As we have seen, first comes the thing, then the idea, then the word. If our ideas are sound to the extent that they faithfully represent the thing, they will be clearly communicable only if we clothe them in words that accurately signify them.

Logical truth, as you might suspect, is the form of truth we are most directly concerned with as logicians. Logical truth is simply the truth of statements.

The user shapes language, but language shapes the user as well. If we consistently use language that serves to distort reality, we can eventually come to believe our own twisted rhetoric. Such is the power of language.

Logical truth, in other words, is founded upon ontological truth.

Sometimes our failure to find the root causes of things is attributable to simple laziness.

When we define something, what we are attempting to do is simply identify it more precisely—first by grouping it with other things that are generally similar to it, then by noting what is unique to it (the specific difference) in comparison with the other things in the group.

In efficient causality a distinction can be made between the “principal cause” and the “instrumental cause.” We say that a sculptor is the principal cause of a marble statue, because he is the ultimate explanation for its existence. But he is not the only explanation, for he needed tools to make the statue. In an important sense those tools caused

Rationalization is reasoning in the service of falsehood.

We will call “complex” ideas those for which there is no simple one-to-one correspondence between idea and thing. Here the correspondence is one to many. There is more than a single originating source for this kind of idea in the objective world.