Mental Language

From Plato to William of Ockham

Claude Panaccio, Joshua P. Hochschild, Meredith K. Ziebart

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780823272617
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Science cognitive

The notion that human thought is structured like a language, with a precise syntax and semantics, has been pivotal in recent philosophy of mind. Yet it is not a new idea: it was systematically explored in the fourteenth century by William of Ockham and became central in late medieval philosophy. Mental Language examines the background of Ockham's innovation by tracing the history of the mental language theme in ancient and medieval thought.Panaccio identifies two important traditions: one philosophical, stemming from Plato and Aristotle, and the other theological, rooted in the Fathers of the Christian Church. The study then focuses on the merging of the two traditions in the Middle Ages, as they gave rise to detailed discussions over the structure of human thought and its relations with signs and language. Ultimately, Panaccio stresses the originality and significance of Ockham's doctrine of the oratio mentalis (mental discourse) and the strong impression it made upon his immediate successors.

PART I

THE SOURCES

CHAPTER ONE

PLATO AND ARISTOTLE

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, three authorities—of no little stature—were regularly invoked in connection with the idea that thought is a type of mental discourse or interior speech. These were none other than Augustine, the intellectual guide of all medieval theology; Boethius, the Latin translator of Aristotle’s logic and its appointed interpreter in the eyes of the Scholastics; and John Damascene, the seventh-century Syrian monk who, through the Latin translation of his exposition of orthodox faith—the celebrated De fide orthodoxa—would become the Middle Ages’ principal transmitter of the theology of the Greek fathers. Examined closely, each prompts, perpetuates, or reveals a distinct tradition—or at least a branch of a tradition—in each of which the theme of interior speech possesses a different range and even a different name. The logos endiathetos of John Damascene, the verbum in corde of Augustine, and the oratio animi of Boethius open to our investigation three original paths—to which we will devote chapters 2, 3, and 4 of this work, respectively. However, upstream of these lines are found, here as in other matters, the immense figures of Plato and Aristotle, and this first chapter turns initially toward these two figures in order to review, however briefly, how the theme that occupies us appears in their works. In the course of subsequent chapters we will see to what extent their small developments—at times, simple allusions—determined the course of our history. At the same time, they will accord us the opportunity to outline some of the principal philosophical motifs that will guide us throughout this study.

THE SOUL’S DIALOGUE WITH ITSELF

The most ancient texts we have in which thought is identified as a sort of interior discourse are Plato’s.¹ Apart from a short, rather enigmatic passage from the Timaeus²—which had been partially translated into Latin by Calcidius in the fourth century—these passages were unknown to the medievals. However, one may reasonably surmise that they were taken very seriously in most late Greek philosophy and consequently that, while unknown to the Latins, they had an indirect but crucial influence upon late-medieval thought, which warrants giving the principal passages some attention.

Today, the most well-known text in this connection is Theaetetus 189e–190a:

SOCRATES: Now by “thinking” [dianoeisthai] do you mean the same as I do?

THEAETETUS: What do you mean by it?

SOCRATES: A talk [logos] which the soul has with itself about the objects under its consideration. Of course, I’m only telling you my idea in all ignorance; but this is the kind of picture I have of it. It seems to me that the soul when it thinks is simply carrying on a discussion in which it asks itself questions and answers them itself, affirms and denies. And when it arrives at something definite, either by a gradual process or a sudden leap, when it affirms one thing consistently and without divided counsel, we call this its judgment [doxa]. So, in my view, to judge is to make a statement [legein], and a judgment is a statement [logos] which is not addressed to another person or spoken aloud, but silently addressed to oneself.

The excerpt is indeed arresting, and yet, it must be admitted, not very revealing with respect to the reasons one might have for treating thought as discourse, nor of the exact sense in which this is to be understood: what Plato here launches, and not without some hesitation, is an appeal to intuition. Two features merit emphasis. First, in this “discussion” with itself that constitutes thought, the soul questions and answers, affirms and denies. The action is played out entirely on the level of what are today called illocutionary acts—in particular, those characteristic of a dialogue proceeding by way of question and answer. Second, the goal of this process is the adoption of a position, or assent—which is to say, the formation of an opinion, or doxa, through which doubt is dissipated. These two rather remarkable ideas figure even more prominently in two further passages from Plato that relate most directly to our matter.

We find in Sophist (263d–64a) a passage arising in the course of a discussion between Theaetetus and the Stranger, the objective of which is to demonstrate the existence of, and trace the emergence of, falsehood. Having devoted some pages to external speech (which is composed of nouns and verbs) in order to establish that there is sometimes falsehood there as well as truth (261d–63d), Plato turns to what occurs in the soul: “Well then, isn’t it clear by now that both true and false thought [dianoia] and belief [doxa] and appearance [phantasia] can occur in our souls?” (263d). To demonstrate this—as proves to be necessary—the Stranger explains, in turn, what constitutes each of the three states, or mental processes, he has just evoked—namely, dianoia, doxa, and phantasia. At this point, he affirms the quasi-identity of thought (dianoia) and speech (logos): “Aren’t thought and speech the same, except that what we call thought is speech that occurs without the voice, inside the soul [entos dialogos] in conversation with itself?” (263e). And opinion (doxa) is to thought what affirmation and denial are to exterior discourse:

STRANGER: And then again we know that speech contains . . .

THEAETETUS: What?

STRANGER: Affirmation [phasis] and denial [apophasis].

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: So when affirmation or denial occurs as silent thought [kata dianoian] inside the soul, wouldn’t you call that belief? (263e–64a)

Imagination (phantasia) is then defined as opinion that “doesn’t happen on its own but arises for someone through perception” (264a), and the conclusion, consequently, is inescapable:

STRANGER: So since there is true and false speech, and of the processes just mentioned, thinking appeared to be the soul’s conversation [dialogue] with itself, belief the conclusion of thinking, and what we call appearing [imagination] the blending of perception and belief, it follows that since these are all the same kind of thing as speech, some of them must sometimes be false. (264a–b, my italics)

Here we find in full and proper form an argument for applying the semantic properties of truth and (especially) falsity to the order of that which “occurs as silent thought inside the soul.” Truth and falsity are initially recognized as properties of external discourse (first premise of the argument), then, by way of the thesis of the quasi-identity (or isomorphism) of certain mental processes with external discursive processes (second premise), these properties are transposed (in the conclusion) to the level of these very mental processes. Dianoia is thus treated as interior logos, and doxa appears as the mental equivalent of what assertion and denial are for external discourse. Plato is the first to have seen clearly the strong parallel between the order of propositional attitudes, like belief or epistemic assent, and the order of illocutionary acts, such as assertion and negation. It is on the basis of this parallel that he introduces the notion of an interior discourse, once again described in these lines as “the soul’s dialogue with itself” (264a).

This approach to thought as interior dialogue is even more explicit in Philebus (38c–e), where Plato once again reflects on the process of forming opinion, particularly false opinion:

Do we agree that the following must happen here [i.e., in the formation of our opinions]?

. . .

Wouldn’t you say that it often happens that someone who cannot get a clear view because he is looking from a distance wants to make up his mind about what he sees?

. . .

“What could that be that appears to stand near that rock under a tree?”—Do you find it plausible that someone might say these words to himself when he sets his eyes on such appearances?

. . .

And might he not afterwards, as an answer to his own question, say to himself, “It is a man,” and in so speaking, would get it right?

. . .

But he might also be mistaken and say that what he sees is a statue, the work of some herdsmen?

. . .

But if he were in company, he might actually say out loud to his companion what he had told himself, and so what we earlier called judgment [opinion, doxa] would turn into an assertion [statement, logos].

Belief appears here in all clarity as the result of an interior exchange of questions and answers, and it is this, once again, that allows Plato to apply to the order of dianoia those semantic values par excellence—namely, truth and falsity. All of this occurs as though the primary application of these concepts, which will become so crucial for all later Western philosophy, were the evaluation of responses to a questionnaire: the soul may (or may not) be correct in its interior examination, just as a student may (or may not) correctly answer a question posed to him. “Our soul,” Plato concludes, “is comparable to a book” (38e). It must be understood here that he is thinking above all of the sort of book that he himself writes, in which discourse does indeed proceed by means of question and answer.

What we have witnessed in these three seminal passages is the transposition of a linguistic model for the comprehension and characterization of cognitive phenomena—in particular, those of interior deliberation and belief (or opinion). Compared to what one encounters in the fourteenth century, this transposition is but partial; and it is primarily the concepts of truth and falsity whose field of application is thereby expanded. Moreover, it is so expanded on the basis of what, for Plato, seems to be the original domain—or in any case the domain par excellence—of their inscription: the evaluation of answers with affirmations or denials in a heuristic examination. To conceive of thought as an interior discourse, in this context, is essentially to represent it as a dialogue functioning by means of question and answer.

Truth and falsity are the only semantic concepts that profit from this Platonic displacement. Infrapropositional mental units, notably, are not characterized as signs. In fact, they are not considered at all, and the notion that the truth or falsity of opinions may be the result of the properties of constitutive units smaller than doxa themselves is entirely absent. The linguistic model employed is not that of semantic composition.

The question of whether, in Plato’s eyes, interior discourse is equipped with something like a syntax is slightly more delicate. Everything depends on the precise range accorded to the thesis of the quasi-identity of thought and discourse posited at Sophist 263e. Some pages previously, Plato had assigned to exterior logos a characteristic syntactic structure: “there are two ways to use your voice to indicate something about [or: as a sign (semeion) of] being. . . . One kind is called names [onoma], and the other is called verbs [rhema]” (261e–62a); and shortly thereafter he had added that he considered each of these categories necessary for the formation of true discourse: “speech—the simplest and smallest kind of speech, I suppose—would arise from that first weaving of name and verb together” (262c). The question, therefore, is whether this minimal structure of the spoken logos is also found at the level of dianoia.³ One might easily believe this to be the case, were one to take entirely seriously the identification of thought and discourse affirmed slightly further on: “Aren’t thought and speech the same, except that what we call thought is speech that occurs without the voice, inside the soul in conversation with itself?” (263e). Thus it would be necessary to consider that thought is resolutely identified by Plato as a “quiet speech,” as in the silent emission of words belonging to a given language. Aug...