Sorglose Nacht

Overview

The Enquiry is Hume’s concise rendering of his philosophical position (”moderate skepticism”). It consists primarily of statements of his methodological and epistemological views, along with his accounts of free will and religious knowledge.

In Stephen Buckle’s introduction to the first Enquiry, he describes its unified argument as such: “After Section 1 makes its case for serious philosophizing, Sections 2-6 put in place the basic account of human psychological functioning, and this account is then put to work in Sections 7-11.” I’ve taken a cue here and split the outline into two sections (1-6 and 7-11).

On a bureaucratic note, I’ve changed my outline numbering system. The reason I’ve done this is because anymore these texts are getting long, and marking numbered paragraphs alphabetically seems counter-intuitive at best. Here, I’ll try using the capitalized roman numerals (I) to represent chapters, and standard numerals (1) to represent numbered paragraphs.

Outline

1. On the different species of philosophy
   1. Moral philosophy (the study of human nature and action, contra natural philosophy - the study of the world) has two common manners of treatment.
      1. The first manner is designed to influence people to be virtuous by “excit[ing] and regulat[ing] our sentiments…[to] bend our hearts to the love of probity.”
   2. The second is more concerned with cultivating our understanding rather than our manners. Cartesian rationalism is a good example of this type of philosophy, which is “unintelligible to the common man.”
   3. It is certain that the “easy and obvious philosophy” will always receive the common person’s preference over the “accurate and abtruse.” The former may also be more useful in daily life.
   4. In this graph he makes a series of consistently wrong assumptions about which philosophers posterity will remember, choosing Cicero over Aristotle, La Bruyere over Malebranche, and Addison over Locke.
   5. Society types in particular like the easy philosophy, by whose writings “virtue becomes amiable, science agreeable, company instructive, and retirement entertaining.”
   6. Contra certain obsessive rationalists, Hume admonishes “be a philosopher, but…be still a man.” (Here, as many places, Hume is more enjoyable when read to oneself in a Scottish accent.)
   7. However, too much of a good thing (here, Epicurianism) is not the answer either. Perhaps there is something worth considering in the metaphysical endeavor.
   8. For one, accuracy-obsessed philosophy does so in the service of the humane pursuits. By analogy, Hume considers the painter’s debt to the anatomist: “Accuracy is,” he notes, “in every case, advantageous to beauty, and just reasoning to delicate sentiment.”
   9. Secondly, most human progress in understanding comes from the kind of enquiry of the metaphysicians, or “a spirit of accuracy…carries [all human pursuits] nearer their perfection.”
   10. While the important task of making this slow and arduous progress will seem dry to most, some minds “require severe exercise.”
   11. However, the justest exception to be taken with metaphysical philosophy is that these deep folk claim to “penentrate into subjects utterly inaccessible to the understanding.”
   12. This fact should not condemn the deep philosophical enterprise, though. On the contrary, the “only method of freeing learning…from these abstruse questions, is to enquire seriously into the nature of human understanding, and show…that it is by no means fitted for such remote and abstruse subjects.”
   13. There would be considerable other advantages to such an enquiry, the least of which might be a delineation of the distinct parts and powers of the mind.
   14. Skepticism against such an effort ostensibly entails skepticism about the ability of all speculation whatsoever, and of action. One cannot doubt that the mind is endowed with several distinct powers.
   15. There’s thus no reason to despair of such an effort of categorization.
   16. Hume modestly writes that even a small accomplishment in this endeavour would be ample reward for his effort.
   17. “Happy, if we can unite the boundaries of the different species of philosophy, by reconciling profound enquiry with clearness, and truth with novelty!”
2. Of the origin of ideas
   1. Objects of imagination and memory pale in force and vivacity to those of sensation.
   2. Similarly with emotions: A man in a fit of anger “is actuated in a very different manner” than one who merely thinks about anger.
   3. This indicates that we can divide all perceptions into two classes, distinguished by force: ideas (those “less lively”) and impressions (those more).
   4. At first blush, thinking seems unbounded (it is unconstrained by time and space, e.g.).
   5. Upon reflection, however, we realize that thought cannot really invent anything, rather it can merely compound, transpose, augment or diminish the objects we receive from our impressions.
   6. Two arguments to prove this. First, any of our ideas, when subjected to appropriate scrutiny, resolve themselves into simple ideas (received from impressions - very Lockean).
   7. Second, when a person has a defect of some sense (say, he is blind), he is likewise defective in his ability to comprehend its correspondent ideas (here, e.g. color).
   8. There is one phenomenon that contradicts this, for which Lock proposes the following thought experiment:
      1. Suppose a person is acquainted by experience with all but one particular shade of blue.
      2. When shown a gradient of color, he will be aware that there is a jump between the shade preceding the shade he has not experienced, and the one following it.
      3. This means, despite having never experienced that shade, he can infer that it should be there.
      4. However, Hume chalks up this example to complete anomaly.
   9. On the main, this is very useful as a heuristic device for analyzing philosophical argumentation. If you suspect that some philosopher’s terminology has no referent (apparently a big problem in Hume’s time), you can ask yourself, “from what impression is that supposed to be derived?”
3. Of the association of ideas
   1. It is evident that the different thoughts of our mind are always somehow connected to one another.
   2. Hume proposes that this principle of connection takes only three forms: resemblance, contiguity in time or place, and cause and effect.
   3. That these principles serve to connect ideas will not be doubted. That the three of them are exhaustive may justly be doubted. Hume will try to evidence his taxonomy’s exhaustiveness by showing that it applies to a wide variety of examples (following Hutcheson, he will immediately discuss aesthetics, qua the relationship between history and poetry).
   4. People’s actions are directed at ends. We seldom speak or think without purpose or intention.
   5. All compositions of genius therefore must arise at least in the first place from some aim or intention.
   6. Since this is always the case, there always must be some thread which relates the events of a narrative.
   7. The connecting principle may be different, depending on the designs of the poet or historian. Ovid’s Metamorphoses operates connectively by resemblance.
   8. A historian, however, may be influenced by contiguity in time and place.
   9. However, the most usual form of connection in poetic and historical narratives is cause and effect. For a historian, this seems obvious, as the more perfect the chain of causal links, the more perfect is the historical account.
   10. The same is true of a narrative about an individual, but from a narrative standpoint, this degree of detail can be boring. History and poetry thus differ in their “unity of action” not in kind, but merely in degree.
   11. He here gives us the example that it may not be necessary, as in the Iliad to let the reader know “each time the hero buckles his shoes.” If an epic poet does this, the reader’s imagination will doubtless flag.
   12. Secondly, he notes that the epic poet must not trace the causes to any great distance - again, the reader will lose interest.
   13. The same rule in dramatic poetry - introducing an actor only tangentially related to the main characters is just confusing. The author must, again, select which elements she will admit onto the stage, at the clear expense of providing a full accounting of the causal nexus which determines the plot.
   14. Paragraph 14 recaps 7-13: the relation of cause and effect is the same in history and poetry, where the latter’s concern is the imagination and passions of its readers.
   15. Since the difference is only measured by degrees, it will be difficult to separate history from epic poetry cleanly.
   16. Here a brief discussion of the role of narrative contrast in unifying Achilles’ anger in the death of Hector and his anger which “produced so many ills to the Greeks.”
   17. Here an analysis of Paradise Lost that suggests that the connective structure of this poem is not necessary causal, but rather resemblance (of miraculous events) and contiguity (of events in Christian metaphysical time).
   18. The full empirical review of the exhaustiveness of this taxonomy would lead us into reasonings too copious for this enquiry.
4. Sceptical doubts concerning the operations of the understanding
   1. (Part I) All objects of human reason may be divided into (1) relations of ideas and (2) matters of fact. The former are propositions which are independent of the actually existing stuff of the universe.
   2. The latter (matters of fact) are, on the contrary, just states of affairs in the really existing universe. Their contrary states don’t imply contradictions, and we cannot prove their contraries demonstratively false.
   3. It might be worth our time, then, to figure out something about what exactly assures us of any matter of fact, beyond the “present testimony of our senses.”
   4. Outside of that present testimony, everything we have to say about matters of fact seems to be founded on the relation of cause and effect. (It is supposed that there is some causal relation between the present fact and whatever we infer from it.)
   5. Therefore, we’d better look at how we arrive at the knowledge of cause and effect.
   6. Hume affirms that the knowledge of this relation arises entirely from experience. No object, considered in itself, ever reveals by its sensory qualities, the causes that produced it or the effects that will arise from it.
   7. It thus will be admitted that causes and effects are discoverable only by experience (not by reason) with regards to objects.
   8. However, it may not be so self-evident that this is the case when we consider events.
   9. Imagine two billiard balls, a first moving towards a second, making contact. Motion in the second is quite a distinct event from motion in the first.
   10. We of course think that when the first hits the second, the second will move. But we can conceive many other outcomes rationally. The first could stop, or be deflected in some other direction. There is never an a priori reason, then, that grounds our preference that the second will move on contact.
   11. Since every effect is distinct from its cause, and therefore cannot be discovered in the cause. Therfore, it is in vain that we should try to rationally infer an effect from a cause.
   12. While elasticity, gravity, etc. are probably the ultimate causes we shall ever discover in nature, “the most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer,” and “the observation of human blindless and weakness is the result of all philosophy.”
   13. Neither can geometry account for the law of motion, since the latter relies on the real existential world, for which we can only experimentally suppose the efficacy of the former.
   14. (Part II) Since the foundation of all our reasoning is experience, we need to ask, what is the foundation of all conclusions from experience?
   15. Even after we have experience of cause and effect, our conclusions from that experience are not founded on any process of the understanding. Explaining this is what follows.
   16. The main question to answer is why our experience of the behavior of one object should be extended to predictions about the behavior of other objects, however similar, at different times. Even when we allow that this inference is just, we need to know what the “medium” between the single experience and the expectation of similar experiences in the future.
   17. Just because we haven’t figured out this intermediate step yet doesn’t mean we never will. This means the negative proof isn’t good enough, and we need to endeavor to enumerate all the branches of human knowledge, and that none of them can afford such an intermediate step.
   18. There are two kinds of reasonings: demonstrative (that reasoning which concerns ideas) and moral reasoning (that reasoning that concerns fact and existence. That there are no demonstrative arguments to provide the intermediary step seems evident, since it doesn’t imply a contradiction that the course of nature may change sometime in the future.
   19. If we are going to be persuaded by any arguments to continue to expect future behaviors based on past experience, these arguments are going to be probable only.
   20. From causes which appear similar we expect similar effects, but even though there is “nothing so like as eggs,” no one “expects the same taste and relish in all of them.”
   21. If someone is to infer that some bundle of qualities (x) implies some causal power (y), based on his past experience that all x’s have the power y, of what nature is this inference? It’s neither demonstrative nor intuitive, and to say that it’s experimental is begging the question.
       1. Hume also makes the point here that regardless of the fact that as an agent he is satisfied to act based on inferences from experience, as a philosopher, he remains curious as to the nature of these inferences.
   22. Now Hume is going to give us some arguments that will prove that he hasn’t merely /missed/ some argument for the foundation of this inference.
   23. Imagine a child who puts her hand by a candle. The flame burns her, and in the future, she will be careful not to put her hand near the candle again. If you assert that the child develops this conclusion by rational means, and that the means are so evident that an infant can deploy them, this means that any valid explanation of the rational process can’t be more complex than those deployed by an infant. Since this is true, Hume thinks it likely that some philosopher would already have been able to explain it. Indeed, if he’s missing it, he would be “a very backward scholar; since I cannot now discover an argument which, it seems, was perfectly familiar to me long before I was out of my cradle.”
5. Sceptical solution of these doubts
   1. (Part I) One school of philosophy doesn’t lead us to the kind of hyper-rational selfishness in which philosophers are known to indulge. Academic (that is, post-Platonic, contra Pyrrhonian) Scepticism: suspending judgment, and renouncing speculation about things outside the limits of common life and practice.
   2. Though we must conclude (viz. the previous chapter) that there is a step taken by the mind which is not supported by a rational argument, there is no danger that this lack of argument will threaten all the knowledge (which is almost all of it) which it grounds.
   3. To an alien, there is no reason to conclude that simply because one event precedes another that the first is the cause and the second the effect.
   4. Now imagine that our alien has a little more experience. Though he now finds himself determined to draw the inference that one thing causes another, he still has no rational justificatin for doing so. But there must be some principle which makes him form this conclusion.
   5. That principle is custom or habit. It is by habit that we associate, e.g. heat and flame. There is a long footnote here that suggests that this experiential justification for reason underlies not only our knowledge of objects, but our views on civil government, moral conduct, the law, etc.
   6. “Custom, then, is the great guide of human life.” Without custom, we wouldn’t know anything about anything but what our sense experience and memory deliver us. This means that we wouldn’t know how to adjust means to make ends we want, and this would be the end “at once of all action, as well as the chief part of speculation.”
   7. Also, it is prudent to note that though our conclusions can carry us beyond memory and sense, some fact must always be present to sense or memory to provide a starting point to draw a conclusion.
   8. In conclusion, all beliefs about matters of fact are derived from some present object and a customary conjuction between that object and some other object.
   9. From here, then, we need to examine the nature of that belief and of the customary conjunctions from which it is derived.
   10. (Part II) What’s the difference, cognitively speaking, between a belief and something we just imagine?
   11. The difference lies in some sentiment or feeling that gets conjoined to beliefs (by force of custom) that doesn’t get joined up with fictions. Since there’s no logical contradiction in the idea of a red ocean, it is just some sentiment that forces us to understand an image of one as fiction, whereas to one of a blue ocean we attribute facticity.
   12. Defining this sentiment is hard, but describing it might not be so bad. We can call a belief “something felt by the mind, which distinguishes the ideas of judgment from the fictions of the imagination. It gives them more weight and influence…and renders them a governing principle of our actions.”
   13. On summary, “…belief is nothing but a conception more intense and steady than what attends the mere fictions of the imagination, and…this manner of conception arises from a customary conjunction of the object with something present to the memory or senses.”
   14. We will also remember that the principles of that conjunction are resemblance, contiguity and causation. Does it happen, Hume now asks, that “when one of the objects is presented to the sense or memory, the mind is not only carried to the conception of the correlative, but reaches a steadier and stronger conception of it than what otherwise it would have been able to attain?” He finds that in the case of cause and effect, this is indeed the case. The question is now whether it is generally the case.
   15. He argues that it is the case for the resemblance connection as well, using the example of viewing a picture of an absent friend.
   16. Further evidence for the power of resemblance comes in the form of Roman Catholic rituals that use idols (of the crucifixion of Jesus, e.g.).
   17. He argues then that it is also the case for the contiguity relation, using this example: when walking hear his home, the things that he passes remind him of his (absent) home more acutely than do similar things hundreds of miles away.
   18. Finally, “no one can doubt” that causation works similarly. His (strange) example here is the desire for religious types to have relics of saints, which he suggests are effects close to the cause (the holy person).
   19. Another, still weird example, is that in seeing the son of our dead friend, we remember him more acutely. The implication here is that the son is the effect, and the father the cause.
   20. Finally, all three connective types require that the correlative object is presupposed. It would have no effect if, e.g. we didn’t believe the father, or Jesus, or the saint, or our home, or our absent friend actually existed.
   21. This paragraph seems a little strange at first blush, because he suggests that custom is the principle by which “a kind of pre-established harmony between the course of nature and the succession of our ideas” (an obvious reference to Liebniz) and he ends up talking about final causes (in reference to Aristotle). It’s actually kind of nice, though, when you understand these problems in terms of paragraph 6 above: if custom didn’t unite our thoughts with our past experience of nature, we wouldn’t know how to act to bring about ends, and hence both moral action and knowledge would be impossible.
   22. Finally, there’s a practical analogy: we use our instinct for inferring future behavior from past experience in the same way we use our legs. We don’t have to understand the way the muscles and nerves work together to walk.
6. Of probability
   1. Although our world is causally determined, our ignorance of the real cause of any event means that our future-directed knowledge for real events and objects always takes the form of a belief or opinion.
   2. This opinion is based on probability.
   3. Now recall that a belief is just a stronger conception of some object than that which we have of some correspondent object of fiction in our imaginations.
   4. We can now understand that probability begets belief (and degree of belief). Since fire has always burned throughout our experience, it is incredibly probable that it will again. Therefore, we believe with high assurance that we’ll be burned if we touch a fire. In short, Hume thinks that when we project our experience of past events onto our beliefs about the future, those beliefs acquire a degree of assurance proportional to the consistency of our past experience in similar situations.

Overview

The Principles was meant to be Descartes’ magnum opus. It covers all the ground previously traced by his metaphysical and physical works in summary. Apparently, it was intended to replace Aristotle’s philosophy and traditional Scholastic Philosophy then used in Universities.

It is divided into four parts: The Principles of Human Knowledge, The Principles of Material Things, The Visible Universe, and The Earth. Herein we have omitted significant amounts of the physics, as - to be perfectly frank - they failed to interest us.

Outline

1. Doubt [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (1-13)]
   1. That the enquirer after truth should, once in their life, doubt everything as much as they can.
   2. That we should even regard beliefs which can be doubted as false.
   3. That, however, this process of doubt should not be extended to the conduct of life.
   4. We can have doubts about sensible things because (a) we notice that sometimes our senses decieve us, and (b) it’s hard to distinguish the content of dreams (on a sensory level) from that of waking.
   5. We can even doubt mathetmatical proofs because (a) people make mistakes, and (b) as far as we know, God could have designed us such that our feeling of certainty doesn’t have any real correspondence to truth.
   6. “…whatever the ultimate source of our being…we experience within ourselves a certain freedom, which enables us always to abstain from believing anything which is not obviously certain and established. Consequently we can avoid ever making any mistakes.”
   7. That we cannot doubt that we exist while we are doubting; and this is the first thing we know when philosophising in the right order.
   8. That (1.g) enables us to recognise the distinction between soul and body, or between thinking thing and corporeal thing.
   9. Thought is “everything which happens in us while we are conscious, in so far as there is consciousness of it in us.”
   10. That absolutely simple and self-evident things are made more obscure by logical definitions, and that they are not the sort of thing that can become known by academic study.
       1. Saying “I think therefore I am” does require concepts of thought, existence, certainty. These things are treated by Descartes as “simple” (common-sensical?) and thus are assumed at the beginning of philosophy.
   11. The mind is better known/knowable than the body.
       1. “…it is obvious that we know more things in our own minds than in anything else, because nothing gives us knowledge of anything outside the mind, without its leading us to a far more certain knowledge of our own minds. For example, if I judge that the earth exists from the fact that I can touch or see it, I ought to judge from the same fact, but with even more certainty, that my mind exists.”
   12. Not making a sharp enough mind-body distinction is the reason why philosophers have heretofore not developed the correct initial point from whence to proceed.
   13. Knowledge of everything else depends on knowledge of God.
       1. Ideas (mental pictures) are not in themselves deceptive before we suggest that they imply some kind of positive claim about real stuff in the world.
       2. That said, if we want to know about anything - mathematical proofs, toasters, other people, animals, sedimentary rocks - we need to be sure that something vouchsafes some kind of veracity in the mind-world relationship.
       3. A benevolent author would provide this guarantee.
2. God [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (14-23)]
   1. That the existence of God follows from the fact that necessary existence is contained in our concept of God. The argument here is sloppy, but, beefing it up:
      1. We can conceive of a perfect being which entails properties such as omniscience, omnipresence, etc.
      2. These properties are not inherent in us, so we could not conceive them unless they are somehow given to us from outside.
      3. This entails that a perfect being exists.
      4. It is further required that this be a single being, as unity is a perfection, and it is impossible to conceive a perfect being lacking in some particular perfection.
      5. For the same reason, it is impossible that God would not exist, as the concept of his perfection would not admit for a lack of existence.
   2. That necessary existence is not included in the concepts of other things in this way, but only contingent existence.
   3. People fail to recognize the necessity of God’s existence because they are predisposed to distinguish between essence and existence.
   4. That the greater the objective perfection of any of our ideas, the greater must be its cause.
      1. “Objective perfection” is best understood as the truth of a representational content.
      2. The more perfect a thing is as a representation as such, the more perfect the object of the representation must be. Formal perfection “trickles down” to objective perfection.
   5. (2.d) provides a second proof that God exists.
      1. Again, this content either needs to come from oneself, or from something outside of you, and, given the e.g. finitude of man, a clear idea of infinitude (which Descartes believes he has) is simply not capable of emerging from the former.
      2. Hence, God exists.
   6. That even though we cannot comprehend the nature of God, we know his perfections more clearly than anything else. [This seems to be a particularly tough premise for Cartesians. Personally, I think I understand my coffee mug a lot more clearly than infinity.]
   7. Because we have these God-attribute ideas in us, it follows that we were created by God.
      1. We could not have been self-created, because if we were, we certainly would have given ourselves all the perfections of God.
   8. That the continuation of our existence is sufficient to prove the existence of God.
      1. Time is such that its parts do not depend on each other, and never co-exist.
      2. From the fact that we exist now, it does not follow that we will still exist at the immediately succeeding instant, unless some cause continuously re-creates us, as it were, or conserves us.
      3. As we cannot create ourselves (2.g.i), nor can we conserve ourselves. Hence, we need someone else to do it.
      4. And whoever can do it, must be capable of authoring our being. And does, moment to moment. By way of (2.a.iv), this is God.
   9. If our innate idea of God then is sufficient proof of his existence, and hence his properties, it follows that we know what of him we can know, and that this is that God is infinite perfection(s).
   10. That God is not corporeal; nor does he have sense perceptions like ours; nor does he will the wickedness of sin.
       1. Bodies are not perfect, by dint of their divisibility. God is perfect. Hence, God is not corporeal.
       2. Sense perception implies passivity which implies dependence. Dependence is an imperfection. Hence, God does not sense in the way we understand it.
       3. God’s action does all things (objects) at once and consistently. He does not will the wickedness of sin, since sin is not a thing. And apparently (this is new here), God wills free-willing machines, and is as such not responsible for their actions.
3. Knowledge and Error [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (24-30)]
   1. God is infinite, and we are finite.
   2. Whatever has been revealed by God must be believed, even if it transcends our understanding. (Given [3.a], it shouldn’t surprise us when it does.)
   3. Since we are finite, it is absurd for us to attempt to determine anything about infinity, and so to try and set limits to it, as it were, and comprehend it.
      1. Rather, in every case where we can find no limit to some aspect of a thing, we shall not assert that it is infinite, but we shall regard it as indefinite.
   4. The difference between the indefinite and the infinite: Whereas with God (infinity), we have a positive understanding of limitlessness, with things indefinite (the number of stars, etc.) it is merely negative.
   5. Look at the efficient, not final causes, of natural things: When we are investigating things in the natural world, we should never draw our explanations from the purposes which God or nature had in creating them.
   6. God is not the cause of errors.
   7. It follows from this that everything which we conceive clearly is true, and that our earlier doubts are resolved.
      1. Our God-given faculty of knowing now, properly used, cannot deceive us. (cf. Meditations)
4. Will and Error [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (31-42)]
   1. Our errors are negations if attributed to God, and defects if attributed to us. (Again, with appeal to God’s actions doing /things/ [cf. 2.j.iii])
      1. In the Latin, the distinction is between negatio and privatio, and the point is this: We can make true negative statements about God (e.g. that he is not a physical object). But this doesn’t mean that he lacks anything, since he is on a higher plane of existence than a mere physical object.
   2. All of our modes of thinking are reducible to intellectual perception (sensing, imagining, pure understanding) and willing (wanting, disliking, affirming, denying, and doubting).
      1. It is important that Descartes makes such a sharp distinction between contemplating what is present to the mind (perception), and affirming (whether to oneself or to another) that it is true. The latter is a separate mental act; and since it is an act, it is performed by the will. It is in principle under our control whether we doubt, believe, or disbelieve the contents of our mind; and this is why it is a defect of our will if we believe things we should not believe, or fail to believe things we should believe.
   3. Error is only possible when we make a judgment about something which we have not perceived adequately.
   4. Judgment requires the will as well as the intellect.
   5. The will has a wider scope than the intellect, and that this is the source of our errors.
      1. Our will is in some since infinite, insofar as it is impossible to conceive of a will more limitless than our own.
   6. On the other hand, our intellect is clearly limited in its grasp.
   7. Errors occur when we extend our will beyond our ability to perceive/understand.
   8. It is impossible to attribute our errors to God: A created understanding is by its very nature finite; and a finite understanding by its very nature does not extend to everything.
   9. The greatest human perfection is the freedom of the will, and that this makes humans worthy of praise or blame.
      1. Because of the infinitude of our freedom of will, we can be held responsible for our actions.
   10. Error is a defect in our behaviour, not in our nature; and that although superiors can often be blamed for the faults of their subordinates, God can never be blamed for our errors.
       1. The former is true because our nature is the same when we make incorrect judgments as when we make correct ones.
   11. The latter requires three steps, but the gist of it is that it’s not our place (as finitude:infinitude) to presume to understand why God does things.
       1. The authority which we humans have over one another was given to us so that we could use it for saving others from evil.
       2. The authority which God has over us all is completely absolute and free.
       3. Consequently, we owe him our utmost gratitude for the good things he has bestowed on us; but we can have no right to complain about his not having bestowed on us everything we know he could have bestowed on us.
   12. Freedom of the will is self-evident: Even when we imagined that some very powerful author of our being was trying to deceive us in every way, we were still aware that we had this freedom to withhold our belief.
   13. It is also certain that everything has been predetermined by God: Perfect knowledge is a critical perfection, and to deny it of God would be blasphemous
   14. Again, God is infinite, and our finite minds cannot comphrend how these two apparently contradictory facts can simultaneously be. Nonetheless they are.
       1. Note that Descartes is actually incompatibilist here: Freedom and preordination cannot be reconciled, at least not by our understanding, and that we should not even attempt to reconcile them. He is telling us how to cope with their irreconcilability. This is therapeutic.
   15. Our errors are due to our will, even though we do not wish to err: “wishing to be wrong is utterly different from being willing to assent to things in which there happens to be an error.”
5. Clear and Distinct Perception [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (43-50)]
   1. We never err as long as we assent only to what is clearly and distinctly perceived.
   2. We always misjudge when we assent to things which we have not perceived clearly, even if we chance on the truth.
   3. Clear and distinct perceptions, as distinct.
      1. A clear perception “is present and fully revealed to the mind attending to it.”
      2. A distinct perception “is so separated and demarcated from all other ideas, that it contains in itself absolutely nothing which is not clear.”
   4. A perception can be clear without being distinct, but not distinct without being clear.
      1. The example is pain: One can have a very clear perception of pain without having a concept of the sensation as distinct from, say, the location of the pain.
   5. In order to correct our false preconceptions, we must consider the simple notions, and what is clear in each. These will be detailed below (5.f).
   6. Everything we perceive is considered either as things or their affections, or as eternal truths. Herein are the former.
      1. The most general things are substance, duration, order, number, and any others of the same sort which apply to all genera of things.
      2. The first genus is thought things, or things pertaining to the mind, res cogitans (perception, volition, all the modes of perceiving and willing).
      3. The second genus is material things, or things pertaining to extended substance, or body (size or extension itself in length, breadth, and depth, shape, motion, position, the divisibility of its parts).
      4. We also experience certain other things that arise from the close and intimate union of our mind with the body (hunger, thirst, anger, happiness, sadness, love, pain, pleasure, light and colour, sounds, smells, tastes, heat, hardness, and other tactile qualities).
   7. The latter (eternal truths) cannot be listed in the same way. They are axioms, of which he gives several examples:
      1. “Nothing comes from nothing.”
      2. “It is impossible for one and the same thing to be and not to be simultaneously.”
      3. “What has been done cannot have been not done.”
      4. “Someone who is thinking cannot fail to exist while thinking.”
   8. These (5.g) are rightly described as “common” notions because it is possible for anyone to perceive them clearly and distinctly.
      1. However, some of them are not actually perceived so clearly and distinctly by everyone, as some people have preconceived opinions which contradict those common notions, and hence make it difficult for these people to grasp them.
6. Substance [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (51-57)]
   1. “Substance” is a thing which exists in such a way that it does not need anything else in order for it to exist.
      1. There is only one substance really exists independently of absolutely everything else, God.
      2. By contrast, all other substances exist only through the co-operation of God.
      3. Hence, it is impossible to have a distinct understanding of any sense of the term which is common both to God and to created beings.
   2. Both types of substance, however (cogitans, extensa) need nothing other than God in order to exist.
      1. We can recognize existent things by their attributes; absence of attributes (or properties or qualities) is equivalent to absence of being.
   3. Each substance has one distinctive attribute - that of mind is thought, and that of body is extension.
      1. Descartes’ metaphysical terminology is rather loose here. Strictly speaking, each substance has just one attribute, and everything else that can be said of it is a mode, or manner of being, of that attribute. This is contra the use of “attribute” as “property” in the last point. “Distinct” additionally implies that no other substance can have it.
   4. By carefully separating all the attributes of thought from the attributes of extension, we can have clear and distinct notions of created thinking substance, of bodily substance. In the same way, we can also have a clear and distinct idea of uncreated and independent thinking substance, namely of God.
      1. We must not suppose that the latter adequately reveals to us everything that there is in God.
      2. Nor should we pretend that it contains anything which we (a) are not aware of and (b) do not vividly perceive as belonging to the nature of a totally perfect being.
   5. Duration, order, and number are understood distinctly as long as we refrain from attaching the concept of substance to them: They are modes through which we consider (e.g. numbered, ordered) things.
   6. Modes, qualities, and attributes are all of class n.
      1. ns are “modes” when we consider a substance to be affected or variegated by n[x] (e.g., again, number, existence, duration)
      2. ns are “qualities” when this variegation is the basis for giving them a name (example?)
      3. ns are “attributes” when we view them more generally, and only in so far as they exist in the substance (what a body generally is, cf. 6.c.i: e.g. extension qua bodies)
   7. Some attributes are in the things themselves (attributes, modes) whereas others are only in our thought.
      1. The main message is that time is only in the mind, whereas duration is an attribute of things (and presumably of the mind as well).
      2. When we measure the duration of things in time, we add the concept of time to duration, by reference to the heavenly bodies.
      3. He does not make it clear whether he is saying that the quantity of motion of a thing is in the thing itself, or in the mind (or both).
7. Universals and Kinds of Distinction [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (58-62)]
   1. “Number” and all other universals are only modes of thinking.
   2. How universals arise; and what the five standard ones are.
      1. Universals arise when we use one idea for thinking about all individuals which are similar to each other.
      2. The five standard universals are: genus, species, specific difference, property, and accident.
   3. On distinctions; real distinction.
      1. Universals (e.g. number), as applied to things, arise from their being distinguished from one another. There are three types of distinctions.
      2. Real distinction is only one between two or more substances. We perceive real distinction insofar as we can have a clear and distinct thought of one thing without the other.
   4. The two sorts of modal distinction
      1. One is the distinction between a mode and the substance of which it is a mode. This can be recognised from the fact that we can have a clear perception of the substance independently of the mode, but we cannot, conversely, understand the mode independently of the substance (e.g. body: shape, motion; mind: affirmation, memory).
      2. The other is the distinction between two modes of the same substance. This can be recognised from the fact that one mode can be known independently of the other, and vice versa; but neither can be known independently of the substance which they both exist in (e.g. a moving, square stone).
      3. However, when a mode of one substance differs from (a) another substance or (b) a mode of another substance, this is a real rather than modal distinction.
   5. The two sorts of distinction of reason
      1. A distinction of reason are between (a) a substance and one of its attributes or (b) two such attributes of one and the same substance.
      2. We can recognize (a) when we cannot form a clear and distinct idea of the substance if we exclude the attribute from it. (e.g. between a substance and its duration)
      3. We can recognize (b) when we cannot perceive clearly the idea of the one attribute if we separate it from the other.
8. Thought and Extension [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (63-69)]
   1. The appropriate level of abstractness for conceiving substance
      1. Thought and extension can be considered as constituting the natures of intelligent and bodily substance respectively.
      2. Given this, they should not be conceived as anything other than thinking substance and extended substance themselves, that is, as mind and body. This the clearest and most distinct way of conceiving them.
      3. It is also easier to form a conception of extended substance or of thinking substance than of substance alone, and they differ from it only through a distinction of reason.
   2. Thought and extension are can also be taken as modes of substance, insofar as (a) one mind can have many different thoughts; and (b) one body can be extended in many different ways (stretching). In that case, they are modally different from substance.
   3. Thought and extension themselves have various modes in their turn. These are best perceived if we consider them as modes of the things they are in.
      1. E.g. (thought): understanding, imagination, memory, volition, etc.
      2. E.g. (extension): shapes, the position and motion of parts.
   4. Sensations, emotions, and appetites can also be perceived clearly, provided we scrupulously avoid making any judgments about them which go in any way beyond what is included in our perceptions, and what we are intimately conscious of.
      1. However, in the grand Cartesian style, we must remember that this is particularly hard to do, insofar as from a very young age we are given to judge that all the things we sensed were things existing outside our minds, and that they exactly resembled our sensations, which we do not /know/ at the time.
   5. The same is true of everything else we sense, including pleasure and pain, despite the fact that we often wrongly think that pain is located in, e.g., the foot, it is much more certain that it is a mental disposition.
   6. We must take the greatest care to remember that pain, colour, etc. are perceived clearly and distinctly only when they are considered as sensations or thoughts.
      1. Through lack of attention, one might easily persuade onesself that one has considerable knowledge of - e.g. - color, by assuming that it is something similar to the sensation of colour which one experiences in oneself.
   7. Meanwhile, in the same visual objects/representational content, we have a much clearer picture of size, shape, number, motion, duration, etc. - not as part of the existential content of some thing, but as a “modal” mental content.
9. Causes of Error [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (70-76)]
   1. That there are two ways of arriving at judgments about objects of sensation, one of which keeps us from error, and the other of which leads us into error.
      1. One is to judge that there is something in objects (that is, in the things, whatever they might be, which our sensation comes to us from), but that we do not know what. This is tantamount to saying that there is something in some object of sense that causes in me the sensation of color. This will not cause an error in judgement.
      2. The other, which will cause an error in judgement, is when we think (e.g.) we perceive colours in objects, even if we don’t know what it is we are giving the name of colour to, and cannot understand how there can be any similarity between the colour we suppose to be in objects, and the colour we experience in sensation.
   2. The main cause of errors is our preconceptions, established at infancy, is the conflation of one’s sensory experiences of things with actually-existing properties of the things themselves.
   3. Another cause of errors is how incredibly hard it is for us to forget our preconceptions.
   4. A third cause is that thinking wears us out, and we lapse into thinking about things (e.g. substance) as they are framed by our preconceptions as opposed to as they are occuring presently to our perceptive apparatus.
   5. A fourth cause is that we associate our concepts with words, and we are much more apt to do our thinking with these words than with their representational content, concepts. Basically, words are short-hand for concepts whose ease of use prevents us from being forced to think with the complex entities that concepts-as-things are
   6. A summary of what is to be observed in order to philosophise correctly.
      1. Lay aside all preconceptions
      2. Scrutinize (in the proper order) the notions we have within ourselves. Judge all those which we perceive clearly and distinctly to be true, and all others to be false.
      3. In so doing, we shall first observe that we exist insofar as it is our nature to think.
      4. Simultaneously, we shall observe that God exists, that we depend on him, and that we can discover the truth about the other things by considering his attributes, since he is their cause.
      5. Finally, we shall observe that apart from the notions of God and of our mind, there are also notions of eternally true propositions, a certain bodily nature (extension, divisible, capable of moving), and various sensations.
   7. That divine authority takes precedence over our perceptions; but othwerise it is inappropriate for a philosopher to accept anything which has not been perceived.
10. Existence of Matter [Part 2: The Principles of Material Things (1-4)]
    1. On what grounds we know with certainty that material things exist.
       1. All our sensations come from a thing of some sort, which is distinct from our mind.
       2. This is because it is not in our power to bring it about that we have a sensation of one thing rather than of another.
       3. However, it can be asked whether this thing is God, or whether it is distinct from God.
       4. Under compulsion from our sensations, we clearly and distinctly perceive a certain matter, extended in length, breadth, and depth, etc.
       5. Let us now suppose that God revealed this idea of extended matter to our mind through his own immediate agency.
       6. If it is “absolutely inconsistent” with God’s nature to deceive us, then our clear and distinct perceptions of extended things must be true.
       7. And this extended thing is what we call body or matter.
    2. The same argument proves that one body is more closely united to our mind than other bodies are.
       1. The reason is because we observe that pains and other sensations come to us unexpectedly, and the mind is aware that they do not come from itself alone.
    3. Perceptions of the senses tell us not what is really in things, but what is good or bad for the human compound.
    4. The nature of body does not consist in weight, hardness, colour, etc. (as all these properties are based on some arbitrary effect they cause to the senses) but in extension alone.
11. Nature takes on all possible forms [Part 3: The Visible Universe (47)]
    1. Previously in Part 3, Descartes has said enough to “provide the causes of all the effects which are observed in this world,” with maximum simplicity, intelligibility, and probability.
       1. Descartes once tried to explain how the present orderliness of things could be deduced by the laws of nature, from a primal chaos.
       2. However, a state of confusion seems less consistent with the supreme perfection of God than a proper arrangement.
       3. No ratio or order is simpler or more easily comprehensible than that which consists in everything being the same as everything else.
       4. Therefore I now suppose that, in the beginning, all particles of matter had the same size and motion.
       5. In general, it makes hardly any difference what is assumed as the initial state of the universe, since all subsequent changes must take place in accordance with the laws of nature.
       6. Thanks to these laws of nature, matter successively takes on all the forms of which it is capable.
       7. Consequently, if we consider these forms in proper order, we shall finally be able to arrive at the form of the world we currently live in.
12. Sensation [Part 4: The Earth (188-195)]
    1. Why the machinic account of the Earth is not sufficient.
       1. So far I have described the Earth, and hence the whole visible world, as like a machine, taking account only of the shapes and motions in it.
       2. Yet our sensations reveal to us many other aspects of it, such as colours, smells, sounds, and the such like. If I were to say nothing at all about these, I would seem to have left out the main part of any account of natural things.
    2. The motions which the nerves set up in the brain affect the soul or mind which is intimately joined to the brain in different ways. These different affections of the mind (thoughts) are what we call sense-perceptions, or sensations.
    3. The distinction between sensations; on the internal sensations
       1. There are seven species of sensations, two internal and five external
       2. The first species of internal sensation is natural appetite, which involves nerves going to the stomach, gullet, throat, etc.
       3. The second species of internal sensation is emotions or passions, which involve nerves going to the heart and chest.
       4. All of these are a different species from the types of clear and distinct thoughts we might have about what is to be desired, etc.
    4. On the external senses; on touch.
       1. There are five external senses.
       2. Touch is the sense which relies on the nerves which end in the skin of the whole body.
       3. When these nerves are stimulated more forcefully than usual this gives rise to an additional sensation of pleasure or pain, (pleasure: because the mind is naturally pleased to receive evidence of the strength of the body to which it is closely united).
       4. From this it is obvious why bodily pleasure and pain are so little different from each other in the object, even though they are opposite sensations.
    5. Taste relies on nerves dotted around the tongue and the areas next to it.
    6. Smell relies on two nerves set in motion by particles forceful enough to pass through the mucous membrane after being drawn into the nostrils.
    7. Hearing relies on two nerves hidden in the innermost cavities of the ears, which receive the quivering and vibrating motions of all the surrounding air.
    8. The eyes rely on the optic nerves, which form the membrane in the eyes called the retina, and which are not moved there by the air or by any macroscopic bodies, but only by globules of the second element.
13. Soul and Body [Part 4: The Earth (196-197)]
    1. The soul senses what happens to individual parts of the body by means of the nerves only insofar as it is in the brain.
       1. This is proved by the fact that diseases which affect only the brain obliterate or distort all sensation.
       2. The second proof is that, even if the brain is undamaged, we lose the sensation of parts of the body external to it if there is merely an obstruction of the routes by which the nerves connect them to it.
       3. The third proof is that we sometimes feel pain as in a certain part of the body even though there is no cause of pain in that part itself, but only in other parts through which the nerves pass en route to the brain. (e.g. phantom limb syndrome)
    2. The soul or mind’s various sensations can be stimulated in it by bodily motion.
       1. The writing point: “…words (whether spoken or merely written) can arouse absolutely any kind of thought or emotion in our minds.” [Actually, there is quite a beautiful passage that follows this, but is not quoted here.]
       2. The pain point: “A sword strikes against our body, and cuts it…This clearly shows that the sensation of pain is aroused in us simply by virtue of the fact that certain parts of our body are set in motion by contact with some other body.”
14. Knowledge of Nature [Part 4: The Earth (198-207)]
    1. Our sensations reveal nothing to us in external objects apart from their shapes, sizes, and motions.
       1. We have no basis for concluding that anything at all reaches the brain apart from the motion of the nerves themselves.
       2. There is no way we can understand how size, shape, and motion can bring about something of a completely different nature from themselves, for example, those ’substantial forms’ and ‘real qualities’ which many people suppose to exist in things.
       3. Nor can we understand how these qualities or forms could subsequently have the power to cause motions in other bodies.
       4. Add also the observational evidence that in fact these various sensations are stimulated in the mind without our being able to detect anything passing from the external sense organs to the brain.
       5. We can then draw the general conclusion that we also have no basis for asserting that the things in external objects which we superstitiously reify with the names of light, colour, smell, taste, sound, heat, cold, and other tactile qualities (or even substantial forms), are anything other than the various dispositions of these objects, which bring it about that our nerves can move in various ways.
    2. No phenomena of nature have been omitted in this treatise: Size, shape, and motion are what count as phenomena of nature, given (14.a).
       1. Hence, objects themselves are nothing other than (or at least cannot appear to us as anything other than) various dispositions consisting in size, shape, and motion.
    3. Finally, these Principles on the complete nature of material things were formulated without using any principle at all which was not accepted by Aristotle, and by all other philosophers of all historical periods.
    4. There are imperceptible particles which make up bodies. Evidence: growth, decay.
       1. The reason we cannot sense these particles is that our nerves are not themselves so very small.
    5. The atomic philosophy of Democritus is similar to Descartes’, but with key differences.
       1. First, Democritus supposed that atoms were indivisible.
       2. Second, Democritus invented a vacuum surrounding them, whereas Descartes proved that a vacuum is impossible.
       3. Third, he endowed them with weight, whereas Descartes believes that weight is not a characteristic of any body considered in itself.
       4. Fourth, he failed to show how individual things arose from collisions of atoms alone.
    6. Descartes can explain the shapes and motions of insensible particles by using the method and inferring their behaviors from their macro- counterparts.
    7. It is sufficient that Descartes explain what insensible things /might possibly/ be like, even if they are not actually like that.
       1. One clockmaker can make two visibly identical clocks which tell the time equally well, which internally consist of completely different sets of wheels. Likewise, God could have made material existence work in many ways.
       2. Descartes claims, “I think I shall have achieved enough if what I have written is at least perfectly consistent with all the phenomena of nature.”
    8. These explanations, though they may contain some mechanical uncertainty, are at least morally certain, “are as certain as is necessary for the conduct of life.”
       1. Descartes claims that his objectors “perhaps overlook the fact that it would hardly be possible for so many factors to be mutually consistent if they were false.”
    9. Indeed, they are more than morally certain. They are absolutely certain insofar as they are built on a metaphysical foundation that God is completely good and utterly undeceptive.
       1. Assuming this is the case, the faculty he gave us for distinguishing the true from the false cannot lead us into error as long as we use it correctly, and perceive something distinctly by its means, which Descartes has.
    10. Caveat lector: “Nevertheless, I am aware of my weakness, and I affirm nothing. I submit everything I have written, both to the authority of the Catholic Church, and to the judgment of people who are wiser than myself. Nor would I wish anyone to believe anything which they are not convinced of by obvious and irrefutable reasoning.”

Overview

In the Discourse (on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences), Descartes explains, in an autobiographical way, both what the method is - how he came to it, what its principal rules are, and what moral guidelines he applied to himself while he engaged in using it (these were required by the deep skepticism inherent to the procedure) - and the results of the method - the existence of god and the soul, and from there a sort of survey of the great many things he has learned about the world. He closes with an apology for the publication, which entails explaining why he had forestalled publishing it thus far, why he was now publishing it, and finally that he was looking for someone to fund his continued research.

Three physical treatises were attached to the Discourse, presumably as bait to potential investors: the Optics, the Meteorology, and the Geometry. It is reasonable to assume that these were attached because they were safe - that is, non-heretical.

Outline

1. Considerations on the Sciences
   1. Everyone thinks he has plenty of good sense; further, it is unlikely that they are all wrong, and much more likely that good sense and the power of reasonable judgement is in fact distributed with some equality among men.
      1. The challenge then, is not genetic (he lacks good sense), it’s pathological: We fail to apply the good sense with which we are endowed.
      2. Given this, Descartes, hapless though he is, has formed a method to ensure that he applies his finite sense, and hence has succeeded in accruing knowledge. He believes that this search for truth is perhaps the ultimate purpose of men.
      3. Also, because he doesn’t deign to prescribe the method, this discourse is merely a detailing of his attempts to rightly use his reason.
   2. The end and subsequent beginning Descartes’ education
      1. Descartes, maybe the smartest guy in the room at maybe the most prestigious school in Europe, realizes that for all his learning, he is still riddled with doubt and error.
      2. This is not to say that all this learning is worthless, but rather simply that it has limits.
      3. Among the disciplines of his study, he found the foundations of mathematics to be the most sturdy. And worse, even philosophy hadn’t reached any firm conclusions: everything seemed to be subject to doubt.
      4. Hence, Descartes resolved to travel the world and dedicate himself to the acquire only knowledge of himself and of practical matters. His travels made him skeptical of his beliefs, which were informed merely by custom and example, so when he settled down to look inward, he was ready.
2. Principal Rules for the Method
   1. Descartes, trapped for the winter in an uninteresting German town, and remembering his belief in the superiority of a single auteur (e.g. in buildings, towns, civilizations, religions) over a consensus design realized that the way to fix his understanding was to sweep away its foundations, and start anew to develop a foundation wholly his own.
      1. Descartes admits that actually accomplishing this “clean sweep” is probably too difficult for most. In particular, he recommends it neither for people who are confident in their destination and the way there, nor for those who feel that they could simply be instructed by someone else.
      2. He himself would have been one of the latter, had it not occurred to him that his professors, all professional philosophers, and all the people of the world - despite their good use of reason - had failed to come to any agreed-upon certainties. This obviously disillusioned him rather badly.
   2. Acknowledging the danger of developing totally new foundations, Descartes wanted to be very careful - rather not get far, than get too far up the wrong track, he reasoned.
      1. Even in his beloved logic and mathematics did he see many false propositions entangled with the true ones; it was, certainly, going to be very hard to untangle these.
   3. With this established, he decided to attempt to set himself up with a framework from which to proceed. This framework would have to be carefully selected from the mess of precepts that constituted modern logic.
      1. First, never accept anything as true that he does not clearly know to be such.
      2. Second, divide any difficulties into the smallest possible units for resolution.
      3. Third, start with the things of which it is easiest to be certain.
      4. Fourth, enumerate completely and provide a synopsis so general as to be sure to omit nothing.
   4. These rules were abstracted to the most general form possible from the principles of what he saw as the only successful discipline in building truth-consensus: mathematics.
      1. They were also so incredibly powerful that within three months, he had not only answered many questions he thought would be exceedingly difficult, he had developed his general framework for determining the extent to which a solution was possible for /any/ problem.
      2. And despite his success, he would choose to waylay his investigation into the deeper problems of philosophy until he matured a bit (hence, the Meditations).
3. Rules of Morals Deduced from the Method
   1. During the time that Descartes was tearing down and rebuilding his entire stock of knowledge, he provided himself with a temporary code of morals, knowing that while he had no knowledge to guide him he was liable to behave “infelicitously.”
   2. Descartes’ Provisional Moral Maxims
      1. Obey the laws and customs of his country (it was a matter of expediency that he chose his country’s mores, as opposed to Persian or Chinese ones, say).
         1. When there were many opinions held in equal repute, he chose the most moderate.
      2. Be as firm and resolute in his actions as he was able; once he’s adopted an opinion, he must adhere steadfastly to it.
         1. This principle was meant to rid him of any pangs of conscience he might feel in moments of uncertainty or weakness of resolve.
      3. Endeavor to conquer himself, not fortune; change his desires rather than trying to change the world, as - in general - his thoughts were the only thing under his power.
         1. Finally, having once again surveyed all professions, he knew that he should be most content in the culturing of his own reason, and in making progress toward knowledge.
   3. Now possessed of his ethical maxims, he boxes these up with his faith, and begins to roam during his journey inward, observing life, and trying to sift the doubtable from the doubtless.
      1. He roams for nine years, and, regardless of his growing reputation, will not set forth his findings…until now:
4. The Existence of God and the Human Soul (The Metaphysics)
   1. Applying the method, Descartes intends to interrogate his (theological) belief; he is hoping he will find some “wholly indubitable” kernel in there. The structure of this chapter will anticipate many of the main arguments in the Meditations (although the treatment of dreams will be different).
   2. He begins by affirming his belief in himself, and by establishing what he believes himself to be.
      1. In doubting all of his beliefs, Descartes realizes that he - the one who doubts - must exist simply in order to doubt. Cogito ergo sum.
      2. Doubting everything else, Descartes can conclude that he is (something) and that he thinks. Therefore, he is the thinking thing (res cogitans).
      3. And since this thinking thing that he was seemed to have no particular need of the body that Descartes once thought was him, Descartes could be sure that the mind and the body were two distinct and separate entities.
   3. This established, he needed to inquire as to how to determine whether a proposition was true or false.
      1. Following the logical necessity of the cogito, Descartes concludes that true things are those which we conceive clearly and distinctly.
   4. In the next place, seeing that his being was not perfect (it lacked certain abilities of which he could conceive), he was led to inquire about why exactly he could conceive of a more perfect being.
      1. He could clearly recognize that this idea must have come from some nature that was perfect.
      2. As opposed to the objective (representational) content all of his other thoughts, which could have come from either nothing or from himself, a representational content which was in itself more perfect than he was seemed to entail some formal/in-itself reality out there which informed the content.
      3. Given this knowledge, Descartes could be sure that he was not the only being in existence, and further that he was necessarily at least in part dependent on some other being. If he was self-generated, he argues, why wouldn’t he have made himself perfect?
      4. Finally, given his own internal division (4.b.iii) and the necessary perfection of the other being (4.d.i-ii), he could be sure that the other being was bodiless, since division was the imperfection for which unity was the perfection. Hence, if anything existed corporeally, it was imperfect.
   5. However, Descartes was still doubtful of corporeal or material things in the world. Nothing thus far had given him any reason to believe in the “formal reality” (in-itself-ness) of anything but himself as the res cogitans and God.
      1. For example, the logical construct “triangle” did nothing to ensure Descartes that any embodied triangles existed.
      2. Alternately, the logical construct “God” entailed the property “existence” (as a being without the property of existence would be lacking something), so Descartes again proved the existence of God to himself.
   6. The Problem of Dreams: How do we know that the thoughts which occur in dreaming are false and the ones in waking are true when there’s often no sensory criterion for establishing their difference?
      1. Insofar as dreams are clearly and distinctly conceived, they come from the part of us that participates in the perfection of God; insofar as they are confused or obscure they emerge from the part of us that participates in pure negation. (Which might seem to imply Descartes’ belief in prophecying by dreams?)
         1. If, for example, a geometer solved a hard proof in a dream, that wouldn’t make it less solved.
         2. Further, insofar as our dreaming sensory content tends to deceive our senses, this doesn’t make them any different than our waking sensory content does: e.g.: square towers that appear round at a distance, perspective, temporary visual impairment by disease.
      2. But, at the end of the day, our reasonings are never so clear when we are asleep as when we are awake, “reason further dictates that, since all our thoughts cannot be true because of our partial imperfection, those possessing truth must infallibly be found in the experience of our waking moments rather than in that of our dreams.”
5. The Physics
   1. Descartes’ method has led him to observe some natural laws.
   2. Rather than provide a compendious recollection of these laws, he will concentrate on light, and follow this with some observations about things in nature that “follow” from light (the sun, stars, comets, things on the earth).
      1. It is necessary, in any world that God would create, that matter would be arranged in such a way as to constitute the sky, starts, planets, earth, and comets.
      2. From there, he deduced things about the speed of light, and about the situation and motions of the stars, and found that there is nothing there that is not there necessarily.
      3. Then on to the earth, on which it is necessary that things have weight; and how the water and air are situated on it.
      4. This led to a serious look at fire, which was the only terrestrial source of light that he knew of, and its effects on the vision and on other materials.
   3. Looking at all this, Descartes determined that it was likely that God had set it all into place as a mechanism rather than just creating ex nihilo things as they are now; and that (anticipating an argument in the Meditations) it was the same kind of effort to create it as it was to preserve it moment to moment.
      1. However, he will not find this the case with man, finding it rather more likely that God had sculpted the body very much the same way we have it now at its introduction.
      2. In this pre-mental body’s heart, God lit a fire without light, “which I thought was not different from the heat in hay that has been heaped together before it is dry, or that which causes fermentation in new wines before they are run clear of the fruit.”
      3. God will then create the rational soul and locate it in the body, but to understand how, we need to look at the functions of the heart.
   4. Descartes takes some pains to describe the heart, under the guise of telling people what to look for when they take the trouble of getting some large animal dissected for their instruction.
      1. This culminates with a mechanical description of the heart pumping blood, of some recent findings in England about how perpetual circulation is possible, and of the motion of the blood in the body, the processes of nutrition.
      2. This really does go on for pages, culminating with a short discussion on “the generation of animal spirits” - which, continually ascending from the heart to the brain, penetrate the nerves which tell the muscles to move.
   5. Descartes marvels at God’s craftsmanship
      1. This fabric of nerves and animal spirits leads Descartes to ruminate about chickens with their heads cut off, and more importantly the brain in all its strange states: sleeping, waking, hunger, thirst, common sense, and the creation of ideas.
      2. If you’ve ever seen a mechanical automaton, he says, and seen how few parts it takes to make something move around, you can easily see how this dense network of organs, muscles, animal spirits, nerves, blood and bone can do this work much more impressively.
      3. Further, he imagines, should industry grow to the point where there were machines that resembled apes, it is conceivable that you wouldn’t know the difference between one and the other.
      4. On the other hand, should there be machines that resembled humans, you could still use two tests to determine whether you were dealing with a human or a machine:
         1. Humans are conversational, whereas machines could not be. (Funny: This is of course the Turing Test.)
         2. Machines would not act rationally, but “solely from the disposition of their organs.” (Organs: Like the gears of a clock.)
      5. The rationality distinction also applies between men and animals, for, Descartes notes “it is incredible that the most perfect ape or parrot of its species, should not in this be equal to the most stupid infant of its kind or at least to one that was crack-brained, unless the soul of brutes were of a nature wholly different from ours.”
   6. This all to five firm conclusions:
      1. The reasonable soul (a) does certainly exist in men, and (b) could not be a simple consequence of matter.
      2. (c) The soul of men is indeed different in nature than the souls of animals.
      3. Finally, in consequence of (5.f.i): (d) the nature of the soul is wholly independent from that of the body, and (e) is, as such and “because no other causes are capable of destroying it,” immortal.
6. The Future Advancement of Science, using the Method (Descartes’ Pitch)
   1. Three years later: Finding just how useful the method was in learning things about the physical world provided Descartes with a sense of duty to publish it, in spite of his natural inclination not to (which stems from the Descartes-persona’s belief in “to each his own”).
   2. In his searches - starting with his certain knowledge of God - he has uncovered many things about the heavens and earth, and in fact “never observed any which I could not satisfactorily explain by the principles had discovered.” However, this does not entail that there are not other ways (outside of the method) of determining each of the things that Descartes has found.
      1. All the things he discovered (which were many and presumably include the Optics, the Meteorology, and The Geometry, all of which were published attached to the Discourse, and others, which he will not publish [out of a fear of being labeled a heretic]) are consequences of the first five or six principal difficulties he resolved (above).
      2. He now gives an incredibly long explanation of why it is more rewarding for other people to find out things for themselves, and why he is the best man to finish the work he started, as two pieces of evidence as to why he has not published his findings thus far.
   3. The reasons why he decided to publish some of these things were twofold:
      1. Despite some effort, he was getting a reputation, and thought it best to “save [himself] at least from being ill-spoken of.” Aka. To set the record straight.
      2. He - at this point - can’t continue to afford his obscurity - he needs funds to continue his experiments. Hence, he has chosen to publish several of his less racy findings, namely on Optics, Meterology, and Geometry, as proof that his method can attain results.
   4. He finally apologizes for writing in French rather than Latin, and closes with a disclaimer which states that he makes no assurances about the future advancement of science.

Overview

Descartes takes on the most ambitious philosophical project since Genesis, here, through a series of careful meditations, and starting with a deep skepticism concerning the possibility of knowledge, Descartes (and the reader who shares his “I”) will establish the possibility of knowledge. Along the way, he will prove the existence of himself, God, and certain things in the world, in that order.

Note: I noticed that I sometimes slip into the Cartesian/Scholastic usage of “objective/formal reality”. Objective reality = representational content. Formal reality = intrinsic reality.

Outline

1. Preface and Synopsis of the Six Meditations
   1. Preface: From Descartes’ request for objections to his discussion of God and mind in the Discourse came only two he found worth mentioning.
      1. Objection 1: If the mind does not comprehend itself as anything but a thinking thing, this does not actually entail that the mind is nothing but a thinking thing.
      2. Response 1: In the passage, he was concerned with mind as an object of his knowledge, not necessarily the mind as it was. In short, the only thing Descartes was aware of about himself essentially was that he was a thinking thing.
      3. Objection 2: Just because Descartes can think of something more perfect than himself, this (a) doesn’t entail that his idea is in fact more perfect than himself, (b) much less that the object of the idea exists.
      4. Response 2: Descartes wants to appeal to a concept of “idea” here that does not just mean an operation of the intellect, but some object represented by that operation. So much for (a). As to (b), if there is within Descartes an idea-object that is more perfect than himself, then the thing exists.
      5. The rest of Descartes’ interlocuters he considers “silly and weak.” Generally, he says, arguments that attack the existence of God rely either on anthropomorphizing God or on our ability to somehow limit what God can do.
      6. Here Descartes introduces the Meditations, and urges anyone unwilling to “meditate with [him]” to quit while they’re ahead. Onward, intrepid meditators!
      7. In outline, he will: (1) Set out the thoughts which have enabled him to arrive at his “certain and evident knowledge of the truth,” after which (2) he will reply to all worthy objections, which he solicited and received pre-press.
   2. Synopsis of the following six meditations
      1. In the first meditation, he will give reasonable grounds for doubting all things. This initial doubt will prevent us from later having to doubt our subsequent findings.
      2. In the second meditation, he will suppose the non-existence of all things about which the mind (note again that the “I” of the Meditations is always written as an indexical) can find any reason to doubt. This will be useful in distinguishing between those things which are properly of the mind and those properly of the body.
         1. He anticipates some concern about why he doesn’t prove herein the immortality of the soul. He then suggests that this will be impossible until the sixth meditation. Fair enough.
         2. Additionally he notes here that since we can easily conceive of half a body, but never of half a mind, these things are not only constitutionally different, but in fact opposed. That will be enough to prove that the decay of the body does not imply the destruction of the mind, which should give us hope for an afterlife, and, this established, the topic will not be further discussed herein.
         3. Preview of the rest of the immortality of the soul argument: Once we recognize that all substances are created by god and hence incorruptable, and we recognize that while the human body is composed of substances which are themselves incorruptable, it itself will decay, and that this is not the case with the mind, which is pure substance, the mind/soul will be immortal.
      3. In the third meditation, he will prove the existence of God. (Notice that he is proving this stuff on basically the same schedule that the Bible has God making the universe. Six days, and the one to rest.
         1. This will take place along the lines of Object/Response 2 (1.a.iii(b)-iv(b)) above: “the idea of God which is [perfect and] in us must have God himself as its cause.”
      4. In the fourth meditation, he will prove that everything we clearly perceive is true, and also the nature of falsity.
      5. In the fifth meditation, he will not only give an account of corporeal nature in general, he wil give a second argument demonstrating the existence of God.
         1. This second argument will hinge on the idea that certainty of anything (even geometry) depends on the knowledge of God.
      6. Finally, in the sixth meditation, he will finally prove that the mind is “really distinct” from the body, and also make an argument about the existence of material things (aka. that there really is a world).
         1. His special point here, which he notes is actually the point of the entire Meditations, is that actually knowing that there really is a world is much harder than knowing one’s own mind or God, and that the latter are indeed the most certain principles of human intellection.
2. First Meditation: What can be called into doubt
   1. Descartes noticed a while ago that a lot of what he believed was dubious, and based on dubious premises. He’s been wanting to take some time, sit at his desk, and really think things out from the ground up. He’s going to start doing that today, right now.
   2. He’s going to start by attempting to let go of any of his opinions that are not completely certain and indubitable; in other words, if he can find a reason to doubt something, he will.
   3. His knowledge has been given thus far to him by the senses, but he knows that the senses are likely to deceive him.
      1. While this happens from time to time with small things, it seems rather unlikely that he’s being duped tout court by his senses, aka. that he is not sitting by the fire, etc.
      2. But then again, what about his dreams? In his dreams, he experiences things that are a lot like what he’s experiencing now, which turn out to be false. He’s not sure that he could really tell whether he’s awake or asleep.
      3. But dreams, as he experiences them, are representations - they are modeled at least in some distant way on real things. This seems to imply that certainly some things are real.
      4. It further seems that this class would include corporeal things in general: bodies with extensions, qualtiites, sizes and numbers.
      5. He concludes that there are certain kinds of truths (analytic truths) that are about absolutely general things. So if physics and astronomy can be objects of doubt, arithmetic and geometry seem quite certain.
   4. From there, he wonders if God is trying to trick him with his certainty about these things.
      1. If God is supremely good, however, there’s no reason to believe he’d want to trick us.
      2. But if we can say that God’s not tricking us all the time, you’d think it follows that he would never trick us. Yet this is patently not the case. I am sometimes wrong about the nature of things.
      3. Contrarily, if there is no omnicient God, and we arrived here by accidents or causality or something else non-teleological, God can’t to lend his credibility to our perceptions, and all the more likely that we’re constantly decieved.
      4. In the end, Descartes realizes that he can’t say that he is without doubt about his belief in God, so he’s going to have to start somewhere else.
   5. In order to deal with this, Descartes will attempt a reductio ad absurdum using the contradictory (rather than the contrary) position: That there is some malicious demon of the utmost power trying to decieve him.
      1. Descartes is going to have to steel himself to his new doubts, and figure out a way to not fall under the sway of his demon.
3. Second Meditation: The nature of the human mind, and how it is better known than the body
   1. Assuming now that all his sense-data is spurious, it seems that the only certain thing is that nothing is certain.
   2. Ipseity
      1. But in order for me even to doubt, does not this require that I, at least, am something? But I have no senses and no body.
      2. Further, if I’ve convinced myself that there’s no world as such either, doesn’t that preclude my existence? I had to do the convincing, so I must have existed.
      3. But what if (3.b.i-ii) are just products of the deceiver: but indeed, who is he deceiving? But deceive me as he might, “he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something.”
      4. Hence, necessarily: I exist.
   3. Res cogitans
      1. But what is, exactly, that exists? Descartes now needs to practice his method of doubt on what it is that his “I” is.
      2. Descartes used to think he was a man. But what does this mean? To define man “rational animal” replaces one vague term with two.
      3. How about this: Descartes thinks that he is a body-soul complex. His body moved around, and his soul engaged in sense-perception and thinking.
         1. He doubts his body, though, insofar at least as it is a think with a definable location and shape, and that it takes up space at the exclusion of other bodies.
         2. He also doubts his soul at least insofar as it concerns his body, that is, viz. nutrition, movement, and sense-perception. But wait. What about thinking? He can’t seem to doubt that his “I” is “thinking”.
         3. Hence, he is, he exists as long as he is thinking. He is certain - without relying on his imagination (as would be required for him to have a shape, an image, a self-representation) - a res cogitans.
      4. A res cogitans, Descartes doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling, imagines, and has sensory perceptions.
         1. Namely, he doubts almost everything, but who nonetheless understands something, which he affirms to be true, and hence denies everything else, desires to know more, is unwilling to be deceived, imagines many things, and is aware of many things which apparently come from the senses.
         2. Note that sensory perception and imagination are included precisely insofar as they are simply modes of thinking, regardless of the actuality of their content.
   4. Res extensa
      1. Despite all this certainty, it’s nagging him that the corporeal things which he doubts seem to be much more distinct than the “puzzling ‘I’” of which he is now certain. He’s going to now attempt to see if he can be certain about anything out in the world.
      2. It seems basic to everyone that we can understand something about particular bodies. Descartes contemplates a piece of wax.
         1. This piece of wax has some properties: it tastes faintly of honey, smells faintly of flowers, it is cold, hard, and of a certain color, shape and size.
         2. Then he puts the piece of wax in the fire. Suddenly, all its properties change. Despite this, though, the wax remains.
         3. Taking all the properties away, Descartes realizes that the essence of the piece of wax is simply that it is a body with extension, flexibility, and changeability.
            1. Alarmed by his tendency to conflate perceptions with intellectual judgement, Descartes pontificates that he does not actually see the men walking outside the window, he sees hats and coats and judges them to be men.
            2. Descartes is glad now that even though his judgement may still contain errors, his knowledge requires a human mind, rather than simple animal perception.
   5. The new character of perception
      1. Descartes realizes now that while the fact that he can judge that the wax to exist does not necessarily entail the wax’s actual existence, it seems to entail his own. Further, his knowledge of the wax seems to actually establish more firmly the nature of his own mind.
      2. And with this, he now knows that even bodies are not strictly perceived by the senses or imagination, but by the intellect which judges them. Given that, it is clear that it is easier and more evident to perceive one’s own mind than anything else.
4. Third Meditation: The existence of God
   1. The third meditation begins with Descartes “casting about” for what other things he might be able to know with certainty.
      1. He realizes that insofar as he knows with certainty that he is the thinking thing, he must also know what it is for him to be certain about something: he must perceive (conceive is probably more accurate) it clearly and dinstinctly.
      2. To put a finer point on it, even if the sky, the earth and the stars do not exist, he can be certain that his ideas of them do. The source of his initial mistake was in thinknig that there were things outside of him which were the sources of and resembled his ideas.
   2. Now he recalls that when he previously opened things like arithmetic and geometry to doubt, he did so because it occurred to him that perhaps God was trying to trick him about even those things which seemed most evident to him.
      1. Clearly, the only way to handle this kind of a situation will be “to examine whether there is a God, and, if there is, whether he can be a deceiver.”
   3. Before we can begin such an investigation, however, Descartes will need to classify his thoughts into the kind that bear truth, and the kind that bear falsity.
      1. First sub-classification: picture-thinking/representation (think of a man, a chimera, the sky, an angel, God) [D calls these “ideas”] and another class - which seem to have another kind of conceptual content - exemplified by things like volitions, emotions, judgements.
         1. The former class, ideas, considered soley in themselves, canoot be false; Descartes imagining a chimera is just as true as Descartes imagining a goat (regardless of whether a chimera exists).
         2. To the latter class applies a similar logic: Whether or not Descartes desires something wicked or nonexistent, it is nonetheless true that he desires it.
         3. So the class of thoughts to really be wary of are judgements, and again, the most common mistake is to judge that your mental representations conform to the world.
      2. Second sub-classification: The first element of the previous classification (representations/ideas) can further be divided into three classes.
         1. Innate ideas from which truth seems to come.
         2. Accidental ideas: Representations from sensory experience (seeing the sun, feeling the fire).
         3. Invented ideas: Hippogriffs, sirens, chimeras.
   4. Now as to (4.c.ii.ii), why does Descartes incline to think that those resemble things?
      1. First of all, because “Nature taught [him] to think this”, and secondly because Descartes has these ideas whether he wants to or not: the fire just makes him feel hot. So the obvious explanation is that the thing in question transmits its likeness to Descartes.
      2. What it means when he says that Nature taught him to think that is that he had a spontaneous impulse which lead him to believe it. This is not nearly such solid ground as the “natural light” by which, say, the cogito was revealed to him.
      3. Secondly, just because his ideas don’t depend on his will doesn’t necessarly entail that they come from outside him. He could have some faculty inside him that produces them (e.g. the faculty that produces dreams).
      4. Finally, if these ideas did in fact come from things outside him, this doesn’t guarantee that the ideas will resemble the things. (For example, the sun looks quite small, and yet we know it is quite large. Both of these cannot resemble the sun itself.)
      5. Hence it was just some “blind impulse” that has led Descartes to believe up until now that there is some correspondence between his perceptions of things and the things themselves.
   5. Why a cause must be more perfect than its effect
      1. So, if a representation has both a subjective (mental) content and an objective content, then, regardless of the parity between the objective content as-represented and in-itself, a representation of something substantial seems to have more “objective reality” (more representational verisimilitude) than a representation of something “accidental.”
      2. By this same logic, a representation of God would have more “objective reality” than a representation of a given finite substance.
      3. Additionally, (this is sort of the Aristotelian argument) there must be as much of this “objective reality”/perfection in the total cause of effect n as in n itself.
      4. And hence, something cannot arise from nothing and the cause must be more perfect than the effect. This also holds for ideas.
      5. This entails that to have an idea of heat, it must be put there by a thing - heat - which is more perfectly “heat” than my mental representation of it.
      6. So, while a representation itself may require no formal reality except that which it derives from thought, in order for a /representation/ to contain some of this “objective reality” (representational verisimilitude), it must derive from a cause with at least as much formal/intrinsic reality as there is represented in my idea of the thing (insofar at least as something cannot emerge from nothing).
      7. “For just as the objective mode of being belongs to ideas by their very nature, so the formal mode of being belongs to the causes of ideas…by their very nature.”
      8. Further, as there cannot be an infinite regress, we’re going to require a “primary idea”, which will provide the “reality” for the subsequent chain of causal ideas.
   6. Isolating the primary causes of certain effects, and how we find out that Descartes is not alone.
      1. Now, let’s say Descartes has an idea whose objective reality turns out to be so great, that he can be sure that the same reality does not formally or immanently reside inside himself. Well, we know by the chain of reasoning above that Descartes is incapable of causing this idea. This means: Descartes is not alone.
      2. Examining the catalog of his ideas, Descartes finds ideas of himself, God, corporeal and inanimate things, angels, animals, and other men like himself.
         1. Of these, ideas which represent men, animals, and angels can be constructed from the ideas he has which represent himself, corporeal things, and God.
         2. Of the remaining, he can find nothing in his representations of corporaeal things that entails anything too great to have originated in himself. (Remember, all he can really say that he knows are that bodies have extention, motion, substance, duration, number.) Other properties: light, color, sound, smell, taste, temperature, he finds muddled and hence dubious, material falsities in which he may be representing non-things as things.
            1. In short, if his ideas about corporeal things are false, they are in fact only effects of a deficiency in his representational apparatus, whereas if they are true, the reality they represent is so slight that he can’t even distinguish them from non-things. Further all of the properties he can know about anything, he also finds in himself.
         3. All that remains now is the idea of God. And since his idea of god contains things like infinitude, omnicience, omnipresence, etc. it becomes increasingly hard to believe that ideas of these things could have possibly originated in him, who is finite, of limited intelligence, and localized in space.
            1. Further, since there is more (formal/perfect) reality in an infinite substance than in a finite one, it must be that his concept of the infinite preceded or caused his concept of the finite.
            2. How, he asks, could he have understood his own imperfections except by comparison to an idea of perfection?
            3. Descartes anticipates an objection here by suggesting that his concept of God is “utterly clear and distinct, and contains in itself more objective reality than any other idea…” and hence is less liable to be “suspected of falsehood.”
            4. The clarity of his concept of god then, relies not on his ability to grasp the manifold qualities of the infinite, but rather on his very ability to grasp “infinitude” as such. (One has to break impartial character here to ponder how Descartes could possibly imagine that he comprehended infinitude more clearly than coldness. Selah.)
      3. Descartes, in his weaker moments, however, still seems to find himself pondering the validity of the causal relationship between his idea of god and the actual god. He thinks he can close this nagging doubt down by working to prove that without such a being, he himself could not exist.
         1. If Descartes was the cause of his own existence, how would he desire anything?
         2. Given that it is much easier for him to acquire knowledge than it would been for him to emerge out of nothingness, it seems like if he could do the latter, he would have just given himself the former, and we wouldn’t need the meditations.
         3. As he imagines would be clear to anyone who considers the nature of time, there is no actual difference between creating something and preserving it from moment to moment.
            1. And if this is the case, by what power is Descartes preserved? How does it come about that I who exist now will exist a little while from now? Descartes experiences no such power in himself. Hence, again, Descartes is certain that he is not alone.
            2. But why can’t we just say that Mr. and Mrs. Descartes (or some other mundane, existential cause) produced Descartes? Well, we might be able to, but what caused them? At the end of the chain, no matter how you slice it, whatever is responsible for the effect Descartes is a cause that actually contained within it those ideas which are the mental-genetic inheritance of Descartes.
            3. And further, if there is no difference between creation and preservation, and no one can we say that Mr. and Mrs. Descartes are responsible for preserving Descartes at the present moment.
         4. But what if all these ideas (infinitude, omniscience, omnipresence, etc) actually derive from a variety of disparate causes, and have no unified locale? Ah, Descartes tells us, but the unity of these causes is the most important idea I have about God’s perfection.
      4. Finally, given a “very clear proof that God exists”, Descartes sets out to determine how exactly he received this idea of God.
         1. It wasn’t from his senses: It didn’t come to him unexpectedly.
         2. It wasn’t invented by him: He can’t add or take away perfections from it at will.
         3. All that remains is that the concept of god is innate in him, right alongside with the concept of himself.
      5. To recapitulate: “I recognize that it would be impossible for me to exist with the kind of nature I have - that is, having within me the idea of God - were it not the case that God really existed.” (51-52)
      6. Finally, since God has after all necessarily turned out to be the thing with all the perfections, as opposed to Descartes’ posited demon, we can throw away the idea that God is out to trick Descartes. But why then is Descartes sometimes wrong?
5. Fourth Meditation: Truth and falsity
   1. Given Descartes’ clear knowledge of himself, and of God, and of the fact that God is not trying to trick him, Descartes thinks that he can see a way forward to knowledge of the things in the world.
   2. Certainly, Descartes received his faculty of judgement - like all of his faculties - from God, which implies that as long as he’s using the faculty correctly, it shouldn’t deceive him.
      1. Nonetheless, Descartes is indeed prone to countless errors. He also believes that this is because his ontological status is decidedly in between pure positivity/being/God, and pure negativity/nothingness, and it is exactly insofar as he participates in this nothingness that he is himself lacking, and hence capable of wrongness.
      2. However, this can’t be the whole story, since error is not a pure ontological negation, but rather an epistemic lack or privation.
   3. But this doesn’t really gel with Descartes’ idea of a God, who would inevitably see no reason to give him an imperfect faculty of judgement.
      1. First, Descartes has to humbly admit that he doesn’t understand the reasons for all of God’s actions, and further, based on knowing his own finite nature, Descartes finds the search for such first causes useless.
      2. Second, when we look at the works of God, perhaps we should be considering the perfection of the totality rather than the assumed imperfection of a part. In short, perhaps the imperfection of Descartes’ judgements is simply a distortion of his limited perspective.
   4. On further reflection, Descartes notices that all of his errors stem from both his faculty of knowledge or his faculty of choice/free will simultaneously.
      1. Again, Descartes appeals to the fact that, ultimately, how much knowledge God chose to give him was up to God.
      2. On the other hand, he knows from experience that his free will is perfectly free or unrestricted (his free will is in fact the most extreme case of his internal infinitude Descartes can unearth).
      3. So, if Descartes can imagine a greater intellect, but not a greater faculty of free will. This leads him to believe that the source of his mistakes is not in fact his perfect (although limited) understanding, and certainly not his perfect freedom of choice, but rather, his inability to correctly scope the use of his intellection. Namely, his problem is that he tries to extend his intellect to matters he does not understand.
         1. On free will, Descartes notes that the more one inclines in one direction, the more one experiences freedom of will; indifference, he says, is the lowest grade of freedom.
      4. Hence his indifference about, say, matters of corporeal existence.
   5. For Descartes, then, the ethical choice is to refrain from judgement concerning all matters about which he cannot perceive the truth with sufficient clarity and distinctness. (He terms this “incorrect use of the free will.”)
      1. At the end of the day, he then decides that in those instances in which he errs, it is his own fault for overextending the finite intellect which is his lot as a finite, created being.
      2. The fact that his free will (which has longer arms than his intellect) allows him to overextend his intellect, further, certainly can’t be blamed on God.
         1. Despite this, Descartes can’t help noting that God /could have/ given him a perfectly clear intellect, or else the perfect ability to refrain from judgement when his knowledge was imperfect.
         2. And again, had God done so, Descartes feels that he would have been a more perfect man, which doesn’t necessarily imply a more perfect universe.
         3. And we end up with Descartes’ important ethical maxim: “…if, whenever I have to make a judgement, I restrain my will so that it extends to what the intellect clearly and distinctly reveals, and no further, then it is quite impossible for me to go wrong.” (62)
6. Fifth Meditation: The essence of material things, and the existence of God considered a second time
   1. Descartes first sets for the inventory his thoughts, and see which thoughts of material things are clear and distinct.
      1. (1) Extension in space, (2) the number of parts of a thing, and (3) the sizes, shapes, positions, and motions of the parts all seem to fit the bill.
         1. Even more than that, when Descartes imagines geometrical figures, even if they have never existed outside of him, he is convinced that these figures have a determinate, immutable nature independent of his mind.
         2. Now, remembering that whatever is true must be (a) something, and that (b) Descartes must be clearly and distinctly aware of it. He has always imagined that abstract mathematical truths are among this class.
      2. Another thing which meets these two critera (6.a.i.ii.a-b) for truthiness is God.
         1. Descartes is clearly and distinctly aware of his idea of God, and part of his idea of God is that God exists (in other words, without existing, God would certainly be imperfect).
         2. However, just because Descartes can picture a mountain and a valley, that don’t necessarily make a mountain and a valley exist in the world. However, this actually ends up working in God’s favor; in the same way mountain-valley is a logical entailment, so is God-existence. So, while Descartes is free to picture a horse with or without wings, he is not free to picture a God without the property of existence (God exists essentially).
   2. After his longish second proof of God’s existence, Descartes quickly concludes that he can no longer be persuaded by the argument he set forth before (viz. dreaming: cf. 2.c.ii).
      1. Given that (1) the certainty and truth of all his knowledge depends on his certainty of God, and particularly now that (2) he has a criterion for separating the true from the false - namely, when he understands something to be clear and evident - Descartes can no plainly see that knowledge is possible on countless matters, including elusive matters of corporeal nature.
7. Sixth Meditation: The existence of material things, and the real distinction between the mind and the body
   1. Now what remains is to determine that material things exist. At least they are capable of existing, insofar as they are the subject of pure mathematics.
   2. Imagination, it occurs to Descartes, seems to be nothing more than the application of cognition to a body which - in being “intimately present to it” - must exist.
      1. There is a distinction to be drawn between imaginging (a triangle, which entails a mental picture) with a thousand-sided figure (which entails no mental picture); it is the effort which is entailed in drawing a mental picture which clues Descartes to this difference.
      2. Further, he thinks that his power of imagining is not essential to himself, unlike his power of understanding.
      3. This can be described as such: When the mind understands, it turns toward itself, and when it imagines, it turns outward, toward a body.
      4. Given this, it seems probable that since we can be sure of our faculty of imagination, we can be sure of the body which enables it. Although this is still only a probable conjecture.
   3. Now we turn to sensory perception:
      1. What the pre-Meditations Descartes thought about the objects of sensory perception.
         1. He thought that he had a body: head, hands, feet, etc. and that this was himself.
         2. He also gauged that his body could be affected by other bodies to feel sensations.
         3. Among these sensations was one, sight, that seemed to allow him to distinguish other bodies out there in the world.
         4. He also figured that these things were real things and not part of his mind, and that his ideas resembled these things.
         5. Further he figured that one of these bodies was his, and that this one seemed to be able to provide some sensations that corresponded with his mental states.
         6. All this he believed de facto, without ever really sitting down at his desk and figuring out whether it was true or not.
      2. Why he doubted (7.c.i)
         1. His faith in the senses was undermined. Things that looked round from a distance appeared square closer up, etc.
         2. Not only his external sense either. Here he appeals to phantom limb syndrome; he couldn’t even be sure that when he was feeling pain, the pain was true.
         3. No sensory experience he has ever had seems to be exclusive to waking or to dreaming, and hence, he couldn’t find a compelling reason to believe his waking experiences were caused in any way different than his sleeping ones (that is, by his mind).
         4. He also simply couldn’t rule out that his natural constitution was prone to error, since he didn’t know his maker “(or at least was pretending not to).”
         5. Finally, he had no trouble refuting his old (7.c.i) beliefs.
      3. What he now believes about them
         1. Everything that he clearly and distinctly understands corresponds exactly with his understanding of it. (If he perceives two things to be distinct, they are distinct, since they are “capable of being separated, at least by God.”
         2. Given that, and that he is clearly and distinctly aware of himself as the res cogitans and also of (distinctly) a body, it is certain that he is distinct from his body, and can exist without it.
         3. Further, he can clearly and distinctly understand himself without appeal to his faculties of sensory perception and imagination, but not vice versa.
         4. The passive faculty of sensory perception requires another, active faculty to enabe its use and hence to produce his sense-perceptions. This faculty is clearly not in him, since he doesn’t have to be in any way active to active sensory perception. Therefore, it must have been created by another something.
         5. This other something, then, must be another substance that contains either formally (intrinsically) or immanently all the reality which exists objectively (as representational content) in the ideas produced by Descartes’ imagination (cf. 4.e).
         6. So, finally, the cause of these representations either has to be a body that intrinsically contains the reality which the representations represent it having, or else it’s God, in which case that reality is immanent.
         7. Which seems to finally lead us to the fact that if God isn’t deceiving us, why would we have ideas of corporeal things that are actually transmitted immanently by God.
         8. Hence, corporeal things exist, whether or not my representations reflect them perfectly. (Again the criterion for determining whether they do or not is a clear and dinstinct understanding).
   4. Hence, there is no doubt that everything Descartes is taught by nature contains some truth. Here are the things that nature seems to be most clearly teaching:
      1. Descartes has a body.
      2. Descartes is closely joined to his body (via pain, etc.)
      3. Other bodies besides Descartes’ exist, which are different from each other, and differently attractive to Descartes, and hence can affect him/his body.
   5. However, Descartes has also to use his infamous criterion to distinguish these things with things that are results of his history of ill-considered judgements. Examples of the latter:
      1. That space in which nothing is occurring to stimulate his senses is empty.
      2. That color, temperature, taste, etc. are present in bodies and not in Descartes.
   6. (7.d-e) has taught Descartes that while sense-perceptions may be inevitable, it was not “taught to him by nature” to just blindly trust them without the help of intellection.
      1. And hence, he can conclude, that sense-perception was given to him precisely to ward of those things that are harmful to the complex (body-mind) of which the mind is a part, and hence are only sufficiently clear and distinct with regards to this task.
      2. But what about when a man eats a poision cookie? Why is sense-perception capable of being tricked? Simply, we appeal again, because of its finitude.
      3. But what about a sick person who eats, and then pays the price? Well, says Descartes, a badly made clock observes the same laws of nature a well-made one does. But this doesn’t exactly justify God’s divine will that nature can trick us in this way.
         1. First, the body is divisible, and the mind is not.
         2. Second, the mind is not affected by all the parts of the body, just the brain (or even a small part of the brain).
         3. Third, Descartes notes that, e.g. the foot is connected to the brain by nerves. However, he says, you could cause the same sensation by pulling on that same nerve somewhere in the calf, or torso, or neck, or whatever.
         4. Finally, any movement in the part of the brain that immediately affects the mind can produce just one corresponding sensation. Hence, Descartes imagines that God has designed a system that chooses the statistically best possible sensation for a person’s continued health and well-being.
         5. Hence, when a sick person gets the signal to eat, this is just the most statistically probable signal to continue the good health of the body.
      4. Hence, “notwithstanding the immense goodness of God” the body-mind complex is bound to mislead us from time to time for purely mechanical reasons.
   7. Descartes now decides that since he can rely at least statistically on his senses, and with even greater reliability on a complex of senses-memory-intellect.
      1. Accordingly, the dream-reality confusion (2.c.ii) can now be dismissed in light of the fact that he’s just noticed that his dreams are not linked up in his memory in the same way his waking actions are.
      2. And finally, he can be sure that, using a sense-memory-intellect complex, and remembering that God’s not out to trick him, he should be completely free from error.
      3. Of course, he doesn’t have time to sit down and think about everything he does before he does it, so in practice he will continue to make errors, but that’s just life.

Overview

In Book One of his Analytics, Aristotle discusses the structure of the syllogism, his logical procedure. In Book Two, he discusses some of the properties and defects of syllogisms, and some types of reasoning that are related to syllogisms.

Outline: Book Two

1. Properties and defects of syllogism; Arguments akin to syllogism
   1. Properties
      1. The drawing of more than one conclusion from the same premises
         1. Very nice recapitulation of book one: (1) The number of figures, (2) the character and number of premises, (3) when and how a syllogism is formed, (4) what we must look for when refuting and establishing propositions, (5) how we should investigate a given problem, (6) and by what means we will attain principles appropriate to each subject.
         2. Universal and affirmative particular syllogisms yield more than one result (as these are all convertible propositions).
            1. (E.g.) Universal: Aab -> Aba
            2. (E.g.) Particular Affirmative: Iab -> Iba
            3. (E.g.) Particular Negative: Oab -//> Oba
         3. You can also get this conclusion for universal syllogisms insofar as that which is subordinate to the middle term can be inferred.
            1. Adb, Aba -> Ada, Aad
      2. The drawing of true conclusions from false premises; the first figure
         1. Given true premises, false conclusions are impossible.
         2. True conclusions (wrt fact, not reason) may be drawn from false premises.
            1. If both premises are wholly false, the conclusion can be true. (All men are stones, All animals are stones -> All men are animals).
            2. If both premises are partially false. (Some men are stones, Some animals are not stones -> Some animals are not men)
            3. If only one premise is false:
               1. When the first premise (AB) is wholly false the conclusion will be false.
               2. When AB is partially false, the conclusion can be true.
               3. When the second premise (BC) is wholly false, the conclusion can be true.
               4. When BC is partially false, the conclusion (C) can be true.
            4. If one premise is wholly and one is partially false:
               1. When AB is partially false, C can be true.
               2. When BC is partially false, C can be true.
      3. The drawing of true conclusions from false premises; the second figure
         1. In each of the above situations, in the middle figure, it is possible to reach a true conclusion from one or more false premises.
      4. The drawing of true conclusions from false premises; the third figure
         1. In each of the above situations, in the third figure, it is possible to reach a true conclusion from one or more false premises.
      5. Circluar proof; the first figure
         1. Reciprocal demonstration is when any [P1,P2,C] of a syllogism is provable by assuming the others.
         2. Reciprocal demonstration is only possible if propositions and terms [A,B,C] are convertible (cf. Book 1:A.I.2; i.e. Aab->Aba, Eab->Eba).
            1. Positive Universal: AC: Aab, Abc -> Aac. We can also prove AB by Aac, Acb ->Aab. And BC: (Aac->Aca),Aab -> Abc.
            2. Negative Universal: AC: Abc, Eab -> Eac. And then: AB: Eac, (Acb->Abc) -> Eab. Etc.
            3. Positive & Negative Particular: In the particular cases, we can demonstrate the particular premise from the universal and the conclusion, but not the other way around.
               1. E.g. if: (U)AB, (P)BC -> (P)AC –> Aba, Iac -> Ibc. And this only.
      6. Circluar proof; the second figure
         1. Positive Universal & Particular: Reciprocal demonstration is not possible.
         2. Negative Universal: Aab, Eac -> Ebc. (Aab->Aba), Ebc -> Eac, Etc,
         3. Negative Particular: Once again, the particular premise can be proved but not the universal, for the same reasons as in (A.I.5.iii) above.
      7. Circluar proof; the third figure
         1. Positive & Negative Universal: Reciprocal demonstration is not possible. (Third figure conclusions are always particular.)
         2. Particular premises are sometimes possible to prove reciprocally when the other premise is universal.
            1. Both affirmative & the universal concerns the minor extreme.
            1. Eg. Aac, Ibc -> Iac. If (Aac->Aca), Ibc -> Ibc (!Icb). This fails because we can’t prove something universal about the minor extreme, C.
            2. Eg. Abc, Iac -> Iab. Then if (Abc->Acb), Iab -> Iac. This succeeds because we can say something universal about the minor extreme, C.
         3. One premise is universal affirmative and the other negative -> Circular proof can be given.
      8. Conversion; the first figure
         1. Conversion means altering the conclusion of a syllogism to make another syllogism to prove that either:
            1. The last term cannot belong to the middle.
            2. The middle cannot belong to the last term.
            3. Aristotle will refer to this operation as “refuting a premise”.
         2. Conclusions can be converted into their:
            1. Contradictories: “to all”->”not to all”, “to some”->”to none”.
            2. Contraries: “to all”->”to none”, “to some”->”not to some”.
         3. Universal Contrary: Major extreme premise cannot be refuted universally (forces appeal to third figure). AB, BC -> Eac. –> Eac, Aab -> Ebc. –> Eac, Abc -> Oab (Felapton).
         4. Universal Contradictory : Conversion results in conclusions that are negative and particular.
         5. Particular Contrary: Neither premise may be refuted.
         6. Particular Contradictory: Both premises may be refuted.
      9. Conversion; the second figure
         1. Universal Contrary: The major extreme premise (AB) may not be refuted, but AC can. Aab, Eac -> Abc. Abc, Aab -> Aac. Abc, Eac -> Oab.
         2. Universal Contradictory: The major extreme premise (AB) may not be refuted, but AC can. Ibc, Eac -> Oab. Ibc, Aab -> Iac.
         3. Particular Contrary: Neither premise can be refuted.
         4. Particular Contradictory: Both premises can be refuted.
      10. Conversion; the third figure
          1. Universal Contrary: Neither premise can be refuted.
          2. Universal Contradictory: Both premises can be refuted.
          3. Particular Contrary: Neither premise can be refuted.
          4. Particular Contradictory: Both premises can be refuted.
      11. Reductio ad impossibile; the first figure
          1. The syllogism per impossibile is proved when the contradictory of the conclusion is stated and another (incompatible) premise is assumed.
          2. It resembles conversion, except that a conversion leverages an already-agreed to contradictory, whereas in a reduction to the impossible it is simply clear that the contradictory is true.
          3. E.g.: Aab, Abc -> Aac. Now, we pose that Eab, or Oab then Eab, Abc -> Eac. But Eac is impossible.
          4. All the syllogisms in all moods in all figures can be proved per impossibile, except the universal affirmative in the first figure. (Cf. I.A.11.c.)
             1. Example proof: Eab, Abc -> Eac. Aac, Abc -> Aab, which is impossible.
             2. Why it doesn’t work in the universal figure of the first: Aab, Aca -> Abc. Now assume Ebc. Ebc, (Aca->Aac) -> Eab, which is impossible, but the negation of Eab does not necessarily prove Aab. I think.
      12. Reductio ad impossibile; the second figure
          1. Reductio ad impossibile is possible in all syllogisms in this figure; proofs.
      13. Reductio ad impossibile; the third figure
          1. Reductio ad impossibile is possible in all syllogisms in this figure; proofs.
      14. Comparison of reductio ad impossibile and ostensive proof
          1. Reductio ad impossibile
             1. posits what it wishes to refute by reduction to a statement admitted to be false.
             2. takes one premise from which the syllogism starts and the contradictory of the original conclusion.
             3. it is necessary to suppose that the conclusion is not true.
          2. Ostensive proof
             1. starts from admitted positions.
             2. takes the premises from which the syllogism starts.
             3. it is not necessary that the conclusion is known or true.
          3. Both
             1. Both take two admitted premises.
             2. Anything that can be proved with one can be proved with the other.
          4. Figural dependencies for proving syllogisms.
             1. Proving a syllogism in the first figure by RAI and ostensive proof.
                1. If negative: Proof with the middle figure.
                2. If affirmative: Proof with the last figure.
             2. Proving a syllogism in the second figure by RAI and ostensive proof.
                1. Proof will accomplished using the first figure.
             3. Proving a syllogism in the third figure by RAI and ostensive proof.
                1. If negative: Proof with the middle figure.
                2. If affirmative: Proof with the first figure.
      15. Reasoning from opposites
          1. Possible types of oppositions
             1. Universal affirmative to universal negative
             2. Universal affirmative to particular negative
             3. Particular affirmative to universal negative
                1. Note that particular affirmative to universal negative doesn’t qualify, presumaly along the same logic as (A.I.11.d.ii). Aristotle says they are “only verbally opposed.”
             4. All the universals are “contraries”, all the particulars are “contradictories.”
          2. The first figure
             1. No syllogism can be made from opposed premises.
          3. The second figure
             1. Syllogisms can be made any opposed premise
             2. Science (B) is good, No science (C) is good -> Science (B) is science (C).
          4. The third figure
             1. No syllogism can be made from opposed premises.
             2. A negative syllogism is possible whether the terms are universal or not: Some medicine is a science (B), No medicine is a science (C) -> Some science is a not science [Iab,Eac->Oac].
          5. The types of opposites engender six sets of two premises [e.g. (A.I.15.a.i): Aab, Eac; Aac, Eab;]
          6. It is not possible to draw a true conclusion from opposed false premises.
   2. Defects
      1. Petitio principii (Begging the question)
         1. Begging the question is trying to prove something that’s not self-evident by means of itself.
         2. Basically, using A -> B -> C -> A to prove A is begging the question.
            1. When it is uncertain whether A belongs to C, and uncertain whether A belongs to B, but one assumes A belongs to B, one might be begging the original (AC) question.
            2. If in the above it turns out that B = C or B < -> C, the question is begged.
         3. Syllogisms are question-begging when either their predicates are identical or their subjcets are identical.
      2. False cause
         1. ‘False cause’ describes a situation in which the conclusion would have been reached with or without the hypothesis on which it was based.
         2. This is most obvious when the premise is completely irrelevant to the conclusion.
         3. It can also happen when the premise is related to the conclusion, but the conclusion does not follow from it.
      3. Falsity of conclusion due to falsity in one or more premises
         1. A false argument depends on the first false statement in it, be this the conclusion or one of the premises.
            1. A false syllogism cannot be drawn from true premises (cf. A.I.2.a).
      4. How to impede opposing arguments and conceal one’s own
         1. Don’t allow the person against whom you are arguing to use the same term twice in his premises. Be watchful: The middle term is necessary!
         2. Start from the outside: Assume we are set out to prove AF from B, C, D, and E. We need to prove AB and EF first, no BC. Our tricky interlocutor may attempt to start at the middle, and confound us!
      5. When refutation is possible
         1. A refutation is a syllogism which establishes the contradictory of the original conclusion.
            1. A refutation is possible only when at least one of the terms is affirmative.
            2. A refutation is possible only when at least one of the terms is universal.
      6. Error
         1. It turns out that when you do these in practice, its easy to logically know one thing and think the opposite.
            1. A set of premises like this could arise: [Aab, Eac, Abd, Acd] which entails a contradiction.
            2. This is the case with particulars too: [180 degrees, triangle, some particular triangle]. While someone can know ABC holds, she is not per-se required to think that C exists.
         2. Criticism of Meno and the theory of learning by recollection: “It never happens that a man starts with foreknowledge of the particular, but along with the process of being led to see the general principle he receives a knowledge of the particulars, by an act (as it were) of recognition.”
            1. In seeing some particular and not recognizing the universal, one can be led to error as well. E.g.: One can think [all mules are sterile, this is a mule, this animal is with foal] by simply not recalling AB in the presence of some compelling circumstantial evidence of C.
         3. These points show the three senses of “to know”, which, we will note, dictate the three kinds of error above.
            1. To have knowledge of the universal
            2. To have knowledge of “proper to the matter at hand” (of the particular)
            3. To exercise such knowledge
   3. Arguments akin to Syllogism
      1. Rules for conversion and for comparison of desirable and undesirable objects
         1. Whenever the extremes (A,C) are convertible, the middle (B) must be convertible with both.
         2. Let => equal “more preferable”. Given {x:{A,B},{C,D}} where A,B and C,D are sets of opposites:
            1. If A=>B and D=>C, then if {A,C}=>{B,D} -> A=>D
            2. Since they are opposites, A and B are in an equal relationship of preferability with inverse magnitude e.g.: (1,-1).
            3. If A=>B and D=>C, if A==D -> {A,C}=={B,D}
            4. Also the example he gives here is incredible (this being the Analytics): “To recieve affection is preferable in love to sexual intercourse. Love then is more dependent on friendship than on intercourse…”
      2. Induction
         1. Every belief comes either through syllogism or from induction (not only demonstrative and dialectical syllogisms thus far, but rhetorical syllogisms and other forms of persuasion).
         2. The syllogism that springs out of inducution, which works from a premise and a conclusion rather than two premises:
            1. [Long-lived, Bilelessness, Particular long-lived animals]: We know Aac, and Abc, so we can induce that Aab as long as C is wider in extension than B. His example is terrible. A more contemporarily comprehensible version is if we swap B for some Darwinian thing like “has been selected for in its ecosystem”.
            2. Also, this will cover syllogisms by probability: [Fire a cooked my hot dog, Fire b cooked my hot dog, Fires cook hot dogs.]
      3. Example
         1. Reasoning by example works when (in syllogism ABC) AB is proved by means of AD where D resembles C.
            1. E.g. ABCD:[Evil, making war against one’s neighbors, Athenians against Thebans, Thebans against Phocians]
            2. To prove AC, we appeal to [AB,BC] and we attempt to prove AB by appeal to AD.
         2. So, if deductive reasoning is reasoning from whole to part, and inductive reasoning is from part to whole, then reasoning by example is from part to part.
      4. Reduction
         1. Reduction involves attempting to clarify a term relationship by reducing one of the terms via another syllogism.
            1. E.g. [What can be taught, knowledge, justice]. AB is clear, but it is unclear that virtue is knowledge. But if BC is clearly equally or more true than AC, we have a reduction.
            2. So, assuming virtue is D, we can reduce the uncertain premise AC to a more certain premise set AD,CD: Aab, [Aad, Acd->Aac] -> Abc.
      5. Objection
         1. An objection is a like a premise contrary to a premise, with the exception that there are no universal/particular restrictions with regard to objections, even in, e.g., Barbara or Celarent. In other words you can validly offer a particular objection to a universal syllogism.
         2. In the attempt to raise an objection, one starts from premises which will result in a contrary conclusion.
            1. This will not work in the second figure, which cannot produce an affirmative conclusion.
      6. Enthymeme
         1. Enthymeme is a syllogism which requires an unstated assumption to be true for the premises to lead to the conclusion.
            1. Universal enthymeme (irrefutable, first figure): [To be with child, To have milk, A lactating woman]: AC,BC->AB.
            2. Particular enthymeme (refutable third figure): [To be with child, To be pale, A pale woman]: AC,BC->AB.
            3. Recall that enthymeme is not refutable in the second figure.
         2. The middle term (B) of an enthymeme may be called an index.
            1. Arguments derived from the middle term are those in the first figure, and are most generally accepted to be true.
         3. The extreme terms (A,C) are signs.
            1. It is possible to infer character from features, if we assume that (1) body and soul are changed together by natural affections, and (2) for each change there is a corresponding sign.
            2. E.g. Lions have courage, Lions have large extremities, Large extremities are signs of courage –> Tigers have large extremities…etc.
            3. An enthymeme of this type would require that, e.g. all and only courageous animals have large extremities.

Overview

In Book One of his Analytics, Aristotle discusses the structure of the syllogism, his logical procedure.

Outline: Book One

1. Structure of the syllogism
   1. Preliminary Discussions
      1. Subject and scope of the Analytics; certain definitions and divisions
         1. The subject of the Prior Analytics is demonstration and the faculty that carries it out.
         2. Premise: a sentence affirming or denying something.
            1. Universal: Something belongs to all or none of something else.
            2. Particular: That something belongs to some or not to some or not to all of something else.
            3. Indefinite: A premise that doesn’t indicate its universal/particular status: “Pleasure is not good.”
            4. Premises are demonstrative insofar as they proceed by statement rather than questioning. Premises are offered by the arguer, rather than culled from his interlocutor.
         3. Term: That into which the premise is resolved (In “Socrates is a man” - both “Socrates” and “man”)
         4. Syllogism: A discourse in which one thing (a conclusion, consequence) necssarily follows from some other statements.
         5. Perfect and imperfect Syllogisms: Perfect syllogisms need nothing but what’s in the premises to get the conclusion. Imperfect syllogisms rely on external propositions.
         6. Inclusion and non-inclusion of terms in others: We say that one term is included in another insofar as it is predicated (e.g.) of all of another whenever no instance of the latter can be found of which the former cannot be asserted.
      2. Conversion of pure propositions
         1. Every premise is either affirmative or negative.
         2. Universal Premises
            1. Negation: Should be always universally convertible: If no pleasure is good, then no good will be pleasure.
            2. Affirmation: Convertible, but not universally: If every pleasure is good, then some good must be pleasure.
         3. Particular Premises
            1. Negative: Non-convertible: If some animal is not a man, it does not follow that some man is not an animal.
            2. Affirmation: Convertible in part: If some pleasure is good, then some good will be pleasure.
      3. Conversion of necessary and contingent propositions
         1. The same logical statuses in (A.I.2) will hold good for necessary premises.
         2. For possible premises, the same affirmative structures will hold, but the negative ones won’t. In fact, their conversion potential inverts:
         1. Negative universal possible becomes non-convertible: If it is impossible that every pleasure is good, that does not necessarily imply that it is also impossible that every good will be a pleasure.
         2. Negative particular possible becomes convertible: It is possible that no garment is white, then it is possible for nothing white to be a garment.
      4. Generally, the three conversions (inverting of subject & predicate) that are sound are:
         1. Eab -> Eba
         2. Iab -> Iba
         3. Aab -> Iba
   2. Preliminaries for the Exposition of the Three Figures
      1. II-a. The three figures of Syllogisms
         

         Figure	First Figure		Second Figure		Third Figure
         &nbsp	Pred	Subj	Pred	Subj	Pred	Subj
         Premise	A	B	A	B	A	C
         Premise	B	C	A	C	B	C
         Conclusion	A	C	B	C	A	B

      2. II-b. Terminology
         1. “Aab” = a belongs to all b (Every b is a)
         2. “Eab” = a belongs to no b (No b is a)
         3. “Iab” = a belongs to some b (Some b is a)
         4. “Oab” = a does not belong to all b (Some b is not a)
   3. Exposition of the Three Figures
      1. Proper syllogisms in the first figure
         1. Syllogisms Overview
            1. Demonstration is a form of syllogism, and not every syllogism is a demonstration.
            2. Whenever three terms are so related that the last is wholly contained in the middle, which is wholly contained in the first (positively or negatively), we have a perfect syllogism.
            3. Syllogisms are just like a formal structure for the transitive relation of propositions.
         2. Chart of first-figure syllogisms
            1. All pure syllogisms in the first figure are perfect

            2. Form	Mnemonic	Proof
               Aab, Abc ¦ Aac	Barbara	Perfect
               Eab, Abc | Eac	Celarent	Perfect
               Aab, Ibc | Iac	Darii	Perfect; also by impossibility, from Camestres
               Eab, Ibc | Oac	Ferio	Perfect; also by impossibility, from Cesare

         3. Spelling out the first-figure syllogisms
            1. All A is B, All B is C: All A is C
            2. No A is B, All B is C: No A is C
            3. All B is A, some C is B: Some C is A
            4. No B is A, some C is B: Some C is not A
      2. Proper syllogisms in the second figure
         1. Chart of Second-figure syllogisms
            1. There are no perfect syllogisms in the second figure.

            2. Form	Mnemonic	Proof
               Eab, Aac | Ebc	Cesare	(Eab, Aac)>(Eba, Aac) | Cel^Ebc
               Aab, Eac | Ebc	Camestres	(Aab, Eac)>(Aab, Eca)=(Eca, Aab) | Cel^Ecb>Ebc
               Eab, Iac | Obc	Festino	(Eab, Iac)>(Eba, Iac) | Fer^Obc
               Aab, Oac | Obc	Baroco	(Aab, Oac +Abc)|Bar(Aac, Oac) | Imp^Obc

         2. Spelling out the second-figure syllogisms
            1. No B is A, All C is A: No C is B.
            2. All B is A, No C is A: No C is B
            3. No B is A, Some C is A: Some C is not B
            4. All B is A, Some C is not A: Some C is not B
      3. Proper syllogisms in the third figure
         1. Chart of third-figure syllogisms
            1. There are no perfect syllogisms in the third figure.

            2. Form	Mnemonic	Proof
               Aac, Abc | Iab	Darapti	(Aac, Abc)>(Aac, Icb) | Dar^Iab
               Eac, Abc | Oab	Felapton	(Eac, Abc)>(Eac, Icb) | Fer^Oab
               Iac, Abc | Iab	Disamis	(Iac, Abc)>(Ica, Abc) = (Abc, Ica) | Dar^Iba>Iab
               Aac, Ibc | Iab	Datisi	(Aac, Ibc)>(Aac, Icb) | Dar^Iab
               Oac, Abc | Oab	Bocardo	(Oac, +Aab, Abc) | Bar^(Aac, Oac) | Imp^Oab
               Eac, Ibc | Oab	Ferison	(Eac, Ibc)>(Eac, Icb) | Fer^Oab

         2. Spelling out the third-figure syllogisms
            1. All C is A, All C is B: Some B is A
            2. No C is A, All C is B: Some B is not A
            3. Some C is A, All C is B: Some B is A
            4. All C is A, Some C is B: Some B is A
            5. Some C is not A, All C is B: Some B is not A
            6. No C is A, Some C is B: Some B is not A
      4. Common properties of the three figures
         1. Syllogisms always result from conversions (3.c), and changing universals to particulars affects the results.
         2. All syllogisms in the second and third figures are provable with those in the first figure. Further, it is possible to reduce all proper syllogisms to the universal syllogisms in the first figure (Barbara and Celarent).
            1. Also, the particular syllogisms in the first figure (Darii, Ferio) can be proven by those in the second figure (Camestres and Cesare respectively).
         3. In what follows, Aristotle will be doing something like this:
            1. Two necessary premises (8)
            2. One necessary and one assertoric premise (9-11)
            3. Two possible premises (14,17,20)
            4. One assertoric and one possible premise (15,18,21)
            5. One necessary and one possible premise (16,19,22)
         4. More terminology:
            1. Since this is his procedure, it is convenient to describe modal syllogisms in terms of the corresponding non-modal syllogism plus a triplet of letters indicating the modalities of premises and conclusion:
            2. N = “necessary”, P = “possible”, A = “assertoric”.
            3. Thus, “Barbara NAN” would mean “The form Barbara with necessary major premise, assertoric minor premise, and necessary conclusion”.
            4. I use the letters “N” and “P” as prefixes for premises as well; a premise with no prefix is assertoric. Thus, Barbara NAN would be NAab, Abc : NAac.
      5. Syllogisms with two necessary premises
         1. There are three classes of premise possible for a syllogism, (a) a necessary one, (b) a contingent/possible one, and (c) a simple/assertoric/pure one.
         2. With the exceptions of Baroco (5.a.4) and Bocardo (6.a.5), conclusions will be proved to be necessary by conversion (3.c).
      6. Syllogisms with one assertoric and one necessary premise in the first figure
         1. Universals: When the major premise of a first-figure syllogism is necessary, the conclusion is necessary.
         2. Particulars: When the universal premise is necessary, the conclusion is necessary.
      7. Syllogisms with one assertoric and one necessary premise in the second figure
         1. Universals: When the negative premise of a second-figure syllogism is necessary, the conclusion is necessary.
         2. Particulars: When the negative premise is both universal and necessary, the conclusion is necessary.
      8. Syllogisms with one assertoric and one necessary premise in the third figure
         1. Universals: When one of the two premises of a third-figure syllogism is necessary and both are affirmative, the conclusion will be necessary.
         2. Particulars: When the universal premise is necessary, and both are affirmative, the conclusion is necessary.
      9. Comparison of assertoric and necessary conclusions. In overview:
         1. You need at least one necessary premise to get a necessary conclusion.
         2. Assertoric conclusions are reached by two simple premises.
      10. Prelimiary discussion of the contingent/possible
          1. For Aristotle, “Possibly P” is equivalent to “not necessarily P” and “not necessarily not P”.
             1. Hence the conversion looks like Pp -> [!Np, !N(!p))]. That said, this difference has weird logical consequences.
             2. Entailments:
                1. PAab -> PEab
                2. PEab -> PAab
                3. PIab -> POab
                4. POab -> PIab
             3. Modern modal logic, contrawise, treats necessity and possibility as interdefinable:
                1. “Necessarily P” is equivalent to “not possibly not P”,
                2. “Possibly P” is equivalent to “not necessarily not P”.
                3. Like this: (i) Np -> !P(!p), and (ii) Pp -> !N(!p)
             4. Aristotle acknowledges that there is a certain sense of “possible” that is more like the modern equivalece:
      11. Syllogisms in the first figure with two possible premises
          1. PAab, PAbc -> PAac
          2. Universals: When the major premise is a universal, and the minor premise is particular, there will be a perfect syllogism.
          3. Particulars: When the major premise is particular, no syllogism is possible.
      12. Syllogisms in the first figure with one possible and one assertoric premise
          1. PAab, Abc -> PAac
          2. Aab, PEbc -> PEac
      13. Syllogisms in the first figure with one possible and one necessary premise
          1. PAab, NAbc -> PAac
          2. NEab, PAbc -> NEac
          3. PEab, NAbc -> PAac
      14. Syllogisms in the second figure with two possible premises
          1. No syllogism is possible in this combination.
      15. Syllogisms in the second figure with one possible and one assertoric premise
          1. Eab, PAac -> Eba, PAac -> PEbc
          2. Aab, PEac -> Aba, PEac -> PEbc
      16. Syllogisms in the second figure with one possible and one necessary premise
          1. NEab, PAac -> NEba, PAac -> PEbc, Ebc (otherwise it would be impossible that Aac)
          2. NEab, PEac -> NEba, (PEac -> PAac) -> PEbc, Ebc (cf. 19.a, 13.a.ii)
          3. Rule: If there is a universal, negative and necessary premise, a syllogism is possible.
      17. Syllogisms in the third figure with two possible premises
          1. PAac, (PAbc -> PIcb) -> PIab
          2. PEac, PAbc -> POab
          3. A syllogism with two negative possible premises lead nowhere.
      18. Syllogisms in the third figure with one possible and one assertoric premise
          1. Aac, (PAbc -> PEbc) -> PIab (cf. 13.a.i, 15.b)
          2. Abc, POac -> POab
          3. Whenever both premises are indefinite or particular, syllogism is impossible.
      19. Syllogisms in the third figure with one possible and one necessary premise
          1. NAac, PAbc -> NAac, PIcb -> PAab, Aab
          2. PEac, NAbc -> PAac, NAbc -> PEab (cf. 19.b)
          3. NEac, (PAbc -> PEbc) -> POac -> Oac -> Oab (* I don’t get this one. It might be wrong, but it seems like this is what he’s saying.)
   4. Supplementary Discussions
      1. Every sylllogism is in one of the three figures, is completed through the first figure, and reducible to a universal mood of the first figure.
         1. All of the above syllogisms can be reduced to the univeral syllogisms in the first figure (Barbara, Celarent).
            1. To prove A has some relationship to B, you need some C that unites them.
            2. If this is the case, in order to predicate A of B, you need to predicate either (1) A of C and C of B, (2) C of both A and B, or (3) both A and B of C.
               1. (1) Possible syllogism: [(Eac | Aac),(Ecb | Acb)]
               2. (2) Possible syllogism: [(Aca | Eca), (Acb | Aca)]
               3. (3) Possible syllogism: [(Aac | Eac), (Acb | Acb)]
            3. Which are the three figures (4-6), which we just proved reduce to Barbara and Celarent in 7-22 above.
      2. Quality and quantity of the premises of a syllogism
         1. Every syllogism requires at least one affirmitive and one universal premise.
         2. Further, one of the premises must be like the conclusion in both its affirmitive/negative quality and in terms of its necessary/possible/assertoric status.
      3. Number of the terms, propositions, and conclusions
         1. Every demonstration requires three terms and no more. (The fact that multiple minor premises can be used to assess a single conclusion does not create extra premises, but extra syllogisms.)
         2. It follows from this that every conclusion follows from two premises and no more.
         3. In the case of prosyllogisms or continuous middle terms, we can generally state that:
            1. Terms = premises +1
            2. Premises = relations of predication (e.g. A,E,I,O)
            3. When you add terms, conclusions grow proportionally where: newTerms = oldTerms++; conclusions+=(oldTerms-1);
      4. The kinds of proposition to be established or disproved in each figure.
         1. The universal affirmative is only proved through Barbara.
         2. The universal negative is proved through Celarent in the first figure, Cesare and Camestres in the second.
         3. The particular affirmative is proved through Darii in the first figure, and Darapti, Disamis and Datisi in the third.
         4. The particular negative is proved through Ferio in the first, Festino and Baroco in the second, and Felapton, Bocardo, and Ferison in the third figure.
2. MODE OF DISCOVERY OF ARGUMENTS
   1. General
      1. Rules for categorical syllogisms, applicable to all problems
         1. Individuals (Socrates) cannot be predicated of universals, but universals can be predicated of them (Socrates is human).
            1. Predicating a sensible particular (Socrates) on something else is always incidental: The white thing is Socrates.
            2. The ‘upward limit’ of predication is yet to come (Posterior 1. 19-22); we assume it now.
         2. The aspiring syllogist should collect a cache of universal premises (by comprehending relations of definition and properties).
            1. The aforementioned aspirant should take care to realize that some things that apply universally to the species are not so applicable to the genus, and while this is not the case vice versa, one should still avoid applying species predicates to a genus for propriety’s sake.
      2. Rules for categorical syllogisms, peculiar to different problems
         1. To build a syllogism, you have to look at subjects and their attributes.
         2. Suppose (1) B entails A, which entails C and D’s cannot be predicated of As and (2) E’s have attribute(s) F, can’t have attributes H, and are entailed by G.
            1. C=A, then Afe,Aac->Aae (first figure)
            2. C=G -> Iae (last figure)
            3. F=D -> Eaf,Afe -> Eae (first figure, second figure)
            4. B=H -> Aba, (Ehe->Ebe) -> Eae
            5. D=G -> (Ead->Eag),Ige -> Oae (last figure)
            6. B=G -> Aba, (Aeg->Aeb) -> Aea & Iae
         3. Hence, we must find out which terms in the inquiry are identical
      3. Rules for reductio ad impossibile, hypothetical syllogisms, and modal syllogisms
         1. What is proved ostensively may also be concluded syllogistically per impossibile and vice versa.
            1. Aba, Iae -> Ibe: But it Ebe was assumed. Hence, it must be the case that Eae.
            2. Eae, Aeg -> Eag: But Aag was assumed. Hence it must be the case that Iae.
         2. Generally, a ostensive syllogism has two true premises, and in the reductio ad impossibilie, one of the premises is assumed falsely.
         3. Hypothetical syllogims:
            1. C=G, Aeg -> Aae
            2. D=G, Aeg -> Eae
         4. The method works the same way whether the relation is necessary or possible.
   2. Proper to the several Sciences and Arts
      1. “It is the business of experience to give the principles which belong to each subject.”
   3. Division
      1. Division (cf. The Sophist) is a sort of weak syllogism - it begs the question and proves something more general than it ought.
         1. Division takes the universal as a middle term. E.g.:
            1. A = Animal, B = mortal, C = immortal, D = man
            2. Division assumes all A is either B xor C, so if D is A, then D = B xor C, which Aristotle doesn’t believe.
            3. Funny example then where B = footed, C = footless.
3. Analysis (I) of arguments into figures and moods of syllogism
   1. Rules for the choice of premises, terms, middle term, figure
      1. In attempting to select the premises, ensuring at least one universal premise and two total premises.
      2. Further, we need to discern that nothing unnecessary is assumed, and nothing necessary is omitted.
      3. This established, we need to take as the middle term that which is stated in both premises.
   2. Quantity of the premises
      1. That one premise be universal - which is to say that one term is premised of all of another term - is absolutely required.
   3. Concrete and abstract terms
      1. An easy fallacy to encounter is one in which the terms are “set out wrong”.
         1. E.g. A=Health,B=Disease,C=Man -> Eac, which is obviously wrong.
         2. Subustituting more concrete terms -> A=Healthy,B=Diseased,C=Man, we get better results.
   4. Expressions for which there is no one word
      1. Let A=180 degrees, B=Triangle, C=Isosceles triange
         1. It appears that while Aac because of Aab, there is no middle term for AB.
         2. This is because, Aristotle says, the middle must not always be assumed to be an indivdual thing, but sometimes a complex of words.
   5. The nominative and the oblique cases
      1. Terms should always be used in the nominative (man, good, contraries) and not the oblique (of man, of good, of contraries).
         1. Eg.: If Wisdom (a) is knowledge (b), and wisdom (a) is of the good (c), then knowledge is of the good. I think the problem here is just an equivocation of “is of the good”. Or maybe the translation suffers from this and the original doesn’t. Who knows.
      2. Premises ought to be understood by case: dative, genitive, accusative, nominative.
   6. The various kids of attribution
      1. Any derivation of “belonging” (”This belongs to that”) can be understood in as many ways as there are categories.
   7. Repetition of the same term
      1. When you have a term that repeats another term,
         1. A=”knowledge that it is good”, B=”good”, C=justice. * universals here to keep it simple
         2. P1: There is of the good (b) knowledge that it is good (a). (Aba)
         3. P2: Justice (c) is good (b). (Acb)
         4. But if we add “that it is good” to B (good that it is good), we still get P1, but P2 becomes sensless.
      2. Hence, if you’re going to repeat a term, add it to an extreme (A or C) and not a middle term.
         1. He is deeply confusing about this.
   8. Substitution of equivalent expressions
      1. We can exchange equivalent expressions in syllogisms.
   9. The definite article
      1. The premise “Pleasure is good” is different from “Pleasure is the good”.
      2. The use of either requires consistency in the use of the definite article.
   10. Interpretation of certain expressions
       1. The main point seems to be that “A is said of all of which B is said” is equivalent to “A is said of all the things of which B is said”, a point so lukewarm it’s hard to imagine I actually understand the passage.
   11. Analysis of composite syllogisms
       1. A composite syllogism can be composed of simple syllogisms from multiple figures; it can be internally heterogenous.
   12. Analysis of definitions
       1. Sometimes syllogisms use throwaway terms in definitions. E.g. if a given syllogism proves that water is a drinkable liquid, then we only really proved either drinkablility or liquidity (assuming the other).
   13. Analysis of arguments per impossibilie and of other hypothetical syllogisms
       1. Reduction of hypothetical syllogisms (syllogisms with at least one hypothetical premise) is impossible.
       2. Neither can arguments brought to conclusion per impossibile.
          1. These differ from (I.C.44.a) insofar as those latter require an agreement on a hypothetical premise, whereas in the former men accept the reasoning because the falsity of a premise is patent and required for the conclusion.
   14. Analysis (II) of syllogisms in one figure into another
       1. The conversion of syllogisms (cf. I.A.I.3) continues to apply, and that we can reduce complex syllogims to their components, which can in turn be reduced to the first-figure syllogisms as before, and that these can be proved reductio ad impossibile.
   15. ‘Is not A’ and ‘is not-A’
       1. The clearest example he gives of why these two phrases are different:
          1. They are not identical: “It is not a white log” is not identical to “it is a not-white log”.
          2. Nevertheless, there seems to be some relationship as it is impossible that “It is a white log” and “It is a not-white log”.
       2. Succintly, the appeal to a third term seems to be required, The general four-term logical matrix is:
          1. A=”white”, B=”not white”, C=”not-white”, D=”not not-white”.
          2. Nothing can be (1) [A,B] or (2) [C,D], but everything must be (3) either A or B and (4) either C or D. (Noncontradiction, Excluded Middle)
          3. D “follows” B: Since (4), and C cannot belong to that which B belongs (since B “carries along” A and (1)).
          4. Since C “does not reciprocate” with A, but (4), then it is possible that something could be [A,D].
          5. Since A follows C, then B and C cannot belong to the same thing.
          6. B “does not reciprocate” with D either, since (I.C.46.b.iv).
       3. Out of those five conclusions (ii-vi), only one makes sense to me: ii. The quoted language is just lost on me. Email would be great.

Whew. Next week, Book Two: Properties and defects of syllogism; Arguments akin to syllogism.

Overview

1. The Two Systems

There are actually two sets of Categories articulated in the Categories. The first (2.b) is four-fold, and the second is ten-fold (4.a). It is notable that there is considerable debate about the subject matter of the second system of classification (aka. whether it is a classification of (1) words or of (2) objects in the world, or as classifying (3) linguistic predicates in so far as they are related to the world in semantically significant ways).

2. A Metaphysical Note about the Second System

That there are highest kinds (categories) can be motivated by noticing the fact that the ordinary objects of our experience fall into classes of increasing generality. Consider, for instance, a maple tree. It goes something like ‘maple trees’ -> ‘trees’ -> ‘plants’ -> ‘living things’ -> and so on. Now, quite naturally any good Aristotelian will tell you that this increase in generality or extension cannot go on ad infinitum. We seem to require, then, a highest kind. The obvious appeal here is to Being.

The class that contains all and only beings must be the class with the greatest possible extension. However, in the Metaphysics, however, Aristotle argues that being is not a genus. Why? According to Aristotle, every genus must be differentiated by some differentia that falls outside that genus. Hence, if being were a genus, it would have to be differentiated by a differentia that fell outside of it. In other words, being would have to be differentiated by some non-being, which, according to Aristotle, is a metaphysical absurdity. This can generalize to any proposal for a single highest kind.

Hence, he does not think that there is one single highest kind. Instead, he thinks that there are ten.

3. The Structure of the Categories

In the Pre-Predicamenta (1-4), Aristotle discusses a number of semantic relations (1,3), gives a division of beings into four kinds (2), and then presents his canonical list of ten categories (4). In the Predicamenta (5-9) Aristotle discusses in detail the categories of substance (5), quantity (6), relatives (7), and quality (8), and provides a cursory treatment of the other categories (9). And finally, in the Post-Predicamenta, he discusses a number of concepts relating to modes of opposition (10-11), priority and simultaneity (12-13), motion (14), and ends with a brief discussion of having (15).

Outline

1. Equivocations, univocations, and derivatives.
   1. Equivocations (homonyms) are things sharing a name but with different meanings. His example is a real man and a figure in a picture are called “animals”.
      1. Such words are applicable to various items in the world in virtue of the fact that those items all bear some type of relation to some one thing or type of thing.
      2. A second example of such a homonym is “healthy”: A regimen is healthy because it is productive of health; urine is healthy because it is indicative of health; and Socrates is healthy because he has health. In this case, a regimen, urine and Socrates are all called ‘healthy’ not because they stand under some one genus, namely healthy things, but instead because they all bear some relation to health.
   2. Univocations (synonyms) are things that mean the same thing and are applied to different things. His example is a man and an ox; both are “animals”. That is, they all stand under a genus; in this case, “animals”.
   3. Derivatives are things that derive their meanings from other things. His example is the way a courageous man derives his name (as such, “courageous man”) from the word “courage”.
2. Kinds of things qua predication
   1. Simple and composite expressions.
      1. Simple forms of speech are either a single subject or predicate: ox, man, wins, runs.
      2. Composite forms of speech are subject/predicate expressions: The ox runs. The man wins.
   2. Things (a) predicable of the subject, (b) present in a subject, (c) both predicable of, and present in, a subject, (d) neither predicable of, nor present in, a subject.
      1. Qua (2.b.a): ‘Man’ is predicable of the individual man, and is never present in a subject. Presence here means “contained in”.
      2. Qua (2.b.b): Think of a particular piece of grammatical knowledge. It is present (”contained”) in the mind, but is not predicable of minds (or anything?) in general. (Try also the particular whiteness of Socrates; even if some other white is qualitatively different that Socrates’, it is numerically distinct. This is what we mean by a nonsubstantial particular.)
      3. Qua (2.b.c): While knowledge in general is present in the human mind, it is predicable of grammar. Again, whiteness provides a somewhat more intuitive example. The universal whiteness is said-of many primary substances but is only accidental to them.
      4. Qua (2.b.d): These are individuals. An individual man or horse.
   3. Irritatingly, this set of distinctions rests on a circular definition (of what “present in” means) and a missing definition (”said of” or predication). Apparently, most scholars conclude that beings that are said-of others are universals, while those that are not said-of others are particulars. Beings that are present-in others are accidental, while those that are not present-in others are non-accidental. Now, non-accidental beings that are universals are most naturally described as essential, while non-accidental beings that are particulars are best described simply as non-accidental.
   4. Putting all that good work of interpretation together, we can gather that we have
      1. Essential universals (2.b.a)
      2. Accidental particulars (2.b.b)
      3. Accidental universals (2.b.c)
      4. Non-accidental particulars (2.b.d): Primary substances, individuals.
3. The Transitive property of predication and its effects
   1. That which is predicable of the predicate is predicable of the subject.
      1. ‘Man’ is predicated of an individual man. ‘Animal’ is predicated of ‘Man’. Thus, the individual man is ‘Animal’.
   2. The differentiae of species in one genus are not the same as those in another, unless one genus is included in the other.
      1. E.g. The genera ‘Animal’ has differentiae (internally-differentiating characteristics), e.g. ‘with feet’, ‘two-footed’, ‘winged’, ‘aquatic’.
      2. These differentiae do not arbitrarily apply to all genera, e.g. ‘Knowledge’.
      3. They may, however, apply, to subordinate genera, as the parent genus will be predicated of the child.
4. The eight categories of objects under thought.
   1. The (ten-fold) categories (substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, affection) are signified by simple expressions.
      1. E.g.: Substance - ‘man’, ‘the horse’
      2. E.g.: Quantity - ‘two feet long’
      3. E.g.: Quality - ‘white’, ‘grammatical’
      4. E.g.: Affection - ‘to be cauterized’. Etc.
   2. No one of these terms involves an affirmation. Positive and negative statements arise only by combination.
5. Substance
   1. Primary and secondary substance.
      1. Primary substance is that which is neither predicable of a subject nor present in a subject (2.b.iv), aka. an individual man, horse.
      2. Secondary substances are the species and genera into which primary substances fit; in the case of a man, the species ‘man’ and the genus ‘animal’ are both secondary substances.
      3. An interesting proposed secondary substance tree from the SEP:
         1. Immobile Substances - Unmoved Mover(s)
         2. Mobile Substances - Body
            1. Eternal Mobile Substances - Heavens
            2. Destructible Mobile Substances - Sublunary bodies
               1. Unensouled Destructible Mobile Substances - Elements
               2. Ensouled Destructible Mobile Substances - Living things
                  1. Incapable of Perception - Plants
                  2. Capable of Perception - Animals
                     1. Irrational - Non-Human Animals
                     2. Rational - Humans
   2. Difference in the relation subsisting between essential and accidental attributes and their subject.
      1. Essential: Predicating secondary substances of primary substances entails that the primary substance is predicated by both the name and the definition of the secondary substance. (Both “man” and “bipedal animal” - or whatever - are predicated of a man by the predication of the former).
      2. Accidental: Predicating accidental characteristics of substances of the substances themselves, however, does not entail that the substance contain the definition of its attribute. (E.g. you can say, “the man is white,” but that doesn’t mean that “the man is [the definition of whiteness]”).
      3. In overview, this model entails a twofold manner of predication, one is a definitional/essential predication-relation (used by species and genera) and the other is an accidental relation (e.g. “the man is white”).
   3. All that which is not primary substance is either an essential or an accidental attribute of primary substance.
      1. Everything except primary substances is predicable (in the sense of definition) of a primary substance, or is present in a primary substance (is an accidental attribute).
   4. Of secondary substances, species are more truly substance than genera.
      1. A more convincing account of a primary substance can be given via species than via genus.
      2. The same predication-relation that exists between primary substances and everything else also exists between species and genera. [ species:genus :: subject:predicate ]
   5. All species, which are not genera, are substance in the same degree, and all primary substances are substance in the same degree.
   6. Nothing except species and genera is secondary substance: These alone convey knowledge of primary substance.
   7. The relation of primary substance to secondary substance and to all other predicates is the same as that of secondary substance to all other predicates. [E.g. a man -> “skilled in grammar” implies “man” -> “skilled in grammar”.]
   8. Substance is never an accidental attribute; e.g. a secondary substance is never “present” in a primary substance.
   9. The differentiae of species are not accidental attributes. [’two-footed’ is not in ‘man’ (remember that /in/ here is the container definition: (2.b))].
   10. Species, genus, and differentiae, as predicates, are ‘univocal’ with their subject.
       1. This means that when you predicate any one of them, they are related both in definition and name to the children of that which is predicated of them.
       2. In other words, this means specifically that there’s an inheritance effect if you enter into one of these /specific/ chain of predication:
          1. individual (primary substance) <- species <- genus <- differentiae
          2. individual (primary substance) <- species <- differentiae
   11. Primary substance is individual; secondary substance is the qualification of that which is individual.
       1. A secondary substance is a class that can be predicated of individuals.
       2. Species and genus signify substance qualitatively differentiated.
   12. No substance has a contrary.
   13. No substance can be what it is in varying degrees.
       1. If you’re a man, you’re a man all the way, contra, say, your whiteness, which admits of variation in time.
   14. The distinctive mark of substance is that contrary qualities can be predicated of it.
       1. For any other term, contraries cannot be predicated. Later (6a:0-3) we find that nothing can admit contraries at the same time.
   15. Contrary qualities cannot be predicated of anything other than substances, not even propositions and judgments.
       1. Interestingly, he admits statements and opinions as an exception here, although he argues that it is not they themselves that undergo modification, but things external to them which retroactively modify their truth values.
       2. Hence, it is distinctive that substances seem to be internally-modifiable in a way that admits contrary qualities.
6. Quantity
   1. Discrete and continuous quantity.
      1. Discrete quantities are things like number and speech. They share no “common boundary”.
      2. Continuous quantities are things like lines, solids, time, and place.
   2. Division of quantities, i.e. number, the spoken word, the line, the surface, the solid, time, place, into these two classes.
      1. Numbers and speech are constituted by discrete packets of information.
      2. Lines are constituted by continuous points, surfaces by continuous lines, solids by continuous planes.
      3. Time, past, present, and future, forms a continuous whole.
      4. Space, likewise, is a continuous quantity, as its parts share a common boundary (this is evidenced by the fact that space can be occupied with solids: cf. (6.b.ii)).
   3. The parts of some quantities have a relative position, those of others have not. Division of quantities into these two classes.
      1. Either a quantity’s parts have a relative position, each to each, or they do not.
      2. Quantities that do: Lines (their parts are distinguishable and relative to their other parts), and hence planes, solids, and space.
      3. Quantities that don’t: Numbers, time, speech do not because they don’t have “an abiding existence”. One might say they have a relative order, but not a relative position.
   4. Quantitative terms are applied to things other than quantity, in view of their relation to one of the aforesaid quantities.
      1. E.g. A white wall is large in terms of length (solid), a speech is long in terms of time, etc.
   5. Quantities have no contraries.
      1. Terms such as ‘great’ and ’small’ are relative, not quantitative, and moreover cannot be contrary to each other (because of their reliance on a third party or external standard).
      2. That which is most reasonably supposed to contain a contrary is space. But this seems to fall apart because of a confusion of contrariness and extreme difference of degree (the weight of the universe is not the contrary of the weight of a dust mite). Interesting that he should say this and still call sickness and health contrary.
   6. No quantity can be what it is in varying degrees: Just because n is bigger than m, it doesn’t make n /more of a number/.
   7. The peculiar mark of quantity is that equality and inequality can be predicated of it.
   8. Question: “Perhaps the most interesting question concerns the fact that some of the species in quantity appear to be quantified things rather than quantities themselves. Consider, for instance, body. In its most natural sense, ‘body’ signifies bodies, which are not quantities but rather things with quantities. The same is true of line, surface, place and arguably speech. Of course, there are quantities naturally associated with some of these species. For instance, length, breadth and depth are associated with line, body and surface. But Aristotle does not list these as the species under quantity. So, in the first instance, we can ask: does Aristotle intend his division of Quantity to be a division of quantities or quantified things?”
7. Relation
   1. First definition of relatives: Relatives are explained by reference to some other thing. (E.g. “superior” implies superiority over something else.)
   2. Some relatives have contraries (e.g. virtuous/depraved) but not all (e.g. “double”).
   3. Some relatives are what they are in varying degrees (e.g. likeness or unlikeness).
   4. A relative term has always its correlative, and the two are interdependent (e.g. slave->master, double->half, greater->lesser).
   5. The correlative is only clear when the relative is given its proper name, and in some cases words must be coined for this purpose.
      1. This is a little convoluted, basically he seems to be talking about something like this:
      2. Call the condition of being a ruddered thing “rubob”. Call the opposite condition “belbob”. Something is rubob in virtue of its rudder and relative to something belbob.
      3. E.g. a “slave” is not usefully defined with reference to bipedalism. The correct correlative of a relative term (a) is what remains after all incidental attributes are removed from (a).
   6. Most relatives come into existence simultaneously; but the objects of knowledge and perception are prior to knowledge and perception.
      1. True, e.g.: Doubleness and halfness are mutually dependent immediately.
      2. False, e.g.: The objects of knowledge/perception.
   7. No primary substance or part of a primary substance is relative.
   8. Revised definition of relatives, excluding secondary substances.
      1. The fact that a thing is explained with reference to something else does not make it essentially relative. (This is the argument against ‘head’ and ‘hand’ as candidates for categorization as relative.)
         1. Question: How do we distinguish between those things about which we are just confused and need new terminology (7.e) and the case when something that requires something external in its explanation is actually not relative?
      2. There’s an appeal to intuition now, (if a man knows something is beautiful, he knows that than which it is more beautiful). I frankly don’t see how this is a helpful criterion though, given the whole “rudder” problematic.
   9. It is impossible to know that a thing is relative, unless we know that to which it is relative.
      1. He concludes that no substance is relative in character, but again I am still stuck up on rudders.
   10. Overview: “Perhaps the most straightforward reading of Aristotle’s discussion is the following. He noticed that certain predicates in language are logically incomplete - they are not used in simple subject/predicate sentences of the form ‘a is F’ but rather require some type of completion. To say ‘three is greater’ is to say something that is incomplete - to complete it requires saying what three is greater than. Nonetheless, Aristotle accepted a doctrine according to which properties in the world always inhere in a single subject. In other words, although Aristotle countenanced relational predicates, and though he certainly thought that objects in the world are related to other objects, he did not accept relations as a genuine type of entity. So, Aristotle’s category of relatives is a kind of halfway house between the linguistic side of relations, namely relational predicates, and the ontological side, namely relations themselves.”
8. Quality
   1. Definition of qualities: “that in virtue of which people are said to be such and such.”
   2. Different kinds of quality.
      1. Habits and dispositions
         1. Habits are more lasting and firmly established than dispositions.
         2. Knowledge and virtue, e.g., are habits.
         3. On the other hand, heat and cold, disease and health are dispositions.
         4. Habits are dispositions, but not vice versa.
      2. Capacaties
         1. Capacities are predicated of a person in virtue capacity (nice). E.g. being a good runner or boxer.
         2. There is also a kind of health that is less a disposition (e.g. I am healthy at the moment), and more of a capacity towards health (e.g. I am a healthy person generally).
      3. Affective qualities (distinction between affective qualities and affections)
         1. Affective qualities and affections are like: sweetness, bitterness, whiteness, blackness, heat and cold.
         2. Affective qualities are actually capacities to produce affections “in the way of perception.” These are things like sweetness and heat, which are capable of producing affections in the senses.
         3. Contrarily, affections are like pallor and flushing (in skin). This is again reliant on a more permanent/less permanent distinction. Affections are caused by affectors (shame/fear). So the white of Socrates when he sees a ghost is an affection, and the white of my walls is an affective quality.
         4. There are also affective qualities and affections of the soul. Of the former: temper, insanity, irascibility as constitutional. Of the latter: the same list as a temporary state. We can say that affective qualities are pathologies of affections.
      4. Shape, etc. (Rarity, density, etc. are not qualities)
         1. Straightness, curvedness, triangularity or octagonality are qualities.
         2. Rarity and density, roughness and smoothness because these are actually composite attributes: roughness is due to the unevenness of an array of parts, sparseness because of the distance between parts, etc. These are not intrinsic, and thus not qualities.
   3. Adjectives are generally formed derivatively from the names of the corresponding qualities (e.g.: the quality ‘whiteness’ nominates the adjective ‘white’).
      1. The alternative to that is when things derive names from sciences (e.g. the ‘boxer’ derives his name from the science of ‘boxing’, as the innate capacity for boxing, as a quality, has no name).
   4. Most qualities have contraries
      1. Usually: justice/injustice, whiteness/blackness
      2. Not always: Red, yellow
      3. If of two contraries one is a quality, the other is also a quality.
   5. A quality can in most cases be what it is in varying degrees.
      1. In the case where it is debatable whether it can (e.g. justice), we can at least say that subjects can possess most qualities in varying degrees.
      2. Qualities of shape are an exception to both of these rules (8.e, 8.e.i).
   6. The peculiar mark of quality is that likeness and unlikeness is predicable of things in respect of it.
   7. Habits and dispositions as genera are relative; as “individuals”/(species?), qualitative.
      1. While knowledge, e.g., as a genera is relative (to something) - knowledge is always knowledge of something, a particular branch of knowledge (say, musicology) is not relative to anything.
      2. Furthermore, if something should happen to be both a quality and a relation, this wouldn’t really hurt anything.
9. Action and affection and the other categories described.
   1. Action and affection both admit of contraries and of variation of degree (heating/cooling, being glad/being vexed).
   2. Position we understood back in (7.d-e), when we “stated that such terms derived their names from those of the corresponding attitudes.”
   3. Time, place (’in the Lyceum’), state (’shod’, ‘armed’) are easily intelligible.
10. Four classes of opposites.
    1. Correlatives: ‘Double’ and ‘half’.
       1. Correlatives are defined in reference to each other: A double is two times its half, knowledge is grasping an object.
    2. Contraries: ‘Good’ and ‘bad’. (Some contraries have an intermediate, and some have not)
       1. Tautologically defined: The ‘good’ is not ‘the good of the bad’ (qua 10.b), but ‘the contrary of the bad.’
       2. There are some contraries that are mutually exclusive (odd, even) and some that aren’t (blackness, whiteness).
    3. Positives and privatives: ‘Blindness’ and ’sight’.
       1. Positives and privatives reference the same subject (blindness and sight reference the eyes).
       2. Also, it is “a universal rule” that positives are the “natural” state of things. We don’t refer to blind chairs, because they are not missing sight in any significant sense.
       3. The terms expressing possession and privation (’being blind’) are not the positive and the privative (’blindness’), though the former are opposed each to each in the same sense as the latter.
       4. Similarly the facts which form the basis of an affirmation or a denial are opposed each to each in the same sense as the affirmation and denial themselves.
       5. Positives and privatives are not opposed in the same sense in which correlatives (10.a.i) nor contraries (10.b.i) are opposed.
       1. Viz. contraries: (1) Positives/privatives are not like contraries with no intermediates because in the case of the latter, one or the other has to be present in the “subject in which they naturally persist.”
          1. His examples are health/sickness and odd/even. You get odd/even: Every number has to be either odd or even entirely. His argument is that there exists a subject who has not advanced to the state in which sight is natural, and thus is neither seeing nor blind in the sense set forth in (10.c.ii).
       2. (2) They are not like contraries which have intermediates because in the latter, only one of the two contraries need be in a subject which is constituted by that quality (e.g. fire must be hot, and hence not cold. Otherwise, things can be in the middle of the hot/cold spectrum.)
          1. The appeal here is that - while it is not necessary per se for a given subject - once said subject has reached a stage in which sight is natural, it will either see or be blind.
          2. This contra contraries with intermediate stages, for which (a) it is never necessary that one or the other be inherent in a subject, and that (b) in the special cases, if one or the other should be present, it will not admit of its intermediate or its contrary.
       3. Also contra contraries, there can be no change from one state (e.g. privation) to its opposite.
11. Affirmation and negation: ‘He sits’, ‘he does not sit’.
    1. These are distinguished by from other contraries by the fact that one is always false and the other true.
       1. Opposite affirmations seem to possess this mark, but they do not. Eg. [”Socrates is ill”, “Socrates is well”] will always contain only one true and only one false statement if Socrates exists.
       2. Contra (10.d.i), the set [”Socrates is ill”,”Socrates is not ill”] always contains one true and one false statement, regardless of the existential status of Socrates.
12. Contraries further discussed
    1. Evil is generally the contrary of good, but sometimes two evils are contrary (e.g. defect, excess).
    2. When one contrary exists, the other need not exist (when “Socrates is well” then manifestly not “Socrates is ill”).
    3. Contrary attributes are applicable within the same species or genus (whiteness and blackness require a body, disease and health, a living body).
    4. Contraries must themselves be within the same genus (white and black->color), or within opposite genera (justice,injustice->virtue,vice), or be themselves genera (good and evil).
13. The word ‘prior’ is applicable:
    1. To that which is previous in time.
    2. To that on which something else depends, but which is not itself dependent on that something else.
    3. To that which is prior in arrangement.
    4. To that which is better or more honorable (he’s “first in my book”).
    5. To that one of two interdependent things which is the cause of the other and not the other way around. (The being of j:The truth of the proposition “J is.”)
14. The word ’simultaneous’ is used:
    1. Of those things which come into being at the same time. (”Double/half” cf. 7.f)
    2. Of those things which are interdependent, but neither of which is the cause of the other. (”Double/half”, cf. 10.a.i)
    3. Of the different species of the same genus (’animal’: ‘winged’,'terrestrial’,'aquatic’).
15. Motion is of six kinds: Generation, destruction, increase, diminution, alteration, and change of place.
    1. It is obvious that five of the six are distinct kinds; the exception is alteration. One may feel like alteration implies other types of movement.
       1. This is not the case, apprarently, insofar as a square can increase but not alter (qua square). Hence it is does not directly alteration or diminution, which it seemed to initially.
    2. Rest is the contrary of motion generally, but the contraries of the specific kinds have their contraries in other kinds (e.g.: generation/destruction, diminution/increase).
       1. The contrary of change seems to be either rest in place or change in the reverse direction.
       2. The contrary of alteration seems to be either stability of quality (rest) or change of quality in the reverse direction.
16. The meanings of the term ‘to have’.
    1. With reference to a habit or disposition (”he has a pleasant temperment”).
    2. With reference to quantity (”he has a height of six feet”).
    3. With regard to possessions and parts (”he has a coat”, “he has two hands”).
    4. With regard to content (”the jar has wine”).
    5. With regard to a wife/husband, which Aristitotle concludes is the most remote meaning of “having”, since it really parses out to “lives with”.

Overview

To Aristotle, there is no higher moment of Natural Philosophy than the study of the Soul. In Book One, we get an overview of the historical thought about the soul. The three principles of the soul handed down to us historically are that (a) it is the source of movement and (b) sensation, and that (c) it is composed of elements. Aristotle refutes (a) and (c) in turn, and we seem to be left in the position of “starting over”.

In Book Two, we do in fact start over, trying to understand the Soul phenomenologically. We find that the soul has certain faculties: the nutritive, the appetitive, the sensory, the locomotive, and the power of thinking. All besouled things have at least one of these, and some have all. The plan moving forward is to analyze each of these faculties in turn. The remainder of Book Two addresses the nutritive, appetitive, and sensory functions of the soul.

Book Three treats, in turn, (1) “common sense”, or that which allows us to discriminate between sense objects of different sensory domains, (2) the imaginitive function of the mind (the name which marks out the domain of the “knowing soul”, as opposed to the sensing soul), (3) the practical function of the mind, and (4) the motive function. At the conclusion, it is decided that the Touch is “the essential mark of [animal] life.”

1. BOOK ONE
   1. The dignity, usefulness, and difficulty of Psychology.
      1. Knowledge of the soul is knowledge with the higest dignity. Knowledge of the soul tells us something about truth, and something about Nature, insofar as it is in some sense the principle of animal life.
      2. This knowledge, though, is nefariously difficult to attain. First, we need to know which summa genera (categories) the soul lies (is it a substance, quantum, etc). Is it potential or actual? Is it divisible? Are all souls part of one soul? Etc.
      3. Also, are all the dispositions of soul actually dispositions of the soul/body complex?
         1. It seems they are: passion, joy, fear, pity, courage, loving and hating, etc. are all produced in varying intensities that are not strictly correlative to the stimuli; apparently, this entails that these dispositions rely in some sense on an already-existing bodily state, at least in degree.
         2. Even clearer, we sometimes find ourselves, in the absence of any external cause of terror, feeling terrified.
      4. This seems to entail that soul-based dispositions are definable materially.
   2. The opinions of early thinkers about the soul.
      1. Historically, movement and sensation have been thought to be the reliable indicators of a soul-infused object.
         1. Many philosophers have viewed soul as the condition of possibility for all movement, or as the self-moving thing.
            1. Also, many of these philosophers have thought that soul and mind were the same thing.
         2. Other philosophers took perception itself to be the most characteristic attribute of the soul.
         3. Generally, those in both camps define the soul as constructed by an element (e.g. fire) or elements.
   3. Refutation of the view which assigns movement to the soul.
      1. Not only is (1.b.i.i) impossible, but it is in fact impossible that movement be an attribute of the soul.
      2. Things can be moved in two ways: (a) indirectly - by something else, or (b) directly - by its own power.
      3. Further, there are four species of movement: (a) locomotion, (b) alteration, (c) diminution, and (d) growth.
      4. If the soul is self-moving, its “moving-itself-ness” must be essential to it, and if so, because all (1.c.iii.a-d) above require place, the soul requires place.
      5. Since the soul moves the body, and the body moves by locomotion, it would seem to entail that the soul is itself moveable in space:
         1. If it is self-moving, it seems that it could aka. leave the body, which would imply the possibility of the resurrection of animals from the dead.
         2. It seems most likely that if the soul is at best incidentally moved by the body.
      6. In the sense where we think of mind and soul as the same thing, we realize that if infinite movement were coextensive with the soul, the mind would be infinitely moving (circularly, as Plato wants it in the Timaeus), which doesn’t seem to be the case as all practical instances of thinking possess very definite limits.
      7. If we can now agree that movement is not essential to the soul, movement must be contrary to the soul’s nature.
      8. Also, all views of the soul want to join it to a body without adding any specification of the reason of their union.
   4. The soul not a harmony.
      1. Another account is that the soul is a harmony: (a) a blend or composition of contraries, and (b) the body is compounded out of contraries. This is absurd because:
         1. There are many composite parts, variously compounded.
         2. All body parts (bone, muscle, etc) are different ratios of elements, so in order for the soul to be the composition of these elements, we appear to require multiple souls/harmonies to compose a body.
         3. E.g.: Is the soul identical with the ratio of elements, or is it something “above” this? Is love the cause of any and every mixture, or only those in the right ratio? Is love this ratio itself, or something “above” it? Etc.
      2. And now we know that the soul cannot be a harmony (1.d.i) nor can it be moved in a circle (1.c.vi). Yet it seems that it can be moved incidentally, and further it can power its vehicle (the body). In no other sense can the soul be moved.
         1. Qua those who say that the soul can be angered ([self-]moved to anger), this is as inexact as saying that the soul weaves webs or builds houses.
   5. The soul not moved with non-local movement.
      1. The case of mind is different, but in order to understand the mind as properly material, we only have to make the analogy to sight; both of these men lose with age, as their material elements disintegrate.
         1. So it seems clear that a disposition of the soul is not responsible for the incapacities of old age, but one of the body.
      2. Thus, finally, it is clear that the soul cannot be moved at all, and as such, certainly cannot be self-moving.
   6. The soul not a self-moving number.
      1. This hypothesis is by far the most unreasonable one yet, as it falls prey not only to the fallacy that the soul can be moved, but also to the ontological confusion that the soul is a number.
         1. How could a unit be moved? By what agency? What sort of movement would it be?
         2. Also, 1 divided in half equals a different unit, but plants and animals, when divided, are thought to retain the same soul in each segment.
   7. The soul not composed of elements.
      1. At this point, (1.b.i.i-1.b.i.ii) are refuted. What remains is to examine 1.b.i.iii. The reason for this doctrine is that its proponents think that only like can know like (i.e. only something composed of elements can know something composed of elements, i.e. bone or man).
      2. There’s nothing to be gained by the soul being composed of elements unless there are also various formulae of proportion consummate to the “recipe” for a soul. Even worse is that the recipe would have to contain the recipes of all the objects of its knowledge, which seems very unlikely.
         1. An ugly consequence of this is that it makes mortal souls more complete than the God-soul, as the God-soul is unable of knowing strife, but the mortal soul is.
         2. Continuing with the argument forwarded in (1.g.ii), we now ask: Why not just say everything has a soul? If everything is formed out of elements, each thing must certainly /know/ one or several or all of the elements.
         3. The anti-materialism argument: Mind is the primary thing, and these elemental-souls require matter to be more primary than mind!
      3. Secondly, if the soul is (i.e.) a substance, how will it know other types of beings (qua Categories: qualia, etc.)?
      4. Continuing the argument of (1.b.i.i-1.b.i.ii), then:
         1. If you consider the soul as the source of movement, and souls as the province of animals, you aren’t accounting for animals that don’t move/locomote.
         2. Further, if you want the soul as the perceptive faculty, you have to contend with the fact that while plants live, they aren’t endowed with either locomotion or perception, and most animals have no reason.
   8. The soul not present in all things.
      1. Some thinkers say that the soul is intermingled in the whole universe, but if so:
         1. Why/by what mechanism does it in some cases form an animal and not in all cases?
         2. Both ways you can answer this question lead to a paradox.
   9. The unity of the soul.
      1. Finally, some hold that the soul is divisible. But if this is the case, what holds its parts together? Surely not the body, it seems clear that the contrary is true (when the soul departs, the body decays).
      2. This argument also falls victim to the third man argument. If some unifying agency holds the soul together, is /that/ one or multipartite? Etc.
      3. From the plants argument (1.g.iv.ii), we know then that the soul is homogenous (it doesn’t have distinct parts) and that it is divisible (i.e. the smallest bit of soul is still homogenous soul).
      4. Finally, it seems that this principle in plants is a kind of soul, since it seems to be the only principle holding plants and animals together. Therefore, while it appears that soul is /necessary/ to perception, perception does not constitute soul. Neither locomotion, needless to say.
2. BOOK TWO
   So much for our predecessors’ views. Let’s make a completely fresh start:
   1. First definition of soul.
      1. Substance (determinate “what is”) is: (a) matter/potentiality - the stuff that makes up stuff - and (b) form/actuality/essence - that in virtue of which ‘this’ is ‘this’ as such, and (c) the combination of both.
         1. Of form/actuality, there are two grades, e.g. knowledge and the exercise of knowledge.
      2. Bodies are substances in the sense of (2.a.i.c: a composite) above.
      3. But, the body cannot be soul; the body is the subject or matter to the soul’s form. But form is actuality, and thus the soul is the actuality of a body thus characterized.
         1. In the first sense: of knowledge possessed; as waking corresponds to actual knowing (the exercise of knowledge).
         2. In the second sense: of knowledge possessed but not employed; sleeping.
      4. Thus the soul is the “first grade of actuality of a natural organized body.” Hence the soul/body distinction is meaningless: It is like asking whether the wax and the shape of the wax are one.
      5. More simply, soul is the essence of the thing. But this still requires having in itself the power to move itself.
         1. This power (”soulness”) is first-grade (essential) actuality, contra (2.a.iii.i), which is more second-grade (instrumental) actuality - more like the actuality of the axe.
      6. So, as the pupil + the power of sight constitutes the eye, so the body + soul constitutes the animal.
         1. From which it follows that (at least parts, if it has parts, of) the soul is inseparable from the body.
         2. Which leaves us with the problem of whether the soul is the actuality of the body in the sense that the sailor is the actuality (i.e. actuator) of the ship.
   2. Second definition of soul.
      1. Let’s now see what emerges from (a): we’ve discovered the conclusion of the syllogism, but we need to prove the ground (middle term).
      2. We know that what has soul differs from what doesn’t insofar as it displays life.
         1. Displaying life seems to be constituted by the power of self-nutrition.
         2. Displaying animal life seems to be constituted by sensation, namely touch.
      3. We have no evidence as yet about mind, which seems to be a very different kind of soul (eternal vs. perishable: “it alone is capable of existence in isolation from all other psychic powers.”).
      4. However, we are quite sure at this point that the soul (a) cannot be without a body (it is the actuality of the body), and (b) cannot be a body (it is something relative to a body), so:
         1. We can say that soul is an formulable essence of something that possesses a potentiality of being “besouled”.
         2. This leaves us needing a specification of what kind of body can be “besouled”.
   3. The faculties of the soul.
      1. We’ve mentioned the following powers of the soul: the nutritive, the appetitive, the sensory, the locomotive, and the power of thinking. All besouled things have at least one of these, and some have all.
         1. Certain of these entail others; i.e. all animals with the sense of touch have the appetitive power.
         2. There is no soul apart from the forms so enumerated. Hence, the desire for a general definition is destined to fail (qua. “figure”), and we must handle the problem on a species-level.
      2. So, the best way to define the soul is to give a definition of each of its forms.
   4. The nutritive faculty.
      1. Since nutrition (and reproduction, which he considers inseparable from the former) is the only factor common to all souls, we start there.
         1. Reproduction is an attempt to reach the divine, by the creation of an unbroken current of the same specific life flowing through a discontinuous series of individual beings united by descent.
      2. The soul is the cause of the body in three senses: It is (a) the source or origin of movement, (b) the end, (c) the essence of the whole living body.
         1. (c) is obvious since the essence of anything is the ground of its being, and in the case of living things, the ground of their being is life, and the soul is the source of life (by definition).
         2. (b) is manifest since Nature acts in a purposive way.
         3. (a) is maintained insofar as (i) qualitative change occurs via sensation, and (ii) quantitative change (growth and decay) occur via self-nutrition. Hence, all change comes from the soul.
      3. An account of food: The consumer of food transforms the food into itself.
         1. Historically, some thinkers have said that food is contrary to the thing which consumes it.
         2. Others have said that like is consumed by like.
         3. Aristotle will resolve this difference by saying that the former is undigested food, which is transformed into the latter by digestion.
      4. So, we can say that what is fed is fed because of the soul.
      5. The process of nutruition involves three factors: (a) what is fed, (b) that with which it is fed, and (c) what does the feeding.
         1. (c) is the first - earliest and most indispensible kind of - soul.
         2. (a) is the body, besouled.
         3. (b) is the food.
      6. But remember (qua 2.d.i.i) that the end of all this is reproduction, so the first soul is the reproductive soul, powered by a faculty of nutrition.
   5. Sense-perception
      1. Sensation in general relies on something outside itself as its object.
      2. Why do we not perceive the senses themselves as well as the external objects of sense?
         1. Or, why do the senses require objects since they are presumably made of the same elements as their objects?
         2. Sensitivity, then, must be a kind of potentiality (like, say, flammability).
      3. “Perceive” above as (a) the ability to perceive (a closed eye) and (b) actually seeing (something).
         1. Thus, sense must have both potential and actual senses too.
         2. Further, there are three “potentialities” here: The potential (e.g.) of a wild chimpanzee to communicate something linguistically, and the potential of someone sho speaks English to communicate something something linguistically, and someone actually saying something.
      4. Being “acted upon” by some (sense object, e.g.) also has two senses: (a) the extinction of two contraries (e.g. of food via digestion), or (b) the transformation of something like from potentiality to actuality by an actual thing (e.g. learning).
         1. The potentiality of (2.e.iv.b) also has two senses, e.g.:
            1. The way we might say that a boy may become a general.
            2. The way we say the same of an adult.
   6. The different kinds of sensible object
      1. There are three kinds of objects of sense:
         1. What is perceptible by a single sense (a “special object”: color, sound, flavor).
         2. What is perceptible by any and all senses (”common sensibles”: movement, number, figure).
         3. An “incidental object”: Something like “the son of Diares”, whose essence/concept is incidental to its perceptible qualities (i.e. a white object).
         4. (2.f.i.i-ii) are directly perceptible, (2.f.i.iii) is indirectly perceptible (or it relies on another facultly of perceptiblility -Pt).
   7. Sight and its object
      1. The object of sight is visible, which is to say that it is (a) color and (b) a certain kind of object that can be described in words but which has no single name (see below).
      2. If we want to understand color, we have to understand light:
         1. Light is the proper color of what is transparent (e.g. air, water), and exists wherever the potentially transparent is excited to actuality (by fire, he says; elements, we are thinking he means).
         2. Reflective things are bracketed here. Suffice it that what is seen in light is always color.
      3. The mechanics of seeing are like this: Color sets the air into movement, which comes into contact with the sense organ, which it sets in movement.
         1. This mechanism can be abstracted to describe the function of all senses: Sense object -> Medium -> Sense organ.
            1. The apparent difference between sight/smell/sound and touch/taste will be handled later.
   8. Hearing and its object
      1. Two kinds of sounds, actual (e.g. music) and potential (e.g. an instrument). Note that this distinction will be repeated for all senses, but not further noted.
         1. Actual sound requires two bodies with potential sound and a space between them.
      2. Voice is a kind of sound characteristic of what has soul in it.
         1. Voice is a sound with meaning.
   9. Smell and its object
      1. The reason why smell is more elusive to us than (2.g) and (2.h) is because our sense of smell is inferior (to our others, to that of other animals).
         1. This is evidenced by the fact that smell does not seem to give us clear knowledge (qua sight, hearing), but instead only the confused sensations of pleasure or pain.
         2. This is parallel to our sense of taste; the exception is that taste is more discriminating, since it involves touch.
         3. So much is our sense of smell confused, that we often describe smells out of a felt likeness to tastes (aka. we describe honey as smelling sweet because it tastes sweet and we end up associating that with smell, in absense of a “real” vocabulary of smells).
   10. Taste and its object
       1. Taste is directly reliant on touch. The thing that touches the tongue must be liquid/dissovable.
       2. The organ of taste must be able to become assimilated to its objects, so it must be a non-liquid capable of “liquidizing” - aka. becoming moist.
       3. Similar to the categories of smell, tastes are either (a) bitter/saline or (b) sweet/succulent. From (2.k.iii.a-b): Pungent, harsh, astringent, and acid.
   11. Touch and its object
       1. It is a problem whether touch is one sense or a group of senses.
       2. There is another problem about what the organ of touch is (the flesh? or is that the medium of touch, the real organ situated further inward?).
       3. A third problem is whether all senses are taking place in the same way (e.g. through touching the medium). Aristotle will say yes to this one.
          1. Basically, if you place a white thing on the eye, you can’t see the whiteness, etc. Hence, senses need media. Hence, the flesh is not the organ of touch, but rather the medium.
       4. Finally, we can’t percieve a mean of hotness and coldness (or, e.g. blackness and whiteness), we rather only percieve hotness exclusively or vice versa.
          1. This seems to imply that sense itself is a ‘mean’ between any two opposite qualities of objects as determined by that sense.
   12. General characteristics of the external senses
       1. Overview: What is a sense?
          1. A sense is that which has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter.
          2. An organ of sense is that in which (2.m.i) is seated.
       2. An explanation of plants, then, is that they don’t contain within themselves the means of contrary qualities.
       3. Finally, as to the question of whether objects of sense can affect bodies without the proper sense organs:
          1. Light, sounds, smells leave bodies quite unaffected, what does affect bodies is the media (the air, e.g.) of these objects of sense.
          2. For example, the visual effect of lightning doesn’t split a tree trunk, the air affected by the phenomenon does.
          3. Senses, then, are just observers of the resultant changes in the media of sense-object transmission.
3. BOOK THREE
   1. The number of external senses
      1. How can we be sure that there are just five senses?
         1. Touch covers any potential comers viz. sensation by contact, and thus all other senses are handled through a medium.
         2. Assume that for every sense there needs to be a sense organ, which is made of the same element as the medium through which the object of sense passes (eyes of water, ears of air, noses of one or the other).
         3. Given that no sense organs seem to be made of earth alone (except maybe those under the domain of touch), and further either none or all of them contain fire, then all the possible sense organs are possessed by well-formed animals.
         4. This argument assumes that the four elements are those of the world, and there is no other.
      2. The common sensibles (2.f.i.ii) are percieved by two qualities contemperanously. If there were special sense organs, our perception of the common qualities would always be incidental (aka. we couldn’t tie whiteness to Cleon’s son perceptibly).
         1. We do posess a general sensibility which enables us to perceive them directly.
         2. This “percipient sense” is what allows us to tie two individual sense-data (yellow, bitter) together in a single perception.
         3. That we have many senses instead of just one (a) provides determinacy, and (b) reveals the distinction between common sensibles and special sensibles.
   2. Common sense
      1. The question of whether a sense can be self perceptive (aka. is it by sight that we know we are seeing?)
         1. The appeal to hallucination: Sight (or the eye) itself must be colored, since it can experience color/vision without the material of the thing (think of a red apple).
      2. Further, like a thing may have a sound without (actively being) sounding, so a thing may have hearing without (actively) hearing.
         1. That said, actively sounding and hearing are the same event: “Since the actualities of the sensible object and of the sensitive faculty are one actuality in spite of the difference between their modes of being, actual hearing and actual sounding appear and disappear from existence at one and the same moment, while as potentialities one of them may exist without the other.”
         2. Hence, the relationship of actual sensation (between sensor/sensed) is a ratio: Objects of sense are pleasant in sensible extremes, and painful in excess.
      3. But how do we discriminate between sense objects of different sensory domains (aka. whiteness and sweetness)?
         1. There has to be some faculty that has access to the experience of both whiteness and sweetness.
         2. This has to be done simultaneously.
   3. Thinking, perceiving, and imagining distinguished.
      1. Remember our two faculties of the soul, (1) local movement and (2) thinking/perciving/discriminating.
      2. Thinking is akin to perceiving, for in both the soul discriminates and is cognizant of something that is.
         1. Thinking has - historically - even been identified with perceiving, although this doesn’t seem to account for the possibility of error. Unless:
            1. Whatever seems is true (there is no truth/appearance distinction).
            2. Error is contact with the unlike (although it is also widely accepted that only like can know like, and likewise error).
         2. Hence, perceiving and practical thinking are not identical. (Just think: the former is universal to all animals, the latter quite rare.)
         3. Further, speculative thinking (imagining) is also different from perceiving.
            1. In discrusive/practical thinking we are called to form judgements, in which we are constrained by truth and falsity, contra the more “free” terrain of imagination.
            2. Also, we can imagine things that will stimulate us similarly to perceptions, but which don’t endanger us.
         4. Hence, thinking is divided into thinking as judgement (3.e-h) and thinking as imagination (3.d).
   4. Imagination
      1. Imagination is not sense:
         1. Sense is either a faculty or an activity (sight, seeing), imagination takes place in the absense of both (e.g.: in dreams).
            1. Visions appear to us even when our eyes are shut.
         2. Sense is always present in animals; imagination is not.
         3. Sensations are always true; imaginations are for the most part false. (Saying that we “imagined it to be a man” is an indicator of its sense-falseness.)
      2. What is it?
         1. It’s not knowledge or intelligence, for it can be false, while the former cannot.
         2. It is not opinion, because opinion involves belief (which entails conviction, which entails reason).
            1. Hence imagination cannot be opinion in any way combined with or mediated by sensation.
         3. But, imagination is still held to be moved by sensation, and hence impossible without sensation.
            1. This movement must be necessarily (a) incapable of existing without sensation, and (b) incapable of existing except when we perceive.
            2. That in which it is found may contain phenomena both active and passive.
            3. It (the movement which spurs imagination) may be either true or false.
         4. The reason for (2.d.ii.iii) is that imagination relies on combined objects of common sense, so
            1. While single-sense-objects cannot be false (aka. whiteness is white).
            2. Second- (what is white is this or that) and third- (attributes of second-: movement, magnitude) degree objects of sense may be subject to sense-illusion.
         5. Hence, imagination must be a movement resulting from an actual exercise of sense.
   5. Passive mind.
      1. Now to turn to the thinking and knowing part of the soul. What differentiates this part, and how does thinking take place?
      2. Mind must be related to what is thinkable as sense is to what is sensible. Since (a) everything is thinkable, then, and if (b) like can only think like, and (c) the soul admits no admixture, then mind, “before it thinks, [is] not actually any real thing.”
         1. Hence, it cannot be blended with the body, lest it acquire some quality.
         2. Hence, the intellective soul is a place of potential forms.
      3. Extreme experiences of mind (very clear thoughts) seem to have the opposite effect of extreme experiences of sense (very loud music); they make the forthcoming thought more acute, and not confused.
         1. Once the mind has taken the shapes of all its objects of knowledge, it moves from the first kind of passivity to the second (cf. 2.e.iv.i): the mind is then able to think itself.
         2. Insofar as the realities the mind knows are capable of being separated from their matter (straightness vs. something straight), so also are the powers of the mind. (I wish I had an example here.)
      4. A possible objection: If mind is thinkable per se and what is thinkable is like the thinking thing, then either (a) mind belongs to everything, or (b) mind will contain some element common to all thinkable things.
         1. Qua (3.e.iv.a): Mind is /potentially/ like whatever is thinkable.
         2. Qua (3.e.iv.b): Mind is thinkable in exactly the same way its objects are: it is the potentiality of immanence as such that allows all things (speculative and materiality alike) to be thinkable. And what is mind if not the potentiality of immanence?
   6. Active mind.
      1. Since in every class of things we have (1) a matter which is potentially all the particulars included in the class, and (2) a cause which is productive in the sense that it makes them all (e.g. 2:1 as art:material).
         1. In (3.e.ii) above, we described mind as something which takes the form of its objects.
         2. In addition to this, we need a positive state which “makes” things (like light makes colors).
      2. While potential knowledge is prior in time in a subject to actual knowledge, not so in the universe.
         1. “When mind is set free from its present conditions” (when is this?) “it appears as just what it is…this alone is immortal and eternal…and without it nothing thinks.”
         2. What on earth is that referring to? I have to guess that its point at the sort of disembodied cosmological mind - mind as such - that is God. Or maybe our individual minds join up to the universal mind at death? All our souls are part of one big soul-mass, which distributes itself amongst life?
         3. Note: In the “Generation of Animals” Aristotle speaks of an intellect that enters “from without” (GA 736 b 27).
   7. The double operation of mind.
      1. Falsehood always involves a synthesis of two objects of mind (single sense-perceptions are always true).
         1. The unifying/synthesizing faculty is mind.
      2. The mind is capable of identifying simple (indivisible objects) as well.
      3. This unification of (3.g.i) can occur with actually or theoretically unified/divided objects (note that dividing the unified and unifying the divided work the same way here):
         1. Actual: The mind can divide an actually undivided length (in a similarly undivided time): In this instance, it can (e.g.) divide it in half (the object has no parts until it is divided), which also divides the time into the time in which there are two and the time in which there is one.
         2. The object of thought and the time in which it is thought here are only incidentally divisible. They also contain some indivisible unity, which gives us the time and the length as such.
         3. The best thing I can come up with here is that to have a simple line (or two), you have to have a simple time. As soon as you complicate the line (by, say, splitting it) you need complex time or the relation of contraries (one and two lines).
      4. In overview: That which cognizes must be characterized actually by one and potentially by the other of two contraries. (E.g. the cognition of evil or black.)
   8. The practical mind, and the difference between it and the contemplative.
      1. Here we get some light on (3.f.ii.ii): “…in the universe [potential knowledge] has no priority even in time; for all things that come into being arise from what actually is.”
         1. So, simple objects of sense (2.f.i.i) and knowledge (3.g.ii) - perceptions - are like bare asserting or knowing.
         2. Complex objects of sense and knowledge (movement, pain) are arrived at by negation or “quasi-affirmation” (qua 3.g.iii).
      2. The thinking soul uses images as the contents of perception. (They are like, e.g. the air that modifies the pupil for the soul: (perception-objects -> images -> soul).
      3. Let the single-sense faculties unified by (3.b.iii) be C and D where A and B are their sense objects.
         1. A:B :: C:D (aka. sweet:hot :: taste:touch)
         2. This is ostensibly how the thinking soul uses images to create judgements, which in turn lead to actions (pursuit/avoidance).
         3. Note that this is a faculty exclusive to the speculative mind. (See 3.c.ii-iii)
   9. Comparison of mind with sense and with imagination.
      1. In summary, the soul is in a way all existing things:
         1. Sensation is in a way what is sensible
         2. Kowledge is in a way what is knowable
         3. Knowable and sensible things are exhaustive of all things.
         4. The question now is: What is the way in which this is true?
      2. Within the soul, the faculties of knowledge and sensation are potentially the knowable/sensible.
         1. These potentialities must be either the things themselves or their forms.
         2. The former is impossible (viz. the stone). It must be the forms.
         3. Hence, the soul is analogous to the hand: As the hand is a tool of tools (a tool for using tools), the mind is the form of forms and sense the form of sensible things.
      3. Hence (how?):
         1. No one can learn anything in the absence of sense.
         2. When the mind is actively aware of anything, it is so through an image.
      4. Imagination is different from assertion and denial, as the latter require a synthesis of concepts.
         1. In what way do concepts differ from images?
         2. Must we not say (he asks) that concepts are not images, though they necessarily involve them?
   10. Problems about the motive faculty.
       1. Remember (again, from [3.c.i]) our two faculties of the soul, (1) originating local movement and (2) discriminating.
       2. Now, what is it in the soul that originates movement? Is it a part or the whole thing?
          1. If we have to break up the soul we’re going to stick with the old schema (2.c.i):
             1. The Nutritive
             2. The Sensitive
             3. The Imaginative/Practical (3.c.ii-iii, 3.h.iii.iii)
             4. The Appetitive
       3. Let’s start with a restricted subset of movement: What generates forward movement in the animal?
          1. It seems like the appetitive and the imaginative faculties would motivate the animal to move.
          2. It can’t be the nutritive faculty (since plants share that), nor the sensitive (for there are animals with sensation which don’t move).
          3. It can’t be the calculative/specutlative mind, for this doesn’t think things which are practical.
          4. In short, it is desire that is moves us.
          5. But we observe that something else is required to produce action in accordance with knowledge, as appetite is “too incompetent to account fully for movement.”
   11. The cause of the movement of living things.
       1. In short, it appears that the appetites and the imaginative part of mind (shared by all animals, that is, the non-rational part) motivate all movement.
       2. The practical mind is stimulated by the object of an appetite. Both practical mind and appetite are end-oriented.
          1. This ultimately means that when the imaginative/practical facility originates movement, it does so on behalf of an appetite.
          2. Thus the origin of movement is the appetitive faculty of the soul.
       3. All movement involves (a) that which originates the movement, (b) that by means of which it originates it, and (c) that which is moved (the animal).
          1. (a) may mean either something which is itself unmoved (the realizable good) or else something which is at once moves and is moved (the faculty of appetite).
       4. To sum up, insofar as an animal is capable of appetite, it is capable of self-movement. It is not capable of appetite without possessing imagination (either calculative or sensitive).
       5. Three modes of movement are possible:
       1. That in which the appetites overpower wish (gluttony)
       2. That in which the wish overpowers the appetites (restraint)
       3. That in which appetites overpower appetites (the dog drops the bone in the water)
   12. The faculty of knowing is never moved but remains at rest.
       1. The domain of knowledge is the universal, not the particular.
4. The mutual relations of the faculties of the soul, and their fitness for the conditions of life.
   1. To wrap up: All besouled things have the nutritive faculty.
   2. All animals have the sensitive faculty.
      1. Further, animals require touch specifically in order to survive (touch is a condition of being embodied).
      2. That is why taste is a sort of touch; it is the sense of the tangible and nutritious.
   3. It is clear that the body of an animal cannot consist of a single element, as it requires touch.
      1. The element of touch is earth, so earth-constitution is a requirement for embodiment.
      2. Additionally, touch must be composed of other elements, since it is capable of perceiving (e.g. hot/cold).
      3. This will also explain why when an excess of sensation is presented to any other sense (very loud noise, etc.) it simply destroys the specific sense-organ, but when an excess of touch (burning, etc) is given, it destroys the animal.
   4. Touch is “the essential mark of [animal] life.”