Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 61: Truth, Being, and the Acts of Reason

Transcript
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The ability to enact me be in the mind, a mental being. So it's a very universal division of being. Now he says, this being is chiefly true or false. Now he begins from where it's more obvious. He ties it up with the mind here. This is first of all, as far as we know about it, is in things to be put together or divided. Now what do you call the first two acts of reason? Now sometimes you can call the first act simple apprehension. Pretty speaking, there's simple grasping, right? But the grasping of what something is, however perfect that may be. Sometimes I call the first act understanding what a thing is. Now what's the second act? Composition and division. Thomas always goes back to Aristotle's text in the third book about the soul, where he speaks of composition and division. Now you have to understand what you mean by division there, right? He's talking about the division that you have in a negative statement. You say man is not a stone, right? That's dividing man and stone. Man is an animal. It's putting together man and animal in some way, right? But he always uses those words composing and dividing. And he's very true to Aristotle, right? Now sometimes, I call the second act understanding the true or the false. But Thomas always likes to go back and use the word composing and what? Dividing, huh? What were we thinking about, with the two, about grasping and judging? What were we thinking about? Well, I mean, a lot of times you see this in logic books, you know. But actually, when you study the logic of the second act, it doesn't use the word judgment, huh? See? It just talks really about what a statement is, huh? And for the most part, in order to judge, we need to, what? Reason, right? Yeah. And so, in the tradition, they would use the word judgment, scientia yudikandi in Latin, huh? The science of judging, to refer to the prior and the posterior analytics. Where judgment is taken now, not in the contemporary sense of judgmental, but judged in the sense of certitude, right? Okay? And so, they'll talk about that, because for the most part, it takes place as a result of reasoning. So, if you take all these theorems in book one of Euclid, you know, 48 theorems there, you judge this to be true, right? By some kind of demonstration, huh? Okay? So, it's only those few statements that are obvious, right? That we judge to be true without going through reasoning, huh? Okay? But actually, the logic of the second act doesn't make that, what? Distinction. It talks about, mainly, what a statement is, and divides statement into affirmative and negative, and then it tries to find out exactly what statements are opposed contradictorily, right? And statements are opposed contradictorily, which have the same subject and the same predicate, right? One affirmative, one negative. But they're opposed such that they can't both be true and they can't both be false. But one must be true and the other must be false. Whether you know which one is the true one and which is the false one, huh? But the logic of the second act doesn't give you any help as to decide which is the true side and which is the false side, right? And when you come from a more universal point of view, you say, well, sometimes it's obvious that the affirmative and the negative is true, but in most cases it's not obvious and has to be shown in some way, right? And this would be very important when you try to come to understand what it is to believe, right? When Thomas in the Secundes Secundes takes up the act of faith to believe, and in the De Veritate, he takes up that same article, or in the Sentences, huh? Those are the three main places where he takes it up. Although also in the Epistle of the Hebrews when you get the definition of faith. But he goes back to Augustine in the, I think it's in Predestination of the Saints, huh? In the second chapter of that book, where Augustine says that to believe is to ascent while thinking about it, huh? And Thomas will go back and, all the way back to the distinction between the first act and the second act of reason. And he'll show how to believe is in the second act, right? But then he'll show how the definition of Augustine separates it from every other thing in the second act. And we'll have to see that sometime, maybe, huh? Because sometimes you, what? Think about something without assenting. And sometimes you assent to something without thinking about it, because it's obvious. Sometimes you assent to something as a result of thinking about it and thinking it out, right? But none of that is belief. But in the belief, huh, you assent firmly, right? Your reason, though, being moved, not by the evidence, right? But by the will, right? And being helped by this gift that God has infused into your reason, in fact. And because you don't have evidence, you think about it. So you assent while thinking about it. What's kind of interesting about that definition of belief is that you see you're expecting the nature of reason itself, right? Because reason doesn't really understand what it's assenting to. And if you have the evidence, it naturally thinks about what it understands, huh? You can kind of see how Anselm's definition of theology starts in there, right? Because he says it's belief seeking understanding, right? So you're assenting to something while thinking about it. And if you don't think about it, you're not really assenting, right? But you're thinking about it as not the cause of your assent. But in geometry, right, you're thinking about the Pythagorean theorem and so on. And finally thinking it out is the cause of your assent, huh? So you have to go back then to the two sides of a contradiction that are taught in the logic of the second act of reason. And Thomas will distinguish all the possibilities we have, right? Sometimes the mind is what? In doubt, whether to affirm or deny. Either because it has no reason to affirm or deny, right? Or because the reasons kind of equally belt each other. And that's the doubting mind, right? Sometimes you, what? Incline more to one side of the contradiction than the other. But you don't have a reason that shows you it must be so. And then you have an opinion or a suspicion, but you have fear that the opposite might nevertheless be so. Sometimes, though, you, what? Assent in the full sense. But you've got to distinguish the ascent of natural understanding. Like I assent that the whole is more than a part. And my ascent to the Pythagorean theorem. And then the ascent of faith. A few different ascents. And the one is to ascent without having to think about it, really. Another is to ascent as a result of thinking about it and thinking it out. And the third is to ascent while thinking about it. What was your first example again? Well, you have the mind that is not inclined more to the affirmative or the negative. The doubting mind, right? Either because you have no reason, right? To affirm or deny, right? Or because if I do have reasons, they're more or less equal, right? Because my mind is kind of in suspense between the two, right? But then you have where the mind is more inclined to one than the other, right? And sometimes Thomas will do like he does in the praying to logic. Distinguish between suspicion, right? And opinion, right? But in both cases you have a fear, right? Of the opposite might be so, huh? And so you don't have really a full ascent to one half of the contradiction. So that's a different condition, right? When you're equally in between one, you're inclined to one with fear of the other, right? And then the third is where you're completely assenting to one half of the contradiction as being the truth, right? But then the third is where you're being the truth, right? And then the third is where you're being the truth, right? And then the third is where you're being the truth, right? And then the third is where you're being the truth, right? And then the third is where you're being the truth, right? There's three different, what, ascents, huh? One is the ascent of deus, of intellectus, of an actual understanding, right? The ascent to the obvious, huh? And then the other is the ascent that's a result of some demonstration, right? And then finally there's the ascent of faith, huh? And that definition of Augustine, to ascent while thinking about it, separates the act of faith from an actual understanding of the ascent and from the ascent of science or demonstration, okay? If you didn't think about what you assent to because you're moved by the will, then you would not be respected in the nature of reason, huh? People should, you know, think about what it is that they believe, huh? That's why people read the Catechism of the Catholic Church. And that's eventually why you do theology, if you're doing it in the sense of the non-sense, it says, right? Belief-seeking, what? Understanding, yeah, yeah. Even though Thomas always quote Hillary, you know, that I know I should never arrive, but I keep on making progress, right? Trying to understand these things. So Thomas likes to go back to this kind of thing we're speaking about. So he thinks truly, who thinks the divided to be divided, right? So if I think that man is not a stone, right? I'm thinking truly. And the put together to be put together, right? So if I say that Socrates is a man, right? I'm thinking truly. But he thinks falsely, who is in the contrary, should be poor of there. When is there is not what is called true or false, huh? What we say, he says, should be investigated. It is not because we think truly that you are white, that you are white. But because you are white, we who say this speak, what? Truly, huh? Now he's thinking here, first of all, of material things, right? Where there's a composition, right? Of matter and form, right? Or a composition of substance and accident, right? Okay? And so if you put together in your mind things that are together in reality, you're being true. And if you divide in your mind things that are divided and separated in reality, right? Then you're speaking truly, right? If you do the reverse, you're speaking, what? Falsely, right? You might require, I'll use this as an example before and after in the sense of cause and effect and the categories. You take the same example, right? That at the same time you are sitting, it's true to say you are sitting, right? So that you are sitting is not before it's being true that you are sitting. In the second sense of before, they're together, right? And yet one is in some sense before the other because it's the cause of the other. Okay? Now then, in the next paragraph, he makes a three-fold distinction here. There are some things that are what? Always together, right? And some things are never together. Impossible to be together. And some things sometimes are and some ones are not, right? If then, he says, some things are always put together and unable to be divided, huh? Like man and animal, right? Man is always an animal. And others are always divided and unable to be put together. Like man is a stone, right? They're always divided. While others can be contraries, for being is to be put together and be one, while none being is not to be put together, but to be many. The same opinion and the same thought, he says, huh? About contingent things becomes false and true. So, breakfast is sitting. Sometimes it's true. Sometimes it's false, right? But man as an animal is always true. And man as a stone is always what? Always false, yeah. But about things unable to be otherwise, about things necessary. It does not become sometimes true and other times false. But the same are always true or false. So, man is always an animal, right? Necessarily. And man is never a what? A stone. Yeah. Okay? Or man is a stone will always be false. Have no fear. Except that a fork is taking place. So, are the contingent things as true as the necessary things? Is it as true that breakfast is sitting as it is that man is an animal? Because man as an animal will always be true. But breakfast is sitting will not always be true. And he touched upon this back in the, what? Second book, huh? When you say that necessary things are more true than the contingent things. He was talking about how consideration of truth belongs more to looking philosophy than to practical knowledge, huh? And practical knowledge in many cases is a question of what? Continency, right? Okay? Where is Sarkawi, right? Okay, that's what you want to know, right? He's a head terrorist over there, I guess. But Sarkawi is always changing the dress apparently. He hasn't cut up to him yet, huh? Huh? Okay? But that's very important for practical reasons, huh? To know where he is, huh? Okay? So the practical man is interested in these contingent truths, huh? And his action requires that, right? Where can I buy cheap and sell deer? Well, it's not the same place maybe every year, right? And you know, if you buy wine or something like that, huh? There are some countries that are well-established in the wine market and so on, and reputation and so on, and then lesser countries, you know, are developing their wines and they're trying to get a share of the market so they put out their wines at a good, you know, or reasonable price. And so you start buying their wines and then as soon as they get established the price goes up. And then you start buying somebody else's wine, right? So you go to Chile or Australia or someplace, right? Or Eastern Europe, you know, they try to get recovered from the Communist days, huh? And so on. But those contingent truths are always, what? Changing, huh? When do you sell your stock? When do you buy, right? You know, well, it's going to go up. You might want to hold on to it. It's going to go down. You might want to sell. But that's always changing, huh? So Aristotle, you know, argued that the looking philosophy is more concerning the truth than the practical, not only because it's, what, in their purposes of truth, by the end or purpose of the practical is action, not a truth, right? But even the concern that the practical science has with truth is more about those contingent truths, which will be, what? Yeah, sometimes true, sometimes not, huh? But notice, up to this point, he's been seeing truth and falsity in material things more, where there's a real, what, composition of matter and form or substance or accident. Now, what about these simple things? What about the simple things that are not composed of matter and form, like the separated substances, right? And even more so God, right? What does truth mean then, right? You're saying these things are together or these things are separated? Well, no, they're simple. But about things not put together, what is it to be or not to be and the true and the false? For it is not put together so as to be when it is put together, but not to be when it is divided, like the wood is white or the diameter is incommensible. Nor will true and false belong still in the same way as in those. For just as true is not the same in these, so neither is to be, huh? Now, he had talked in the second book about the connection between being and, what, truth, remember that? And he had argued, you know, from the famous statement that I expand on, huh? And kind of it's more so. That and... which more so, that's what Cato and Aristotle say, but Aristotle and Thomas here at the Gravati of Wisdom. But I expand, as you know, when the same belongs to two things, but to one of them because of the other, it belongs more to the cause. So if true belongs to the cause and the effect, but to the effect because of the cause, right, then the cause is what? More true, right? And if being, if to be, belongs to the cause and to the effect, right, but to the effect because of the cause, then to be belongs more fully to the cause. So he points out that there's the same order in being and in what? Truth, you know. And that's why I kind of speculate as to what Aristotle would be like, Hilary of Poitiers, right, who spoke of how he first picked up the Bible as a pagan, I guess, or, you know, and he was, he read the Exodus, I guess, I am who I am, right? And he heard, you know, God saying to Moses, I am who I am. He was very impressed. But if Aristotle was to see, I am who I am, right, in the Exodus, and then turn to the New Testament and say, I am truth itself, say, well, that makes sense, right? That would be a motive of credibility for the philosopher, because the order in being and the order in truth is the, what, same, okay? So these simple things are going to be, what, have more being, they're going to be more necessary, right? They're not going to be contingent like these composed things that are sometimes put together and sometimes separated, right? And therefore, they're going to have more truth, right? Okay? But again, you're going to see the idea that truth is tied up with act more than, what, ability. But true or false is as follows, he says in this paragraph. To grasp or understand and say, is true, right? Now, as Thomas points out in the commentary, and Aristotle points out in the parentheses there, when I say, say, I don't mean say in the sense of an affirmation. Then you say one thing of another. There's a composition of the thing, huh? But you simply, what? Understand what something is, huh? And this incidentally is the way that eventually we find out that God understands, right? God understands by knowing what he himself is. And by knowing what he himself is, he knows all other things. Because he is among other things that cause everything else. But he understands it in a way like we do in the first act. But if in my understanding what a triangle is, I saw in understanding what a triangle is, the two triangles of the triangle make the two right angles. I wouldn't have to put together this, would I? But in understanding what a triangle is, my little mind is so weak, it doesn't see everything that belongs to a triangle, right? And so I have to reason, right? And eventually put together a triangle and has interior angles equal to two right angles. I put them together in my mind, huh? As a result of some kind of reasoning, huh? But now you have simple things, right? Which are not a result of matter and form coming together, right? What does truth mean, huh? Well, it means to understand what these things are, right? And say what you understand, but would not be a, what? A statement. Okay, it's a very subtle, but it has to all the same here. And you're not deceived, he says, in understanding what something is, except by happening, huh? Okay? Insofar as if some put together, when we form it like a definition, let's say, right? Or when we say the definition of something, huh? Then we can make a mistake, huh? But just in understanding what something is, there's no possibility of a mistake, huh? So either you understand them or you don't. And to understand them is to, what? Have truth. To not understand them is just to miss out on that. Okay? And all exist and act, these simple things, not in ability, right? Okay? He's thinking now that ability to be and not to be, right? Well, is there in the angel, in the separated substances, an ability to be and not to be? Well, then they would be material, right? Okay? So they don't have this ability to be and not to be, right? So they're always true in their nature. And all exist and act, not in ability. For otherwise they would have come to be and cease to be. But now being itself does not come to be, nor is it corrupted. For it would have come to be from something, huh? Whatever things then are in what itself and in act about these, it is not possible to be deceived. But either one understands or not. You either know or you're simply in right there. But the what it is, is sought about them, if they are such or not. So, as regards being as true now, and none being as false, one is thus. If it is put together, it is true. And if it is not put together, it is false. And the other one, if it is a being, it is thus. If it is not thus, it is not. But the true, in this case, is to understand these. The false is not, nor is there deception. But ignorance, huh? And not as blind as son. Thomas is very subtle at this point. What is Aristotle saying? We are saying that man is not completely, what? Blind as far as knowing what the angels are, what God is. Because then you can never come to know what they are, right? For blindness is as if one was wholly lacking the ability to understand, huh? That is comforting to know, right? Maybe we will see God someday as he is, right? And Aristotle is leaving it to open here. It is interesting, huh? I don't think you can go that far, huh? Now, it is clear also that there is no deception about unchangeable things, according to Wynne. Because they are not in, what? Time, right? If someone takes them to be unchangeable. For example, if we think the triangle does not change, it would not be thought that sometimes it has angles. It has two right angles and sometimes not, or it will change. Okay. So, we'll let our stop rest here, huh? Okay. That's kind of a preliminary reading of Book Nine, right? But we're not going to put away philosophy, right? We're going to use it, right, in our study of theology. But sometimes, as you study theology, you have a desire to go back to the, what? Philosophical works, right? Okay. But sometimes you appreciate more the need for those philosophical works when you see the use that Thomas will make of them in, what? Theology, huh? But sometimes Thomas will go back a little bit to the philosophy, even the theological work, and kind of recall some things for you, right? Or maybe develop some things, huh? So, sometimes even the theological works, you get help in the philosophical works, huh? Okay. Now, do you have a chance to look at the other documents? We should take a little break now, because we're in our... Did you pass them out last night? It's... I think...