Peter Abelard

hello and welcome this is the history of medieval philosophy my name is Marc Torres being in this video we're going to be talking about the work of medieval philosopher and logician Peter Abelard so welcome back everyone I hope you guys are doing well so first off let's begin with Peter Abelard he lived from 1079 to 1140 - you're sort of a drawing or woodcut of Abelard he in a couple things just to sort of start with a background is where we're gonna take a look at sort of two of his works for excerpts from two of his works first off is his glasses on pour a few theory and then we're also going to take a look at his ethics we're gonna mainly focus today on the problem of universals which was a central problem for him and really in many ways he working eyes is the problem for those who would come after him now just a quick quick reminder with in the Middle Ages there's sort of two types of curriculum that students would have to review the first is the Trivium and the Trivium would cover grammar dialectic as well as rhetoric and then there's the quadrivium which is your arithmetic your music - your geometry and astronomy and I know I've mentioned this before but this is quite important is that you essentially have if you will language arts and if you will the sciences and that's sort of the way which the medieval curriculum was articulated this is important because of the way in which we see Peter Abelard was a well known teacher in his own day and a really famous debater he also we're going to see in the clauses he utilizes or employs what's known as the science or the method of disputation essentially it's maybe you can think of disputation as a genre within medieval literature where for instance the most the prime example of the disputation method can be seen in the work of Aquinas in his Summa Theologica but disputation essentially would work where for instance essentially students would would go to lectures in the morning they would memorize in the afternoon everything they've learned and then at some point they would be tested and they were frequently at least in the hive as they proceeded forward they'd be tested using the method disputation or essentially we'd have one student would argue a thesis and then before there make a claim and give arguments for why they make that claim usually how to do it something about the nature of God or some sort of philosophical or theological problem and then everyone else in the room or all the teachers and all the other students would then not just raise questions but offer counter arguments and reputations or objections and there are objections in this case and then Abelard or whoever was sitting in the middle would then go back and then respond and refute each of those objections and this was a very important sort of method it's a great way to practice your own critical thinking skills we don't employ it too much today within within the academy nor do we typically see our works argued but in our published in this format but we will see this in Peter Abelard work so as you're reading it you'll notice that it's very very systematic and as a consequence of that systematicity Abelar is able to really probe in depth into a subject or you know in a desperate disputation in a way that they typically won't have the ability to do so it's one of the things that's important to know about medieval curriculum and the style of reasoning or the genre of writing that these philosophers would do then theologians would would right now as we mentioned today's already is we're gonna be primarily taking a look at the problem of universals and it can just to remind ourselves the problem of universals is essentially the question of whether or not Universal claims or things which are known to be the case everywhere or universal substance whether those are just one of those refers some sort of reality which is also existing everywhere or whether or not Universal statements are religious statements in words and so nominalism is the position roughly speaking that the universes are not real but that they are words which do signify the claim of universality or as realism is the claim someone like Plato will see that no in fact the universals actually exists somewhere now one thing that's important here to know is that Abelard really is also highly credited with being the first major Yuval philosopher to articulate theology and it's modern and contemporary sense one thing is that Apple are due to we'll talk about this in a little bit but due to a famous debate or rather trial of his hewing sometimes there be called the Socrates of Gaul one of the things we will see is that Alba Lawrence is the great one of the greatest philosophers of his day because of the rigour of his method he was a very gifted magician in fact his work and logic has had a lasting impact particularly throughout the Middle Ages but even still today he's well regarded so let's talk a little bit about his biography he was born in the penne or in Brittany I'm around 10 79 he was born into a well-to-do family but he renounced his inheritance and ultimately his knighthood now to be clear he whenever was knighted but he was on track to become a knight but he gave that up in order to pursue philosophy he actually traveled to work and studied with the most influential philosophers of his day which include Rosalind William of Shem Paul and so reference to his WC and so he was very very famous for debating in fact he was and he was famous over the debate over universals particularly a debate which occurred in 1108 believed against William of Shem Paul and he actually never quote-unquote lost a debate whatever that means I assume it essentially means that he always came it doesn't mean that everything need to bethe he was right about but it does certainly mean that he was out / - he was he was frequently able to overcome any what he did to be particularly using this disputation method we've mentioned now in June 3rd 1140 something really important happens to Abelard and by this point how the Lord had lived in France and then he traveled back home and then moved back to France and he was competing with the Philosopher's at the table to millet to become his own great philosopher but in it but in 1140 he was invited by Bernard of Clairvaux to have it debate and of course he accepted the debate because these two have been debating an important theological points for some time and things that began heated between the two and Abelard thought this would be a chance to finally settle scores of course he was always a good debater and you see that you know when we read his text is he's he's very brilliant he's also very witty and it's as a forceful thinker but unfortunately when he arrived to actually have the debate instead what he found was he was ambushed by a trial of heresy and in fact Bernard had organized you know on behalf of the church about a trial two charged with heresy he refused to take part he was really upset as you can imagine he walked out he immediately headed to Rome to appeal to the Pope directly unfortunately we got to the Pope or actually before he got there he did he learned that he was already been ordered to silence by the Pope and then essentially although the trial never went forward he was essentially condemned for on charges of heresy now although he was ordered into silence and he actually followed this order from what we know is he actually went to Barnard and they actually were able to sort of come to some sort of agreement I mean but later on the Pope would reverse the order and allow him to teach again but unfortunately this manthe because of this charge of heresy Peter Abelard work although it's highly influential throughout the Middle Ages and he was highly read it meant that that his work was stifled in terms of its implement in terms of its effect on the broader world and so in many ways the impact of Alba Lord was stifled or cut short as a consequence of this basically show trial and as a consequence he actually had to live under the protection of Peter the venerable including in fact that I believe it was the Cardinal of Cluny who actually called him the Socrates of call because he is he was a brilliant thinker and he was living in exile as a consequence as a consequence of his thinking and his free thinking on April 23rd and 1142 Adler died and he was interred in Paris where you can still go visit his grave so that's a little bit a very very brief sort of - or certainly not sufficient one of the things that school got Abelard is that we actually know a lot about his biography because he wrote it down for us where he wrote many he wrote much of his life for us so we actually know a lot of more details about Havel art that we do about other thinkers so let's keep killing Europe as eventually before we're going to talk about the problem of universals and the key problem here is whether or not universals exists now there's different ways to attack this problem one question yours jobs what do we mean by existence the other question is to ask what do we mean by universals our particulars well first up let's introduce an important distinction we're gonna see hablar discuss and this is distinction between general and species okay and or if you will in modern parlance we could say genus versus species now genus and species is an important distinction that goes very very far back all the way ultimately to Aristotle although he uses the Greek terms instead of a lot of terminology to talk about it but a genus species distinct just to start off with you're probably already familiar with think about in biology when we name animals we name them according to both their genus and their species so for instance I'm a human being and so that means I'm a member of this the homeo car no I was gonna say homo sapiens right so homo is the genus for a certain for a whole branch and a whole plurality of animals that have two legs those those sapiens are the only ones that so far as I know survived but you had homo erectus and these other types of human like they were human in a certain way but they're part of the genus of human sapien is the current is the species and that's of course what I am here now a species referral to Milly to a thing and do things exist yes obviously they do exist so for instance here we might say that I have a glass of water here and so we can say that maybe cookware is the genus and classes are the species so for instance but one of the things we're gonna see there and then of course the species refers ultimately to some particular thing now obviously the things exist we have to ask ourselves without this genus and species because species refers to all our homo sapiens the species sapien refers to all members of humanity that you know conform to the certain categories however biologists have defined sapien right and genus is Homo which is a bigger category so that means that if all persons all human persons are members of the sapien species then that means that species is itself something universal and of course the genus also must be universal of course it's as it were a larger category so notice that homo and I'm sorry the genus and species here all to refer to something like universal categories and so the question there is well is the genus really real or is the species really real now the one hand we know that things are real but what about this question about universals in general how can a genus be real for instance because there's no thing which actually corresponds to a genius and that's where we particularly see the problem now next persons consider what kinds of things seem to count as being Universal on the one has think about the word names of things so if I could say use the word cup or glass right that refers to a whole category of things that sort of look like this although there's many many versions or variations so names appear to universal a question we haven't looked at is whether proper names so my name is Mark for SB so you guys is mark Thor's be as a name is that Universal because it's only the universal of one but is the universal of one universal and there's an interesting set of debates to go on actually about that very question but think here in terms of our own day we consider for instance scientific laws to be universal and so for instance we talked about the law of gravity right the idea that bodies and with mass attract and the large of the body the larger the pole so I'm living on earth so if I drop something it falls this appears to be a universal law right so but wait a second if it's universal what does it mean for it to exist because notice you can't look outside and see something fall in sea cravat right you don't see a universal law you don't see a lot in fact right it's rather something which seems to be deduced and also there's although a blog does not discuss it I think a really important question for us to ask and maybe this is kind of looking ahead towards Thomas Aquinas is where is the causative being is also universal notice that we say that everything which exists everything which exists has being but notice here is that the word being is highly abstract it refers to everything well therefore all things which exist are species of the genus being that guess but wait a second what does that mean exactly does it does being actually have existence per se or am I just getting lost mixed up in my language so notice here we can already begin to see the pull towards nominalism to think of universals as words in some way and think nominalism comes from the word nominal which means name or we also to a pull towards the idea that no being existence must be real but is that as the universal itself real we have a tendency to want to say that to write because do these we can so we ask do these things I'm existence because they're not things as such they're not actually things per se so let's jump here into the text here we're gonna be taking a look at just an excerpt here on the problem of universe holes from the text called Colossus and on porphyry and I hope I'm not mispronouncing it but we're talking about porphyry of tyre who live from 234 305 80 and he's actually quite famous as he was a student of plutinos and he's actually the only person who edited the only known source of Platina says written works here's a sort of picture of porphyry a wood carving of him so he's a late Roman or a mid I guess a Roman philosopher early Roman philosopher it depends on when early late starts here but one of the things we see is that as early as porphyry we see the question of universals being addressed or being raised now it's important to note here that Abelar is also well aware of the things that our Aquinas is arguing about this as well as what Aristotle they don't also talk about with regard to this problem so it's important to see here is that Abelard is not writing in a vacuum right he's highly aware of highly educated regarded this problem and those who've come before him so first off let's sort of jumped into it the first thing a blur does is he review some of the questions that get raised by porphyry himself and then we'll see that Albemarle will then raise his own questions and then he's going to go over roughly two theories about how to answer the problem of universals ultimately he rejects both of those theories and they offers his own which is a sort of sort of if you will a sort of not that unfamiliar from sort of one-two-three punch sort of essay that most of our students write ok so here's some of the questions now let's pull these up a little closer the first here is that we talk to us is degenerate and species subsist or are they posited only so the first thing is do they actually have some sort of adhering subsistence in the world or are they something we just say exits try our that is positive number two is do they have true being or do these things actually just reside in the opinion of people who could think that is are we really just talking about concepts right number three is if they really do exist then are they Kapur US Census are they incorporeal now Kapur Lee here refers roughly speaking though sure Adler has a precise definition for it but think of corporeality is the idea of having extension in space right so as being with other things and space if you will so for instance the cup here of water has a Kapoor Niall existence right and we but we can say for instance that if I just think of the number two that does not seem to have a comportable existence because it seems to be just a concept in my head so so if there are universals then are they portal or they incorporeal and it's another question that really falls under that same one which is are these things if they're real are they separated from sensible x' or they posited in sensible x' so are they something that can sense or they have a different type of reality or are we actually saying that really they have some sort of existence has sensible x' now we're gonna see here is that the first thing a velar does is he adds another question it actually adds a number of questions and he's review he's sort of if you will having a sort of commentary import freeware he's looking at what porphyry argues and then he essentially sort of he's not doesn't stick too close to poverty so he's not really trying to he's sort of using the text as a launching off point to raise his own position so that's what he adds this other question which is so our genre and species nominated ad hoc or candor universe I exist in the understanding no so in other words so we just making this step pointing and just naming things and that's all there is to Universal such that they're not really Universal or does the university exist simply in the mind and so we're gonna see him sort of going in that direction actually so it's not surprising now the other thing is here I just want to mention is the sort of chastises poor freak threw out for because the first thing important where he will say is here are the questions and he says I'm not gonna address those and then he goes on and Al Balad sort of annoyed you can tell the text behind worker here and he says wait a second why are you raising these questions then decline to answer any sort of chastises him because he says at one point he's porphyry seem to say well we don't have time to talk about this and he sort of says they're saying that the reader doesn't have time well if the readers m tempt and what are we doing exactly so he sort of chastises him for trying for declining to answer these questions so you can see he's not really a fan of this guy so and that's that's not a surprise most philosophers will do that they'll take another philosopher typically who's the lesser thinker and then use them to first discount their view and then argue why their view whatever Bob Lords of you is the one that will answer the question correctly and by the way the Apple are just to get it out of the way he's a nominalist she's an important nominalist so he doesn't think really that universals exists not at least it's substances but we'll see that he doesn't think that they're just pure ad hoc either so al Ballards own position is a bit nuanced but ultimately he's gonna we're gonna he's are attributed or characterized as being anomalous within the history of medieval philosophy now the problem of universal names is one of the questions here write a name covers many individual things for example take the idea of a horse the word horse covers many many different objects and notice you can have brown horses you can have black horses and you could have white horses so we're talking about is that the word horse applies equally to all of these things which are different so you see that we have a situation where we have diverse things are an agreement with the name but according to what exactly what makes the agreement subsist so for instance he says degenerate species as long as they are generous species necessarily have something subject to them by nomination or alternatively even if these things do things named are destroyed can the universal consist even dead of the understanding signification alone for example the name Rose where there are no roses to which it is common so for instance I'm imagined think here about the problem of species going out of extinction so if we know what's an example of a species think of the saber-toothed tiger right which is no longer exist the saber-toothed tiger is a word and refers to many things but it doesn't refer to anything which exists right now so does the word really have any time can we really understand that word does it actually signify something just quite an interesting problem because if you argue that the word has no meaning because there are no objects then that means that we can't really have a credible concept of extinction extinguished eggs species that have gone extinct for instance but we seem to clearly actually do have an understanding of what the saber-tooth Tiger was so this is sort of the problem of the universal names now Eris Dali the first one of the first things that he does is typical of the medieval thinker his Abelard references Boethius I remember we talked earlier about how Politis is such a central figure within the history of philosophy particularly made in the Middle Ages and so one of the things that Abelard does he says well let's review what boethius says about Aristotle Plato now keep in mind here is that predominantly the only knowledge they have a varus tatl comes from Boethius so they in as well as Plato so the so there's always a reference here it is now for Aristotle the genre and the species subsist but only in sensible but are understood outside of sensible 's so a universal is what is naturally apt to be predicated of several that's what Aristotle says and then he also says I call singular what is not predicated of several right so for Aristotle least from boethius's interpretation a universal is something which can be predicated of many things right and whereas something a singular can't be predicated many things it can only be predicated of something which is single or singular now a Plato's view was that there understood they were both understood and they exist outside of the sensible so clean as views that universals do exist but did they exist outside of sensibility and that the understanding of them also exists outside Sensibility right but so if aerosol takes genus and species somehow subsist within the sensible things themselves now we're gonna see he's really gonna begin sort of with Aristotle's position yeah Abelard doesn't really go too far with Plato's position or seem to take it seriously but we do see is that for air install things are contained under the name of universal now there's an important thing that we have to mention that Abelard recognizes with regard to language and this becomes very important later on particularly we'll see in modern philosophers modern logicians have seen recognize the same distinction of course they use a different word you can think about you can go to my video and fragrant for instance and we'll see the same distinction come up though in different terms right so the idea here is that notice that when we used language we use words words are signs right so how to stop sign here's an example of course there's the word stop now the word stop is just a bunch of squiggly lines right it doesn't actually mean anything in itself the word stop means something only with regard to those who understand so how is it the words function think of the word Abelard here we have these letters that are in this certain sort of shape but somehow they refer they symbolize an actual person who used to exist but the other hand we also recognize that the words exist and this symbolic form so for instance when we talk about words we can say that words have doop they have the work of showing but we cannot talk about the idea of things which are signified so when words show the showing belongs to the words or as the things which are being signified belonged to the things so for instance when we talk about the word the word has has a certain visual matrices that we recognize and so it shows us something but what's signified by that showing belongs to the things whereas the showing belongs to the words now I know that seems sort of hopeful maybe a nitpicky but it actually proves to be a very very important distinction in order to understand the function of language notice that when someone says you should stop at the stop sign they don't mean you should stop or when someone says that a stop sight has meaning let's say whereas a meaningful thing so I would recognise the stop sign versus maybe someone from another country who doesn't speak English doesn't recognize what these words mean here for instance the person who doesn't have the language can see the showing but they lack the signification so language has to operate according to this at least in some degree now Nando is not the same thing as a species that's an important distinction that Abelard will make here right a blurred rights and again he says he's quoting right the word name is predicated several names in any ways of species continue the individuals on it under it it is the word is not properly called a species since it is not a substantial but accidental word but there is no doubt it is a universal and the definition of a universal fits it so out of one hand a word does not seem to be as species correct least speaking but a name does seem to have some sort of universality to it so the problem of universals is a problem for the for language in general and we sort of see a distinction of words here the Apple are it's making that I think is worth drawing our attention to the first here is the distinction between a word can be understood because the word is substantial in some sense word is merely accidental no there's not a really good example of this but so for instance where does the word mother come from or mama well one of the things that psychologists and people who studied children and the infants have notice is that one of the first words that one of the first sounds the children can articulate is the the phonetic mama right or a mat mat they can do that soon they can make that sound easily so in a certain way that word has a more substantial relationship either taste someone text me and they text me pfft can I'd never seen that so I didn't know what it was I thought it was an acronym right but then they wrote me that I said no it's not an accurate means post or puffed or something like that in other words they were trying to use the words in a substantial sense but I understood it in terms of the accidental sense namely idea the word is not actually tied to the thing right the word is just something we've applied secondarily to an auditory to try a thing but here we have to ask this question okay back to universals how exactly if a name is universal in some sense how can we adapt the concept of universal to things themselves because notice here that if thing is not universal right so here's my watch I have a watch right here right this is a thing at least it's a thing for me I can feel it it's substantial right so when I say the word watch right that name is universal to all of the things that fall under this under that category which include this thing so how exactly does the concept of universal apply to something which is quite non universal because it's singular so how can we adapt this concept to things now we're gonna see a large really trying to address this question first he's gonna took a look at one possibility and this is the first theory and this is really one what you might say it's something like the theory of forms where you have a universal form and then you have many imperfect versions of it so under this theory we could say is that maybe the way that the universal applies to things is to say that there is one perfect idea perfect definition of what a watch is and then all these other particular things are just sort of bad these bad versions of that of that universal form of course if you're thinking about Plato's Plato's own theory which is of course but Abelard is thinking about right there is that Plato's theory is that there really is a transcendental form that exists in a transcendental realm of some sort and then that singular form is what allows for us to make comprehensive sense of all these other versions of things so for instance I have right here I'm doing working on a project in my garage I'm putting up a new light my things like my pot holders and so here the light bulb holders here notice that that I can call these this is a lamp holder I have four of them so is there a perfect form of lamp Holderness and then each of these are just example or objects they're certainly imperfect versions in some way that's one possibility for answering the question now the second thing to consider here is that we composite one and essentially the same substance in different species so we composite that there's one ultimate universal form and then we essentially have the same substance but it's just in these sorts of different species the examples he gives here is for instance an animal in differing animals is the same so for instance if we talk about a horse we talk about a monkey we talk about a bird I would talk about a fish and we talk about a human all of those things are animals and they're all equally animals so the word and the concept of animal applies to all of them but how is that they each one of those things encapsulate the animality right and so here's sort of a problem what is the universal form of animal because all the animals are going to be different right well it's one possibilities that you draw this substance into diverse species by taking on diverse differences so what you can say is well the concept of animal itself has a diversity within it and that diversity is abstracted and that's what allows for the multiplicity of things so in other words one possibility saying instead of saying there's one universal form an imperfect versions we can say there's one universal form and that that universal form is essentially dynamic enough allow for variations over time or variations contemporaneously okay so this means that from this theory is Tydeus that something is universal in its nature but singular in its actuality so something so the notion here is that animal is a universal and it's it's the same it's universal throughout nature throughout all of these cases but it's singular when it becomes actualized so such that you can never have a pure animal existing you can only have singular types of animals which have actuality but that the universal does have some sort of reality in nature so what are the objections to this this theory what are some of the objections well here subjection one yeah below rights for facili the same thing exists in several singulars even then even though diverse forms occupy this substance brought about by these forms must be identical with that with that one occupied by those forms for example the animal formed by rationality is the animal form by irrationality so this means that the rational becomes the irrational animal so the objection to the first series we'll wait a second what you're saying is that that if there's this pure form and all of us have these sorts of different versions and there's this difference since in the actuality of things because of their singular nature and so and so forth it means that one animal can be rational and another animal could be also simultaneously irrational this seems to be a contradiction so in other words the question to outlaw it says Welkin contours reside in the same substance he says no because if they do reside then they cannot be contraries and contours cannot be non contours at the same time that too is a contradiction we're gonna see I'm not off for sort of reputation against this theory or he's gonna reply to it and the first thing is he says but way to saying it takes Socrates so here's a version of pick someone's picture of Socrates but Socrates has both rationally in here rationality right Socrates is a human being so he's a rational animal and Aristotle and Plato would say but he's also irrational as well right that's why Socrates talks about the idea of trying to improve himself right because he knows the easy irrational so notice here you have rational and irrational residing together in Socrates and that's not a contradiction because that's the truth and then he's going to talk about he gives this example I'm not going to go through it but he talks about the distinction between Socrates and brownie brownie is a donkey right and there he's thinking about Socrates as an animal with rationality brownie is a donkey with irrationality and he essentially applies in that sense the second reply that a blog gives is that a rational animal is in your rationale take that statement when we take that statement we can either criticize the proposition or we can criticize the judgment right so we can ask ourselves is the proposition itself illogical or is it that we're actually have a problem with the judgment that's being made so namely that we disagree that a rational animal can also be an irrational animal and what we see here is that the words do not probably seem to show how the substance can be both so in other words it looks like the mistakes actually arise from the language and then here's a reputation against this reply well is that a contradiction to contradiction but surely forms attached to the same thing at exactly the same time no longer stand in opposition to one another so you have a sort of reputation say no wait a second if something is contradictory at the same time something could not be contrary simultaneously at the same time otherwise it's a contradiction so for example take Socrates and Plato both of these are men right so here's Socrates or here's a sculpture of Sardis you as a sculpture of Plato both of them are men so they both have the same essence or category of being insofar as they participate in this form of humaneness because they're both human right so the word man or human applies to both of them equally even though they're different so we get this quote right for there is only one essence of their substance just as is throwing there is only one essence their qualities too so this praises this brings us to our third objection to this theory which is well how can we then recognize numerical multiplicity right because notice that if I have a glass of water here but imagine fact ten glasses of water how is it that we can recognize they're all distinguished differently yet they all have the same form right they all have the same form of water Nisour if I you give these in the end of this little thing right so there's an objection there you can see there's a direct correlation there with the problem of mathematics another objection years but the individuals cannot be produced by their accidents right Plato's being a man is not what makes him play no exactly right so simply because someone's an individual and they and as an individual they have certain features there are features their features are not what make them individuals right so Socrates is not his accidents right Sardis is not just the person with the snub nose or the person with the long beard etc are you short I believe so soccers but then also consider Socrates cannot exist apart from the accidents that he has so for instance I'm here I have different features I have a beard I have blue eyes I'm wearing glasses I have hair and so on and so forth Levin knows but notice here is that I can't exist without these things even though these things are not essential to who or what I am as a human being so accidents are not in the individual substances as they're in the subjects now there's an important distinction here between the idea of substance which is a sort of metaphysical or physical description of me I'm a substance of it how existence but when we talk about subjects were ultimately talking about language and the logical relationships of things so accidents are not in the individual substances as they're in the subjects but if accidents are not in individual substances they are surely not in the universal substances so therefore the theory in which what is basically the same essence said to be in diverse things that was is completely lacking reason so hopefully you were able to follow that it's bit there's a bit of mental gymnastics involved but ultimately it's a rational thing what he wants to argue is that we're only making a distinction I'm sorry a mistake in our our reasoning what we think when we say something that they somehow all of the the essence of Universal exists within the individual has been in this sort of imperfect sense ultimately the more questions we ask the more questions are raised rather than answering so this brings us to a sort of second theory let's actually read through the second theory thus other people with a different theory of universality we get closer to the truth theory of the matter so you can see here right from the beginning the Abelard doesn't really believe in this second theory but he thinks it's better than the first they say that some things are not not only are diverse from one another by their a demeaning forms but are discrete personally in their essences and what is it one thing is in no way into another whether it's a matter of form and the thing they cannot subsist any of the less discreet in their essences even when their forms are removed because their personal discreteness does not arise from those forms but is from the very diversity of the essence just as the forms themselves also are so we get a sort of second possibility here which is disabled okay we have these words but really they don't adhere in the objects themselves what we have is that each individual has a sort of form but that there's discrete personal essences right so everyone has their own form essentially we're moving away from Plato's theory into a more Aristotelian version so in there is a prawn here with the sort of there's some potential for an infinite regress argument here which was namely a wait a second if everything has their own diverse essence that means that if I have one cup of water and then I have another cup of water what I say that they're both the same cup of water that's maybe kind of true but really what we have is that they each have their own essence right they each have their own essence of discrete personality if you will and then what I'm recognizing is the similarity between the two but notice and this is where we serve kids here here's a wait a second that seems to raise the question of what we don't when I say you have a classroom there's a glass of water on the table I'm talking about anything looks like this I'm not just talking about this particular essence and notice there's another problem of language here which is our words do not seem to really refer all the time to discrete personal essences of things right so there's a sort of interesting that solve subproblems but it seems to raise other problems because individuals are diverse not just in their Advent forms but in the discrete essence itself right that is if I have another cup of water with ice and water it's just like this it looks like they actually have the same essence so otherwise the diversity of forms would go on to infinity so that one would have to assume that yet others you have to assume that something else can account for the diversity of the other forms there's another consequence of the second theory which is namely that every individual is essentially different so the way in which two things take Socrates and Plato again the way in which these two things are the same is not a reference to the same essence but a recognition of the indifference between their essences right so okay so you're Plato and Socrates are both men and so that means that the that they both have the essence of man within them but they're discretely different right but the consequence here is that so when I recognize that they're the same I'm really recognizing that they're different that seems to be a bit of a problem but Abelard does note that there's a disagreement between the proponents of this position so for instance is a universal actually collection of things then so when I say the word men and I really just type up a collection of beings that can count under that definition of men or if I'm human or women or whatever it is right is the universal really just sort of kind of like a bag that I put all these discreet essences in and sort of tie up together but is is it a collection any things that he did I'm sorry al-balad mentions the Boethius seems to actually hold this position right here i'ts boëthius seems to agree with them quote species is to be regarded as nothing else than the thought gathered from the substantial likeness of individuals so you recognize things are like and gather them together genus on the other hand is thought to be gathered for the likeness of species so you have a sort of you take a bunch of individual objects you put them into one bag by their likeness or similarity and that's the species and then you get a bunch of species that look similar enough you put them together in a bag and then you have a genus right and so genus of interest not to be gathered from the likenesses of the species and our Lord says that when he says gathered from the likeness he seems to imply that a gathering of several things right so it's a collection of sorts so does that actually make sense well one thing here is that others say that species is not only the collection of men but the single individual remember a blog says that the second theory the proponents of that same three are not actually an agreement themselves right so is it a collection or is it a singular individual now here's some of the arguments against number one and we're gonna see a blog takes on this position is that he has it offers a refutation against what we'll call the collection thesis so if we take all men together and treat them as the same species it's the same category right and number two the name human can be predicated several so that it counts as a universal so I take all human beings that I find all persons I put them in my my concept bag if you will and then treat them as a universal and then they become sort of species right now if the collection is predicated through the parts of its members then the collection is not a universal type now think about it for a moment that means that if I'm if I say that all of these persons I put in the bag count under the word human but then I'm saying that the word human just applies to the different parts in any of the individuals but not to the whole persons then the collection is not really universal to all of them right but the species cannot both be and not be a universal so we have here a narc the argument against the collection thesis is to say that listen a person is a human being not because some parts of them are human but because they're all human and so that means that we can't just say we're putting a collection of individuals and just recognizing what's similar and then saying this part similar for this person this parts similar in this person so on and so forth and then at the end say okay they're all humans based upon their parts but the problem is they're human all the way they're not just human because some part of them is human so you can see here a species cannot put the and out via universal otherwise you end up with a contradiction we have this great quote here which is that every universal is naturally prior to its own individuals right the universal be is logically applied to the entire category fully right but a collection of things whatever is an integral whole with respect to the singulars of which it's constituted and it and is naturally posterior to the things out of which it's put together so basically what he's saying is a universal has to be prior to the individuals conceptually or as a collection is by definition posterior that as it comes after you have the things to put together right now notice here is that when you go to the hospital like go to the wing in the hospital where there's a bunch of babies or just been born and they're laying in their little ICU cribs or whatever it is that they put them in their heating pods and you can ask yourself right do we to someone have to give birth for us today and then do we have to check the baby to make sure the baby's human notice we don't have to do that we don't have to go and double-check to make sure that we really just have humans inside of the neonatal ward or something like this they're already human because the universal human community applies prior to them not afterwards but a collection always requires that a thing exists on first so can the universal then be a singular individual this is a question we raised at the very beginning and here we see Abelard taking up that question for himself let me take a quick picture he says furthermore things are granted to be entirely the same that is the man that is in Socrates and Socrates himself there's no difference between one or the other for no thing as diverse from itself at one at the same time since whatever has in itself it has it has an entirely to say wait the sacristy Socrates both white and literate even though he has diverse things in himself nevertheless is not diverse from himself because of them since he has them both and in exactly the same way for he is not literate in any other way from himself or whitening the other way from themselves so - as white he's not something other than himself or as literate something other than himself so basically here we have to be a bit careful here because when we say that Socrates as a man and then he has these characteristics he can read he has a light a white complexion right we will we cannot say that that his his whiteness is distinct for himself if that's what we know to be right so a universal applies to many things but there's no many things here and remember the way we defined universal it's something which combines diverse things together there's no diversity of Socrates and on 60 Section 62 outlawed says for if Socrates did not differ from Plato in a thing that is man the neither does he differ from Plato himself right so Socrates has to be senior in a way that goes beyond that and so this means that the second theory is not really sufficient no matter which way we take it whether we take it in the first sense when we take it in the second sense so this now is where we get to the Abelard owed through what is his position and this will be where we see Abelard articulate some of the core features of his own theory of nominalism so first thing is that universals are not collections of things nor are universal singular individuals right because if it's a singular individual then that means that the individual has to be multiple to first things even though it's only one thing doesn't make sense right and notice here that a Pilar is taking that second theory and building from it right now he's building front he doesn't really go back to that first third and he'll go back to the the names in particular and he notes that we have names some names are universal and some names are particular so let's start with the particular name a particular name is invented with an application to be predicated to several things one by one so there particular so the name applies like one thing at a time it doesn't refer to all the things at once so for instance imagine if I say the current person sitting in this chair correct that's a sort of weird name I guess but that name is particular to me in this moment but I can get up and you can see here and that name will now apply to youth but notice that name can never apply all of us at once unless I guess we're all sitting in the chair once which can't really happen so it's not so names can be particularly by contrast when we talk about a name being universal what we really seem to be saying is that a name is invented with the application to be predicated to several things one by one so for example the word man can refer to me and refer to someone else at the same time so notice here there although Abelard doesn't discuss it I think there's something interesting here which is concerns the role of time because it looks like universality is a temporal or particularity it seems to be temporal so I'm not committed to that thesis but it's interesting question and if you're interested in talking about that feel free to comment on that so what we can say is that we have the universal name what we really have is we have one word with many significations so we have one word but it actually should signifies many different things at once and when we seem to have as a unity of signification rather than a unity of things so now let's talk about syntax and predication River when I make a logic if I make a statement I say the grass is green the grass is my subject category and greenness is that what i'm predicating of the grass i'm saying that the grass has that essential quality to it or maybe that accidental quality to it but it's actually the form of predication is what I am one category or superimposed way one category onto another in some way and so for instance in Aristotle we see Aristotle's categorical logic really articulating this and as well as his modal logic this is a key feature and it's still an important function it's the central function of language let's say all language is the function of predication but what is predication exactly what i say that the grass is green am I actually applying the category to another category or am I simply doing something in language and ultimately what we have to realize here is that we can predicate things in logic but that doesn't mean that those things are predicated in terms of things the thing leanness right the grass might not actually be green so what does it mean to have predicated well or what does predication to be predicated is to be conjoin about to something to be combined with something truly by means of the expressive force of a present tense substantive verb for example man can be truly conjoined two diverse things through substantive verb verbs like runs wat so I could say the man runs to the fence right and there I'm predicating running and controlling it and running in particular to the object of the fence to the original subject so verbs allow us to do this for instance and there's a sort of calculated function here where runs tells us about the being of things right he says runs a watch was a predicate of several things also the force of a substantial verb in his calculated function a copula in logic is the word it is for instance so if I say the grass is green grasses that is this subject is is the copula it's though it's the thing which combines it to the predicate term which is green so whenever you look at predicate and you have a subject you have these two counters you're trying to combine them you need some glue so think of it like that the copula is the thing that glues things together and glues them through existence right because when I say the grass is green is which is the copula refers to the beam of the grass which is that has a green leanness to it I guess so I say the man runs right the running has a cognitive function when it's a verb they take a drink water but notice the predication also concerns the nature of things so if I say a man is a stone that's a valid form of predication in terms of the syntax the syntax refers to the structure of the proposition in terms of its language you can go ahead there's more precise definition of syntax but I'll just leave that with you it's sort of the logical relationship of the words within a statement so when I say a man is a stone that makes sense there's nothing logically problematic about that it's a valid statement it's a valid form of predication but it's unsound and the reason it's unsound is because a man is not a stone that is the thing leanness cannot be combined in existence like that a man cannot be a stone at the same time right so notice here is that what album arts do it is he's using his own philosophy of language and logic to help us understand the problem of universals to recognize that we can make Universal claims or we can make Universal predications and language but that doesn't always mean that we have a universal predication in terms of things right they're two different thing to four things they notice again is the relationship there is also very similar to the idea that words show versus referring to things which may be signified so a man is a stone might show us something in terms of its baseline predication but it doesn't actually signify anything meaningful which means we don't understand it ultimately right so there's different types of names to write so you first thing you're as a universal name is not the same as an applet of name now an applet of name is any type of name that doesn't play the Nominating role it does not they don't talk about that year to second it doesn't refer to subject right and a singular name is not the same thing as a proper name right so a singular name if I talk about balls right that's not the proper name this or that ball alright so imagine if you have a baseball and inside that's famous or something you have a baseball side and let's say by Mark McGwire maybe you call that ball something the McGwire ball right the McGwire ball is a proper name but the word balls is just a singular name or ball does the singular name I guess that would be a plural name right so single name is ball a universal name is not the same as an applet it may be basically your is that what we see is that is that from universals to singulars into proper names we see something going from were from a broader predication into an increasingly narrower sense so different names have different functions now for Aristotle Abelard says the oblique forms are less necessary than the nominee for the oblique form is any case that is not in dominant or evocative now here we're talking about the cases of language in particular in Greek but all languages have cases English only has I think one case technically because English is its own sort of thing but we can say is that the nominative when you put a word in the dominant form of language it becomes the subject now it becomes the primary category of the thing you're talking about whereas the bakit of the sort of sacred form so for instance if you read in clay those in Plato's Republic when they say oh by Zeus his name or something like that those are the vaca t'v form right that's the bucket form but there's other cases too so for instance there's the genitive case so the possession if you say you say Socrates of Greece right Socrates is in the nominative but of Greece Greece isn't the genitive because I'm saying that the socrates possesses Greece in some way right there's the accusative formed and this is when would I say Socrates of Greece eats slovak ii right or he eaten liam right lamb because the object of the sentence is taking in the accusative sense presence as whereas the data this is sort of indirect object something that's related but it's not the primary what's gonna be important here is that the dominant form is the primary mode were thinking about with regard to these problems so that all these statements can make up an argument right so that's important too is that whenever you have an argument about saying that arguing is composed of statements and those statements are composed of words some of those words or names so therefore the oblique forms should be counted as names because the oblique forms do not take up the role of statements they cannot be used in the same sense so it's not names but the cases of names that ultimately that happens here so for the example Socrates is a man down by the river Socrates gets treated in the nominative sense there so what about these universal words it seems the universal slack a proper subject and tears what we could say is that if it's Universal applies everywhere but since it applies only to particulars then the word itself doesn't have a universal subject it only has particular subjects right so universal words do not actually seem to signify anything exactly so AB Lord says so neither man nor any other universal word appears to signify anything for it does not establish an understanding of any thing right but it seems there can be no understanding that does not have a subject thing it conceives and he goes on to quote boethius right every understanding rises from subject thing either as that thing is disposed or as it is not disposed for no understanding can arise for no subject you have to have a subject ultimately in order to understand something but if universals have no subject that doesn't make any sense because I do understand what Universal means or at least I think I understand so this means that universal words signify in a way not in terms of the understanding that arises from them but in terms of establishing what pertains to them so here's what a blur wants to suggest is okay the universal don't actually signify us but what they do signifies they would not signify but what they do is they establish what that word can pertain to so they have a different if you will logical function so that means that the universal word is not doesn't refer to the reality of the universal objects or subjects but it does have a function and that's the function of establishing something of establishing what can pertain to it so the word human doesn't explain the individual but it does for us constitute a certain understanding of what one might count with in a human so this means that universals don't reveal to us the thing Li or substantial nature of things in the world but they play a constituting role for our understanding of things so universals came out as a sort of common cause they're as common and cause here could be understood as an answer to the question of why something is the case and you can say is that universals help us to understand things by constituting and helping us understand what pertains but what they don't do is they don't point to some object in the world so what we see here is that is that Al Balad has an epistemological model where we have senses and those senses help organize our understanding in the mind which means ultimately that you can say as universals exist in the understanding but they don't exist in this in the senses so we have here is nominalism now just as the sense is not the thing sensed - whoops just now just as the sense is not the thing sensed so what I hold this the cups cold right but the object that's cold is not the sense that I have to which it is directed so the understanding is not the form of the thing it conceives instead an understanding is a certain action of the soul on the basis which the soul is said to be the state of understanding so that means the understanding is not a passive thing it's an active thing but the form in which it is directed is a kind of an imaginary and made-up thing which the mind contrives for itself whatever once and however it was so the imaginary city is seen in a dreamer like this or the form of a building that will be made which the architect conceives as a model and an exemplar of the thing to be formed we cannot call this either a substance or an accident right so that I love that example of the architect so the architect has these plans for building and building the building doesn't exist right so but obviously the plans pertain to the building and they organize the building so he's giving us an example here to help us get a sense of why what he's arguing in terms of the function of language and in terms of the problem of nominalism and universalism right but the plans are not the substance in ability nor are they simply accidents of the building their proto the building if you will so universals are mental they're not substantial phenomena they don't refer to substances their mental things so this is the position of nominalism now the difference in understanding that there is a difference in understand between universals in particulars or a universal name conceives a common in a confused image of many things so I say the word man I can think it'll whole bunch of different things come to mind and everything that were human and man here could really should be taking the most universal sense which is say all humans are men strictly speaking but let's not use that gendered language let's talk about humans right we say when I say the word human a lot of things followed that category and it's kind of confusing some of those humans are gonna be red-headed some of those humans are gonna be bald some of those humans have for two legs some of them have one leg etc etc so Universal conceives a common but a confused image of things in the mind but the understanding of a singular word generates the proper form of one thing that is a form related to one person in one person only so that's when I hear the word man a kind of model rises up in my mind that is related to single men in such a way that it's common to all of them and proper to none of them I love that it's common to all of them and proper to none of them because why because the word man as it's a universal it doesn't signify but it acts has an operation of allowing us to constitute so has a constitutive function rather than a signifying function so but what I hear Socrates that word Socrates a certain form rises up in my mind that expresses the likeness of a particular person hence by the word Socrates which produces in the mind the proper form of one person a certain thing is picked out and determined but with the word man the understanding of which depends upon the common form of all men that very community produces a sort of confusion so that we don't understand any one form from among them all so what does it mean to understand a subject well if you understand a subject either means a you understand the true substance of the thing or B you have the conceived form of anything when the thing is absent so you either have a particular or you have a universal when you understand a subject so that's why universals can function as the subject of our statements in language and within us within the statements we make in our arguments even though they don't have a proper leave signifying function now there's a caveat for God here which is namely that everything we've mention here does not apply for God but that's because God God can conceive of all things and God has produced all things so for God the problem of universals is quite different and we're not gonna go into that too much but he doesn't mention that which is an appropriate and important for him so this means that they understand the universal is on the one hand alone because it's apart from sensation it's bare because it's an abstraction and see it's pure of everything there's no discrete being so universals are alone they're bare and they're pure he says now what's ultimately back to the question poor for you how do we make sense of this what we can say is they okay Universal do signify truly existing things by naming them the same things are seeing you same things that singular name signified so there is a way which universals refer to things which are true right but they're not true in existence not in the same I should say they're not true as a subsistence in existence they're not but they're also not positive and just pure empty opinion it's not like we just make this stuff up they actually have a function in a logical role notice here the Abelard wants to argue for nominalism but he doesn't want to say that at the end of the day universals don't have a universal meaning right because then you end up with a whole range of philosophy that we have to discount and think here about Anselm and Anselm's notion that God's Universal for instance what does that mean here Abelard is beginning just sketch out for us if you will the logical answer to the question number three to ask is to ask a universal either to ask if the universal is either poriyal or incorporeal is actually a false dichotomy because nothing can be inked up oreal universals are corporeal in a sense their cap oriole in terms of their application to things right there corporeal respect to the nature of things but in compile with respect to the mode of their signification next universals are sensible and insensible in the same sense as Kippur oil and incorporeal because that which is insensible is nothing because all things which exist have sensibility can be sensed as it were at least for humans so that means that a their universal are sensible in terms of the nature of things but they're insensible with regard to signification now are you starting to see why he would needed to make this distinction earlier with the stop sign or as our example about why words suppose signified but they also show universals place um or somewhere in between those two right so number five universal terms do not signify discrete existence its particular terms which signified discreetly and six it is the multitude of things themselves that is the cause of the universality of the name so in other words universality is ultimately nominal with regard to the particular things that exist in the world but it doesn't mean that universals are not are meaningless and that they don't have some sort of truth here's a quote the universality of a thing confers on a word the thing does not have in itself for surely the word does not have signification by virtue of the thing and a name is judged to the applet of in accordance with the multitude of things even though we do not say that things signify or applet it so here you wants to sort of argue that he's being consistent ultimately in terms of his in terms of the logic of this argument so hopefully you can see here is that the album art offers really I think an important position with regard to nominalism and in an important argument I've understand what in da middle is it actually is nominal isn't here is not the idea that universals have no meaning but rather that universals have no signification to things in the world but they are related to the nature of things because of the multitude of things that exist within the world okay let's move here let's talk about ethics or knowing thyself in this section would be a little bit briefer because I really wanted to focus on the problem of universals in today's lecture but first up here let's start with vice and virtue now something is advice if it's lacks excellence and something is a virtue if it's fulfills excellence and there's four Aristotle's ethics there was a whole range of different types that there's virtues of habit there's also virtues of the my right mental or intellectual virtues so what we can say is then we talked about bison virtue you can either talk about the mind or you can talk about the body a moral refers to a virtue of the mind for Abelard not to a virtue of the body so for instance think about if you don't watch the Olympics or you love to watch sports maybe you like watching rugby right athletes can be really great athletes in terms of their body but this isn't doesn't mean that they're morally virtuous right just because they're good with their body right they have to have an excellence of the body that's now a moral so a moral is ultimately an excellence of the mind and some way it's an excellence of our conduct and the way our mind or organizes our contact so not only advises the mind not all vices the mind are considered moral vices know so there's an important caveat so for instance because I make a mental let's say that if you have a you're teaching a child how to divide two numbers together using long division or something of our algebra then what you're gonna see is that they make a mistake that's not a moral problem even though it's advice of the mind so not all classes or moral vices but all moral vices are mental so this means that mental vices now he's gonna say that mental vices though are not the same as sin exactly so for instance he gives the example of being hot-tempered so if you're the type of person who gets really angry and hot-tempered that signifies you the mental predisposition but that doesn't mean necessarily you're sinning now we're not talking too much about his theology or the theology of sin but we can say is that a sin is certainly that which is immoral you know and a sin is essentially there's lots of discussion about what exactly counts as sin but let's just keep it clean and easy for ourselves and just say a sin is a mental vice or a sin is not the same thing as intensifies I'm sorry we can say that a sin is something different from a mental bias but certainly in something which is immoral as a sin right so but being hot-tempered is also a mental vice right it's also a problem in your conduct it's a mental predisposition but that's not the same thing as doing something which is immoral right and here you quote the Apostle I believe Paul when he says that no one will be crowned unless he struggles according to the law now wait a second in order for someone to struggle morally right that means that they have to struggle against a moral bias but if the struggle is good then the Weisse they're struggling against and while they're struggling it cannot itself be a sin so that means I'm gonna be being careful about what we think counts as a sin so let's ask the question what exactly is a mental bias and what is properly called a sin okay a vice he says it's something which disposes us to sit so the cut it's but it's the consent of the virus which is sin so this is very important scene ultimately in Alba Lara's view is a option of choice it's a function of the will and we're not gonna get in too far into the will because he doesn't think the sitting is the same thing as willing but obviously if you consent to what's evil and then you're making a choice and then your will is involved so sitting is not the same thing as willing but every sitting is a consequence of Willie that's a word so a lot of things we also said without having a bad will so he thinks that's possible for us to commit sins even though we have a good will right so for instance imagine sitting under Tourette's right so what puts a gun to your head and they say or no instead of you to come to they had an example imagine someone sends you package and they say if you don't go assassinate a political opponent then we will kill your family someone threatens you well there if you go assassinate someone that's obviously saying you're murdering someone but you're sitting under duress are you doing it against your will so you can have sinning against your will in the exactly the example of the Abelard talk so has a servant who murder the servant who has to murder their master for survival right they're forced to do it but they don't want to do it so sitting is not always the same thing as willing but sin is which means that sin is also about the desire nor is sin the will but it's the consent of us it's the idea that you agreed to it and it's only when you consent to something that we say you're completely guilty of something right so for instance if you have when I was in high school friend of mud he was driving he was driving fast and he did it turn wrong and this car flipped over and the private person another friend of mine was killed right now he was he won't remember if he was held for manslaughter or not but there was a question about whether or not he should be held for me it's law but no one thought it will lead him responsible for murdering someone why because we knew that he wasn't completely guilty why because he didn't want to do it he wanted to happen he did not consent but with someone murder someone and they agreed they decided to do it they consented to the idea then we say they're completely guilty this quotation from Abelard he says now as for the things that ought not to be done I don't think it escapes anyone how often they are done without said for example when they're committed through force or ignorance for instance if a woman subjected to force has sex with someone else's husband or for man somehow deceive sleeps with the woman he thought was he was his wife worth by mistake he kill someone he believes should be killed by him in his role as a judge so it isn't a sin to lust after someone else's wife or doubt sense with another the sin is rather to consent to this lust or to this action so that means that the sitting isn't the action it's not the actual event but it's the consent to the evil event it's like it's the agreement to it notice here that that means that sin is mental right sin is not what happens in the world of things it seems to refer to what happens in the realm of the mind and the way the mind understands the realm of our actions of actions in it so the sin of lust is not the feeling of attraction or the desire as felt but the consent to the feeling right so of course you can think of the seven deadly sins here lust and being one of them right lust is not that so for instance he would say is that because Christianity is certainly in Christianity and in the Middle Ages lusting is a sink right but what is lust right so if you are a person you see a beautiful person suddenly naked before you right you can't control maybe go to beach and someone takes off their clothes right and you realize that they're attractive right and you have a desire you have a you feel a desire of attraction sexual attraction does that mean you're lusting no it does it not for Abelard it's when you consent to it it's when for instance you see that person that you turn turn away that's what he thinks is not a sin but is as soon as when you consent to it and then you you turn you staring someone or something like this this is when les takes over it's to consent to it and that's where the sin arises now he quotes Agustin here where Gustin says that the law commands nothing but charity but for but-for and forbids nothing but greed here notice that it's not the Act but it's the consent which ultimately makes the most sense here which means that intention not action is what is morally significant so this is becomes important with regard to modern philosophers later because for instance modern philosophers such as Manuel Conte recognize the moral importance of thinking about your intention to do things so it's not the action which is morally significant that's not what God says though but it's the intention which is morally significant in terms of it being a sin so there's also a process of temptation to sitting and committing evil the al-balad sets out he says first there's the suggestion of something and this is when there's something that's externally directed towards us right then there's the pleasure right there's the experience of it and then there's the consent to do it so imagine a person someone comes you and says hey maybe you should go see a movie or something and then after your movie you're with someone and they say let's go jump into another movie right let's steal we only paid for one movie but let's see - so let's steal a movie well the suggestion is actually directed then there's the the temptation of it which is the pleasure to do the deed he doesn't think that's an evil thing to to feel like oh that'll be fun to do right he says that the sin occurs will we approve of that pleasure when we consent to it so sin is the result of the approval to act viciously to act in Vice sin is therefore therefore not the will per se but it does require a function of the will and there's a number of other key ideas which Abelard discusses in Diaz that takes in clean the idea that God is the examiner of the human heart and he also discusses the reward of external deeds to what extent external benefits who should organize us and rewards you know sometimes my baby a deed is good because of its good intentions so this would mean that ultimately if you do what's a good action but you have an evil intent it's actually an evil action it's actually an immoral thing so let's say for instance I helped an old lady across the street and I helped her and everyone would see me and say oh he's so good but why am i doing that maybe I do that to cover up the fact that I just robbed a bank so I have an evil intention so the deed is good because of the good intentions not because of the action itself so the basis of a good intention is that the intention itself really should be good and again when we think about kaun kaun says the goodwill is something which is always inherently good because it's it's the intention which is really good and you have to have a good intent ultimately in order to act morally so that's a little brief very very brief - about Lawrence I think but hopefully it will give you a sort of kind of a sense of what he's arguing at least within our reading thank you guys very much for watching the history of medium philosophy I'm Marc Torres maybe I'll see you guys online next time

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Keywords: Philosophy, Medieval Philosophy, Peter Abelard, The Problem of Universals, Sin, Consent, Intention, Logic, Language

Id: yi-RmGc-ynM

Length: 80min 27sec (4827 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 14 2018