Minor Logic Tape #8
Tree of Porphyry: An arrangement of the most important concepts of philosophy in such
a way as to express vividly a certain hierarchy of universality which orders and
significantly relates these concepts to each other.
Father Feeney’s Method of Memorizing Using Numbers:
1.
​One purpose of logic is Truth.
2.
​Two types of Argument: Inductive & Deductive
2.
​Three acts of the Mind: Simple Apprehension, Judgment, Inference
4.
​Four types of Categorical Propositions A, E, I, O. (Brother Francis Notes,
paragraph 29)
5.
​Five Predicables: Genus, Species, Differentia, Property, Logical Accident.
6.
​Six Transcendental Ideas that go above the Categories: Being, Thing,
Something, One, True, Good.
7.
​Seven Liberal Arts: Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric (Trivium), Arithmetic,
Astronomy, Geometry, Music (Quadrivium)
8.
​Eight Rules of the Syllogism (see Chapter IX of Brother Francis’s Logic
Notes)
9.
​Nine Accidents: Quantity, Quality, Relation, Action, Passion, Time, Place,
Disposition, Habitus.
10.
​Ten Categories: The Nine Accidents plus Substance.
14.
​Fourteen Modes or Moods of the Syllogism (Brother’s Logic Notes, par. 46)
Three Orders that Logic is Involved with: Individual things, Thought (First Universals or
the “Logical Whole”) and the Expression of Thought (Words)
First Intention: Think of the reality represented by the idea.
Second Intention: Think of the idea itself.
Ten Categories: The highest Genera—the limit of univocal predication.
When we define, we go UP the Porphyrian Tree and we make the object more intelligible;
but when we divide, we go DOWN the Porphyrian Tree and we make it more familiar.
Species: Names the complete essence of a thing. (For example, when you call someone a
“man” you name the complete essence, versus when you say he is a “body.”)
Man is the only species that can be fully defined (in the physical order).