Study Notes (Trivium) - (6/5/18-6/10/18)

Greetings.  Felt I should try to add some content; even if it is quite sub-par quality.  The following is my personal notes taken while studying the The Trivium this past week.  To explain a little, it's not prettied up and organized in this post.  These are the notes as they appear in my personal notes.  I've attempted active recall (writing from memory after reading) with these notes as well as I can, but I'm certainly far from perfect.  Everything in red is stuff that corrected or added after going back to the back after getting down what I could.

My intent is four fold:

1. I'm hoping to give myself a mental push by publishing these notes.  It should force me to think more about the concepts and issues to make them better articulated and succinct if I know others will be reading.
2. I hope to encourage anyone interested in studying this stuff but that may be discouraged by the difficulty of the subject matter.  I have a LOT of red on some days. But I persevere.
3. I hope to quite simply communicate information that I find important and interesting.  If someone can happen upon this blog and find what's contained interesting enough to take it up himself, that's a pretty cool positive for me.
4. Two+ heads are better than one.  Having others weigh in on these notes will hopefully lead to some fruitful discussions and even deeper thinking and understanding of the material. 
5. If others of more sufficient understanding of these things happen to find this blog, then I'm always happy to accept input in the hopes that I can gain a better understanding of it all.

Quick note:  these notes start on page 20 of the book.  Perhaps one day I'll go back and digitize my handwritten notes from the earlier pages.

Here are the notes (the Roman Numerals separate the different days):

I -- Trivium - words without meaning aren’t symbols.  Words must correspond with some reality or a concept/abstraction of reality to be a symbol.

The senses work with the brain in order to perceive and abstract from the world.  The senses initially work to achieve percept through the stimulation of the senses.  Then the imagination works to achieve a phantasm so that the mind can recall a sense of the object/idea without the object needing be present.  

Concept is the abstraction of the essence of phantasms.  You see multiple chairs and the phantasms that arise in your mind provide the material from which the intellect can abstract the concept of chair from the individual examples.

The imagination is the meeting point between the intellect and the senses; think dreams being how the intellect might attempt to bridge a gap with reality and new information through strange, imaginative exercises.

Review:  four ways to symbolize - A) two ways to symbol aggregate and individual: 1) proper name, 2) empirical description; B) two ways to symbolize essense: 1) general/empirical description, 2) common name.

Man is the only creature with true power of abstraction; some animals may contain some low-level ability to abstract, but it is of limited use and related wholly to survival/instinct.  It does not appear to be of intellectual use to them.

II -- Trivium - Generalized concepts are abstractions of the essence of particular class.  The concepts exist regardless of time, location, etc as opposed to the percept and phantasms of objects.  Percepts exist within the external senses and depend upon external stimulus to manifest. Phantasms are dependent upon an individual’s imagination and intellect to manifest at a particular time and place.

General concepts have their basis in normative reality.  To put it another way, concepts have a basis in what is real; not in the subjective interpretation one might have for reality.

Everything within the intellect (with the exception of the intellect itself) depends upon outside data produced by the external senses.

Man is the only animal with the rational capacity of abstraction.  Other animals can have the capacity to respond to external stimulus (shapes, colors, etc), but Man is the only creature that can abstract and create concepts (essense of a square, formula for the circumference of a circle.

Sister Miriam gives the analogy of a bee making honey.  Many different insects may rest upon and interact with a flower, but only the bee has the capacity to interact with the flower so as to produce honey.  In a similar fashion, Man has a unique relationship with the world by having the capacity to abstract concepts from raw sense data that both Man and animal can perceive.

If animals could abstract, you would expect to have change and perhaps some form of culture evolve in them.  But they remain static in their instincts and capabilities in so far as we can theorize.

St. Thomas More made a defense of the Church’s use of statues and images by saying in essence statues/images and written text are fundamentally the same.  They’re all symbols (imitation and written) that communicate the phantasmical thoughts of the author to the viewer at a later point. At a technical level it is quite true.  We see the words same as we might a painting. The only difference I can think of is that the words have a more concrete an objective interpretation set upon them than the potential ideas any individual may receive from looking at a painting.

Interesting thought:  a painting that depicts an event from a book that is constructed by repeating the text from the particular book scene over and over and changing the coloring of the letter to create the image.  

According to More images and statues are of great benefit to the unlearned and ignorant who may not have the capacity or learning to benefit from the written word

III -- Trivium - Thomas More defends the use of statues and icons by explaining how they are symbols the same as words in that they help to communicate the phantasms and concepts in the author’s mind to the recipient.  

10 categories of being:

1. Substance- that of something which is in itself (man)
2. Quantity- determination of matter of a substance (tall man)
3. Quality- determination of the nature of something (friendly, handsome man)
4. Relation- something in relation to others (man is near)
5. Action- matter doing something either for itself or to something else (smile, type on a keyboard)
6. Passion - matter acted upon by something else (being drafted)
7. When- quality of something in relation to extrinsic events with relation to time (man on a Sunday morning)
8. Where- quality of something in relation to extrinsic objects/places (near a lake)
9. Posture- the matter of something in relation to itself (sitting down changes how the parts of matter relate to itself)
10. Habiliment- clothing and decoration of a person.

Substance seems to be distinct from essence.  Essence is a concept taken from multiple phantasms/percepts of a thing while substance is that which is the sum total that makes something what it is in itself.  And the categories relate to substance how a thing relates to itself and others.  

IV -- Trivium - The Ten Categories of Being:

1. Substance - that which exists in and of itself in the subject. (e.g. the person)
2. Quantity - that which exists in relation to determination of the matter of the subject (e.g. height, weight)
3. Quality - quality  determination of the nature of something (e.g. intelligence)
4. Relation - the reference a substance (individual) or accident bears to another (e.g. friend)
5. Action - the exercise of the faculties or power of a substance either upon something else or itself to produce a result (e.g. typing notes, smiling)
6. Passion - something extrinsic to the subject that has its terminus in the subject reception by a substance (i.e. the subject) of an effect by an external agent (e.g. getting slapped)
7. When - something extrinsic in relation to duration position in relation to extrinsic events which measure duration. (e.g. Sunday afternoon)
8. Where - something extrinsic in relation to position of a substance in relation to other (i.e. extrinsic) bodies in order to measure and determine the substance’s place (e.g. by the lake, next to the clock tower, on the bench)
9. Posture - matter in relation to itself the relative positions of the matter of a substance to itself (e.g. sitting down)
10. Habiliment - what the subject wears. (e.g. clothing, jewelry, helmet)

Predicates can organize the Ten Categories of Being in to three blocks according to what the say about the subject:

1. If the predicate is the subject itself and

V -- Trivium- Predicates can subcategorize the Ten Categories of Being in three ways:

1. The predicate is the subject.
2. The predicate exists within the subject
3. The predicate exists outside the subject

Seven important definitions with consideration to language and reality:

1. Essence is that which makes a being what it is and without which it would be what it is. (e.g. I am Man.  Man is my essence differentiates me from other beings made of similar matter)
2. Nature is essence viewed as a source of activity.
3. The individual is constituted of of essence in quantified matter.  While I’m part of the greater class of man by my essence, I’m still differentiated by having my own individual material existence and accidents to set me apart.  Even matches, while manufactured to meet exacting standards, are still individual matches due to their quantifiable difference in having individual material existence apart from the other matches.  
4. Percept is the simple apprehension sense-apprehension of an object that is present.
5. A Phantasm is the image from memory in the mind in the absence of the object; mental image of an individual reality
6. General Concept is the basic understanding intellectual apprehension of essence.

An Empirical Concept is the intellectual apprehension of an individual.  The intellect can only indirectly know individual objects, the objects being material.  But the intellect can directly know itself.

I love how day IV just ends so abruptly.  That was a particularly taxing day.

I'll try to get out my Logic notes from the same time period later today.