It would be interesting to develop St. Thomas’s notion of logic as a manual like “the proper use of a human intellect”.
int.) Human powers can function well or poorly. Digestion can happen either effortlessly, or with difficulty and pain; vision can be either 20/20 or obscured by glaucoma, nerve damage, etc; the endocrine system can work or be impaired by diabetes; our ability to make a jump shot can be trained and coached, etc.
1.) Intellect: a power which knows what things are. We pass over any consideration of the nature of this power, unless we need to know it in order to use the intellect properly.
2.) We come to know by learning. So intellect learns what things are. Like other human powers, sometimes this development is automatic, other times it must be trained or coached. We are only interested here in the part that can be trained or coached (that is, educated).
3.) Learning involves getting a more perfect knowledge of something, and so begins with what is more imperfect. Learning simply speaking therefore begins with a concept that is most imperfect, simply speaking.
4.) The learning in question is of what something is. The most imperfect grasps of what something is, is our awareness that it is at all in some way. One the one hand, this is a real awareness of what something is; on the other hand it is so imperfect and indeterminate that it tells us almost nothing, and is always taken for granted in our thought.
(more examples)
The logic from names to definition(s)
The Death of an Interesting Theory
