In this post, I am going to explore Hobbes’s philosophy of language and an interesting implication it has in the “free will” debate.
What kinds of truth are we allowed to communicate with language? “When two names are joined together in a consequence or affirmation (as thus, a man is a living creature…), if the latter name, living creature, signify all that the former name, man, signifieth, then the affirmation or consequence is true; otherwise false” (I.iv.11). One paragraph later, Hobbes defines “truth” as “the right ordering of names in our affirmations” and claims that all one has to do to find it is “remember what every name he uses stands for, and to place it accordingly” (I.iv.12). So the quest for truth consists in drawing out the consequences of definitions.
If we take this account seriously, it does strange things for everyday truths. Take, for example, the claim that “Peter owns a Lexus.” According to Hobbes, in order for this to be true, there must be something in the definition of “Peter” that signifies all that “owning a Lexus” signifies. But what in the definition of “Peter” includes this? It cannot be anything he shares with anyone else—e.g., his humanity, his maleness, his age, etc. We might say that something about Peter, say, the fact that he possesses the title and registration for a vehicle manufactured by a certain kind of company encompasses “owning a Lexus,” but this merely shifts the problem to a new level. What in the definition of Peter encompasses “possessing title and registration for such-and-such a car”?
The “owning a Lexus” can be present only in Peter’s singular individuality—“owning a Lexus” is bound up not in the universals we may predicate of Peter, but in the definition of Peter as being Peter and not Paul, Mary, or Sergius. But this means that any facts about Peter have to be part of his definition—and thus there is no Peter above and beyond Peter’s circumstances and actions.
Thus we have yet another reason “free will” is “without meaning” and “absurd” (I.v.5). A believer in free will may believe that “I did x, but I could have done y.” But for Hobbes, x is part of my definition; that which is included in the concept of “me” by definition signifies not-y.
Good post. I wonder about the similarities between the Hobbesean definition of "Peter" and Quine's conception of "Peter" as "the thing that is Peterizes".
ReplyDeleteI also wonder whether the definition of man as "man is a thinking thing" causes any change in your conclusion. Maybe if man's reason is not completely pre-determined there's free will wiggle room. At least it would then be plausible to conceive of Peter intending to own a BMW.
Has Hobbes ever claimed we could have knowledge of particulars? Mightn't we read Hobbes as saying that truth is only possible where knowledge is possible? I wonder if Peter even has a "nature" as a singular peter rather than as a human being. I can draw a red circle but its redness has nothing to do with its fulfillment of its circularity. If I want to make true statements about the circle I will have to say things like "this circle's circumference is two X pi X radius."
ReplyDeleteHobbes does not seem to have claimed outright that we can have knowledge of particulars. Nevertheless, in his discussion of truth in I.iv.11-12, Hobbes says that "truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in our affirmations."
ReplyDeleteUnder the category of "names" Hobbes includes both universals (names "common to many things") and "proper" names of singular particulars (I.iv.6). It seems that if Hobbes thought we could not have knowledge of particulars, he could have said "universals" instead of names. Otherwise, he's breaking his own rules by using a word ("name") imprecisely, almost immediately after precisely defining it.
Then again, Hobbes's examples of affirmations are only statements about universals ("human" and "mortal," to be exact), not particulars. So it is not out of the question that Hobbes slipped up on one sentence and really did mean to exclude particulars. But the above passage certainly makes it possible to read Hobbes as saying we can have knowledge of particulars.