Bentham's Theory of Fictions

C.K. Ogden

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134534821
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This is Volume VI of eight in a series on the Philosophy of Mind and Language. Originally published in 1932. Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume - to his five great predecessors Bentham acknowledges his debt. It is the purpose of the present volume to give some indication of the debt which future generations may acknowledge to Jeremy Bentham, when he has taken his place as sixth in the line of the great tradition—and in some respects its most original representative.

The Theory of Fictions

Part I

GENERAL OUTLINE

I.—LINGUISTIC FICTIONS

A. Classification of Entities¹

1. Division of Entities

AN entity is a denomination in the import of which every subject matter of discourse, for the designation of which the grammatical part of speech called a noun-substantive is employed may be comprised.

Entities may be distinguished into perceptible and inferential,

An entity, whether perceptible or inferential, is either real or fictitious.

2. Of Perceptible Entities

A perceptible entity is every entity the existence of which is made known to human beings by the immediate testimony of their senses, without reasoning, i.e. without reflection. A perceptible real entity is, in one word, a body.²

The name body is the name of the genus generalissimum of that class of real entities. Under this genus generalissimum, a system of divisions which has for its limit the aggregate of all distinguishable individual bodies, may be pursued through as many stages as are found conducive to the purposes of discourse; at any such stage, and at any number of such stages, the mode of division may be bifurcate³ and exhaustive, i.e. all-comprehensive.

The division according to which bodies are spoken of as subjects of one or other of the three physical kingdoms, viz. animal, vegetable, and mineral, is a trifurcate division. By substituting to this one stage of division, two stages, each of them bifurcate, the division may be rendered, or rather shown to be, exhaustive ; as thus—

A body is either endued with life, or not endued with life.

A body endued with life, is. either endued with sensitive life, or with life not sensitive.

A body endued with sensitive life, is an animal; a body endued with a life not sensitive, is a vegetable ; a body not endued with life, is a mineral.

3. Of Inferential Entities

An inferential entity which, in these times at least, is not made known to human beings in general, by the testimony of sense, but of the existence of which the persuasion is produced by reflection—is inferred from a chain of reasoning.

An inferential entity is either, 1. human ; or, 2. superhuman.

1. A human inferential entity is the soul considered as existing in a state of separation from the body.

Of a human soul, existing in a state of separation from the body, no man living will, it is believed, be found ready to aver himself to have had perception of any individual example ; or, at any rate, no man who, upon due and apposite interrogation, would be able to obtain credence.

Considered as existing and visiting any part of our earth in a state of separation from the body, a human soul would be a ghost: and, at this time of day, custom scarcely does, fashion certainly does not command us to believe in ghosts.

Of this description of beings, the reality not being, in any instance, attested by perception, cannot therefore be considered any otherwise than as a matter of inference.⁴

2. A superhuman entity is either supreme or subordinate.

The supreme, superhuman, inferential entity is God : sanctioned by revelation ; sanctioned by the religion of Jesus, as delivered by the apostle Paul, is the proposition that no man has seen God at any time. If this proposition be correct, God not being consistently with the imperfection of the human senses capable of being referred to the class of perceptible real entities, cannot, in consequence of the imperfection under which human reason labours, cannot, any more than the soul of man considered as existing in a separate state, be referred by it to any other class than that of inferential real entities as above described.⁵

A subordinate superhuman entity is either good or bad. A good subordinate superhuman inferential entity is an angel; a bad superhuman inferential entity is a devil.

By the learner as well as by the teacher of logic, all these subjects of Ontology may, without much detriment, it is believed, to any other useful art, or any other useful science, be left in the places in which they are found.

4. Of Real Entities

A real entity is an entity to which, on the occasion and for the purpose of discourse, existence is really meant to be ascribed.

Under the head of perceptible real entities may be placed, without difficulty, individual perceptions of all sorts :⁶ the impressions produced in groups by the application of sensible objects to the organs of sense : the ideas brought to view by the recollection of those same objects ; the new ideas produced under the influence of the imagination, by the decomposition and recomposition of those groups:—to none of these can the character, the denomination, of real entities be refused.

Faculties, powers of the mind, dispositions : all these are unreal; all these are but so many fictitious entities. When a view of them comes to be given-, it will be seen how perfectly distinguishable, among psychical entities, are those which are recognized in the character of real, from those which are here referred to the class of fictitious entities.

To some it may seem matter of doubt whether, to a perception of any kind, the appellation of a real entity can, with propriety, be applied.

Certain it is that it cannot, if either solidity or permanence be regarded as a quality belonging to the essence of reality.

But in neither of these instances can, it is believed, any sufficient or just reason be assigned, why the field of reality should be regarded as confined within the limits which, on that supposition, would be applied to it.

Whatsoever title an object belonging to the class of bodies may be considered as possessing to the attribute of reality, i.e. of existence, every object belonging to the class of perceptions will be found to possess, in still higher degree, a title established by more immediate evidence : it is only by the evidence afforded by perceptions that the reality of a body of any kind can be established.

Of Ideas our perception is still more direct and immediate than that which we have of corporeal substances : of their existence our persuasion is more necessary and irresistible than that which we have of the existence of corporeal substances.

Speaking of Entities, ideas might perhaps accordingly be spoken of as the sole perceptible ones, substances, those of the corporeal class, being, with reference, and in contradiction to them, no other than inferential ones.

But if substances themselves be the subject of the division, and for the designation of the two branches of the division the words perceptible and inferential be employed, it is to corporeal substances that the characteristic and differential attribute, perceptible, cannot but be applied: the term inferential being thereupon employed for the designation of incorporeal ones.

The more correct and complete the consideration bestowed, the more clearly will it be perceived, that from the existence of perceptions, viz. of sensible ones, the inference whereby the existence of corporeal entities, viz. the bodies from which these perceptions are respectively deduced, is much stronger, more necessary, and more irresistible, than the inference whereby the existence of incorporeal entities is inferred from the existence of perceptible entities, alias corporeal substances, alias bodies.

Suppose the non-existence of corporeal substances, of any hard corporeal substance that stands opposite to you, make this supposition, and as soon as you have made it, act upon it: pain, the perception of pain, will at once bear witness against you ; and that by your punishment, your condign punishment. Suppose the non-existence of any inferential incorporeal substances, of any one of them, or of all of them, and the supposition made, act upon it accordingly : be the supposition conformable or not conformable to the truth of the case, at any rate no such immediate counter-evidence, no such immediate punishment will follow.⁷

5. Of Fictitious Entities

A fictitious entity is an entity to which, though by the grammatical form of the discourse employed in speaking of it, existence be ascribed, yet in truth and reality existence is not meant to be ascribed.

Every noun-substantive which is not the name of a real entity, perceptible or inferential, is the name of a fictitious entity.

Every fictitious entity bears some relation to some real entity, and can no otherwise be understood than in so far as that relation is perceived—a conception of that relation is obtained.

Reckoning from the real entity to which it bears relation, a fictitious entity may be styled a fictitious entity of the first remove, a fictitious entity of the second remove, and so on.

A fictitious entity of the first remove is a fictitious entity, a conception of which may be obtained by the consideration of the relation borne by it to a real entity, without need of considering the relation borne by it to any other fictitious entity.

A fictitious entity of the second remove is a fictitious entity, for obtaining a conception of which it is necessary to take into consideration some fictitious entity of the first remove.

Considered at any two contiguous points of time, every real entity is either in motion or at rest.

Now, when a real entity is said to be at rest, it is said to be so with reference to some other particular real entity or aggregate of real entities ; for so far as any part of the system of the universe is perceived by us, we at all times perceive it not to be at rest. Such, at least, is the case not only with the bodies called planets, but with one or more of the bodies called fixed stars ; and, by analogy, we infer this to be the case with all the rest.

This premised, considered with reference to any two contiguous points of time past, every perceptible real entity was, during that time, either in motion or not in motion ; if not in motion, it was at rest.

Here, then, we have two correspondent and opposite fictitious entities of the first remove, viz. a motion and a rest.

A motion is a mode of speech commonly employed ; a rest is a mode of speech not so commonly employed.

To be spoken of at all, every fictitious entity must be spoken of as if it were real. This, it will be seen, is the case with the above-mentioned pair of fictitious entities of the first remove.

A body is said to be in motion. This, taken in the literal sense, is as much as to say—Here is a larger body, called a motion; in this larger body, the other body, namely, the really existing body, is contained.

So in regard to rest. To say this body is at rest is as much as to say—Here is a body, and it will naturally be supposed a fixed body, and here is another body, meaning the real existing body, which is at that first-mentioned body, i.e. attached to it, as if the fictitious body were a stake, and the real body a beast tied to it.

An instance of a fictitious entity of the second remove is a quality. There are qualities that are qualities of real entities; there are qualities that are qualities of the above-mentioned fictitious entities of the first remove. For example, of motion, rectilinearity, curvilinearity, slowness, quickness, and so on.⁸

6. Uses of this Distinction between Names of Real and Names of Fictitious Entities

These uses are, i. Attaching, in the only way in which they can be attached, clear ideas to the several all-comprehensive and leading terms in question. 2. Obviating and excluding the multitudinous errors and disputes of which the want of such clear ideas has been the source: disputes, which, in many instances, have not terminated in words, but through words have produced antipathy, and through antipathy, war with all its miseries.

Fictitious entity, says some one—of such a locution where can be the sense or use ? By the word entity cannot but be represented something that has existence ; apply to the same subject the adjunct fictitious, the effect is to give instruction that it has not any existence. This, then, is a contradiction in terms, a species of locution from which, in proportion as it has any employment, confusion, and that alone, cannot but be the effect.

Entities are either real or fictitious, what can that mean ? What but that of entities there are two species or sorts : viz. one which is itself, and another which is neither itself nor anything else ? Instead of fictitious entity, or as synonymous with fictitious entity, why not here say, non-entity ?

Answer.—Altogether inevitable will this seeming contradiction be found. The root of it is in the nature of language : that instrument without which, though of itself it be nothing, nothing can be said, and scarcely can anything be done.

Of the nature of that instrument, of the various forms under which it has been seen to present itself among different tribes of men, of the indispensable parts (i.e. parts of speech) which may be seen to belong to it under every one of those forms, actual or possible, of the qualities desirable on the part of the collection of signs of which, under all these several forms, it is composed:—under all these several heads, sketches will be endeavoured to be given in another place.⁹

All this while, antecedently to the stage at which these topics will present themselves, use is however making, as it could not but be made, of this same instrument. At that future stage, it will not only be the instrument, but the subject also of inquiry: at present and until then, employing it in the character of an instrument, we must be content to take it in hand, and make use of it, in the state in which we find it.

In like manner, the several operations, which by the help of language, and under the direction of logic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• INTRODUCTION (BY C. K. OGDEN)
• II. THE THEORY
• III. EXPANSIONS AND APPLICATIONS
• IV. REMEDIES, LEGAL AND GENERAL
• CONCLUSION
• BENTHAM IN OLD AGE
• BENTHAM AT OXFORD, ætat I2 ½
• THE THEORY OF FICTIONS
• PART I
• II. FICTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY
• III. ELLIPTICAL FICTIONS
• IV. FICTION AND METAPHOR
• V. EXPOSITION
• VI. LANGUAGE AS A SIGN-SYSTEM
• PART II
• II. SUBSTANTIVE AND ADJECTIVE
• III. THE FICTION OF RIGHT
• IV. THE FICTION OF AN ORIGINAL CONTRACT
• V. ANALYSIS, PHYSICAL AND LINGUISTIC
• VI. SUMMARY
• APPENDIX A. Legal Fictions
• APPENDIX B. The Classification of Fictions By George Bentham
• INDEX