 So the last chapter began to add those rules for analytical reading, and a lot of it covered skills that you use, skills where you use inspectional reading, remember that then. Not skimming, or not speed reading, but maybe skimming or, you know, special reading. To refine the structure of the book, try to find the problem that the philosopher, excuse me, the author is trying to solve what question the author is trying to answer, what the author believes answers that question. The structure and how the steps that the author is going to take to get there, to go from the question to the answer. This chapter begins kind of the next stage for analytical reading, and it's coming to terms with the author. And what Adler is dealing with here is to find the key words, the key concepts, the important words, the important concepts that the author uses to get from that question to that answer. So to start, Adler gives us a distinction between words and terms. Words are collections of, you know, if they're written down, collections of letters, which together, you know, follow rules of spelling to be a word. If it's spoken, it's a collection of sounds. Again, following certain rules, phonetics, sign language has words. They're signs, hand signs. I'm not going to try to insult people by, you know, imitating them right now because I just don't know enough about sign language to do that. But sure, those are words too. Those are words. Terms are different from words. Terms are a word used unambiguously, which is kind of a clumsy phrase there. The medieval said used univocally, right? And that means that they're used with one and only one meaning. There's a difference between words and terms. There can be many different meanings for a single word. I know I've looked up the word innocent before. Innocent has something like 16 different definitions depending upon which dictionary you look at, ranging from anything to not guilty, to not guilty because of ignorance, to, you know, moral purity, something like that. And those are three very different things. So a word can have many different meanings. A meaning can have several different words, right? These are synonyms. What liquid, water, agua, right? Well, that's, I guess that's Spanish at that point. But these are rough synonyms for all the same meaning, right? Okay. So there's a difference between words and terms. And what you have to do as a reader is come to terms with the author. You have to find those important words and figure out what term the author intends with that word. This brings us to rule five of analytical reading. You have to identify the key words and come to terms with the author. Now notice, and Adler takes pains to point this out. This is a two-step process. You have to first identify the key words, right? You don't necessarily understand fully what they mean yet, or maybe not at all, right? But you have to identify the key words. Once you identify the key words, then you try to understand what the author means by those words. What are the terms? So you have words on the one hand, terms on the other. And Adler recommends, by the way, Adler recommends in your notes, you know, creating a two-column list, right? One column with the words, one column with the meanings and the terms, okay? Now this process isn't going to be straightforward. It's not like we have a finite number of steps to determine what the key words are. I know maybe you've done assignments, right? Find five key words in this text. It's not going to be like that. And, you know, textbooks usually give them to you, which really bugs me, because that's, you know, that's taking away your opportunity to think at that moment. So, you know, that's perhaps another discussion. But identifying the key words is not going to be straightforward. You've got to hunt for these words. And Adler has several pieces of advice on how to do so. And then once you identify those words, you have to find the term. You have to find the meaning. Finding the key words is not going to be straightforward. You've got to hunt for them. One of the initial pieces of advice that Adler gives as far as that's concerned is, you know, first find those words you don't already know, right? Find these words with which you're unfamiliar. And you don't know the meanings of the terms. Or even maybe, I don't know, you kind of have an idea, but it's not really clear. That's just as good practice, so you can understand what the author has to say. I mean, the whole purpose behind identifying the key words and coming to terms with the author is to understand what the author has to say. Okay, so you first start with those words you don't already know. Secondly, pay attention to those words that the author takes pains to identify and to define. And sometimes this happens. Sometimes this happens, especially if the author is, you know, maybe using a word in a very, very specific way and not necessarily using it just in a common way of speaking about it. There's lots of words that we use that in common speak just really don't mean something very specific. It can mean a variety of different things, right? I'm going to take a walk, okay? I'm walking, right? Those are two, you know, walk is kind of a common word between those two. But it probably means something different, right? You know, when you talk about walking, you probably just mean something like, you know, moving at a relaxed pace on my feet, one foot in front of the other, not trying to run, blah, blah, blah, whereas I'm going to take a walk and mean anything from going to the park, going to the neighborhood, going on a, you know, even a hike, you know, going to cool off, right? There's lots of ways that we use these words that, you know, in common speak, we just, it could be in any one of them and it doesn't really matter. But the author really wants to pay attention to a particular word and spends time defining it, right? You know, pointing it out, giving a definition, then yes, right? You should write that one down and also write down whatever meaning the philosopher believes is appropriate for them. You should pay attention to the section titles, right? If you have an article or a book or a chapter or, you know, sections within a chapter, those are probably going to be important words. You should write those down and make sure you understand what they mean. Often or, you know, a common practice is to, you know, title a section with something very, very important, you know, for the main point. It's not just going to be, you know, here's a Sunday afternoon, right, unless somehow Sunday afternoons are important to the author's work. Now I don't necessarily give this advice, but I think it's a good piece of advice. Remember in the last chapter, Arthur wanted us to pay, you know, to identify the problem and to, you know, try to figure out what the, you know, the book is about. All right. This is a good idea. Now once you identify that question and that answer, you should write down the subjects and the predicates, right, the important, these key concepts in that question, in that answer. Right. Chances are this is going to be important to the, to the author's works, right. And you know, if you've identified that structure, chances are there's going to be some kind of link from one concept to another, right, where, you know, if we're talking about subjects and predicates, that a subject is, is described by the predicate or excluded by, from the predicate, these important links, you want to identify those key terms all along the way from that question to that answer, that'll be helpful in identifying the, these key words. All right. So that's the first step, find the key words. The next step, come to terms with the author. So once you identify those, the key words. Now you have to come to terms with the author. You have to figure out what the author means by those words. Now, I mean, you could try just going to a dictionary and, you know, just pulling out meanings of, of, meanings for words and then planting it in there, but that's probably not going to do you any good. I mean, there's no guarantee that the author means the same thing that the dictionary means. And frankly, there's, you know, there's going to be lots of problems with this trying to just pull out meanings from the dictionary. First of all, you're not thinking anymore. Right. That's a start. You're letting somebody else think for you. Secondly, you are, you know, you probably misunderstand that, you know, the author. And you know, there's the problem of synonyms. Right. Actually, not even, I'm sorry, not synonyms at this point. This is the problem of ambiguity, where there's multiple meanings for any given word in the dictionary. Yeah. I mean, there's rare exceptions, but, you know, there can be multiple meanings for any given word in the dictionary. So you have to come to terms with the author and like finding the key, the key words, this is going to be difficult. So earlier I mentioned, you know, paying attention to those words that the author, you know, tries really hard to define. So that's kind of, that's kind of an easy step. You know, they give a definition, okay, good, right? You know, you, you figure that part out. But don't think your job's done, right? Because the author can provide multiple definitions for the same word. And they may not necessarily be identical. So what you'll have to do is, you know, kind of catalog all those different definitions and then write them all down, right? Have them in your, you know, two columns, right? You got your word and your definitions, right? So that's, that's kind of a, you know, an upfront way of identifying or coming to terms with the author is looking for those technical definitions or the ones that the author specifies, like, I mean this and only this, right? That sort of thing. And that's, that's kind of a good way forward. The other way to do this is pay attention to examples that the author gives. You'll, you know, want to write those down too. Now, I either doesn't necessarily state this, but I think it's a good idea. If the author provides examples of the word, that's part of defining that term, right? So write down those examples too. Try to identify what those examples have in common. What makes those things what they are and what distinguishes those things from others of its kind, right? If you're paying attention, you just notice that I gave genus a differential. Adler is unapologetically Aristotelian, so it's not a surprise that he's going to help himself to Aristotle here. Now, you know, the more that you work with this, right? You're going to struggle because, you know, this comes through experience. You're going to struggle with finding the term, the meaning that the author is using. Now, you know, you might wonder, well, when do I really understand what the author is doing? Well, you can start coming up with your own examples and see if they fit with the examples that the author gives. This is part of defining these terms, is the things to which the meaning refers, right? That's really, really great. They helps. And when you start coming up with your own test cases that match up with all the claims that the author makes about those terms, yeah, you've probably successfully identified at least the objects to which the term refers. The other part of it is actually providing your own definition, right? The author is going to provide one definition and that's fine. I'm not saying you, you know, you almost do better, but you can do better. Or at least you can provide a definition that's going to be pretty much the same, right? It is possible to give multiple definitions, right, without using, that they all mean the same thing without using the same set of words. It can be done. Now, but this is, you know, this is this project that you have with coming to terms with the author, with understanding what the author says. Now, you often teachers, professors will say, you know, put it in your own words. And this is a really great way of doing this, right? Unfortunately, when we, you know, what happens a lot when teachers they put it in your own words, you know, students will hit the the source and try to find synonyms for these words and, you know, have at it and say, OK, well, that doesn't really help. But now this coming to terms with the author is a practice in defining at this art of defining, defining does not mean going to the dictionary and finding the meaning in the dictionary, right? Merriam Webster is not the end all be all of your thought, right? You've got to learn to think and by the way, those dictionaries aren't even like, aren't even necessarily that great. I mean, really good dictionaries and these are only multi volume works will sit there and painstakingly define a single term and it'll take, you know, a few pages, right? Sometimes we think of these as encyclopedias, but it isn't necessarily the case. So learning to define is an important skill and it is a skill. This is something you can acquire and perfect and home. So what do you do and broad strokes, right? You, you know, give examples, these clear cut cases of what you're talking about. You give clear cut cases of it like the exact opposite, right? What's really not this, maybe even give cases where, you know, you're trying to say, OK, I'm talking about this, but not that, right? Maybe some close cases, right? And you give, you know, maybe. Famous cases, if it applies, right? If that applies point to examples, this is going to help you to find the term so that the reader, right? This is when you're writing and somebody else is reading your work. The reader will be able to identify what you're talking about. Provide, look for synonyms. Synonyms are great. Now, it can be helpful to say, look, I'm kind of talking about this sort of thing. But you might also want to distinguish the synonym, right? You know, to distinguish some cases in the synonym. That's not what you're dealing with. In addition, you want to provide, you know, a nice sentence definition, right? You know, I'm sitting there beating up on Merriam Webster. But being able to provide a single sentence definition is a real skill, right? And that means providing the genus and the differentiate, right? You identify the kind to which the thing belongs. And then you spell out what distinguishes that thing from other members of its kind. Now, shameless plug moment. I have a whole video set of videos, really, on defining terms, right? I'm going to put a link in the description. You want to develop your skill in this, start there, that will help. And, you know, this is a real skill. If you have, you know, you're signed to a paper, you know, a three to five page paper. I've yet to see a paper in the humanities that didn't require defining at least three terms. And if you're, I mean, if you're really, really precise and you edit out, you just shave off words, you can thoroughly define a term in about 100 words. If you are, you know, if you're not nearly so precise, if you're just speaking casually, or you're just not trying to shave off words, you can probably do it in about 300. And it's about a page. And all of a sudden that three to five page paper, it's a lot easier to fill the pages, right? And this isn't, you know, this isn't bold work. This is just, you know, making stuff up. This is defining terms. It's defining terms. Okay. So that's rule three, that's rule five, identifying the key words and coming to terms with the author. You know, and Adler even says that, you know, the more you work on this, the more you can become interested in defining the difference between a literal definition and a metaphorical one. Concrete terms versus abstract ones. Emotive terms versus cognitive. And the more you can define, the more you learn how to think. It's very literally, understanding what you're saying. I think we're all familiar with more than a few people who speak without understanding what they mean.