Copyright © 1996 R.J. Kilcullen
It was an endless, as well as an useless thing, to trace the Schoolmen, those great masters of abstraction, through all the manifold inextricable labyrinths of error and dispute, which their doctrine of abstract natures and notions seem to have led them into. What bickerings and controversies, and what a learned dust have been raised about these matters, and what mighty advantage hath been from thence derived to mankind, an things at this day too clearly known to need being insisted on.But despite this scorn, Berkeley enters into the cloud of dust and emerges with something quite like Ockham's theory of universals.
Berkeley's immediate target is John Locke. Locke's account of the formation of abstract ideas is reminiscent of most medieval accounts since Boethius: the abstract idea is made from particular ideas by leaving out various particularising circumstances--as if something is literally taken from sensations and freed of extraneous matter and taken into the mind. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), Book II, Ch.11, section 9, Locke writes:
The use of words then being to stand as outward marks of our internal ideas [let me interrupt him to remind you that this was the standard medieval idea, which Ockham disagreed with--according to Ockham words stand directly for things, though in subordination to concepts, i.e. if we decide that the thing does not conform to the definition of that concept we change the word we use to stand for it]--the use of words then being to stand as outward marks of our internal ideas, and those ideas being taken from particular things, if every particular idea that we take in should have a distinct name, names must be endless. To prevent this, the mind makes the particular ideas received from particular objects to become general; which is done by considering them...separate from all other existences, and the circumstances of real existence, as time, place or any other concomitant ideas. This is called abstraction, whereby ideas taken from particular beings become general representatives of all of the same kind; and their names general names, applicable to whatever exists conformable to such abstract ideas. (Emphasis added.)Cf. Book III, ch.3, sections 6 ff. In Book IV, ch.7, section 9, he writes:
For abstract ideas are not so obvious or easy to children... For, when we nicely reflect upon them, we shall find that general ideas are fictions and contrivances of the mind, that carry difficulty with them... For example, does it not require some pains and skill to form the general idea of a triangle... for it must be neither oblique nor rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural [i.e. isosceles], nor scalenon; but all and none of these at once.
Berkeley criticises this account. He says that "the opinion that the mind hath a power of framing abstract ideas" seems to be the main source of perplexity and error in philosophy, especially in Logic and Metaphysics. Philosophers claim that the mind has the power to make abstract ideas, for example of extension,
"which is neither line, surface, nor solid, nor has any figure or magnitude... So likewise the mind by leaving out of the particular colours perceived by sense, that which distinguishes them one from another... makes an idea of colour in abstract which is neither red, nor blue, nor white, nor any other determinate colour... Similarly it makes an abstract idea of man, or, if you please, humanity or human nature; wherein it is true, there is included colour, because there is no man but has some colour, but then it can be neither white, nor black, nor any particular colour; because there is no one particular colour wherein all men partake. So likewise there is included stature, but then it is neither tall stature nor low stature, nor yet middle stature, but something abstracted from all these.Similarly the generic idea of animal includes body, life, sense and spontaneous motion--
body without any particular shape or figure, there being no one shape or figure common to all animals, without covering either of hair or feathers or scales etc. nor yet naked: hair, feathers, scales and nakedness being the distinguishing properties of particular animals, and for that reason left out of the abstract idea... the spontaneous motion must be neither walking, nor flying, nor creeping, it is nevertheless a motion... ". (sections 7 and 8).Obviously Berkeley is insinuating the impossibility of such ideas, but notice that he is able to specify quite clearly in words what these ideas include and leave out. What is impossible is to picture or imagine a colour that is neither white nor red or any determinate colour. Like Locke, and unlike Descartes, Berkeley means by an "idea" a sense impression or a remembered or imagined sensation. Medieval authors, did not use "idea" except for the Ideas in God, and in human cognition they emphasised (like the whole Platonic and Aristotelian tradition) that intellection is of a different order than sensation, memory and imagination: an abstract concept was never thought of as an image. It was rather something corresponding to the meaning of a word or phrase; and as I have just remarked Berkeley has no trouble explaining in words the abstract concept of animal (etc.).
To continue. At the beginning of the next section (10) Berkeley refers explicitly to "imagining", but then talks of "framing an idea", and "conceiving" an idea "by any effort of thought". But all the time he is really talking about what he can imagine. "I have a faculty of imagining" which can variously divide and compound images:
I can imagine a man with two heads... I can consider the hand... by itself abstracted or separated from the rest of the body. But then whatever hand... I imagine, it must have some particular shape and colour. Likewise, the idea of a man that I frame to myself, must be either of a white, or a black, or a tawny, a straight or a crooked, a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man. I cannot by any effort of thought conceive the abstract idea above described.The line he draws around the power to imagine separately corresponds to Scotus's and Ockham's criterion of real distinction, viz. the possibility of separate existence.
To be plain, I own myself able to abstract in one sense, as when I consider some particular parts or qualities separated from others, with which though they are united in some object, yet it is possible they may really exist without them. But I deny that I can abstract one from another, or conceive separately, those qualities which it is impossible should exist so separated, or that I can frame a general notion by abstracting from particulars in the manner aforesaid.In section 13 he quotes Locke's passage on the abstract idea of a triangle that is "neither oblique nor rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once". Berkeley asks the readers to reflect and see whether he has an idea corresponding to that description--expecting of course that the answer will be No, as it will be if the attempt is to imagine such a triangle, though we all understand that the definition of a triangle leaves open the ratio between its sides.
What is Berkeley's own account of universals? He writes:
When I demonstrate any proposition concerning triangles, it is to be supposed that I have in view the universal idea of a triangle; which ought not to be understood as if I could frame an idea of a triangle which was neither equilateral nor scalenon nor equicrural. But only that the particular triangle I consider, whether of this or that sort it matters not, doth equally stand for and represent all rectilinear triangles whatsoever, and is in that sense universal.This is reminiscent of Ockham: a universal is a particular thing functioning as a sign that can stand for any one indifferently of a set of particulars. In Ockham's theory a physical thing like a barrel hoop outside a pub can be a universal, by institution or convention, but ultimately there must be natural universals--concepts, particular intellectual acts (in Ockham's later theory) capable of standing for any one of the set of similar particulars. In Berkeley's theory there is no mention of concepts, only of ideas in his sense, i.e. images, and sometimes he seems to speak of what we would call external physical things like the barrel hoop, namely of geometrician's diagrams:
An idea, which considered in itself is particular, becomes general, by being made to represent or stand for all other particular ideas of the same sort. To make this plain by an example, suppose a geometrician is demonstrating the method of cutting a line into two equal parts. He draws, for instance, a black line of an inch in length, this which in itself is a particular line is nevertheless with regard to its signification general, since as it is then used it represents all particular lines whatsoever; for that which is demonstrated of it is demonstrated of all lines, or in other words of a line in general. (Section 12).The universal in this example is the black line an inch long, the physical diagram. (Berkeley later argues that physical things are really ideas in a mind, e.g. in God's mind; hence he refers to this diagram as an idea.) Returning to the triangle example: suppose I demonstrate that the interior angles of a triangle add up to two right angles, using a particular figure:
Though the idea I have in view whilst I make the demonstration be, for instance, that of an isosceles rectangular triangle, whose sides are of a determinate length, I may nevertheless be certain it extends to all other rectilinear triangles, of what sort or bigness so ever. And that, because neither the right angle, nor the equality, nor determinate length of the sides, are at all concerned in the demonstration. It is true, the diagram I have in view includes all these particulars, but then there is not the least mention made of them in the proof of the proposition. It is not said, the three angles are equal to two right ones, because one of them is a right angle, or because the sides comprehending it are of the same length. Which sufficiently shows that the right angle might have been oblique, and the sides unequal, and for all that the demonstrations have held good. And for this reason it is, that I conclude that to be true of any obliquangular or scalenon, which I had demonstrated of a particular right-angled equicrural triangle; and not because I demonstrated the proposition of the abstract idea of a triangle. And here it must be acknowledged that a man may consider figure merely as triangular, without attending to the particular qualities of the angles, or relatives of the sides. So far he may abstract. (section 16).
So Berkeley's theory of the universal is to some extent like Ockham's: that a universal is a particular diagram, or image, or... , that can stand for any member of a sort of similar things. The difference is that whereas Ockham postulates concepts as natural signs of similar things, Berkeley talks of figures and ideas or images. In one place he comes closer to concepts by speaking of significations. He writes:
There is no such thing as one precise and definite signification annexed to any general name, they all signifying indifferently a great number of partic ular ideas.In medieval terminology, he is here talking about supposition rather than signification: a general term is capable of standing for indifferently a great number of particular things; however, it does have a fixed signification, expressed by definition. Berkeley agrees. He goes on to say:
To this it will be objected that every name that has a definition is thereby restrained to one certain signification, [e.g. "triangle" has a definition], to which I answer that in the definition it is not said whether the surface be great or small, black or white, nor whether the sides are long or short [etc.] and consequently there is no one settled idea [i.e. image] which limits the signification of the word triangle. 'Tis one thing for to keep a name constantly to the same definition, and another to make it stand everywhere for the same idea: the one is necessary, the other useless and impracticable. (Section 18).Berkeley's use of the term "signification" is not medieval, but what he is saying is quite traditional. To keep a name constantly to the same definition is to use the name in subordination to a concept. In Berkeley's philosophy definitions and concepts (or as he sometimes calls them "notions") have a kind of intermittent existence. When, after the "Introduction" we've been looking at, he goes on to the body of the work, the Principles of Human Knowledge, he begins by laying it down that the only objects of knowledge are ideas. There is no mention of definitions or concepts; whereas according to Ockham science, or knowledge, is of propositions, which consist of words or concepts--fundamentally of concepts--standing for things.
The less forcible and lively are commonly denominated "thoughts" or "ideas". The other species want a name... Let us... call them "impressions".Hume's distinction is in terms of "liveliness", rather than in terms of the function of intuitions in rendering contingent judgments evident. For Hume, in fact, it is questionable whether impressions are evidence of the existence or character of the things they seem to be impressions of.
All reasonings concerning matter of fact [i.e. contingent propositions] seem to be founded on the relation of cause and effect... Knowledge of this relation... arises entirely from experience, when we find that any particular objects are constantly conjoined with each other... Were any object presented to us, and were we required to pronounce concerning the effect which will result from it without consulting past observations, after what manner... must the mind proceed?... It must invent or imagine some event which it ascribes to the object as its effect; and it is plain that this invention must be entirely arbitrary. The mind can never possibly find the effect in the supposed cause by the most accurate scrutiny and examination. For the effect is totally different from the cause, and consequently can never be discovered in it... every effect is a distinct event from its cause. It could not, therefore, be discovered in the cause, and the first invention or conceptions of it... must be entirely arbitrary.
And even after we have discovered by experience that X causes Y, we can never understand the ultimate reasons why:
It is confessed that the utmost effort of human reason is... to resolve the many particular effects into a few general causes... But as to the causes of those general causes, we should in vain attempt their discovery... The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer.Experience provides no insight into the connection of cause and effect: all that experience ever shows is that one regularly follows another. Hence Hume's definition of cause:
an object followed by another, and where all the objects similar to the first, are followed by objects similar to the second. Or in other words where, if the first object had not been, the second never had existed. (Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, sections IV and VII).
Hume makes various sceptical observations on causation. If we say that we know that X causes Y because Xs have always been followed by Ys, we are supposing that what has always happened in the past will go on happening in the future. And there can be no guarantee that it will. There is no a priori demonstration (i.e. no conclusive argument independent of experience) to show that the future must go on like the past, and of course there can't be any guarantee of that in experience. The fact that the laws of cause and effect that held last Tuesday held the day before and the day before that, and so on, doesn't show that they will hold tomorrow, except on the assumption that something that has been true in the past, viz. that the laws of cause and effect were the same day by day--will continue to hold in the future; and, of course, this assumption would beg the question.
There are some noteworthy similarities with some of Ockham's remarks on causation. On this topic see M. Adams, William Ockham, ch.18; she argues that Ockham and Hume are not as close as they first seem. But certainly they seem close. For example, Ockham comes close to the definition of cause just quoted from Hume. He says:
Although I do not intend to say in general what an immediate cause is, nevertheless, I hold that the following is sufficient for something to be an immediate cause, viz. that when that absolute things is posited, the effect is posited, and when it is not posited and all other concurrent conditions and dispositions remain the same, the effect is not posited... [a little later:] when this is posited the effect follows, and when it is not posited the effect does not follow (quoted Adams, p.746).He says he does not intend to say in general what a cause is, but he does remark in the present passage that if his formula were not sufficient, then "every way of knowing that one things is the cause of another would perish". This seems to imply that all we can know of cause and effect is that when and only when the one is posited the other follows.
He also says something close to Hume's scepticism about our ability to know causal connections:
It cannot be demonstrated that any effect is produced by a secondary cause. For even though when fire is close to combustible material combustion always follows, this fact is, nevertheless, consistent with fire's not being the cause of it. For God could have ordained that whenever fire is present to a close-by patient, the sun would cause combustion (in it); just as he ordained with the Church that when certain words are spoken, grace is produced in the soul. Thus, there is no effect through which it can be proved that anyone is a human being... For an angel can produce in a body everything that we see in a human being--e.g. eating, drinking and the like. This is clear from the case of the angel in the book of Tobit. Therefore, it is not surprising if it is impossible to demonstrate that anything is a cause (Adams, p.750).Thus even constant experience cannot prove that fire causes combustion, since God may have ordained two or more concomitant regularities of sequence and we may notice only one. Elsewhere Ockham says that God's ordinances may change (not in the sense that God changes his mind, but in the sense that he always ordained that at such and such a time a different ordinance would come into force). Ockham does not relate this to causation particularly, but obviously if what causes what is a matter of what God has ordained and he can change his ordinances, then in the future causal laws established in the past may cease to hold.
Marilyn Adams (pp.785-95) challenges the Humean interpretation of Ockham. Her strongest point is that she shows that Ockham does postulate a power in the cause to produce the effect, whereas Hume rejects this and insists that all there is is regular sequence. But perhaps Hume was just more consistent than Ockham. Certainly there are similarities even if, as she claims, there are differences.
In Inquiry, section 12 "Of the Academic or Sceptical Philosophy", Hume draws out from his account of causation some further sceptical conclusions reminiscent of Descartes' hypothesis of the deceiving genius. Perhaps what we are accustomed to regard as the real world is not really there. If the only way we can know that X causes Y is by observing that Y regularly follows X, then if we can never observe X we can have no reason for believing that it is the cause of Y. The external things that are supposed to cause our impressions are, in this case, ideas: what we observe, according to Locke, Berkeley and Hume, is the idea or impression, not the object. (Contrast this with Ockham, who rejected species. The "ideas" and "impressions" of the early modern British school are species). So if all we can ever observe is the supposed effect on our organs of perception of outside objects, then we cannot know that there are any outside objects. As Hume says:
Nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception, and the senses are only the inlets through which these ideas are conveyed, without being able to produce any immediate intercourse between the mind and the object... The mind has never anything present to it but the perceptions, and cannot possibly reach any experience of their connection with objects. (Inquiry, section 12).By rejecting species Ockham gave no opening to such a line of thought. His theory that God could produce in us a creditative cognition of something non-existent which we would believe to exist might lead to Humean scepticism about the external world, but Ockham never drew that conclusion, perhaps because he did not assume that knowledge is impossible unless we can know whether a seeming intuition is genuine.
From Bernard's definition of clear intuition Nicholas infers that "every awareness which we have of the existence of objects outside our minds can be false"; also "we cannot be certain when our awareness of the existence of external objects is true or false".
But you [Bernard] will perhaps say, as I think you wished to suggest in a certain disputation... that although from the fact of seeing it we cannot infer, when that seeing is produced or conserved by a supernatural cause, that the seen object exists, nevertheless when it is produced precisely by natural causes--with only the general concurrence of the First Agent--then it can be inferred. (p.657).This is reminiscent of Ockham's point that an intuitive cognition can be caused naturally only when the object exists and is present; but (according to Ockham) even when supernaturally caused an intuitive cognition will not cause error. But he might have said of "creditative" cognition (widening that term to include genuine as well as spurious intuitions) that it cannot be erroneous when caused naturally. Nicholas replies to Bernard: if true existence cannot be inferred from Bernard's clear intuitive cognition when God produces it, it cannot be inferred no matter how it is in fact produced, since we can't be certain in any particular case whether it was produced by God or not. And how can Bernard know that there are not other causes, besides God, capable of producing in us a deceptive intuitive cognition? Also, if, as Bernard has also said, we do not have intuitive cognition of our own acts (e.g. of will or belief) than a fortiori we cannot be certain of our own acts, and we can't be certain of anything.
And so, bringing all these statements together, it seems that you must say that you are not certainAnd thus you do not know if you are in the heavens or on the earth, in fire or in water; and consequently you do not know whether today's sky is the same one as yesterday's, because you do not know whether the sky exists. Just as you do not know whether the Chancellor or the Pope exists, and whether, if they exist, they are different in each moment of time. Similarly you do not know
- of those things which are outside of you.
And, as it seems to me, the absurdities which follow on the position of the Academics follow on your position. (Pp.658-9).
- the things within you--as, whether or not you have a beard, a head, hair, and so forth. And a fortiori it follows from this that
- you are not certain of the things which occurred in the past...
In a second letter to Bernard, Nicholas goes deeper, and whereas in letter 1 he was drawing out the implications of Bernard's position, here he is explaining his own. He lays down a more general proposition:
It is possible, without any contradiction being implied, that something will appear to you to be so, and yet it will not be so; therefore you are not evidently certain that it is so (P.660).Re-read Ockham, Quodlibet V, question 5, and notice the use he makes there of the notion of non-contradiction: God can do anything that does not involve a contradiction, therefore he can cause in us assent to a false proposition. Similarly, Nicholas says here that it is possible for what seems not to be, since this does not involve any contradiction. He goes on to draw out various implications and then says:
On the basis of these statements, I laid down... this [proposition]: From the fact that some thing is known to exist, it cannot be evidently inferred... that some other thing exists (P.661).This would mean, for example, that from the fact that I have some sort of cognition or apparent cognition, it cannot be inferred that anything else exists. Nicholas goes on to infer that therefore there can be no knowledge that substance exists, since we only ever see accidents: a conclusion that Hume also drew. For more on Nicholas see Hastings Rashdall, "Nicholas de Utricuria, a Medieval Hume", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society VIII (1907), 1-27, and T.K. Scott, "Nicholas of Autrecourt, Buridan and Ockhamism", Journal of the History of Philosophy 9 (1971) pp.15-41.
In this lecture and the last, I have not suggested that the early modern philosophers were directly acquainted with Scotus, Ockham, Nicholas of Autrecourt and other 14th century philosophers, merely that there are similarities sufficient to suggest that there must have been some connections. If we knew more about the textbooks used in 16th and 17th century universities we might be able to trace them in detail (a tedious task!). But in the meantime I think it can safely be said that a knowledge of fourteenth century philosophy will often give some background or context to the questions, assumptions, concepts and terminology of seventeenth century philosophy. In view of the density and difficulty of medieval philosophical texts from Scotus onwards it is not surprising that educated laymen, influenced by the literary and gentlemanly ideals of the Renaissance, would come to feel like junking the whole tradition and starting from scratch. But some of what they junked was actually better than what they were able to produce themselves, and they did not discard as much as they thought they did--medieval assumptions and concepts still have a deep influence in 17th century thought.
Finally, I should point out that Ockham had two careers as a philosophical writer, the second of which is at least as interesting as the material of his that we have looked at in this course. The year 1328 was the dividing point. Until then he wrote his commentary on the Sentences, and his logic, and other works of academic philosophy and theology. After 1328 he wrote nothing of that sort. Instead he produced a great volume of so-called "political" writings, concerned with questions about rights and authority in Church and State. For something on this see my article, "Ockham and Infallability". See also my translations of some of these political writings in the Cambridge University Press Series, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought.
This is the end of the 12th and last cassette in the course. Farewell.
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