Today's episode is brought to you by the Michelle and Fresh to Pre-Foundation and Grandpa's Cheese in Porium in Ashland, Ohio. That's Grandpa's Cheese in Porium, where we don't just let you finger the cheese. We let you f*** it. How are you doing, Alex?
My good friend? I'm great. I was just thinking. That's funny.
I was just thinking. Well, it's true. We have sponsors. No, we haven't had an advertiser in forever.
I think we're really... I wonder why. I know. I mean, they're absolutely disgusting.
I'm pretty sure my mom will be back on the show now after that introduction. But how are you doing? I'm good. Good.
Good. I was named at the end of the summer. It was wonderful. I was wearing it in airports.
It was where you were going to catch COVID. There were people coughing on you. So I just cuffed back at them. You got to get a couple more goodies.
I do. And speaking of the elderly people, how are you doing? I'm great. How are you, David?
Good. Nice to hear from you. I'm just to be clear. I'm glad you changed your name so we won't actually face any lawsuits from the cheese barn.
Yeah. I did that on purpose. Yeah, I thought so. They don't let you do that.
It's a crucial one. Yeah. There are a few people who... That's why you go there.
That's why you go there. It's more fun when it's illegal. Yeah. It's when you know, cheese like the adult stores, the magazines behind the black plastic covers, they have the cheese.
Yeah. But you know, Greg has his methods for stealing it. And I think Martha and Nussbaum's probably going to sue us too. That's almost me.
Just me. I think it would be. Yeah. But today we have a returning guest, a close friend of ours, somebody we admire for his wisdom.
Director of Academic Programs at the Jack Miller Center, Tom Cleveland. I just say Dr. Cleveland. Tom is a background in Deep Background in Pluck of Philosophy.
I believe you wrote your dissertation on the law. Is that accurate? That's correct. Yeah.
So welcome. Good to have you. I'm pleased to be back. Excellent.
So what are we talking about? So how did this episode even come about? This ridiculously difficult text? Yeah.
We loved Tom. And I asked him, we loved Tom. And I think in an effort to get out of this, you cite something very... I asked for this, didn't I?
No, no, no, no. Alex, that's what it was. I asked for this. Greg recommended it and we both said, I haven't.
No way. And I said, what about Tom? Way too far. And I was like, why don't we have Tom?
Come on. We'll just tell him a lecture a little bit. All right. Yeah, yeah.
I'm really interested in this stuff. Yeah, it's not all jokes aside. But what is the time and what are we even doing? Yeah.
And the translation also, if you could write it right. Yeah. So we're reading a treatise from a collection of treatises by Aristotle called Arva Naturolia. Oh.
And this we're reading has the very exciting title on prophecy from sleep. So you mentioned the translation. There's been newly translated by David Bolatin, Sirius Mann. He translated a day animal before this.
Maybe he's got a book related to this that was published a while back called an approach to Aristotle's physics with a special focus on his manner of writing something like that. Yeah. Really great subtitle. Really draws you in.
The whole book sounds like it. The publishers must be thrilled with these subtitles. But yeah, I do recommend this translation. I did it for university press.
For some reason they don't publish books in a handsome fashion. A decent price? A decent price. Yeah.
You did Danema and then he did this, right? And they're related. Right. So that's worth saying.
I mean, how is it commonly translated? I don't even know. It's not translated. It means small things.
How do you do with nature? Parp and naturally is it a collection of books within a larger work or? So yeah, so I think Alex was referring to the fact that Bolatin translated Danema and he translated this. And there's a way in which these treatises function as a kind of sequel to Danema.
So maybe I'll just begin by naming the treatises and eventually we'll get to prophecy and sleep. But the table of context. We've got first on sense perception and sense perceptibles on memory and the recollection. On sleep and awakeness, on dreams, on prophecy from sleep.
Now in the tradition, we go straight from that to on long liveliness and short liveliness. Bolatin has a good argument that on the motion of animals belongs in this collection. And he also makes the argument that on the generation of animals belongs as collection, though he does not translate it in the volume in question. So on the motion of animals on the generation of animals and on long liveliness and short liveliness is the next one.
And then the last one is possibly you could bring it up further. But we've got on youth and old age and life and death and breathing. And you could just add these out of order, Tom, with some profit or is the sequence. Well, I think you could study them out of order.
I've made some efforts to see that there's a sequence. And at the beginning at the end of some of the treatises, he definitely says, like, well, now I talked about this. Now I have to talk about the other thing and applying that they really belong together. And I mean, another thing I could say is that it could be worth reflecting on the order that's present here.
I don't know if we want to do that at this second, but there's some guesses that could be made of that. And you pointed out in some of your notes that you sent us at the beginning of the first treatise on sense perception, in sense, perception that was one that eludes back to the animal. But then he also lays out a number of topics that he then follows in it. So there's quite a lot of evidence it seems like that they all sort of fit together.
Can I go back? Is it okay to take a step back? Like this is a podcast called The New Thinkery and Alex put a little colon after the colon. It says something like a podcast about it's a political philosophy.
And particularly- That's the manner of writing. Yeah. Thank you. And I don't help me to defend ourselves against someone who's tuning in and expecting, you know, on- How to rule or statesmanship or has to have your friend in the back and get- Well, this is- Don't have those kinds of activities.
That's a good question. On sleep, on memory. I mean, what does this have to do with political philosophy? Well, I mean, I guess one thing I would say is- I mean, you could ask what political philosophy is.
And one interpretation is a species of philosophy. And which would imply that you would need to know what other parts of philosophy are. Or I mean, there's a possible relation between political philosophy and the other parts or what the whole of philosophy is. And then I would also say, I think you've had guests before.
Maybe one guest at least says things like, you know, the real first philosophy is political philosophy. And sometimes there's some thoughts in that direction. But, you know, it's worth reflecting that that's a very peculiar thing to say. Because most naturally what philosophy means is, you know, investigating their beings and their causes.
And it's not clear in what way political philosophy could play that role. But just as a general point, I would say, you know, no matter the relation, I think you would be compelled to think about the rest of the philosophy. Right, of course. Can you speak for a second about this isn't in our show, but- Can you speak for a second about the relationship and Aristotle between his political philosophy?
And these works, like, are they related? Can they be separable? I mean, if he's wrong about the motion of the planets, should we throw out politics? Or how are these things related?
If at all? Yeah, so I mean, I think that's a big question. And as opposed, I would say, though, opposed to Plato, the Aristotelian corpus, at least parts of it seem to have a pretty clear order. There's an argument you could make that.
Well, you begin with the ordinate. That is his logical works, you know, beginning with the categories and on interpretation and the prior analytics. Going all the way through, and that provides an entrance into a different part of his philosophy, maybe physics, and then eventually you get a metaphysics. But even if you do something like that, it's hard to see where the political works, including the ethics and politics, and there's a bunch of guesses that you could make.
And I would say if you look at the political works, sometimes he refers back to the more properly scientific or theoretical works, but in an ambiguous way. So I'm thinking, for example, at the first book of the ethics near the end, he provides a kind of psychology of the parts of the soul. And then he's like, well, just be clear. I'm more precise about this somewhere else, presumably in DeAnima.
And so from that point of view, it looks like you might enter into his philosophy through the ethics, not having read DeAnima, but eventually you do need to read DeAnima. You know, a different, similarly in the politics, there's stuff about teleology that is much cruder than the teleology that he describes in his physics and so forth. Yeah, I mean, in a way, you can read the ethics and the politics both end with sort of discussions of the politics of the education of the philosopher in a way within the polis. Ethics ending with an account of the best life is the contemplative life.
They seem to be kind of moral arguments leading up or in part, right, leading up towards this sort of like another thing that I got the sense from your notes and also just reading a bit is that it seems like what Aristotle's doing in his work is a different approach to understanding the human being or the intellect, which is, okay, there's human beings, and then there's animals. And we kind of have some things in common. And maybe if we can define, define these like lower faculties and phenomena, it'll help us clarify what exactly is going on that's above mere well sensibility or something like sensory perception. Or above mere sleeping and or just ordinary dreaming and how this determined.
What are the distinctive phenomena of human beings in these experiences and how that might help us decide their specific causes, right? Yeah, that seems right to me. And I guess like one, I mean, just one very crude point. What you describe is real hard.
It's like real complicated. And then like to make a second point related to the question of like the connection between this and political philosophy, you know, one possible connection is that thinking about the things you're talking about is difficult to do in so far as if you haven't thought about three or four years ago. If you haven't thought about through moral matters and various hopes that we have those provide obstacles to you thinking through that matter clearly. So anyway, that's just proposing one relation between the things that a political policy, you know, gets rid of obstacles to approaching this matter, difficult matter clearly.
Can I tell a story? Funny story? Yeah. Yeah.
I met a person. I was talking about causes of strange visions, right? I met a guy once he was talking about how he was traveling to Europe and he had to stop. And he had just seen his grandmother.
She was very sick and then he stopped, I think in New York or something on his way. And as he's sitting in his hotel room, he sees this fly and it's flying around and it kind of slows down and then it dies. And he was convinced that his dead, you laugh, David, but this is true. Okay.
He was convinced that this flight was his dead grandmother and having died another less consequential death or what? Yeah. Well, and the reason he said is because his fly was fat and his grandmother was kind of a big lady. So he was convinced this was a divine revelation.
Now, just so how many his grandmother did die. And so then he was like, oh, so you study Fosmigo again and he goes, well, how do you explain something like that? And I offered some kind of rudimentary explanation. You didn't say the Lord has a sense of humor?
I don't know. I said that's a pretty, I feel bad for a square mother. I'm going to compare it to this fat fly. But yeah, the Tom's point, right?
If you haven't thought through your sort of moral political, theological commitments or presuppositions, you're not going to be able to think about what your dreams or these coincidences or anything are, right? You need to sort of be thoroughly perplexed at least in that sort of regard before you can think clearly about these ordinary natural, apparently natural phenomena. But Aristotle, I mean, we should probably get to the text in the hand, but Aristotle is pretty careful in doing this in the ethics and politics. I mean, he's not, I mean, for example, some of the things you're talking about, he leaves some of these opinions very much intact in the ethics.
People's theological views, for example, about what happens after you die. Right? I mean, it's not clear that reading the ethics that, you know, what would a, someone who's read the ethics say to somebody who said that fly story like you said? Right?
When they say, well, it's unseemly not to sort of say, well, maybe it was a sign or something like this. That might be too far left. I mean, I would say, and this is, again, maybe approaching the text. In his other works, he doesn't, I think you're right that he doesn't attack these opinions and seems to respect them.
On the other hand, you know, it's a basic point about the ethics that like piety doesn't play a role. Right. In the politics of priests, but nevertheless, there isn't like a long description of like the greatness and purpose of religion in a city and so forth. And in like scientific works, he'll say stuff maybe like friendly to traditional religion, but for the most part, he is not directly confronted.
Yeah. I thought here, I mean, I don't know if you want to go through a little bit of unsens and semesters first, but I mean, in the on prophecy and from sleep, I thought he was pretty openly dismissive of some things. Well, that's my point. Okay.
One interesting thing about this text in this lecture, the text is that we have traditional religious opinions, namely that God sends messages to certain people about the future that are true, and he confronts them directly. We deny them. Yeah. And in the context of this, this natural scientific work, and it's more direct than I think you see in other places.
Now, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. No, no, no, no.
Finish that. I was only going to say that that doesn't mean that this is like the best place to understand Aristotle's opinions on religion. I think it's like a pretty clear place to see his conclusions about certain things regarding God and religion, but it could be the case that like a basis for this opinion or conclusion is elsewhere. And now it's correct me if I'm wrong, but is this the text that your great ancestor the Ayatollah used to prop up his murderous regime?
That's the Republic. Okay. That's actually the laws. Isn't it Tom's work?
Well, there's so many nice things to check out. Yeah. A lot of Plato's convenience. Oh, Tom, and this is my life.
I guess this will be the last question we can get to it. Is he having a dialogue with Plato in any of these, say on the on-profit or in the same way that you know how like Burderer, you know, run as a book on the ethics really reveals the conversation that the ethics is having with a certain dialogues. Is that kind of thing going on here? I think I haven't done for that.
I mean, Plato was often in the background of Aristotle and in the background, I thought I was reminded of Yuthafro here that helps it all. Oh, sure, right. Or the as an example of what Aristotle's talking about here. Like the word prophecy, it's a different Greek word for prophecy there.
Is it the same here? It's... I can't think of it. It is.
It's what we're here? I'm to get here. Okay. Let's get it right.
I've been put to it in harm. But he does claim to be a prophet. He throws a prophet. He throws a prophet.
I would say that he throws a prophet. The approach here though is in the context of the natural scientific treatise and then it is the same word. And then it's going to simplify the Yuthafro looks like what we were calling political philosophy. And this is in the context of natural science.
Now, does not say they don't have anything to do with each other, but it doesn't seem like a different approach. Well, it's interesting. The first question we asked about first- what's first- velocity is if political philosophy is something else? If these are his conclusions, maybe it does presuppose some of the other kinds of political investigations first.
Or maybe the ones come subsequent to this and confirm the natural scientific. I don't know if it's just an interesting question. Yeah. I mean, I've got prejudices in all sorts of directions.
Let's see if we can direct it. It might be the case that we don't address it beyond this part of our conversation. That's keeping in mind. Yeah, for sure.
All right. We're next. Well, I guess I would say- I'll just reiterate one point. The first chapter of on sense perception and sense perception as we mentioned already sort of announces all of these works as a sequel to Danema.
And I just like to emphasize a couple of differences. He's not just repeating things. He was doing Danema. There's a sort of different approach that I think can help us understand the prophecy treatise we want to look at.
And the first thing I will say is that in these treatises they are much more readily I think like materialistic or physiological. Or there's a focus on the question of cause and the way that there isn't necessarily or isn't in the same way in Danema. So the example I'd give, and I think this is related to on prophecy, is in Danema when discussing sense perception. He seems to- I mean, he assumes that there is some perceptible which is the cause of the activity of perception, but he doesn't investigate what that perceptible itself is.
And that's specifically the question that he engages in in this treatise. That is, something is the cause. And this is an industry's answer. What is that actually?
And it's a difficult question. And it's not clear he himself thinks you can come to a final answer on it. So I just want to emphasize that one aspect of this treatise or this series of treatises. Now, another thing, and I think this is related to something Alex was saying before, in this series of treatises, he discusses a much wider variety of functions of living beings, not just the nutritional soul in general and all the sense of perception.
But he also talks about sleep and breathing and getting old and dying. So there's a much more grounded view of the human in connection with the rest of living beings than there is in Danema. So that's a couple of aspects that color the kind of investigation that goes on here. Now, another important aspect I think for understanding the prophecy.
Can I just real quick as you move to Eltran, maybe I'll try and transition first, I'll make a plug again to the vault in translation of Danema, which I think does really- I just re-read it. I just re-read that a couple of years ago and it really seems to bring out in a way that I sort of made perhaps not clear out of myself. I sort of thought he ourselves focused on perception and locomotion were sort of the key. And it seems like he ourselves moves to touch being the fundamental perception towards the animating quality ultimately.
So anyway, his translation brings that out. He's really good. He sort of goes through the manuscripts. He does the same thing here.
The notes are extensive. This is a great text for beginners, but they might find it a little off-putting as far as there's a lot of square brackets and he's sort of telling you what's not there in the text. But he makes it clear. He really understands this is the translation used.
So can you connect sense, perception to this? Is the idea that prophecy from sleep is somehow a perception? Does that make sense to me? My question makes sense to me and I think it's clear in my mind why he's treating these.
I realize there's steps in between them. But it seems as though the question that would be really kind of my mind is if this is a thing, what perceptive faculty is receiving it? If that makes sense. So there is this connection between perception and receiving prophecy in sleep.
Yeah, I guess the way I would put it is that he makes at the beginning of on-sense reception, he makes a claim that there's sort of higher functions among them. Sense, perception, memory, and I think locomotion in so far as it's driven by some conception of the good which draws us to it. Yeah. Fantastic.
When we talk about that, we're pretty much like, good. And he makes the assertion that all these higher things are dependent on sense, perception. And there's a way in which to that sleep and weakness are dependent on sense, perception quite obviously. There's an interesting discussion about the plant's sleep.
And the plant's not sleep because you know, weakness is sense, perception and the deprivation of sense, perception is sleep. Now from this point of view, you know, like sleep, being awake is good, sleeping is bad. On one hand. And on the other hand, people while they're sleeping receive images and dreams which seem to tell them things that are more important than they're going to receive.
And there is a general opinion that those things are not dependent on sense, perception, but are given directly by God. Right. So the notion that you can receive these special messages from dreams is contrary to like the entire direction of or like suppositions of the treatments. Exactly.
But there is a way in which the logic so to speak of the people who buy into this is somehow confirmed in their minds by the fact that other senses seem to be amplified during sleep as well, right? So like if you hear something small, doesn't there's something going on in this? Like if you hear something kind of small up in the world, but if you're sleeping, you think it's really loud. Or if something's warm, you think you're on fire or if something like you have a dream, you're in the Arctic Circle and you're just a little chilly.
My favorite is he's got a little bit of a tiny bit of thought you think you're drinking honey or something. Which is, and that analysis you think you're hearing from God within the dream, but in fact, like I don't know, you've got like a spider in your ear or something like that. Right. So I mean, yeah, maybe we're looking at the beginning of the police on prophecy and sleep because I mean, I guess the way I would put it is that this is a short text we should mention folks like you could read it in what an hour or something.
Right. Maybe not well then. Yeah. So, I mean, the way I would put it is that people claim that there are these special messages and dreams that are not dependent on sense perception and do not have a natural cause.
It's a challenge for him to argue that in fact, these aren't special things from God and they are readily explicable according to natural causes. And we can talk about the manner in which he attempts to do that and how successful he is or how successful he thinks he is. But yeah, just as like, you know, spoiler alert, doesn't think they come from God's anything. They all got to be explicable through natural means.
Does keep open, doesn't he keep open the possibility that he's wrong though? I mean, although I agree with you, but doesn't he always sort of formally keep open the possibility that, okay, maybe, am I missing that? Right. I'm importing that into the text.
Like, I mean, there's a few places where he says something like, oh, man, I'll have to find it, not that it's that long. Well, maybe, maybe one way to, because there's a number of different things going on here. One of the things he, so he starts off by saying concerning prophecy that comes into being in sleep and that is set to result from dreams. It isn't easy either to despise it or to be convinced of it.
Right. Right. So, you know, you're not on the fence, right? Well, on the one hand, you want to be contentious of the sort of ground.
On the other hand, you don't want to be too quickly contentious. On the other hand, you can't really be won over, right? For the fact that all are many people take it to be the case that dreams are something of the character of science is important because he talks about science versus causes, the dream that's not... And twin sedences.
Yeah. And that there's a third guy anyway. To get to be the case that dreams have something of the character of science lends credence to the reports of prophetic dreams as being spoken from experience and not incredible that there's genuine prophecy in dreams concerning some things. And as he's working through to going to the cause that might make sense of this, one of the first he comes to is a God, right?
Right. And the first thing he does is he says that it's strange that he doesn't send the best and most intelligent people, but to ordinary people. And as he goes on to say, not just any ordinary person, but the melancholy, right? And those who are subject to quick changes, right, who react quickly to changes.
And the presumption being here that if there is a God, he would never choose such a thing, right? Which is a natural theology to claim about the nature of God or of gods. Right. So I think there's two types of, yeah, so as you say, he first says, like, well, a lot of people say this is the case that we can't just dismiss it.
A lot of people do say it. On the other hand, the people that claim to have these dreams are dumb. And it would be really weird if God chose these people to share special messages with. So that's one type of argument, as he said, I think it is sort of natural theological.
The second type of argument is that if we try to seek the means by which it happens, you know, it's not readily available to us or explicable by us. I guess if it's not a God, and to some extent we can say it can happen through natural means. But I do think it's we're dwelling on this, as you're saying, this natural theological claim, because I think there's like a bunch of assumptions built into that. And I don't know how I question how strong such an argument is, at least by itself, because as far as I can tell, there's something like this.
You know, if there are gods who choose to communicate, they would be like wise people. And wise people don't talk to nincomputes. They talk to smart people if they're going to give messages. Therefore, if nincomputes say they are getting special messages from a divine VA, they're probably not telling the truth or confuse.
Or God would not do such this thing. Again, that's a kind of argument. But it's hard to know how strong such an argument is. Well, I mean, one interesting claim you mentioned earlier, there was a question right about what Plato might be in the background.
You mentioned maybe Keflis. And in that situation, it wise me it does talk to an income loop. And it sort of seems to enjoy it, at least. It's not like in the youth that throw where it seems like it's really thrust upon Socrates in that moment.
So Keflis approaches Socrates and he's just sort of like, hey, let's talk about this. And prize him a little. It doesn't last that long now that this treat is either. But there's a, I mean, there's some, yeah, I don't know what you would do with that in the context of unproficity and sleep.
But that seems seems like a difficult claim, right? Right. I mean, like, I think there's another bit of the Republic I think related to this. So like the theology you have at the end of book, is that the end of book two?
Or am I confused? Yes, at the end of book two. Yeah. The end of book two, right?
There's a kind of natural theology there, which is that God's are perfect beings in need of nothing. If you're in need of nothing, the way it's expressed is you would not lie to people. But the basis of them not lying to anybody is that if you're in need of nothing, you don't bother communicating with human beings at all. Why would you do that?
You don't need to do anything. And so I think this claim is sort of like that claim. But like I said, I think it assumes it's not clear to me what the basis of that assumption is that you know what a perfect being is and is not capable of such that you apply those qualities to that being that you're not familiar with. Why can't it be the case that God's accurate mysterious reasons beyond what a very smart human being like Aristotle or Plato?
I just think it's worth questioning or not just taking for granted as a knockdown punch. Right. I mean, yeah, and that's really good. I mean, one could say that if God wanted to reach more people, that might be precisely the kind of person who would speak to sort of ordinary person who could then relay the message.
I don't want to get too far ahead, but this is different than an idea of prophecy that prophecies in our related to the intellectual faculty. Right. That's true. Yeah.
It's not like a character logical thing, right? One thing you'll just say is, well, the melancholic and easily change are the ones with whom you can most readily speak to right in in sleep, whereas an intelligent person might be an inclined to listen to their dreams. Yeah, they might be overly inclined to materialist natural scientific explanations for things. I'm reminded of the beginning of when the prophet Samuel first receives prophecy has no idea what's going on.
And it's the other guy that's got talking to you. He has no idea what's going on. And just to draw this connection a little bit, the whole whole treatises two chapters since about nine pages and in balladins translation, but it ends with the different way in which, and just the right that negatively the different way in which the sort of melancholic and changeable person would react to their dreams. And the way that the, I don't want to say philosophers, I don't think it uses the word here, the way that somebody theorizes with the artful judge of dreams, right, who's far more skeptical and who has a far more rational procedure rather than the person who is just sort of very vehement is the word that's used.
I think it's so addressed, right, somebody who's very excessive or extreme, right, who would react, I think more immediately and would have a more driven reaction to the prophecy rather than what does he say? The one who is quickly able to perceive distinctly and to see together the scattered and distorted fragments of the images. Like, so this guy's trying to get a prophecy out, right? This is just to say that I think there are good grounds for maybe questioning the natural theology.
Great. Oh, wait, how's that question the natural theology claim then? Well, the natural theology is that a God would never speak to this sort of person, but it might be that a God speaking to a philosopher is like when the Oracle tells Socrates nobody's wise, you know, nobody's wise, right? Then Socrates engages in this long mission and everything like that, right?
So there's the way that one person will react to a prophecy that's very thoughtful and reflective. It's like, I don't know, they'll go to the therapist or something like that. They just start picking it apart. Whereas the person who believes that is inclined to believe that it's a God will react more vehement, right, and follow through with the prophecy or communicate the prophecy.
Does that make sense? Oh, so you're arguing like, well, if you were a God, you're saying that you wanted to pick someone to carry out your mission, you would choose the Dumbo, not the philosopher. The guy's going to get the word out. He's just utterly convinced by the first thing he sees.
I do think that, I don't know if this is natural theology per se, but there's like an underlying question here is like, what is the divine and what is it capable of and how do you determine what the divine is and what it is capable of. And Aristotle's conclusion, just by the way, he speaks, is like not the kind of thing that would be communicating with dumb people, first of all, but I would say more generally, not the kind of thing that would be communicating with dumb people. At least with respect to particular actions. And so it's hard to see.
So he seems to have come conclusions about that. And it's not easy to tell from this text why he comes to those conclusions. To be fair, he doesn't, I mean, I want to, I think Aristotle is very careful, right? He doesn't say it's simply wrong that a God would speak to ordinary people.
He said it'd be strange. Yes. So it'd be a little weird. Other translations probably do that as absurd or something.
I'd be crazy. Kind of not to feel like talk to them, not to people. But I don't mean that to go too far, just that I think he's aware that this isn't a knockdown drag out conclusion. Right, right.
Well, I guess I do want to connect it to like themes and the rest of this collection and the animal, which is that one definition of God would be something like some perfect immaterial intelligence. And then you would have to ask the question, like, are there such things? And if there are such things, what would they be like or what would they do? Right.
Right. And according to the kind of analysis in Danima and in this treatist, any intellect that exists is dependent. So like you say the intellect makes, has knowledge of universals. That's like one sort of claim that would be asserted by Aristotle.
That by itself would seem to preclude knowledge of particulars. Now, what does that mean to plain English? Or I know what you mean, but what does that mean? God knows bird, but not this particular bird or human being, but not Alex Prio.
Or does not know Alex Prio. The object of intellect are intelligibles, which are universals. Right. So yeah, you're saying like human being rather than Alex, you know, and so that's one point to make.
A second point to make would be something which in a way goes in a different direction, which is that the intellect we are familiar with, human intellects come to such knowledge through sense perception that is insofar as they have bodies. Because there are disembodied intellects, or if there are disembodied intellects, it's only they only come to the knowledge that they have of universals through knowledge of particulars. And so, you know, this is not yet an argument against there being gods as they normally can see, but it's clear that the kind of account of intellect he gives is not compatible with the view that there could be such beings. And then you can push the question back, you know, why isn't the room for such, you know, what is the basis of that kind of argument?
So, I just feel like in the background of the conclusions he's coming to here are so much more like bigger complicated questions. So, there's one way to think about what he's doing here then is that he's got, so he lays out the theology in metaphysics, lambda, right? And so he's got this particular notion of gods who, you know, God who cannot know particular things, but then he's got these people running around saying, yeah, gods send a dream, and the dream actually predicts something. And so the question is, sometimes that thing's predicted happens.
That's what I'm saying, he predicts. Okay, got it. So, and so then the, then the, the Aristotle has to, in a way, maybe he's throwing up his theology to a certain extent, and because this is a phenomenon that happens in the world. And so he's trying, maybe it's merely rhetorical, but maybe it's more something he's trying, it seems like if he can reduce the prophecy to particular things to sort of just simple, efficient causality operating on purely natural faculties of the soul, that would take away this particular prophecy and negatively at least clean up this phenomenon so that the God of metaphysics, lambda, looks a little more believable.
Right. Yeah, so maybe it's worth actually talking a little bit about the text. So, where he attempts to do what you're talking about. So in the first chapter, he just makes this general cake like claims like, okay, dreams could either be causes of things or signs of things, or they could be incidental concomonants.
Is there, let's just sign a different word for that. How about coincidence? Oh, that's interesting. Okay.
That's interesting. That's interesting. That's interesting. That's interesting.
You've been incident on confidence. So, you know, some dreams could be signs of things or symptoms of things going on the body. You were saying, like, you've got like post-nasal drip, which, while you're awake since a bunch of other stuff going on, you don't notice, but then like, when nothing else is going on, you like taste something in the back of his throat and there's like honey involved and you talk to a smart, you know, pill estopic doctor. He's like, he's like, well, you must have post-nasal drip.
You're about to get COVID next week or whatever. And so that's completely explicable. It's a sign of something going on your body. Otherwise, when you've noticed, the second one he discusses, maybe someone can help me with this.
Oh, right. So I had dreams like this, actually, where like, you dream something is going to happen and then upon awakening, you think on it and then you do it. Right. So I had dreams like that before where like, I haven't thought about someone or had like called them in a while and then like I had a dream about them and then I called them the next day.
But again, that's not, that's not, that's the reason you do the thing is because you're dreamt about it. So there's nothing mysterious going on there. And then he tends to say that. But people would think there's something mysterious, but people are inclined to think there's something mysterious there because why did I dream about that particular person arrives that led me then to follow up.
And so you're right, it's sort of self-fulfilling in a way. But then for most people, at least I want to know where that came from. And I would say when such things happen, one interpretation one might be tempted to is that you have been commanded to do something. Of course.
That is the most natural interpretation of that, that often will not be like, oh, I just been thinking about them. I'm going to do it. There's no greater significance. The feeling might be like, I've been sent a message and you can do the thing to the message that has been sent to me from somewhere.
Right. Now, having said those things, admitting these things can happen, he says, well, for the most part, these things happen like what happened to me. These things happen like a coincidence. That is, you think of something and you know, we think about all sorts of things.
Sometimes the things you happen to think about actually happen. You tend to notice more. Do you believe about thousands of dreams in your life? Most of them don't happen.
But if one of them does, then you're going to be talking about that, you know, at the bar. You know, every time you can get somebody to listen to you. Right. I had a dream that I murdered Lara last night.
Yeah. You should do it. I think it's a prophecy. I have dreams like this, but I have my neighbors going to do the same thing.
Was that David? I said you should just act on it. I don't know if you'll blame you. You were commanded by the faith of your fathers.
So, I mean, that's the tendency. Now, when we get into the second cap, so at the end of the first chapter, you have to say, well, let's just go into the second chapter. I think he opens up some different possibilities. And actually, if we're getting to the second chapter, we should deal with this interesting statement that is useful in discussing all sorts of things that dreams are demonic.
Yes. Or nature is demonic, but not violent. Actually, that's maybe we're dwelling on a little bit. What the hell is going on there?
I do. I mean, I get in a kind of rudimentary sense that nature does all sorts of things. This is not the right reading of demonic, but it's kind of devilish. Mysterious, I would say.
Mysterious. That's not a good translation. But here's what I thought. So, I thought Volton's footnote 12 was kind of helpful here.
Top of page 136, where the beginning of the middle of that footnote. This is what I was talking about earlier with dreams. I think that there is something weird about dreams that we talked about this maybe earlier, where your mind can actually, because you're at rest and so your other things aren't affecting you as much. There's a way in which it seems like your mind can put things together.
I guess David was talking about this in the pre-before we started recording. But how your mind can kind of in a weird way that maybe you're not even aware of or comprehending, you can start to put things together. So, like, you dream about your own sally. Why?
Well, maybe it's just random. But maybe it's that somebody mentioned something that you saw somewhere on Facebook and then you also saw this thing about people who have these falling traits and then you're sleeping and you sort of, you don't think, oh, Sally has those traits and so therefore I should call and see how I'm doing. But something weird is going on your head. I don't know.
He says this is a vault in a footnote. He or however, is the nature of demonic error, so that was apparently attributing to our human or even animal nature, like a capacity for sensing in dreams and perhaps also in other ways, indications of future events. So, like, there's some way in which the mind can, it's not like, I don't mean to sound as mystical or as prophetic as it sounds, but just like, you can kind of put things to get, you can do this in waking sometimes too, right? You can just kind of see how it invents from folding.
Does that make sense? Yeah. I mean, I've had- It was not like, oh my God, next Tuesday, actually, is going to happen. It's just like, oh, I can see the natural unfolding of the way that this is going to happen.
I remember in graduate school, I had a few experiences where I was studying something for a class or a work or whatever, and I was working on a pastor's play, and I just couldn't figure out what the hell was going on. I would go to sleep, I'd wake up the next day, and the first thing I'd do was go back to work on it and it would clear up in two seconds. Right. Something like that.
It's just like, I didn't do anything. Yeah. Somehow something happened. And so, and now sometimes, you know, I could then have a dream where I'm sitting there studying this office again, just like it was when I was awake, and Seth Benner-Dettie comes to you and says, it means this, and I have something like that.
And then I wake up and I'm like, it does mean this, right? I know you're- I know you're saying that. So that in that situation, every, every side of the experience, I couldn't figure it out that Seth Benner-Dettie spoke me to dream, and then I knew the answer upon waking. I would be like the ghost of Benner-Dettie visited me, right?
And that would be a divine revelation. But in reality, it's a kind of image based on a much paltryer thing happening in my brain that manifests itself as a great god, Seth Benner-Dettie, and that leads me to this delusion, right? And so he's given that naturalistic explanation of that, that sort of apparently divine or supernatural that- Well, I mean, just to deal with the question of the demonic, you know, the comet, uh, uh, the monion, the same as Socrates, the monion. It's like a diminutive of a divine being, right?
Yeah, so I mean, my first approach to the question is that there are some things that are done through the intention of human beings, right? And then there is everything else that happens. The like that entire like, genus of things that are not intended by human beings, we can call demonic. Now there's a question of what like what the character of the demonic is, um, all this other stuff that happens.
There is a tendency to want to interpret some of it as genuinely divine. That is not through some human intention, but through some other beings' intention or some divine beings' intention. And the statement that nature is demonic, not divine, I think has the tendency of saying there is not a divine intention at working all in everything else. There are human intentions, that stuff happens, and then everything that happens in the world in nature, including in ourselves is, you know, natural or merely demonic.
Now that can, as you were saying, I can still be mysterious because it includes things for which we do understand the causes and includes things for which we do not yet understand the causes. But that doesn't mean that causes. It just means we may not understand the causes. Right.
And for things that happen by, I mean, things that happen by chance, defined in a way by the fact that things that happen by chance are defined by, you know, us saying this thing happened as if it was according to some intention. Right. So like even our, even our perception of things happening by chance is sort of related to some notion of intention, even if we're in the state of denying that it really wasn't intention. And that's in the physics where he lays that out, right?
Right. The chance. So then is he trying to say by saying nature is demonic or not divine? Is he trying to offer, I don't know, an adjective or some sort of just simple sort of description of nature such that it could be mistaken for divine.
It's mysterious. That's good. Therefore we take it as divine, but it's mysterious in the sense of it, there just causes you haven't worked out yet or can't work out because of some inability to figure out, you know, that you would flatten your throat at that time or something. Is that in a way, like it's, it's a word that neatly straddles a sort of plain ignorance of a natural cause but also a God.
Yeah. I don't know if the pre-ecyrics would say that like nature is demonic or something. I don't know if that's going to color. What is it because that because the pre-ecyrics think that the causes are all, I don't want to, I'm a fan of the pre-ecyrics.
Yeah. I mean, I'm thinking of the parody of the pre-ecyrics. Yeah. I mean, Heraclitus has that wonderful, right?
Nature loves to hide herself, right? Right. So it's kind of reflexive self-hiding and that's what you can know about nature that it is a sort of some hiding thing that sounds similar to this, but it's not demonic, right? No, no, like having said all of that, you know, when he gets to saying, he like raises the question again in chapter two saying like, okay, if it's not all by coincidence, what could it be?
At which point he launches into a very crude, pre-secratic explanation of prophetic dreams in which there are, according to the democratist, affluences from far off that affect the brain and therefore might explain why especially not smart people could have visions that really tell them things that are like not near to them in time or space. In so far as people that don't have a lot to go in other minds are easily influenced by these small affluences. So having just said that maybe he thinks nature is mysterious, he just asserts this very crude, sort of science, pseudo-science, big explanation for things he otherwise would not be able to understand. And frankly, I don't know what to do with that.
It's not like elsewhere in Aristotle's works, he makes use of democracy and affluences as an explanation for things, but in this case to explain certain prophetic dreams, he says, well, if it happens, maybe it happens through this means. Wow. I don't know what to do with that. Maybe this is too fast, but if it's not caused by Aristotle's God, it should be explicable in purely temarcity in terms or something like that.
Ultimately. Yeah, ultimately. And so, well, yeah, I don't know, maybe it's temarcity and affluences, but it's not God. It's not God.
It's not. Yeah. I mean, what I would say is that it seems like for a moment he's saying, okay, maybe there are prophetic dreams by even dumb people, but it happens through this means. The means he describes as not an intentional divine intelligence, deciding to share special information.
That's some kind of natural scientific effluent theory. I guess my point though was that he doesn't know that this effluent theory is true and he probably ought not think it's true. Yeah. And I don't know if that's like a sign that he's admitting there's sort of gaps in my account or this is just the most he's willing to admit.
He doesn't really think that there are prophetic dreams, but if it's so important to say there are some, it's got to happen through some natural means. Maybe this one. So maybe in support of what I said about the metaphysics land of that line, after he works through this, he says, and because of these things, this experience or this thing that you're going to go, this path, those happens to ordinary people and not to those who are most intelligent. Okay.
Well, why? He says, it would have come to be during the day and to the wise. So that's a different aspect of the natural theology as a touch target, right? Initially it would be to the wise, but now he's also saying it would be to the day, right?
So while they're studying yourself, then you're thinking deeply about these things, then the active intellects, you know, and we can go into all that if you want, but there would be this commuting with the active intellect and God would then communicate universal knowledge in your wakeful state of contemplation or something like that. So it seems like he's like, look, stupid people are just like, whatever, explain it with democracy on the other side. Maybe it's, you know, this other thing, you know, it would have to be this other thing. So Tom, you're saying that this ends on a sort of likely story, then?
Well, I don't know. I don't know. I guess what I, one hunch I have is something like he knows, he knows he ought to explain every, be able to explain everything through natural causes. He does not know for sure that there are never prophetic dreams.
He basically thinks they're mostly coincidences. He thinks to fill a little gap, he makes use of a natural scientific explanation that he does not have reason to believe he knows to be true. I mean, that's, again, that's just as the character of a hunch. It's not the only sub philosophic resource he relies on, right?
A little earlier, he's talking about how, yeah, there's all sorts of dreams come to people and he says, well, let me just read the whole. He says, because of they're being moved many times and in all sorts of ways, they hit upon visions that are similar to real events, hitting the mark in these just as do some who play odds and evens. For as it is said, right, and now here he's quoting a common saying, it seems, if you make many throws, you will throw differently at different times. This happens also in the case of these people.
So there he's like, yeah, of course, one will just sort of eventually land and be correct. Not an adequate explanation, right? The fact that many people claim to be prophets is not a claim that one of them is not a proof that one of them is not a prophet, right? Or that every single one of them is not a prophet.
And similarly here, it's like, yeah, eventually one will hit the mark. Well, that doesn't explain the one that hits the mark. We don't know the specific cause of that dream, simply because there's a lot of BS dreams, right? Well, yeah, I mean, I think it goes both ways because I mean, I want to say the reason to some strength to that argument is like, if the counter argument is like, I had a crazy dream and it happens, that by itself isn't a strong argument either, right?
Because you can always say, well, you've had a lot of dreams and this one happened to what happens. And so that does not impress upon me that I need to believe it. It's not like sufficient evidence for me to reject the man as best character of the world that as it presents to me in every other moment of my life. So, you know, I want to get some power to the argument, even if it isn't a demonstration.
I agree. Yeah, yeah. So we move on to the person who's skilled, the artful, judge of dreams. Yeah, yeah.
Let's move on to that because I don't know my way around this bit at all, really. I think, you know, this always happens in Plato and it happens, I think, as well in Aristotle, where you confront a problem that you're struggling against this, he's struggling against. And you know, you've made a good case specifically in the democracy passage, right? That he has recourse to kind of pre-survivate philosophy.
There then ends up being in the course of this sort of investigation, the positing of a demonstrative science that would fix everything, right? And allow you to overcome the problem. Yeah, Greg. I know what I was wondering if Aristotle's ending, not being entirely satisfying, is meant to point us to another work.
Do you have an idea of the work or you're just... There was a question. I mean, I might have been prepared. I would have had a prepared guess.
But the place to look might be where he speaks about democratic democracy elsewhere. Physics, I would be inclined to start looking maybe. I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm tempted to see what he says about this like influence theory.
Yeah, exactly. Where does he talk about his influence theory? That's worth pursuing. Yeah.
I mean, I'm not in metaphysics, I should be able to refute this. I can't refute it. So this calls into question that this is... I can't even leave this I can read with a suspicious eye.
Well, I mean, one thing I would say is that an interesting element of On The Motion of Animals is that there's a lot of cosmology in On The Motion of Animals. So there's like, I don't know the word, this kinesiological element to it, which is just how locomotion happens with like joints. Yeah. Like among the things you'll say there is that in order for anything to have locomotion, it is to push against something else.
And if something pushes against something else, that thing will move. So that has like cosmological terms. And then there's a... Kind of the unmoved mover, right?
Well, that's no, but he seems to imply that that's not possible in this treatise as my point. And if you push something, it's got to move. But there's a second element when it comes to animal motion, which is that like what is the possible object of desire or appetite such that something moves towards something? And that has theological aspects because there's a denial, I think that...
But pretty explicit denial that the noble or the beautiful itself could be the object of action. So I was only bringing this up just to say like the Lambda questions are apt in so far as what happens next, you know, raises things that are discussed in Metaphysics Lambda. That's great. So what did Alexi want to talk next about the person who has scaled at this?
Yeah, let me... You were saying that there's some notion of a science of... Or an art, right? ...in each one or something.
Yeah. So like to take another example, just one that I know well. I mean, we'll take the Republic for example, right? It's like, okay, well, we need the city in order for it to function well.
We need to maintain the education. And then also it needs to be victorious in war, which means it has to be as big as possible without having factions. So you need to control the births. You're going to control the births.
Do you need people who understand the motion of the stars and everything? And then also have contemplated the goods so they can see how to... And then so we need these philosopher kings who undergo this crazy education that's not possible. And what you've done is you've posited a kind of knower that would give you the result that you're looking for.
Similarly, in the... In the softest, right? You notice that people say different things and they all sound plausible. They're kind of attractive and they're kind of images of reality.
Some distort it. Some you hope, represent it accurately. How do you figure that out? Full it down.
You need this special science that can let you figure out when you make a statement what words and terms can go together and what kind of things can mix and produce a plausible statement. And so you need this completed science of the beings or something like that. And I wonder if there's something similar here. There's a little struggling saying, I can give a kind of naturalistic explanation by, you know, probably together something from a democratist, but I can't really do much better.
What we really need here is a kind of artful judge of dreams who's able to observe or theorize likenesses, right? Somehow able to observe these things. He doesn't call this person the philosopher, right? One might jump to that, but maybe he's trying to say this is not the philosopher.
This is just a hypothesis, right? But I don't know what else more to say about that other than... In general, the tendency is something like one like the higher person is the person that has prophetic dreams. By the end it's clear that the person that's a period is the one that can look at dreams and has a knack.