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.
