I think just getting past the switching of naming conventions was a huge breakthrough for me. My confusion on the actual positioning, or rather the assumed signification of M, was a mess from the beginning. My assumption of its inherent alphabetic sequencing, as if it were univocal to the function of A, and then – with that flawed assumption – tracking the conversion of the major premise as if M is now posterior to N because it was originally prior pre-conversion. All these things were distorting my perception of the premises, their relationships, and their implications to the conclusive propositions. Nothing made any sense, and it only got worse during the subsequent reductions of invalid demonstrations.
Towards the end of my intense first line-by-line study on Chapter 5, all my notes were corrupted because of this error; but after getting into another dialectical tennis match with the tutor for clarification, and wrestling past my ignorant equivocation of M as if it were the subject, instead of the predicate, finally my error revealed itself, and then the light began to shine on everything I had previously stumbled through. There was an immense clarity as I re-wrote the notes, and with the proper terms defined for ‘NMO’, viz. M being properly understood as the middle term, I could then properly understand each line from Aristotle in a way that was not apparent before. I was able to ask the tutor more intelligent, and nuanced, questions and give more logical interpretations on sentences that were difficult to understand at first glance.
EAR