Unit II: Prepping for Argument
IN THIS LESSON
Agenda
If everyone has been through the diagnostics and packets, you could do the first Quill post-test here (see note below class # 13)
Grammar: Clauses and Phrases as modifiers (complex II)
Work on Definition packet
Begin ML 5
First part of summer reading discussion: defining “evil” and “good”
Homework
Quill
ML 5 reading and questions
Notes
1. Grammar: This can be review, practice, or teaching/re-teaching time.
2. Definition Packet: This can also be review or time to finish these packets, and/or discussion on the importance of definition in history or culture ( I sometimes use AI to look up “times in history when definition has been an essential part of an event”). Another discussion might have to do with ways definition can spur an argument, solve an argument, or provide a foundation for argument. This is all very important, because often, when they are writing their first argument essays, or doing an impromptu debate, or dialectic, the Topic of Definition is the first task: what are our essential terms in this argument? Are we using different definitions for the same term?
3. Material Logic Lesson 5 is based on more difficult concepts than they’ve yet encountered. You will also find more commentary and sample answers to questions in the teacher’s companion book for this course:
Again, the fundamental “lesson” behind 5 is the deepest distinction in philosophy, that between substantial form and prime matter, to a lesser extent form and matter. Basically, “form” is the reason for the holistic appearance or “given-ness” of things. Matter alone is not enough; it must be organised and actualized by form—in the case of a being, a thing, etc, a substance, the substantial form (essence, nature) is what continually “creates” that form within matter. Therefore, an acorn has the substantial form of the tree it may become; a child, or a foetus from conception, has the substantial form of a human being though the matter and accidental forms (height, shape, etc) are somewhat different.
To have knowledge of something means we have unity of mind and being( or thing ) in its form. Knowing substantial forms is like reading a book—in a sense, as you read and abstract the story, you “become” the book, the story. The story is like the substantial form.
Material Logic Lesson 5 proper is dealing with the idea of concepts, more in-depth. The fundamental lesson here is that reality precedes conceptualization. Reality, along with the human mind, are the causes of concepts, but reality is prior, in a sense, to the particular human mind. This is an example of the TOI: Relationship: Cause and Effect at work in argument, and I try to highlight this as well. I will bring this up again when we look particularly at TOIs.
Also, in this lesson, the fundamental distinction between “universal” and “particular” is introduced….a universal concept, like “cat” or “love,” is in grammar a common noun because it is not a particular thing that we encounter normally, but rather it is a reality that many actions or things have in common (ie, all acts of genuine kindness have “love” in common). However, we do capitalise particular nouns, because they refer to special or particular things or persons that are not being considered as universals.
These two concepts, universal and particular, will figure in a very common and powerful type of argument and a couple fallacies (contrary, contradiction, hasty generalization, etc).
This is an important lesson on one of the fundamental distinctions in thinking: the ability “to abstract” the essence, or substantial form, from a particular instance of a being, especially that formed in matter. This gets at the concept of “essential”---we talk about “essential definitions” or “essential arguments” etc—this becomes important in argument and rhetoric, because when we talk about “line of reasoning” or “arrangement” or “persuasion” we are getting at the form, and the “essential form” or the “substance” of the argument or persuasion, as the case may be.
This teaches them to begin distinguishing what is contingent, or accidental, and what is essential in many different forms of communication (as well as in their lives).
An important moment is when, on pg 29, the text explains a human person (from conception onward) in terms of substantial form—the same form that constitutes the essence of a human, “no matter how small” or no matter how damaged or handicapped, etc.. This is a moment that they need to experience, and it is good at times to just let them talk about it (impromptu seminar). It can get a bit tough with some of them, so judge your own confidence to have this conversation.
4. First part of summer reading discussion I: This is the students’ first chance to really dig into definition and some of the material logic they are studying. It is also a first dig at dialectic. We’re going to define “evil” and “good,” very general terms, and they can use the summer reading book(s) (Unbroken or Left to Tell) as grounding or evidence.
Again, try to push them a bit. Does “evil” have a nature, or existence? Augustine speaks about evil as actually nature-less, or an “absence or warping” of good; in other words, “evil” does not have existence in the way that “good” does. We never say “the Evil” but we do talk about the Good, that transcendental that is the perfection of being itself, or the complete fulfillment of a thing's nature. Because “good” is the perfection of being, it is a property of being and has a deep connection with existence, and at the highest levels, it has existence as a transcendental; as Aquinas says, the transcendentals can, in some way, be convertible with being. Evil, however, is not a transcendental, or even a property. It is an quality of an accident (doing–see the logic text on the Categories, ML Lesson 4).
Of course, you won’t be using all these philosophical terms, although you can gently introduce them, so that when they get to the Categories and further along in Material Logic, they will already have some deeper understanding.
I will have them culminate these discussions with a written definition paragraph, arguing for a “deixis”-level definition of both terms. This paragraph (or it could be two paragraphs) should be grammatically correct, with clear and correct syntax, and a solid paradigmatic element (precise terms, good evidence, analysis). I will often push students quite hard on this (depending on where each is in terms of confidence and understanding), encouraging them to revise for greater clarity and precision.