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Terms and the Soul

If we are going to give a true description of our experience, we cannot attribute more reality to stones and tables and books than we do to our mind or soul. We need not "make hypotheses" (Newton) about what the mind is, e.g. whether it is a ghost or a product of biology or whether the word 'mind' is a name at all.

But we do have to give preeminence to the mind, and the mind isn't simply "thinking is operating with signs" (BB p. 6) or pictures. Because there is also the phenomenon, the experience of the awareness of awareness (of being aware that one is aware; normally we are not aware of being aware: we are involved in doing things, often purposively, but unselfconsciously).

There is a concept 'mind' and there is also the phenomenon of mind. There is a factual investigation (of a phenomenon) and a conceptual investigation (of the use of a word). Is interest in one more philosophically justifiable than the other (PI § 108)? Both are perplexing and interrelated (What is the essence of man? Is there an afterlife?) What I want is to give an honest description of our experience, one not inhibited by Wittgenstein's implicit disapproval.

It is difficult to imagine the life of another human being, to recreate for very long in imagination their thoughts and feelings when not with us. The inner life of another human being is hardly knowable. Each individual dwells in a small ring of light surrounded by limitless darkness.

A basic description of consciousness or awareness

If we describe our experience, there are two elements to consciousness, one dependent on my will, and one independent of my will (These are, I think, equivalent to Fichte's "presentations with the character of freedom" and "presentations with the character of necessity" (Copleston, History VII, II, 2)); the latter is called "objective", and without this element consciousness would be a phantasmagoria, a realm of pure imagination with no anchor. (How do we know that it is not? We remember, and things that are remembered or held in memory are sometimes unchanging, sometimes changing, and when things change there is a sequence to the changes, a timeline (cf. ibid. II, 9); philosophers seem to neglect the essential role of memory in consciousness.) How do we account for the existence of the objective element? The answer that suggests itself is that there are things that exist independently of my will, which we call, since these things strike us as being interconnected, collectively "the world". Is there any reason to reject this suggestion? (That is what Fichte's idealism demands (ibid. II, 9).) If our experience is not evidence, then what would be? All experience speaks for it, none against. Consciousness then consists of concepts and propositions, both language-laden: concepts of logic (rules for reasoning and mathematics) and concepts of things (Without concepts independent things are unintelligible -- they are not even changing shapes and colors (for 'shape', 'color' and 'change' are concepts), or in other words, consciousness without concepts is "blind"); and propositions stating what is or isn't true (These are Kant's "judgments", I think). (One thing glaringly missing in this account is feeling, i.e. sensations, touch; nothing strikes us as being more real than the solidity of objects, the free-fall of space, and pain.)

The distinction between me and what is forced on me both includes and excludes my body, excludes because my body gives me mobility and lets me change aspects of the non-me or world; but it also includes my body for my body subjects me to pain (headache and so on) and is in appearance mostly independent of my will (I do not choose my face and so on), and it makes demands on me for food and drink; as Plato says it is a source of endless bother (Phaedo 66b). I am thus subjected to the distinction between me and the world by brute force.

If a moth could talk and wrote a book "The World as I Found It", do you think the content of that book would be the same as mine? Realism seems to say that the world makes me, while Idealism say that I make the world. And both those propositions may be true in a sense, because although the moth and I both (presumably) experience necessity, our perception-conceptions are (again ex hypothesi) different.

When Drury speaks of "the I that is always subject and never object", isn't that another way of saying "awareness of one's own awareness", for it is not the content of one's awareness that one is aware of?

When a concept becomes an existent (hypostatization)

Ockham pointed to the language origin of many philosophical problems (III, 7), and the principle of economy (entia non multiplicanda praeter necessitaten) is to be applied here too.

For example. The concept 'man' arises when we abstract the similarities between human beings. (The word 'man' is shorthand ("brevity in speaking") for these abstracted similarities.) But to regard this abstraction (of similarities) as if it were itself an entity (as an individual man is an entity) is to hypothesize a concept (an abstraction or idea) into existence. It is self-delusion, mystification by language. Even if there were or is an essence of man, this essence would be a mere abstraction (a selection of similarities), not the name of an independently existing entity. (Cf. Berkeley on the reification of abstractions.)

With respect to "the phenomenon of mind", there are mental phenomena, thoughts, but need there be a mind, an immaterial something which is the source and the somewhere in which these phenomena take place? The adjectives 'thinking' and 'mental' may give rise to the word (substantive, noun or nominal) 'mind', and this may conjure the thing "the mind" into imagined existence by the suggestions of grammatical analogies (or anyway of analogies): if something happens, then it must happen some place and be done by some thing. (Compare the adjective 'alive' and the noun 'life', as if the word 'life' were the name of some thing that went out of a body at death.)

The Book of Experience

The first thing to write in The World as I Found It [TLP 5.631] is that I am my mind, because my existence in a different body, machine or disembodied is easily imagined. But I cannot say that my self-awareness is essentially me, because there is also discourse of reason (sanity) and there is also memory (although memory like sense-perception is not unique to man). But specifically human existence begins with self-awareness.

In my jargon the background of this page is "the logic of language" or how a distinction is made between sense and nonsense language in philosophy. That and Socrates' standard for knowing in philosophy is the foundation of my thinking in philosophy (the four lines of thought).

Outline of this page ...

Source for most of the quotations that follow: Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Volume III: Ockham to Suárez (1953)

Ockham and the Principle of Economy

[Ockham's] main point was always that there is no need to postulate any factors other than the mind and individual things in order to explain the universal. (IV, 3, vi) [Universals owe their] existence simply to the intellect: there is no universal reality corresponding to the [universal] concept. (IV, 3, v)

Everything which is explained through positing something distinct from the act of understanding can be explained without positing such a distinct thing. (Ibid.

The universal concept arises simply because there are varying degrees of similarity between individual things. Socrates and Plato are more similar to one another than either is to an ass; and this fact of experience is reflected in the formation of the specific concept man. (IV, 3, vi)

The superfluous is obviously superfluous, but what decides what is superfluous? Are Plato's preconceptions superfluous? Not if, as Plato would say, his first principles (preconceptions) are sound.

Ockham's account has this advantage over Wittgenstein's: it doesn't introduce an empty metaphor ("family" resemblances).

... after stating that sense-perception as such cannot attain the universal, Aristotle points out that we may observe groups of singulars or watch the frequent recurrence of an event, and so, by the use of abstract reason, attain to knowledge of a universal essence or principle. [Anal. Post. I, 31] (Copleston, History of Philosophy: Greece and Rome, XXVIII, 5)

To the contrary, Ockham says, sense-perception can attain the universal by observing singulars, but what we "abstract" -- we retain or discard qualities -- is not a universal essence but only resemblances between singulars. Ockham doesn't explain concept-formation; he only describes the facts in plain view. Which is what Wittgenstein does. Is this philosophy wanting? Similarities do not exist except as qualities of singulars (e.g. individual human beings), whereas the notion of essences may suggest something that exists independently of singulars. Sense-perception can attain knowledge of universals because knowledge of universals is not knowledge of universal essences, but only knowledge of similarities. (What is "abstracted" is not an "abstract object".)

"What are the similarities?" versus "What is the essence?" -- "What is the use in the language?" versus "What is the meaning?" The words 'essence' and 'meaning' tempt you "to look about you for some object". (BB p. 1)

The question of universals may be put in this form: "What, if anything, in extramental reality corresponds to the universal concepts in the mind?" (Copleston, History of Philosophy: Volume II, XIV, 3) Ockham answers by saying that what exists are the similarities among things. I think the historical Socrates would have to agree that this is all we know; what he would not agree to is that philosophy ends rather than begins here.

Meaning and Explanation of Meaning

What is the meaning of a common name, e.g. of the common name 'man' -- is it a common quality, nature or essence? The answer here is that there is no "meaning" but only an explanation of meaning, or here the meaning is the explanation of meaning (cf. "the meaning is the method of measurement", and BB p. 1). (Is it the word 'meaning' or the demand for language to be perfectly clear that we are obsessed with?)

[The view was that] a class-word like 'man' [would be] devoid of any objective reference if there were no such thing as human nature. (History III, IV, 1)

But is saying that there is such a thing as human nature the same as saying that there is a human essence (a defining quality common to all members of the class 'man')? According to Ockham and Wittgenstein's account of things, the similarities or resemblances among the things called men are sufficient to explain the existence of the class-word or concept-word 'man'. How do they know? Because as a matter of what is publicly observable (i.e. as a matter of fact, of the "conceived facts"), on the basis of similarities alone we use the word 'man' without difficulty (i.e. without falling out among ourselves as to what is or is not a human being).

Not without language

Ockham rejects innate ideas, e.g. innate knowledge of first principles such as 'The whole is greater than its part', because without language we cannot express those principles and we do not know language without experience, i.e. to know or understand a first principle it is only necessary to know the meaning of its terms, but it is necessary to learn those terms. (V, 1) Essences (common natures or universals) are not needed to explain the concepts we have, according to Ockham; as a matter of experience, only experience of similarities is needed to explain -- i.e. account for -- concept-formation.

In his first volume Copleston wrote:

... language follows thought, it is built up as an expression of thought, and this is especially true of philosophical terms. When Aristotle laid down the ways in which the mind thinks about things, it is true that he could not get away from language as the medium of thought, but the language follows thought and thought follows things. Language is not an a priori construction. (History, Volume I, XXVIII, 3)

To which the reply is, to adapt James 2.18: Show me your thoughts without language. Language is not "the medium of thought" -- language is thought; neither thought nor language "follows" the other. The relationship between language and thought is formed in our infancy as we acquire language; and because we begin to learn language in infancy, far short of the age of reason and criticism, we inherit our language, and in this way language might as well be "an a priori construction". None of us invented the language we speak (thinking is speaking to oneself) or the fundamental concepts we acquired in infancy through learning language. Language is not the clothing of a nebulous something named 'thought'.

W.K.C. Guthrie expresses the idea that Copleston presumes, namely that "words are names and the meaning of a name is the thing the word names":

There are two main kinds of definition, nominal and real ([Anal. Post.] 93b29 ff.). The first simply enables one to connect the fact with the name, e.g. 'Thunder is a noise in the clouds'. (A History of Greek Philosophy VI (1981), X, 1)

The implication being that now we can forget about the word and focus on the thing. That may be the case with the word 'thunder', but not with the words that concern philosophy such as 'justice' and 'goodness' and the "things they name".

"There is nothing in the mind that was not first in the senses"

Could that there are no innate ideas ever be proved? ("Is that the only possible explanation?" The universal method of escaping conclusions.) The principle nihil in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu is unverifiable/unfalsifiable. What matters is not the source of an idea but whether it is consistent with experience and consonant with reason. (And even if there were or are innate ideas, they would not necessarily be true or sound; cf. instinct.)

According to Drury's philosophy of science, there is no knowledge of the world that cannot ultimately be expressed as a sense perception, if knowledge is intelligible (DEF.=) to us. And intelligibility is what matters in philosophy. And intelligibility in philosophy means discourse of reason.

"There are only two ways of knowing what exists"

As intuitive knowledge precedes abstractive knowledge [i.e. syllogistic deduction (in Ockham's jargon)] ... according to Ockham, we can say, using a later language, that for him sense-perception and introspection are the two sources of all our natural [i.e. not divinely revealed] knowledge concerning existent reality.

[Ockham] says that we know our own acts intuitively [by introspection], this intuition leading to the formation of propositions like 'there is an understanding' and 'there is a will'. (A History of Philosophy, Volume III, V, 1)

We experience acts of understanding and willing; but there is no compelling reason to attribute these acts to an immaterial ... soul. (ibid. VII, 1)

What would a compelling reason look like here? Is there a compelling reason to not attribute these acts to an immaterial soul (i.e. the assumption is that the existence of anything not perceived by the five senses must be proved)?

Are there intuitions of spirits (non-material things? Are there non-material things? What's a non-material thing when it's at home?) Not if intuition = sense-perception, and sense-perception is perception of what is external to the mind -- i.e. of what is not only concept or idea?

But on the other hand, if there is also intuition = introspection, then intuition is also perception of what is internal to the mind, i.e. thoughts (concepts , ideas, images).

Question: If there is introspection, then what is it that introspects? The "eye of the mind", which is not something perceived by the senses, i.e. a spirit? That seems the natural thing to say. (Is this a language trap? Instinct or superstition? Note that 'the eye of the mind' is not a metaphor -- it cannot be restated in prose.)

Wittgenstein asks if that is how you learned to use the words 'will' and 'understand' -- by introspecting and identifying acts of a soul? (But why has it got to be all this way (public learning) or all that way (introspective experience) rather than a bit of each?) How does one learn that one thinks and is self-aware?

There is the meaning of the word 'self-awareness' (its use in the language) and there is a description of the human experience of self-awareness. "It is possible to be interested in a phenomenon in a variety of ways" (PI § 108).

Universal and Individual and Extra-conceptual

... universals are terms which signify individual things and which stand for them in propositions. [For example, 'man' in 'man is mortal' stands for each and every individual man, and nothing additional] .... by the very fact that a thing exists it is individual. There are not and cannot be existing universals ... for if the universal exists, it must be an individual [which is a contradiction]. (History III, IV, 2, v)

That only individual things exist is an "Aristotelian doctrine" (IV, 4), as is the doctrine that there are no innate ideas, that man is born a clean slate (XIV, 4). The principle of economy is also Aristotelian.

Is water an individual thing? As a glass of water? As a spilled glass of water? As Lake Michigan? What would it mean to call water an individual rather than a universal? The relation of one drop of water to another is more than just one of likeness. Why not call this an example of an extra-mental universal (though of a different kind from the Diogenes cup)? Because the nominalists are unwilling to call anything that: the combination of words 'extra-mental universal' is undefined language for them, nonsense like 'round square' (RPP ii § 290).

Examples versus Reason

Suppose there were such a thing as a Diogenes cup and the essence of such a cup were to have a particular molded shape. Then cup A and cup B would have the same essence. But then does that essence -- the universal -- itself have an individual existence? Yes, the Diogenes cup mold on the cup-maker's shelf (that Form or Pattern, Archetype or Universal) is an individual existent as well (and, contra Parmenides 134b, it can and does exist in our world). So here we have that an essence exists both as an individual and as a universal -- without contradiction. (Examples are the true masters to follow in logic-philosophy.) Unless 'universal' is simply defined as 'not individual', this example refutes Ockham. And the example is so obvious that either it is flawed (-- why isn't the Greek builder's equivalent of the meter-standard in Paris or the general definition of clay also a counter-example? --) or the proposition 'Only individuals exist' is an assigned rule of grammar.

An argument of Ockham's against the extra-mental (or extra-conceptual) existence of universals is that "one man can be annihilated ... without any other man being annihilated or destroyed. Therefore there is not anything common to both, because (if there were) it would be annihilated, and consequently no other man would retain his essential nature" (History III, IV, 2, v). But in the case of the Diogenes cups, because we defined the essence (the cup-ness or cuphood of the Diogenes cup) as a particular molded shape, the universal exists in the individual, because the destruction of one Diogenes cup does not cause all other Diogenes cups to lose their molded shape, because it is not the essence -- i.e. the mold -- that is destroyed when an individual Diogenes cup is destroyed.

Forms of expression and Pictures

[Ockham says that] we have to be careful of our way of speaking. We ought not to say that "Plato and Socrates [share] in something or in some things, but that they [are alike] by some things ..." (IV, 3, vi)

The word 'sharing' is vague (open-bordered), and Aristotle might have called it like Plato's "partaking" empty words. A change of forms of expression may clear away a confusion, e.g. if rather than 'Diogenes cups share a common nature', we said 'Diogenes cups have the same defining quality, namely their shape'. That is, if the expression 'common nature' suggests something of an unimaginable kind, e.g. dogness as a something inside dogs (whether something material or ghostly).

Pictures express misunderstandings; the imagination plays with pictures. As if the essence of a chocolate-covered cherry were the cherry inside it. And now, how can the same cherry be inside more than one chocolate?

"And why do we have just these concepts and not some other?"

Why -- do you feel the need for some other? Because we can always invent new concepts, because a concept, in this context, is only a convention, a rule for using a word. Of course this is just what Plato denies. And Ockham as well when he speaks of "natural signs", because Ockham says that the things we perceive directly (or, in his terms, have "intuitions" of) are the cause of the concepts we have of those things.

Suppose there were no concept 'immaterial substance', would you feel its absence? If no one had ever spoken to your of "ghosts" or "the soul", would you have thought of it yourself? Would introspection have suggested it to you or forced it on you (CV p. 86 [MS 174 1v: 1950 §§ 6-7])?

Concepts lead us to make investigations; are the expression of our interest, and direct our interest. (PI § 570)

The "expression of our interest" -- or an expression of the nature of things? The concepts we acquire in childhood, those we are taught at school, discover in books -- these "received concepts" direct our interest. To invent a new and serviceable concept is nothing easy.

Syllogistic demonstration

Science, according to Ockham, is concerned with universal propositions, and syllogistic demonstration is the mode of reasoning proper to science in the strict sense: an assent in science is assent to the truth of a proposition. (History III, V, 1)

But then is a universal proposition about concepts only, because universals have no extra-conceptual existence (although similarities are facts)? Equivalent propositions according to Ockham are 'All men are mortal' and 'Each man is mortal'. But how can those propositions be anything other than a proposition about the essence of man -- or if that proposition states only a "probable" fact of nature (similarities only), then does it belong to science (if by 'science' is meant knowledge)?

Meanwhile the universal propositions 'Every man is an animal' and 'Every man is a human' refer to nothing extra-conceptual; the first belongs to a classification scheme, while the second is an equivalent-word definition.

The only knowledge one might gain from syllogistic demonstrations with universal propositions, then, is of probable -- i.e. plausible or believable, but uncertain (not "absolutely certain") -- statements of fact (and of possibly hidden relationships or interconnections between concepts). But if "science" would be deductive knowledge of extra-mental reality, based on the extra-mental existence of universals or essences, then it seems that according to the nominalists there is no science.

Should propositions whose negations are self-contradictory be counted as knowledge? E.g. we use the dining room table to define the word 'solid', but then is 'The dining room table is solid' a statement of fact? (Not all tautologies are idle; some tautologies are knowledge.)

"Time is not an additional thing"

[Ockham's] use of the razor or the principle of economy was often connected with the "empiricist" [an empiricist DEF.= a philosopher who disbelieves "in innate ideas and in a purely a priori knowledge of existent reality" (V, 1); empirical generalizations are inductive generalizations (IX, 1)] side of his philosophy, inasmuch as he wielded the weapon in an effort to get rid of unobservable entities the existence of which were not, in his opinion, demanded by the data of experience. (V, 6)

[Ockham] bases all knowledge of the existent world on experience .... in his analysis of existent reality, or the statements we make about things, he uses the principle of economy. If two factors will suffice to explain [time] for example one should not add a third. (V, 7) [In] Ockham's treatment of [time, time] is not a thing distinct from [or in addition to] motion.

Primarily and principally 'time' signifies the same as 'motion', although it connotes both the soul and an act of the soul, by which it (the soul or mind) knows the before and after of the motion.

Ockham expressly says that the meaning of Aristotle ... about time is, in brief, that 'time' does not denote any significant thing outside the soul beyond what 'motion' signifies, and that this is what he himself held. It follows that in so far as one can distinguish time from motion it is mental, or as Ockham would say, a "term" or "name" [terminus conceptus, in this case not standing for an extra-mental reality]. (V, 6)

When writing about the philosophy of time, I spoke of change rather than motion. Time is a measurement of change, and the meaning of the word 'time' is the method its measurement (although a mechanism isn't always employed; we also have a sense of time: "That interval was long"). Time is "in the mind" in the sense that without memory there is no time: we remember when situations change. But if you observe change, you do not also observe a further thing, namely time (cf. seeing a mother caressing her child and seeing love); the word 'time' is not the name of a thing (When a river flows, a thing flows; when time flows, a thing does not.) The concepts 'time' and 'change' or 'motion' are interconnected but different concepts: we use those words differently.

Experience as a brake to speculative reason

The historical Socrates' induction, Wittgenstein's civil status of words, and Schweitzer's "I express no more than I have experienced" all base philosophical knowledge on Socrates' two tests: experience and reason, not reason alone. Behind this is the principle of trying not to think we know what we don't know, of "saying no more than we know" (BB p. 45). Socratic ignorance: it is better to be wholly ignorant and know that you are than to be partially learned but also think you know things that you don't know.

This is not to neglect metaphysics but to set a narrowed limit to it, because when all that is perceptible to the senses is ceded to natural science, only what is more and most fundamental remains, which is not knowledge of the ultimate causes of things (or natural theology, a project not grounded in experience), but a collection of unanswerable questions, Wittgenstein notwithstanding.

Copleston says that Aristotle's practice was to appeal "to the observable facts. This is not to say, of course, that Aristotle drew the same conclusions from the observable facts that ... drew; but the latter followed Aristotle in appealing to empirical evidence." And "incompatibility with the observable facts" is reason to reject an hypothesis or thesis, i.e. it is grounds for refutation. (XIV, 2) An example of drawing different conclusions: Aristotle says that Socrates' view that one who knows what is right does what is right is inconsistent with experience, whereas I say that the reason it appears to be inconsistent is that men lie to themselves, saying A is true but believing that not-A is.

Experience and reason in religion

When philosophers think about God they think about ideas, whereas when I think about God I think about experience. That God cannot both be all-powerful and all-good has nothing to do with the logical relation of ideas: the impossibility is not logical impossibility, but inconsistency with our experience of the world, in which the existence of evil is only too evident. (The limit of metaphysics -- is experience.)

Manichaeism

As an hypothesis, experience falsifies the almighty goodness of God. But a God who is not almighty is not what we mean by 'God', nor is a God who is not all-good. An all-powerful but not all-good God might be feared or even hated, but such a God could not be worshipped or loved. (As to Job: even abused children love their parents.) Is there a serviceable concept 'God'? Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) says that the Manichaean hypothesis is absurd (Copleston, History VI, I, 2), but is it? Is Christianity's God and the devil absurd? Suppose one said there were two powers at work in the world: function and dysfunction, two quasi-almighty powers, one creative, one destructive, one favoring all moral nobility, the other all moral ignobility, or on other words, one good, one evil? That is not absurd; it accounts for all the data; but it simply is not what we mean by 'God'. The picture (explanation) does not satisfy us. It is not the explanation we want. (Is an earthquake a function or dysfunction of nature?)

Is there a serviceable concept 'God' -- not merely a superfluous synonym for the good and the true -- serviceable or comprehensible? One may accept Isaiah's words ("My thoughts are not your thoughts"), which may either be called faith, humility (not thinking you know what you don't know, that you are wise when you are not) or self-mystification (You make an insoluble puzzle and then are puzzled by it).

Isaiah's words (55.8-9) seem the only possibility, because the first four articles of the Catholic Profession of Faith lock the responsibility for all that happens in God's hands: "We believe in (1) one God, (2) the Father, (3) the almighty, (4) maker of heaven and earth ..." And that is what everyone calls 'God', if we use that word as it is normally used. As well as Job's words about nakedness and "the Lord has given and taken away" (1.21). Faith as a resignation to ignorance. Faith is a resignation to ignorance; so, it is trusting (CV p. 72). Job's wife says to him, "What's left, Job, except to curse God and die." But Job answers her, "Even if he kills me, I will still trust in his goodness."

We are born naked, that is possessing nothing, and naked we die. But even when we are alive, we do not absolutely possess anything: everything remains God's to give and to take back. This is what Job sees. And accepts.

Intuition, Introspection and the soul

William of Ockham had a strong belief in the primacy of intuition, that is, in the primacy of the intuition of the individual thing: all real knowledge is ultimately founded on intuitive knowledge of individual existents. (I, 2)

Ockham "thought that the direct apprehension of anything causes naturally in the human mind a concept of that thing" or, I think, in other words concepts arise naturally from our perceptions of things. Seeing a cow results in the formation of the concept 'cow'. (IV, 2, ii) By 'direct apprehension' here is meant either direct (unmediated) sense perception or introspection. But what is meant by 'concept' here? Seeing the similarities among the cows in a herd of cows might suggest a concept, but seeing an individual cow would not (unless 'cow' were a proper name). These similarities are facts of nature and, in Ockham's view, the cause of the concept 'cow'; and nothing more is needed to explain concept-formation here. But are concepts learned before or when we learn language; is there a concept 'cow' before there is a word 'cow'? What would an answer to that question look like?

(Defining 'concept' as 'rules for using a word' is to assign that word a meaning; but without that assignment, the word 'concept' has no clear meaning (it is vague, nebulous), e.g. 'the concept 'cow''.)

To explain concept-formation

Can there be intuitions without concepts? Not if "intuition" = bare sense-perception or percept, because, according to Kant, "percepts without concepts are blind": you look but see nothing intelligible. But if concepts must exist before percepts, then where do concepts come from? For Ockham the concept or idea arises simultaneously with the sense-perception. (Does the concept 'cow' arise in the mind of one who sees a cow if he has not learned to apply the name 'cow' to a particular kind of animal? A word without rules for its use is not a concept, and what is a concept without language?)

According to Ockham, "the meaning of a term is its function in a proposition"; concepts do not function in isolation (e.g. 'cow' and 'pasture' have meaning only in propositions like 'The cow is in the pasture'). Even an ostensively defined common name may be used to refer to itself, to its definition (concept), to a particular cow or to a group of cows or to all cows. Does that prove that the origin of the concepts that make up the "conceived facts" [Note] (propositions about what are by common consent the facts in plain view) must be experience?

What would an explanation of concept-formation, of the relation between percepts and concepts, look like? The defining common natures Socrates sought by induction in ethics, or Plato's Theory of Forms, or the Theory of Abstraction (of Essences, because undefining qualities can also be abstracted)? But it would not look like Ockham and Wittgenstein's account of similarities and resemblances.

Universals, three possibilities

If I understand aright (and I may not), there are three possibilities: (1) the mold for the Diogenes cup exists prior to any individual cup (Plato's pre-existent and independently existing Forms or Patterns, Archetypes or Universals). (2) there is no Diogenes cup mold existing independently of the individual members of a class, but from those individuals a concept can be abstracted (Aristotle). (3) there is no mold, no universal essence at all: there are only similarities among the members of a class (Nominalism).

Realism versus Nominalism, "the relation of thought to reality"

... if extra-mental objects are particular [e.g. a specific man] and human concepts universal [e.g. humanity], it is clearly of importance to discover the relation holding between them .... if the universality of concepts means that they are mere ideas, then a rift between thought and objects is created and our knowledge, so far as it is expressed in universal concepts and judgments, is of doubtful validity ... [So the problem of universals] is ultimately the ... problem of the relation of thought to reality. (Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Volume II: Augustine to Scotus (1950), III, 14, iii)

If universals exist as essences in individual things (or as Platonic Forms), then as we conceive a thing so that thing really is; our concepts mirror reality as it objectively is. That is realism. But if universals exist only as concepts (ideas), which is nominalism, then it is not reality we know but only our way of seeing (conceptualizing) it. In other words our knowledge is relative (to the human mind or way of thinking) rather than absolute (the same for man and God). (That I took for granted that our knowledge is relative shows how distant the realism of universals is from Wittgenstein's nominalism.)

If universals belong to extra-mental reality, if they exist in individuals (or as ideas in the mind of God), then man sees what God sees, which is absolute knowledge (The same it seems for laws of nature).

For if there are no innate ideas and our ideas are formed in dependence of sense-perception, the question arises, how is metaphysics possible, in so far as metaphysics involves thinking and speaking of beings which transcend matter. And what meaning can be attached to terms descriptive of transcendent beings? (Copleston, History III, XXIV, 2)

There seem to be four elements to human thought: sense perception, memory, ubiquitous imagination, and reason. To these, should innate ideas be added? Ockham can say that those are unnecessary to explain concept-formation. And does introspection reveal them? (How do you know what to answer, by what criterion?) Are innate ideas necessary if we are to have a concept 'transcendent beings', i.e. 'invisible things'? It seems not. But we also have a concept 'negative numbers'; that doesn't mean that negative numbers exist; the lower quadrants of the Cartesian grid are not regions of negative existence. The question 'Is reality confined to what is in principle perceptible to the senses?' does not entail that a negative answer has any clear meaning.

A cricket's description of the world might be very different from man's, but that doesn't make it false or "of doubtful validity", but only relative to a life form.

God's absolute freedom

The "metaphysics of essences" gives nature a stability, an assurance of uniformity and regularity, which Ockham denies it by having natural events depend entirely on the free (arbitrary) will of God rather than on things acting in accord with their essential natures. (VI, 7) The only "ground for asserting a causal relation between two phenomena" becomes the "observation of regular sequence" (I, 2). "Ockham did not deny that a causal argument can have any validity" (V, 5), but "if we cannot establish with certainty by any other way than by actual experience that A is the cause of B, we could not establish with certainty that the world is caused by God" (VI, 3).

The reality of likenesses

But on the other hand, with respect to the concept 'man', for example, the similarities between human beings are real (for God as well as for us); they are a matter of perceptible fact in plain view (although for the nominalists they can only be the "conceived facts" (reality for us, not for God who would know the essence of things)).

The extramental foundation of the universal concept is [the] quality of likeness. [Ockham's predecessor] Petrus Aureoli [died 1322] does not deny ... that there is an objective foundation for the universal concept: what he does deny is that there is any common reality which exists extramentally. (II, 3)

Similarities -- that A is like B in such-and-such ways -- are real. So we can't say that our concepts are arbitrarily conventional vis-à-vis reality. We do know some propositions with certainty, some comparisons that may be true or false but are true, and not only tautologies. (How we define the word 'certainty' varies by context: "The kind of certainty is the kind of language game" (PI II, xi, p. 224). "For the question here is not one of [approximating to logical certainty]" (ibid. § 481).)

[Aside. What is the relation between Kant and Plato's Forms, and between Kant and "innate ideas"?]

Intuitions of spirits?

Ockham's thesis would be that we have no sense perceptions ("intuitions") of spirits (things which are imperceptible to the five senses), and we cannot infer from the sense perceptions we do have that there are spirits. But according to Ockham, do we have "introspections" of spirits, e.g. of a soul or mind?

Is the proposition "the foundation of all knowledge is intuitive knowledge of individual existents" a first principle for Ockham, or can it be demonstrated? Philosophy is not simply Ockham and Plato denying each other's first principles. Or is it? Plato says there is such a thing as absolute largeness -- he asks his companions if they have ever seen such a thing with their eyes -- all agree that they have not (Phaedo 65d); there is no such "intuition", Plato could say, but we can deduce the existence of absolute largeness, for if our souls were not acquainted with it, we would not be able to recognize anything as being large. Ockham denies that this is so; as with 'man' so with relative size: no essence (absolute) is necessary to explain concept-formation here: similarities are enough. But we can always find similarities, Plato says, even black to white (Protagoras 331d-e) -- and dissimilarities, so why do we have just the concepts that we do have and not some other? Plato: because there are absolute archetypes behind the concepts that we do have. Plato says "must", while Ockham says "not-must", that Plato's inference is based on a false preconception; but Plato says: no, it is a sound first principle. "Only individuals exist" -- why not call that a dogma (or a pointless assigned rule of grammar)?

Immediate experience

Do I have immediate experience of my awareness of the paper in front of me, so that I can say that I have an immediate experience of being aware that I am aware of the paper in front of me? and that this awareness is fundamentally different in kind from the paper I am aware of? (Material versus non-material? No, not that kind: two different categories: object and experience.) The paper is an object; the awareness is not; nor is the awareness of the same kind as a concept or idea. As to what the origin and disposition of my "awareness of awareness" is, I make no hypotheses, but its reality is undeniable if we speak of our experience.

So it seems then that we know that awareness and awareness of awareness or, in other words, the soul exists, even if we know nothing more about it. Is the question of "what the soul is" a grammatical question? By 'reification' in philosophy is meant conjuring something abstract (a mere thought or concept) into something extra-mental and real, as when 'being aware' becomes some thing named 'awareness' or 'the soul'. Regardless of the grammatical question, the experience is undeniable.

Ockham says that introspection reveals no new entity (existent thing) or kind of new thing (an immaterial something), that thought is found but not some thing that thinks, and that the proposition that there is such a thing is justified by neither philosophical reason nor experience (History III, VII, 1), that the soul is an "unobservable entity" created by the imagination alone and existing only as a concept.

We cannot it seems infer the existence of imperceptible (suprasensible) things from the existence of perceptible (sensible) things. If we could infer from the existence of thought to the existence of a mind that thinks, then why not from the existence of the world to the existence of God who makes? Where lies the fallacy of these inferences? "Is that the only possible explanation, the only possible way of explaining -- by multiplying unobservable entities?"

Awareness of awareness, awareness of existing, is or should be more, not less, "astonishing" than the existence of the world. What kind of philosophy takes it for granted?

Pictures, clear ideas and the soul

The Portuguese philosopher Francis Sanchez (c. 1552-1632) wrote that introspection "can give no clear idea of [the self]; our knowledge of the self is indefinite and indeterminate. Introspection gives us no picture of the self, and without a picture or image we can have no clear idea." (History III, XIV, 3)

There are no pictures or images of ghosts (spirits), but that does not prove that "the self" is immaterial, for sound is also invisible, and sound is not a ghost (a thing essentially imperceptible to the five senses). But what Sanchez says is important because "Generally nothing explains the meaning of words so well as a picture" (LC ii, p. 63). And here there is no picture. If the soul is not a thing, the absence of a picture is, of course, not a problem, but if the soul is, then in the absence of a picture "our knowledge of the self is indefinite", nebulous, as is sound if one takes 'sound' to be the name of an object. (These are all grammatical remarks.)

"Intuitions" without concepts
(Language and concept-formation)

We have no sense perception of anything that is not conceived; "intuitions without concepts are blind". Even the proposition 'The grass is green' of Russell's "primitive realism" [in contrast to idealism] requires knowledge of the concepts 'grass', 'green', as well as 'quality' and 'proposition'. [Setting criteria for concepts without language (Definition)]

As to the concept 'awareness of awareness', what can explain its formation other than experience, for it is not an inference? Or can it be dismissed as conceptual confusion, mystification by language? What is the source of the concept 'soul' or 'mind'? (Other minds may be the product of instinct rather than deduction: one's awareness does not begin with a comparison to oneself, but "Are you thinking what I am thinking?" is the product of our experience of other people). How does an infant, a child without language, know that a dog is not a human being?

Why does Wittgenstein never ask about concept-formation in the case of the concept (in this context concept = rules for using a word) 'mind' or 'soul'? Is any concept more important to philosophy, both because of ethics ("care of the soul") and the riddle of existence? Wittgenstein never faces the concepts that are most important in our life, the moral virtues (piety, justice, forbearance, wisdom). Ockham's logic of language doesn't either.

I tell you that no greater good can happen to a man than to discuss human excellence [goodness] every day and the other matters about which you have heard me arguing and examining myself and others ... (Plato, Apology 38a, tr. Church, rev. Cumming [tr. Tredennick])

There is no such examination in Wittgenstein's philosophy. And Ockham's insistence on the absolute freedom of God makes such an examination impossible: there is no essence (absolute) of goodness or moral virtue to examine; there is only God's will.

Ockham's authoritarian ethics

Scotus was fundamentally of the same mind as St. Thomas. There are acts which are intrinsically evil and which are forbidden because they are evil; they are not evil simply because they are forbidden. (VII, 6)

In other words, in answer to Euthyphro, a thing is not good just because it pleases the gods; some things are absolutely good, and would be good even if they displeased the gods. Ockham's position was just the opposite, for he wrote "By the very fact that God wills something, it is right for it to be done". Copleston writes "Hatred of God, stealing, committing adultery, are forbidden by God. But they could be ordered by God; and, if they were, they would be meritorious acts .... [Ockham's] thesis was that such acts are wrong because God has forbidden them .... There is no sense ... in seeking for any more ultimate reason for the moral law than the divine fiat. [This is the] authoritarian element in Ockham's moral theory". (VII, 6) With respect to good and evil, Wittgenstein was in agreement with Ockham.

There is another "authoritarian element", however, in Ockham's ethics, namely the authority of individual conscience (as later in Kant and Wittgenstein). Even if one misperceives what the right act is, it is always right (virtuous) to follow one's conscience and always wrong to act contrary to one's conscience. (VII, 6) There is a relation between intention and virtue, and a distinction can be made between objective and intentional (or well-intentioned) virtue.

A synonym for 'authoritarian' is 'imperative'.

[The fourteenth century and Ockham and Ockhamism | The Terminist Logic of Language (Nominalist logic) | Ockham, Empiricism, Natural Science]

Note

[The third of Francis Bacon's four "idols" or things to guard against in philosophy is the] "idols of the market-place" (idola fori) [which are] errors due to the influence of language. The words used in common language describe things as commonly conceived; [but when] the commonly accepted analysis of things is inadequate, language may stand in the way of the expression of a more adequate analysis.

Sometimes words are employed when there are no corresponding things. [The mind tends] to mistake abstractions [or ideas] for [real] things. (Copleston, History III, XIX, 4)

"The words used in common language [which] describe things as commonly conceived" are the "conceived facts" or the undisputed conceptions that are our common currency. [BACK]

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