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Personal Details

Department of Philosophy,
Principal Investigator Prof. A. Raghuramaraju
University of Hyderabad
Department of Philosophy,
Paper Coordinator Dr. Geeta Ramana
University of Mumbai
Department of Philosophy,
Content Writer Dr. Nilanjan Bhowmick
University of Delhi

Content Reviewer Prof. T K Nizar Ahmed Former Professor, SSUS, Kalady

Language Editor Miss Chitralekha Manohar Freelancer, Chennai

Description of Module

Subject Name Philosophy

Paper Name Philosophy of Language

Module Name/Title Early Modern Philosophy of Language

Module Id 11.6
Pre-requisites None
Objectives To make students aware of the early modern thinking on language
Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Machines, Other Minds, Perfect Language,
Keywords
Reference, Indication, Signification
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Early Modern Philosophy of Language

1. Introduction

We will take “early modern” to mean “starting from Descartes to Pre-Hume”. Such a distinction only
serves to bring out the pre-Enlightenment character of the early moderns, in the historical and not the
philosophical sense of the Enlightenment.

The early modern conception of “philosophy of language” is not so much concerned with what we are
concerned with: a theory of meaning as central to the philosophical enterprise. So, the early moderns did
not have a worked out philosophy of language. They had not worked out the highs and lows of a theory of
meaning. But they said enough that resonates today with our concerns, in ways that are crucial and even
unrecognised at times. To the early moderns, language was a phenomenon that some wondered about,
others studied, yet others rectified and regimented, and some tried to universalise.

We will consider the views on language of three philosophers – Descartes, Leibniz and Locke. This does
not mean that the views of others were not relevant or that they didn’t exist. One can only dismiss the
views of Antoine Arnauld at one’s own peril. The focus of the discussion will revolve around the three
philosophers mentioned for reasons of space. All of these philosophers tend to think that language has
something to do with the mind, and, maybe, derivatively, it is about the world.

2. Rene Descartes (1596–1650)

Descartes clearly thought language was crucial as both evidence of the existence of the human mind and
also as constitutive of the human mind. In his Discourse on the Method, Descartes wonders how he can
know that those who walk outside his house and pass by his windows are men and not just machines. This
is called the “Problem of the Other Minds”. We know we have a mind. We have direct access to our
minds. We know our thoughts intimately. How do we know that others have a mind? We do not know
what other people are thinking, or whether they are thinking at all. Maybe they are just like robots,
programmed to do something. Descartes’ answer is remarkably simple. He writes,

…it is a very remarkable fact that there are none so depraved and stupid, without even excepting idiots,
that they cannot arrange different words together forming of them a statement, by which they make
known their thoughts; while, on the other hand, there is no other animal…which can do the same.
(Descartes 1997, 108)
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Human beings appear to respond to each other using language in ways that no animal and no machine
can. A machine can, of course, be programmed to generate replies. But Descartes thinks that this sort of
programming does not come close to what humans are capable of. A human being replies intelligently,
according to the circumstance and context, and his or her speech is usually novel, not repetitive and not
forced or coerced. It is freely creative, so to speak. A machine cannot be said to make its thoughts known
to others. When a machine talks, it is not communicating; it is reacting. A human both reacts and
communicates. And if we speak first, we aren’t even reacting. Sometimes, we speak to ourselves – where
there is no reaction and no communication. The fact that any human being – however endowed in society
– has these capacities, suggests to Descartes that this is indicative of the presence of a mind.

It is well-known that Descartes thought that he was a thinking thing and not a physical or extended thing.
We need not enter into the arguments for such a claim here. Since the use of language by a human being
is taken as evidence of possession of a mind, as we just saw above, and since the mind is a thinking thing,
one wonders what a thinking thing is. Descartes obliges us with a ready answer:

But what then am I? A thing which thinks. What is a thing which thinks? It is a thing which doubts,
understands, [conceives,] affirms, denies, will, refuses, which also imagines and feels. (Descartes 1997,
143).

But you cannot doubt, understand, affirm, deny, will or refuse without entertaining a proposition. If one
doubts, one must doubt that something is the case. If one understands, one understands that something is
the case. One affirms something to be the case. One denies something to be the case. And so on. Hence,
the mind is able to entertain propositions. It seems to involve in speech acts, such as refusing and
affirming and denying.

What about imagination? That does not appear to involve propositions. Rather, when we imagine a lion or
a mountain, there is an image in our minds of such objects. Descartes had pointed out in his Meditations
that imagination is not present in the mind originally, but that it comes forth when the mind comes to
conjoin with the body. Our imagination is quite limited. We can imagine many shapes. We can imagine a
triangle, a square, a sphere and a heptagon. But we cannot imagine a chiliagon, a thousand-sided figure.
But we can certainly think of a chiliagon. We can prove theorems about it. This suggests that the mind’s
capacities are quite distinct from the imagination. It appears to follow that the mind would not imagine
unless it had occasion to do so. And that occasion is created by its union with the body. If we take the
same line with “feelings”, then we can see that the mind is essentially an entity that can grasp objects of a
linguistic kind and hold attitudes towards it. Without language, the mind is unrecognisable.
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The use of language by humans, for Descartes, was a problem. Since it was indicative of a mind, and the
mind was non-physical, it was clear to him that there was no mechanistic explanation as such for the use
of language. Since it fell out of the realm of mechanism, Descartes had not much choice but to posit a
mind. Of course, even if the mind were – in some intelligible sense – physical, it still would not follow
how language was used creatively by human beings. That would still be a mystery.

Cartesian themes have now come to dominate the subject of Cognitive Science. The subject of linguistics,
with Chomsky as its founder back in the 1950s and 1960s, owes its character and its substance to the idea
that language is revelatory of the nature of the mind. We now turn to the philosopher Leibniz, who shared
similar thoughts.

3. G W Leibniz (1646–1716)

With Leibniz, one finds an interest in the modern idea of developing a formal language which would help
us draw out an inference accurately. Leibniz is famous for trying to develop a Universal Characteristic.
This is sometimes called a philosophical grammar or a rational grammar. The idea was to develop a
system of notation and a way of combining them that would reveal to us as clearly as possible not only
what we think, but what we can derive from what we think. Rutherford (1994), explaining Leibniz’s
position, writes that

…the universal characteristic would enable us to construct linguistic characters which are transparent
representations of intelligible thoughts, something the signs of natural languages typically fail to be, and
to reduce logical reasoning to a mechanical procedure relying solely on the substitution of formal
characters. (Rutherford 1994, 225)

There is a difference that Leibniz has with the modern logicians. Leibniz wants not just to draw out the
skeleton of the inference, but also the content of it. He wants to reduce complex concepts to simple ones,
thus showing how all complex concepts are built out of simple ones. Thus, Leibniz has a notion of
compositionality in mind. The concept of a lame horse is built of the simpler concepts of lameness and of
being a horse. Once the concepts are thus reduced, we see with great clarity what the proposition at hand
has expressed. To express one’s thoughts clearly is a standard target of the philosophical enterprise. But
Leibniz wasn’t merely trying to analyse thoughts and propositions. He was trying to make discoveries
with the Universal Characteristic. The discovery here would involve extending the powers of reasoning
and capturing the elements of reality. To use the analogy by Leibniz, the Universal Characteristic was like
a microscope that would increase the strength and power of the mind to conceive and understand.
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Rutherford quotes a letter that Leibniz wrote to Oldenburg in 1673, where Leibniz suggests what he has in
mind regarding the Universal Characteristic.

To anyone who wanted to speak or write about any topic, the genius of this language will supply not only
the words but also the things. The very name of anything will be the key to all that could reasonably be
said or thought about it or done with it. (Leibniz 1673/1994, 231)

Language, once thoroughly represented by Leibniz’s Universal Characteristic, would reveal what there is,
so to speak. It would bring the mind closer to reality. Galileo had believed that nature’s language was the
language of science. Leibniz has a similar belief. It is just that he has a more overarching philosophical
aim: to so organise a system of symbols where each symbol was immediately revelatory of the object it
stood for. Leibniz and Galileo are aware that a lot hangs on notation. But Galileo is happy with the
mathematical notation he possesses. Leibniz wants to go further. He wants to try to develop a language
that would reveal the structure of thought, and in so doing so, also lay reality bare. Reality is not
something independent of the way we conceive it, post-rationalisation and post- the development of the
Universal Characteristic.

Part of Leibniz’s project also involves the idea that once such a Universal Characteristic is developed,
then any human being can use it. Whether the human lives in Papua New Guinea or in Amsterdam would
not matter. Attempts at universal languages, with very different aims from Leibniz, had been made by
Dalgarno and Wilkins (Maat 2011, 284). They had wanted a universal communication system that would
overcome the differences of tongue that existed among various languages.

It is interesting to note that Descartes did think that while it was possible to develop a philosophical
grammar or a universal characteristic, it was quite unlikely to happen unless one develops a true
philosophy. Clearly, Descartes did not think that cleaning up language would lead to the true philosophy,
whatever that is. Leibniz thought that one could do both tasks – analysing language and “true philosophy”
– by doing both. There was no order of precedence here.

This shows an interesting distinction between Descartes and Leibniz. Descartes is very much concerned
with the errors we make and relies on clear and evident perception to evade such errors. Leibniz is not
interested in being free of error as a starting point of philosophy; he is confident that a Universal
Characteristic once developed, with all the errors that will creep in along the way, and the subsequent
rectifications that will take place, will be successful in doing what he wants the symbolic system to do.
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Leibniz changed his mind later regarding the idea of reducing complex concepts to primitive concepts. It
appears that he thought that this was not possible anymore. But he did retain the idea of developing a
language that would capture all inferences.

From Leibniz, we get the ideas of a logical language, which reflects the nature of the mind, and also
displays on its sleeves what we are talking about. Such ideas have dominated the 20th century as well.

But that is not all. Leibniz had a remarkably modern view regarding natural kind names. Post Kripke
(1972), we believe, or at least some of us believe that when we use the word “gold”, we are referring to
the essence of the metal gold. We are not referring to gold through a description. This is Putnam’s view
too. Locke believed that different people could have different descriptions of gold in their minds, and
therefore, could attach varying meanings to the word, “gold”. Not so Leibniz. Leibniz maintained in his
New Essays, contrary to Locke, that gold had an inner constitution, which could be known to experts and
it is this inner constitution around which the usage of the word “gold” revolved. The reference to experts
foreshadows views that Putnam held regarding the “division of linguistic labour”. Not all the meanings of
words are clear to us. We do depend on the expertise and the opinion of others who are better informed
than us about the true reference of words such as “lemon”, “tiger” or “gold”. Leibniz has this belief too.

4. John Locke (1632–1704)

Locke, according to Walter Ott, “is the first to present a detailed and systemic discussion of language and
its relevance to philosophy…His ‘linguistic turn’ put philosophy of language at the heart of empiricism”
(2008, 291).

Locke need not have been necessarily aware that he was proposing the philosophy of language. Locke
wished to speak of the “nature, use and signification of language” and that does not mean he was trying to
give a theory of meaning, unless “Signification” means what we mean by Reference. Modern scholars,
such as Lowe (2005), do not agree that we should think that signification has the connotation for Locke
that reference has for us. Maat suggests that

A too narrow focus on this notion [Of significance as Reference] may detract from the fact that Locke’s
investigations into the nature of language were driven by a suspicion of words, or at least, by a desire to
find a remedy against the misuse to which they are frequently put. (2011, 291)
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Locke, unlike Leibniz, was not trying to come up with a philosophical grammar, a panacea for all
intellectual ills. He was just trying to be aware of the traps that language may lay along the way, which
would hinder our general inquiry.

Locke is quite clear about the “significance” of words. He writes,

Words in their primary or immediate Signification, stand for nothing, but in the Ideas in the Mind of him
that uses them. (Locke Essay III, ii.2)

As indicated above, it can be easy to take Locke to mean that words Refer to ideas. This leads to the idea
that there is a private theatre in the mind that words refer to. Similar conceptions have been criticised
heavily in the 20th century, especially by externalist-minded philosophers such as Putnam. Putnam says
famously that “meanings ain’t in the head”.

To save Locke from this criticism, it has been maintained by Ott (2008) that words bring forth ideas,
suggest ideas, and indicate ideas, in the mind of the person who speaks. Locke need not be saying that
words stand for ideas or mean ideas. He just wants to say that ideas are brought forth in the mind when
words are used. If every occasion of a use of a word is accompanied with the springing forth of more or
less the same idea in the mind, then one would imagine that it is not too bold to suggest that words have
some connection with these ideas. This may not be the way Locke expressed himself, but it is quite in line
with what he means.

Philosophers such as Kretzmann and Ashworth think that Locke believed that words signify things in the
world by signifying ideas, which, in turn, signify what they stand for. Hence, we get the word–world
connection through ideas. But Ott says that this idea only makes Locke look like he is talking of the
reference of words, but he may not be doing so at all – as we have just seen. Exactly what is meant by
“immediate signification” or “signification” is the issue. Ott writes that there is a long tradition stretching
from Augustine to Hobbes, “according to which a sign is not merely something that expresses or reveals
something, but one that does so by means of indication” (2008, 294).

But, what is indication? Ott suggests that “indication” means that words are conventional signs of mental
contents. And, the indicator interpretation of “signification” means that “intentionality takes place at the
level of ideas, not words” (2008, 294). But this is very general. Indeed, according to this suggestion,
indication means nothing different than “signification”. Unless one knows what is understood by the term
“intentionality” here, it is not clear why the claim being made is a discovery or anything new. It is well-
known that intentionality does not belong to words, but to the mind. Words are usually taken to be
conventional signs that are given their “referential” powers by the intentionality of the mind. Thus, while
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the “indicator” view of “signification” is a helpful way of getting ahead in understanding Locke’s
fundamental claim, it is not giving us any better light than the original word possessed. Maybe the
significant term in Ott’s analysis is not “indication”, but “by means of indication”. But this is a shuffle
that gets us nowhere. What does it mean to say that words signify ideas? Words indicate ideas by means
of indication. Well, that is no advance. However, one should not cavil on this matter. There is a genuine
point Ott and many others have when they say that “signification” for Locke does not mean Reference.
What it may mean is an open issue, but “indication” is as good a candidate as any.

Keeping all this aside, Locke did recognise the existence of what are usually called “syncategorematic”
terms, terms which have no meaning, but are important and indispensable parts of propositions. For
Locke, such words are “is” and “is not”. The word “is” goes for affirming a proposition and the word “is
not” for denying. From this, it would follow that one could not wonder whether Mt. Everest was the
tallest mountain for the very moment one thought so, and had asserted the proposition, hence taken it to
be true. Thus, there can be no question about wondering whether such a proposition was true. But this is a
technical matter regarding a nicety in Locke’s account. Locke need not mean what we mean by affirm. He
could easily have meant something weaker than we do. But that is a matter of historical investigation into
gradual etymological changes.

5. Conclusion

This has been a rather short account of early modern philosophy of language. Right at the outset, it was
mentioned that we should use the phrase “philosophy of language” somewhat cautiously. An explicit
concern with meaning is not present amongst the early moderns, but there is a modern consciousness that
language is important, indeed central to human beings and to the expression of what we know. And there
is the modern insistence – so much evident in Cognitive Science – that language is central to our
understanding of the mind. Of course, Descartes thinks that the very use of language suggests a limit to
mechanical explanation, and hence, a limit to the reach of science. Locke is more worried about how
language can distort our judgements. Hence, Locke’s vision is narrower and more incisive and analytical.
Leibniz is the oddball amongst these philosophers. It is Leibniz who wants a regimented language to open
secrets of the mind and the universe at the same time. In Leibniz, the ancient and the modern philosopher
cohabit.