 So Aristotle is also interested in the same project that Plato is interested in. He wants to understand reality. Now for Aristotle, he saw a very close link between the way we describe the world and how the world is. If there isn't that link, then it makes no sense to try to describe the world at all. There's no truth there. So if there are no trees out here, if there is no sky, if these are not tall, and if they're not related to each other, then what are we doing when we're talking? So in this real quick section, which is deceptively short, we have Aristotle's categories. And this is the way that Aristotle thinks that we begin to talk about the world. And how we talk about the world is going to have a really significant impact, and not only in what the world is, right, or maybe it's the reverse. Actually, it's the reverse. So the way the world is has a significant impact on how we talk about the world, but it has a significant impact on logic. So to begin this discussion about the categories, about, you know, about how Aristotle thinks language is related to reality, we had to return to our basics of grammar. And, you know, for every declarative sentence, you have a subject and a predicate. And, you know, a declarative is just that simple sentence, you know, I am sitting on a rock, right? That's a simple, I mean, that's a declarative sentence. To break it down even more simply, we would say I am sitting, right? So every declarative has a subject and a predicate. And the subject, in this case, is me, I. And the predicate is the description, you know, what I am doing. It's sitting. So every, every simple declarative sentence has a subject and a predicate. Now, subjects can be individual things like me, this creek, and the tree that's right behind me. These can be subjects. We can also talk about kinds of things as subjects. Okay. So we would have me, right? I could be a subject. And my kind of thing is human. So human itself can be a subject. And, you know, a predicate for human would be something like humans are warm-blooded. So we have, we have subjects. And that's the, you know, that's the subject of the sentence. It's what's being described, it's what's being predicated. You could also think of this in terms of grammar as the noun. Although not all nouns are, you know, nouns are not always used as subjects, but in a lot of cases nouns are subjects. So predicates are the way that things are described. Okay. Sitting is a predicate. Green is a predicate. This creek is, you know, steep. The edges of the creek are steep. Steep is a predicate. So predicates are the way that things are described. These are adjectives or verbs. The breeze is blowing. Okay. Blowing is a predicate. So, so this, to understand what Aristotle's talking about, you have to get that distinction down really well. The distinction between a subject and a predicate. So as you might be thinking to yourself right now, there's lots of ways to describe things. All right. There's lots and lots of predicates. And that's true. There are lots of predicates. Aristotle tries to give us basically nine kinds of predicates. All right. Nine ways of describing things. So you might even think of these predicates as the different ways of applying the questions who, what, why, where, when, and how. Okay. Who, what, why, where, when, and how. The basic questions. Aristotle calls these predicates, you know, in this list. He calls them the categories. And the nine, he has nine categories altogether. Plus he also says, you know, as, as we mentioned before, kinds of things can also be predicates. Right. So we'll just keep that in the back burner, but we'll look at each of the predicates one by one. Just as a note, I go, I describe these predicates in a different order than the book. So if I'm jumping around, I haven't skipped anything yet. You haven't missed anything. I'm just, I'm trying a different order. The first category we'll look at is quantity. And quantity is more than just, you know, one of that thing. You know, think back to Pythagoras. Pythagoras loved to quantify things, and we still do it today. We quantify things quite a lot. So, you know, when you think about quantity, just think about how can I put a number to that thing? So for instance, I am about six feet tall, right? I have four limbs, right? I have one head. I have two eyes. I have one mouth. I have two ears. We can start quantifying these subjects around us, these trees. We can quantify them in terms of height. We could quantify them in terms of the number of branches, weight, right? We could quantify the number of leaves. There's all kinds of ways that we could start quantifying things. So, you know, the influence of Pythagoras is not diminished. Actually, it's still around today. And this is the first category, is how do you quantify that thing? That's quantity. So the next category we're going to look at is place. And place is really pretty straightforward. It's, you know, where is the subject? Okay, so right now I'm in Texas. I'm in the United States. I'm in North America. I'm in San Antonio, Texas. I am in Crown Ridge Canyon Park, Texas. Is that right? Crown Ridge Canyon? Yes, Crown Ridge Canyon Park, Texas. We can get, you know, I'm on a hillside, right? Place can have a wide variety of different answers. It can be very broad, such as planet Earth, or it can be really specific, such as 29 degrees North and 98 degrees West, using latitude and longitude. So place is pretty straightforward. There's not terribly a mystery there. The next one is date, okay? So again, this one could be pretty broad and it could be pretty specific. So the date is 2014. To get more specific, the date is, what is today's date? August 2nd, 2014. It is 1149 in the morning of August 2nd, 2014. You can even be kind of, you know, vague. So it's daytime, right? Or morning time, or the middle of the day, we can describe it in different ways like that. So these are two of these predicates for Aristotle is place and date. Next category we'll look at is posture. Now this isn't, I mean, certainly whether I'm slouching or standing with my back extended are, you know, different ways to describe your posture, but it's not merely that, right? Standing, you know, stand is a posture. Sit is a posture. Even such things as, you know, right arm raised is a posture. The idea behind posture, we might think of it, is the arrangement of a thing at a time, okay? So I am standing, but I'm standing equally on both feet. At this point, I am, you can't really see it very well, but I am standing with my left leg bearing most of, you know, most of the weight. And now I am standing with my right leg bearing most of the weight. Posture is pretty straightforward. It's just the way that a thing is arranged at a time. So just then, I was climbing, sort of climbing, certainly walking up a hillside. Well, that's an action, right? That is something that I'm doing. Now, you have to be careful to distinguish posture from action, okay? Action usually means that, you know, there's some purpose involved, right? So a posture usually means, you know, you mean like the arrangement at a time. Now, you can have the same arrangement at a time, but have different actions. So suppose I'm standing in the hallway, right? Well, one of the things that I could be doing is looking for a student, right? I might stand in the hallway with my head facing a direction, looking for a student. Another way, another way with that same physical arrangement, I could, you know, simply be intending to block the students walking down the hallway. That's another possible action given the same posture, okay? So the action is, you know, what the subject is doing. And, you know, a subject could be perfectly still and still have an action. The idea is that the, is that the subject has, you know, some kind of purpose or fulfillment or something like that involved in what the subject is doing. Where action is what a subject is doing or how a subject is acting, passivity is how a subject is being acted upon. So it's what some other thing or some other subject is doing to this subject. So right now the sun is shining down on me. I am, that's part of the passivity that's happening with me right now. I am standing on the earth or I'm standing on the ground. So it's in that way that I'm acting upon the ground. You know, passivity and action are kind of two sides of the coin here. Action is what the subject is doing and passivity is what is happening to the subject or how the subject is being acted upon. A relation is the next predicate. You know, subjects do not exist in a vacuum. There are other subjects around subjects. For instance, I am standing in front of that tree. In front of is a relation. I am standing beneath that tree. That is another relation. Relations can deal with more than just location. They can also deal with date. So my speaking here, this video, happened before you watching it. So before is another relation. In fact, it really looks like with the categories, you can really start applying these categories to how you start applying it to two or more subjects. We already covered date and time. We can have relation with kinds of things. So we talked about humans being warm-blooded. Well, being warm-blooded is being a more specific kind. Warm-blooded is a broader kind than human. So human is included in the broader kind of warm-blooded. What else did we talk about? We talked about action. Action is pretty much laden with relation. So when I am acting, usually I am acting upon something. So even just walking up this trail, that is an action. I am walking, but I am walking on the trail. So that is another relation. Passivity is very much relation because it is how the subject is being acted upon. Using the example of the sun, the sun is shining upon me and that shining would be a relation. So relation is how two subjects are being compared. Possession is the next predicate. I have a hat. That is part of the possession. I am wearing a shirt. That is also possession. I am wearing sunglasses. That is also possession. This is kind of the way we are going to introduce this idea of possession. There is more to it than that, but we will go over that in class. But this idea of possession is what does the subject have or hold? What is it own? It might be another way of saying it. If a subject is using something, well, the subject possesses something for that use. As you can tell, it is really hard to escape one category when dealing with the rest. So when we are talking about possession, well, it seems like that is kind of a relation. It also kind of seems like it is an action. Holding onto the hat seems to be an action. Using the hat for shade, the hat is being acted upon. So that is a passivity of the hat. I am holding the hat. That is my activity for the hat. That activity seems to presuppose a possession. The point of this is just because a predicate falls into one category, it does not mean it does not fall into another. It can fall into another. The last category is quality. Quality is kind of broad. One way to start thinking about quality is just to catch off for the rest of the predicates that we did not catch with the other ones. So all sensory information, that is going to be quality. So my shirt is red. Red is a quality. The sun is hot. That is another quality. The tree that is behind me right over there, if I were to feel the bark, the bark would be rough. Rough is another quality. Sensory information, it is probably all of that is going to be considered a quality. Other kinds of evaluative terms, like how we estimate things, that would be a quality too, or how we value things, or how we kind of describe things in terms of the usefulness or appreciation, something like that. I think those would also be qualities too. So we can have a lot of descriptions about the tree. These trees here, and you can say they are 10 feet tall. They have 38 branches and many thousands of pine needles that are erect and the branches are off to the side. So we are getting to quantity, we are getting to posture. We can talk about the relationship of the trees to each other. One of the relations would be, well it is not currently because there is a hole above me, but one of the relations could be that the tree is above me and that is casting a shadow on me. So that is something that I am acted upon. And then I would say something like, the shadow is good. The shadow keeps me cool. The shadow is useful. This useful, this good, this cool, that would probably fall under the category of quality. So those are the main categories. So the last category, or we are talking about the last category, but I want to reiterate how a subject can also be used as a predicate, how a subject can also be a category. So to use the example of me, I am 6 feet tall. I am wearing a red shirt. So we are starting to have these predicates about me. And included in those predicates would be, I am human. I am human. Well, we can very quickly ask, what is it to be human? Well then in that case, when we are asking that question, human becomes a subject. Human becomes a subject. We can start having categories for the subject. Human is warm-blooded. Human is rational. So warm-blooded, we can describe that in terms of qualities. Actually, having blood, that would be a possession. Warm would be a quality. Or if we wanted to use quantity for that, we could say 98.6 degrees. Or actually warm-blooded means that we regulate our own body temperature, not necessarily specific temperature. So having a body, that would be a possession. So you can very quickly start turning subjects into predicates. There's a whole lot of what's real out here. There's also a whole lot of ways to describe it. Got lots of subjects, trees, sky, clouds, meat, hats, sunglasses. We got lots of predicates. Hot, blue, tall, green, articulate voice. These are all predicates. So for Aristotle, if we are actually describing something, if we're actually saying something true, then there has to be something that exists and the way that we're describing it. If there is no blue whatsoever at all, then what am I saying when I say the sky is blue? If there is nothing that is the sky, then what am I communicating at all? If there's nothing that corresponds to what I'm saying, then there is no truth. Or at the very least, whatever I think is true, it's just completely separated from what is actually real. And I might as well be communicating gibberish. Maybe it's useful gibberish, okay, but that doesn't mean that it's true at all. So for Aristotle, if we're speaking in this way, if we're talking about subjects and predicates, then there's something real that is a subject and something real that is a predicate. Now, subjects are these things that are existing, okay? That which is predicated. And for Aristotle, this is the starting point of what's real. This is what he calls the substance. So subjects are substance. Substance is the thing that's existing. So trees, these are substances. Human. Human is a substance. Christopher is a substance, or sorry, Dr. Haugen. Dr. Haugen is a substance. These are substances. Now, substances or, you know, subjects, there's no such thing as a subject without a description, without a way that is existing. And the way that is existing, that's the predicate. This is also what Aristotle calls the accident. So you have subject, which is substance, and you have predicate, which is accident. Subject, or excuse me, substance is the thing that's existing. Accident is the way that it's existing. Hot, blue, breeze, green, wide open space, right? These are all ways of the subjects existing. The sun is hot. The trees are green. The sky is blue. This area is wide open. So you have substance and you have accident. So the way that Aristotle thinks this works is, you know, the way that we know the world tells us the way the world really is. And you want to know existence, right? And if you want to know what it means to exist, you have to understand substance and accident. That's what it means for something to exist as substance and accident.