this in the most common one, you know, you saw it. Advantage of these poor little kids and stuff. One other stock example, just to get the idea across, is if you say that Chianti is a what? Dry wine, right? What is dry is not wet. Therefore, Chianti is not what? Wet. Okay? Nobody's deceived by that, you know? But using the old, you know, rule there, right? Look at the opposite. Dry as opposed to wet. Dry as opposed to sweet, right? So when you say Chianti is dry, it's dry in the sense of opposed to sweet. When you say what is dry is not wet, it's dry as opposed to wet, right? Okay? Now, let's take... You ever hear about Feuerbach now? That vicious little mind there between Hegel and Karl Marx? You ever hear Feuerbach? Terrible thinker, huh? He has a perversial work called The Essence of Christianity, you know? In which he maintains, you know, that all this talk about the incarnation is just a symbolic way of saying not that God became man, but that man himself is God. Okay? And Karl Marx and Engels says, oh man, they're good with enthusiasm, this great work of what? Feuerbach, right? And that's for... And that's for... And that's for... And that's for... And that's for... I was teaching in college at St. Mary's College in California, I was teaching a course in Marxism at that time, it was kind of relevant, and at that time you still would get permission to use these books that were on the index, right? It was kind of, you know, you would give the books to the register and he'd send it down to the bishop's office and come back, right? So when my request came back, I wasn't going to use the whole essence of Christianity, just the certain passages. When he came back, he called me in, you know, in case you permission, he says, but you're responsible for anybody who loses their faith. Oh, right. Now they say they don't bother those things, but it was a good thing, you know, I was going to, you know, have read the whole book, because that would be a bad thing. But this is the syllogism of Feuerbach, yeah? That's what it's called, it's Feuerbach. He quotes a number of the theologians who say, the unlimited, or the infinite, is God, okay? So that seems like, you know, a reasonable statement, right? The infinite is God, huh? And then he points out that man's mind is unlimited, okay? We can always learn more, right? We're always inventing something new, right? There's no limit to us, right? I mean, do you ever reach the point where you can't learn anything more? No, you can always learn more, right? Has man ever reached the point where you can never invent anything more? You can always invent something more. The fact that we know the universal, like odd number, right? I know I get infinity of things, right? I know even number, I know infinity of things. When I know that no odd number is even, I know it, making a statement that I know about infinity of things, right? So, in some sense, my mind is unlimited, right? The theologians say the limited is God, right? Therefore, man's mind is God, right? Okay? Pretty good argument, right? See? And, now, unlimited is not like the word baton, where the two meanings are nice and what? Sensible and concrete, and everybody may know them, right? Or even like the word dry, which is much closer to senses. You know, a lot of people could really say that there's two meanings there of unlimited, right? And, so, if you can't see any distinction between unlimited, in this sense here, and unlimited here, then you can be deceived by far apart, right? And, so, Marx and Engels were, what? Deceived by them. Maybe they wanted to be deceived, right? But, I mean, you know, it's easy for somebody who wants to be deceived, to be deceived. And, so, in this sense, my eyes are deceived by this. So, you look at Marx's doctoral thesis, you know, and rejecting anybody who does not accept the human mind is the supreme divinity, right? He says. Okay? Insert that right now, didn't there? Moscow edition, right? Okay. Now, what is the difference in meaning here between unlimited, when you say God is unlimited, and man's mind is unlimited? In the cycle of man's mind, unlimited, the example, gave us imperfection, but he had no one to get better. Yeah. You can always learn something more, right? When you say God's unlimited, it don't mean there's always something more you can acquire. It's an actual infinity, right? So, right away, there is a difference in meaning, right? If the average person may be having a hard time, you know, expressing that, right? So, the sophists, then, what? Deceived in that way, right? Okay. And the thing you notice, like my teacher, Decanic, is to say, every respectable word in philosophy is equivocal by reason, huh? It has many meanings, huh? It has many meanings in this connection. And what Aristotle has done is taken all the key words in philosophy and distinguished in order their senses, huh? But he's the only guy who does that, you know? Thomas does it, but he's mainly following Aristotle, you know, but the moderns don't, huh? And there's, I've seen them, you know, Wach says, I think there's a lot of confusion in conversation because of different words, right? It doesn't really go into it, you know, but he realizes there's something going on there, huh? But this distinction of the senses of words is very important in philosophy, you know, what you're saying and to avoid this, huh? And the second tool of dialectic, Aristotle mentions that, right? It's for clarity and conversation, but also to avoid this mistake, huh? It can be very serious, the mistake that you make, huh? Okay. But Aristotle says this is the most common kind of mistake in thinking, the one due to what? Equivocation. Now, I might mention here the second mistake, huh? Which is like the first one, except that instead of a word, you have a, what? Phrase or a speech, right? Okay. Speech there instead of a name. Okay. Now, this still isn't good, huh? The Bible, the Bible is the word of God. Vatican II, I mean, document the Bible, on Revelation. There's an even title, the Bible, right? The word of God, right? Okay. But then, when you read St. John's Gospel, you find out that the word of God is the Son of God. Okay. Therefore, the Bible is the Son of God, right? Okay. Anything wrong with that argument? That sounds good to me. Well, this phrase, where we speak the word of God, has two different meanings, right? Okay. But I think it's interesting to note that there's a likeness between the two, right? Which is developed by the Second Vatican Council. That just as the word of God, in a sense, the Son of God, he became man, right? He took on human flesh and so on. So, likewise, the word of God, in this other sense, takes on human, what? Language, right? And expresses itself in a human way, right? Do you remember that proportion there in the Yerubim, huh? But notice, now, the two meanings are connected. You could say, the word of God, in this sense, is chiefly about the word of God, like Todd and Vatican II as well, right? Okay? That's why the greatest books of the Bible are the Gospels, right? But all the other ones, in some way, refer back to the word of God, huh? So, the word of God is about the word of God. It's different meanings, right? But it makes you stop and think, right? You see the connection between those two meanings, huh? The word of God is about the word of God. I like Shakespeare's words for the philosophy of nature. He uses the English words. He calls it the wisdom of nature. Okay? The wisdom of nature, you could say, is about the wisdom of nature. The wisdom of nature, meaning the philosophy of nature, right, is about the wisdom of nature, the wisdom that nature shows in its, what, operations, right? Which is a reflection of the divine wisdom, right? Okay? Sometimes they say that nature is something of a divine art, right? In things, right? They're into things, huh? Okay? So, the wisdom of nature is about the wisdom of nature. But, there are different meanings there, wisdom of nature. But, one is about the other. Okay? Remember the premium to wisdom, right? You could say, wisdom is the knowledge of God. But, wisdom is the knowledge of God in two senses. It's the knowledge about God. In that sense, it's the knowledge of God. And, it's the knowledge that God most of all has, right? So, it's the knowledge of God, right? Okay. It's interesting, huh? It's interesting. And then when you study God's own knowledge, you could say, the knowledge of God is chiefly a knowledge of God, because God knows chiefly himself, right? And he knows other things only in knowing himself. So the knowledge of God is chiefly a knowledge of God. Interesting, huh? So you don't want to do away with it. They call that amphiboli, right? As opposed to equivocation. It means it's going to be thrown two ways, right? But equivocation is with one name, right? You have one name that actually has two meanings, right? Or more. And in amphiboli, you've got one speech that actually has more, right? Those are the first two ones, but the one, equivocation is much more important, right? In a sense, it's much more common, right? Problems, huh? What about knowledge of reason? The knowledge of reason. Does that have more than one sense? About reason? Yeah. The knowledge of reason. Yeah, yeah. So some knowledge of reason is a knowledge of reason. But some knowledge of reason is not a knowledge of reason. It's only a contradiction, isn't it? Some knowledge of reason is not a knowledge of reason. Explain that. You can contradict yourself, right? Mm-hmm. But geometry is some knowledge of reason, meaning some knowledge of reason has, right? But it's not a knowledge of reason, right? But it's not a knowledge of reason, it's a knowledge of triangles and cubes and so on, right? Do you see that? Yeah. And after that, they take up the fallacies of language where you don't actually have two meanings, right? But you potentially have two meanings, right? And the one in speech is given first, because it's more important, the fallacy of composition and division, right? Okay. So can I stand when I'm sitting? What did you say? Yes, I said so. You can kind of pause and say, I can stand when I'm sitting, right? At the same time I could stand, right? But I can't stand when I'm sitting, you can put them together, in a composed sense, right? Oh, okay. Right? I can't be sitting and standing at the same time, right? But when I'm standing, I could be sitting, right? Yeah, okay. See, there's a lot of the hewity there, right, huh? Okay. You see? And it comes up very important when you talk about God's foreknowledge, right? Right, huh? If God knows that you're going to sin, right? Must you sin? Huh? Well, you know, an if-then statement to be true, the then part has to follow the if part necessarily, right? So if God knows you're going to sin tomorrow, then you will sin tomorrow. Does that mean then that you must sin, that you're not free, therefore? You have to be held responsible for your sin tomorrow? Huh? Well, if you consider that separately by itself, you know, must you sin tomorrow? No. You can sin or not sin, right? You have free will, huh? Okay? But, if you take the thing together, right, huh? Then necessarily, right? You can say, if God knows you're going to sin, then it's not necessarily useful to sin. But in the composed sense, right? Not in the divided sense, huh? Okay? Just like in the other example I'll say, can I sit when I'm standing? I can't sit and stand at the same time. But in the time when I'm sitting, I could be standing, and vice versa, right? Okay? That's kind of a subtle thing, right? So, it's a different sense of must, is it? Well, no, no, no, no, not since it's a must. This is a different type of fallacy. They call it the fallacy of composition and division, right? Or it's true, maybe in a composed sense, and also in a divided sense, or vice versa. Okay? So, in itself, you can sin or not sin. But if you take the proposition as a whole, if God knows you're going to sin, then you will sin, right? Then that's necessarily true. Because God cannot be deceived, right? Another one's not as important. There's another one in the single word, which is called accent, right? You know? But that's no big deal, right? The same word doesn't really have two meanings, but pronounced one way, it means one thing. Pronounced another way, it means another. But it might deceive you in what? The written word, right? Okay? You can see how we do that kind of even grammatically. You know, students are always in a paper, you know. And if I do it myself, even, you'll write there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's a similarity there. But anyway. But then the last one is kind of a fantastic or imaginary multiplicity, but where the ending of a word, right, makes it appear to be something different. Like, let's take seeing, right, huh? Seeing and being seen, right? One is active and one is passive, grammatically speaking, right? Just like kicking and being kicked, right? Okay? But now, if I'm doing the kicking and you're being kicked, I'm acting upon you, right? So when I'm seeing something and it's being seen, my eye is acting upon it, because I'm seeing it and it's being seen. And that's all right, isn't it? Actually, the thing I'm seeing is acting upon my eye, right? But grammatically, I say, I am what? Seeing it. As if I'm active and it's being seen, right? You see? Okay? So you can be deceived by the ending, right? Okay? Sometimes they say that, Mill is making a mistake, he says, the only reason we can say something is burnable, he says, is that it's able to be burned, right? The only reason we can call something lovable, then, is that it's able to be loved. You know? And someone says, it's something burnable, when you put it in the fire and it burns, then you say it's burnable, right? Is something lovable? You've got to say that somebody loves it, then you can say it's lovable. See? See what it means, huh? Or desirable, right? Does desirable mean able to be desired? Like burnable means able to be burned? Right? Or someone might say, doesn't desirable mean what? Should be desired, right? Not that someone could desire it, right? But if you look at the ending of desirable, it's the same as burnable, right? So you might think, well then, desirable means, like burnable, able to be desired, right? Do you see that? Yeah. So there are many ways, but I'm not trying to teach them all today, but the one that I'd like to emphasize is the first one, huh? The fallacy of what? Equivocation, huh? The mistake for mixing up the senses of a word, huh? And that's very easy to do, huh? And it's done all the time, huh? Okay? And so, occasions we go through the philosophy of nature, I'll do this, right? Hmm? Okay? Aristotle will be talking in the first reading about how the confused is more known to us, and we're more certain of it, than the distinct, huh? So, how can he say that? When a man's confused, he's mixed up. He's mistaken, right? How can he be more sure? Well,