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Skepticism and language in early modern thought
LANGUAGE & COMMUNICATION
PERGAMON
Language & Communication 18 (1998) 111-124
Skepticism and language in early modern thought Danilo Marcondes Philosophy Department, Pontificia UniversidadeCat6lica do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro. Brazil Keywords: Skepticism; Maker's knowledge;Philosophyof science; Descartes; Locke
[...] for truth consists in speech, and not in the things spoken of [...] From hence also this may be deduced, that the first truths were arbitrarily made by those that first of all imposed names upon things. Thomas Hobbes (1839-1845, pp. 35-36)
1. Introduction
The revival of ancient skepticism in the early XVIth century has been considered one of the major forces in the development of modern thought, especially as regards the discussion about the nature of knowledge and the sciences. Richard Popkin in his History o f Skepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (1979) has shown that skeptical arguments were influential in the attack against traditional scholastic conceptions of science, opening the way to the development of the new scientific method. The dispute between those who embraced skepticism and those who tried to refute or surpass it was central to the philosophical scene well into the XVIIIth century. However, the importance of the discussion of the nature and role of language in this process and its relation to sceptical arguments has scarcely been examined. My objective in this paper is to extend Popkin's analysis of the influence of skepticism in the formation of modem thought to the consideration, in general lines, of some of the main features of early modern theories about language. The skeptical arguments against the possibility of sure knowledge of reality were dealt with by rationalists, such as Descartes and his followers, by appealing to natural light or divine illumination as a characteristic of human mind capable of guaranteeing this privileged access into nature's essence. According to this view, it is this kind of intuitive aprehension that grounds the possibility of sure knowledge. Skeptics, on the other hand, attacked the very notion of intuitive knowledge, either rejecting it, or, such as the more moderate ones, restricting its application to specific domains, for instance, mathematics. 0271-5309/98/$19.00 © 1998 Elsevier ScienceLtd. All rights reserved PII: S0271-5309(98)00003-2
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My main contention is that skeptical arguments, which were mainly arguments purporting to establish limits to knowledge, opened the way to the consideration of language as an alternative to mind's intuitive powers in the apprehension of reality. Linguistic representation became important as a way of avoiding some of the main problems affecting mental representation. I intend to concentrate here on one specific skeptic argument known as 'the maker's knowledge argument '~, basically stating that we can only know what we create. My starting point is that the philosophical interest in language can be understood in m a n y cases as a result of an interpretation of language as a h u m a n creation and therefore as part of the so called ' m a k e r ' s knowledge tradition'. The theories of language in the Renaissance as well as in Early Modern Philosophy had as background assumptions two related questions which had been a central concern of almost every philosophical discussion on language since Ancient Greek Philosophy: • First, does language contribute to knowledge, i.e. to the scientific knowledge of nature? • Second, is language itself capable of being known in a scientific way, i.e. is a science of language possible, and if so what kind of science is it? These questions are part of a broader discussion on the nature and possibility of scientific knowledge found at this time: What is science? Is it possible? And if so, how? I intend to show that these questions undergo a deep change during the period considered here, which can be seen as a turning point in the treatment of this subject, and I hope to analyse some of the main aspects of this change, especially as regards language. My basic hypothesis is that those thinkers who favor the maker's knowledge argument tend to value language, whereas those who reject it do not give a significant role to language in their systems. I intend to investigate then how those thinkers for whom the maker's knowledge argument was central considered language, and on the other hand, I shall ask what place those that had an opposite view of knowledge and science, such as Descartes and the Cartesians, gave to language in their system. I shall restrict myself to the period going from Humanist theories on language to the beginning of the X V I I I century--roughly from Lorenzo Valla (1405-1457) to Giambattista Vico (1668 1744), as during this period a number of new and original arguments concerning the main questions that interest me here can be found. I do not intend to cover this whole period in detail, but only to select a few representative thinkers, following some of the main threads of the complex fabric of modern thought in its early stages. However, there is no basic view shared by Humanist thinkers and early modern theoreticians of language, on the contrary, there are very different conceptions of the nature and function of language, depending on different viewpoints adopted by various thinkers, as well as on different purposes according to which language was considered. iI use this notion as characterized by Zagorin (1984) and Perez-Ramos (1988).
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Nevertheless, in a broad sense, we can make a general distinction between those thinkers who adopted a version of the maker's knowledge tradition and those who rejected it and sought to defend the need for a knowledge of essences, appealing directly to divine illumination or to the light of the soul as ways of getting access into the deepest nature of reality.
2. Skepticism and the maker's knowledge argument In the late XVth and early XVIth centuries, the Humanist's interest in classical texts of Ancient Greece and R o m e made available new translations and editions of the skeptical works of Sextus Empiricus, Cicero and Diogenes Laertius. Moreover, the conflict of theories found at that period between scholastic and Renaissance philosophies, between the Catholic tradition and the new doctrines of the Reformation, as well as between ancient scientific views and the new born modern science, gave fertile ground for the revival of ancient skeptic arguments and disputation strategies, giving birth to what Popkin (1979) has named 'nouveau p y r r h o n i s m e '2. In a period of crisis and transition, of deep changes and the questioning of established authority, the skeptical arsenal supplied important weapons for this combat. As I said above I chose to concentrate on one central argument found at this period, which is to some extent characteristic of modern thought in science and p h i l o s o p h y - - t h e so called ' m a k e r ' s knowledge argument', or ergetic conception of knowledge, as it has also been called (Funkenstein, 1986). Although earlier versions of it can be found, this argument clearly belongs to this context, and becomes pervasive during this period. It has a long tradition in modern thought and can be found in a variety of versions in different philosophers. It is one of the most central ideas of our cultural tradition, the idea of human beings as creators, as in their own little way, getting as close as possible to G o d himself, through the act of creation. The maker's knowledge tradition can be seen as one of the major undercurrents of modern thought, often working more as a presupposition than as a fully explicit argument, in fact it is frequently a tacit assumption more than a developed argument. It does not have one single formulation, but several, having at least one positive and one negative aspect, as two faces of the same coin; although it can also be argued that all these different formulations share a general basic background assumption--precisely the idea that we know only what we make. The origin of the argument is somewhat remote and obscure. It can be found already in the Renaissance and it contains much of the spirit of Renaissance H u m a n i s m seeing man as creator, as well as drawing together the two main fields of h u m a n creativity: art and technique, in the sense of craftsmanship. After all ars is the Latin equivalent of the Greek techn~. Art seems to be the field par excellence in which h u m a n beings can surpass their limits, can make or create something. However, artistic creation is not considered a cognitive or scientific experience, and, in 2,New pyrrhonism' after Pyrrho, the founder of skepticism in the 3rd century BC.
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the field of knowledge, h u m a n experience remains limited, for how can we know something we have not created. But then what is the maker's knowledge argument? One of the main contentions of skeptical arguments is that human beings are limited in their capacity to know reality as it is, that is, to know its essence, its ultimate causes. Skeptics were the first in Ancient philosophy to question the definition of science as having as its objective 'rerum cognoscere causas'. The limits of h u m a n knowledge are of two kinds: the first is epistonic, due to h u m a n nature itself, the reach of our senses and of our reasoning as sources of knowledge is limited since we are imperfect, finite beings. The second is logical, due to our incapacity of proving or demonstrating conclusively the truth of any thesis or proposition. Doubts, objections, alternative views always seem possible in these cases. The maker's knowledge argument can be understood in two ways, depending on the consequences derived from it, positive or negative. According to the interpretation emphasizing its sense as establishing limits to h u m a n knowledge, we can only know what we create. The link between this argument and Christian tradition seems obvious, and this makes it new in relation to Ancient Skepticism. If only G o d can create, then G o d alone is capable of knowledge of His Creation, the natural world. H u m a n knowledge, in its limited effort to understand reality can only generate representations and concepts, which are the actual objects of knowledge, and not reality in itself. We dot not know reality as it is, but only through the way we represent it. Since G o d is the creator of Nature, only G o d can know reality as it is. H u m a n knowledge, if it deserves that name, is confined to mere appearances, to phenomena, and cannot be considered true, demonstrable or grounded, in any definite way. We find this line of argumentation mainly in religious thinkers, and its starting point in the Renaissance seems to be Nicholas of Cusa. The same principle, however, that one knows only what one creates, can be interpreted in the opposite sense. H u m a n beings can know what they create, and although they did not create Nature, and therefore cannot know it in itself, they can imitate or reproduce it through technique and can know what they create. A human being is in this sense an imitator Dei. This version of the argument is found in the so called philosophers of technique, whose main representative at that period was perhaps Francis Bacon. This can be considered the constructivist or positive sense of the argument, and it opens the way to knowledge and science, since as human beings can effectively know what they create, knowledge is possible, although not knowledge of reality in itself. Mathematics and the world of culture are the two most frequent examples of maker's knowledge in this constructive sense.
3. The debate about science
In general lines we can understand the rationalists' philosophical project as a defense of modern against ancient science. The scientific revolution from Copernicus to Galilee not only replaced the ancient geocentric model of the Cosmos by a new o n e - - t h e heliocentric m o d e l - - b u t introduced a new conception of science, the
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scientia activa, the observational and experimental view, against the scientia contemplativa, the essentially theoretical conception of the tradition. The downfall of ancient science, mainly of Aristotelian descent such as interpreted by late medieval scholastics, gave rise to a skeptical challenge which can be illustrated by a passage of Michel de Montaigne's Apologie de Raymond Sebond (Essais, II, 12): So that when any new doctrine presents itself to us, we have great reason to mistrust it, and to consider that before it was set on foot, the contrary had been in vogue; and that as that has been overthrown by this, a third invention in time to come, may start up which may knock the second on the head (Montaigne, 1952, II, p. 12). Descartes' philosophical project can be seen, in m a n y respects, as an attempt to meet this challenge. If Montaigne is right, science, as it was then conceived, would be impossible. Whereas ancient science had effectively represented the Universe in a wrong way, modern science gives a correct explanation of Nature as it is. To defend the essential correctness of the new science we need a method capable of establishing its sure foundations. Since the authority of tradition is unreliable and m a n y of its assumptions have been proved wrong, philosophy must rely on something else as a starting point for its new method. The rejection of tradition is explicit in m a n y of Descartes' (1996) writings (notably the Discourse on Method, part I and the Preface to his Principles of Philosophy). The alternative to false and unreliable knowledge acquired from tradition is knowledge having an innate origin. Language is seen as part of tradition, and as a vehicle of mistakes and prejudices. If we must not accept traditional knowledge, and if the authorities of the past have lost their credibility, since they were frequently wrong, we should then find another authority to establish new and sure criteria of reliable knowledge. This is to be found in our consciousness, in innate reason, in natural light. Popkin (1979) has shown that Descartes' way was, in many respects, preceded by a century, by Martin Luther's appeal to consciousness and subjective religious experience, his rule of faith, as a sure criterion for the correctness of his interpretation of the Scriptures. It is for this reason that Descartes' philosophy was known to his contemporaries as 'a Reformation in Philosophy', in spite of his remaining a catholic. This natural light, or intuitive thought, as a faculty of the human mind, is capable of producing evident knowledge, and therefore it can establish sure foundations for science 3. As Descartes says (Rules for the Direction of the Mind, III): By intuition I understand, not the fluctuating testimony of the senses, nor the misleading judgment that proceeds from the blundering constructions of imagination, but the conception which an unclouded and attentive mind gives us so readily and distinctly that we are wholly freed from doubt about that which we understand. Or, what comes to the same thing, intuition is the 3For a detailed discussion of the different ways this notion was defined, see Jolley (1988).
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u n d o u b t i n g conception o f an unclouding and attentive mind, and from the light o f reason alone (Descartes, 1996). We can define intuitive t h o u g h t as conceived by rationalist philosophers o f the X V I I t h century according to the following features: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
It It It It It
is capable o f direct or immediate access to reality in itself. is evident or certain, i.e. it c a n n o t lead to error. is non-linguistic, i.e. non-predicative or non-propositional. is independent of the senses i.e. it is innate. emerges from a faculty o f the mind, and in this sense is purely subjective.
These features make intuitive t h o u g h t independent from a r g u m e n t and d e m o n stration, not relying on acquired knowledge, which is to be mistrusted. It also results from an inner, strictly individual experience, which makes possible the contrast, in rationalist philosophy, between the inner (reliable) and the outside (doubtful) world. It is thus highly significant that Descartes gave so little importance to language. Considered as belonging to the outside world, as a p r o d u c t o f culture and h u m a n usage, as a conventional system o f signs, language is seen as changing and unreliable. It does not and c a n n o t contribute to the acquisition o f scientific knowledge o f reality. It is in fact part o f the tradition Descartes sees the need to reject since it has been the source o f errors, illusions, prejudices. However, we m a y distinguish four different ways in which Descartes discusses language, two can be considered positive and two negative. The two positive ones are: 1. The language o f geometry, when in rule X I V o f the Rules for the Direction o f the Mind he puts forward the construction o f a projection m e t h o d from geometry into algebra, his major contribution to the development o f mathematics 4. In this case he is successfully proposing the a d o p t i o n o f algebra as the 'language' o f geometry. O f course, language is here u n d e r s t o o d as an abstract, formal system, and as such free from the imperfections o f ordinary language. L a n g u a g e is not seen as a system o f signs representing reality, but as a formal system representing in an abstract way spatial relations. 2. The second positive sense is language as an expression o f human reason or rationality, found in a short passage in the Discourse on the Method, part V 5. In this passage Descartes maintains that only h u m a n beings are capable o f using language as an expression o f thoughts, and not just in a purely mechanical way, such as parrots. A l t h o u g h language, in this case ordinary language, is given a positive role, it is a role as expression o f their thoughts, which precedes it and does not depend on it. L a n g u a g e is not constitutive o f t h o u g h t and does not contribute to knowledge, but 4 See Watson (1995). 5This is by the way one of the passages Chomsky (1966, p. 4) refers to in his interpretation of Cartesian philosophy as one of the sources of his own theories. See also Descartes' letter to the Marquis of Newcastle (1646) (Descartes, 1996). I disagree with Chomsky's (1966) attribution to Descartes of a creative principle related to language. I do not see any textual basis in Descartes' works supporting this interpretation.
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in spite of that the meaningful use of language can be seen as evidence of human reason. The two negative senses are: 1. The view found in the Principles of philosophy (I, p. 74), which seems the opposite of (2) above, that words distort the thought they express, that words are an imperfect medium for the expression of thoughts, and that errors frequently result from our habit of paying more attention to words which seem familiar to us, than to the thought they express. Words, to be meaningful, depend on being associated with ideas in the mind (Reply to the Second Objections on the Meditations, AT IX- 1, p. 124). 2. The rejection in a letter to Mersenne (20 November 1629) of artificial languages as having any usefulness for scientific knowledge. On the contrary, according to Descartes, only after science being completed we would be able to have adequate criteria for the construction of a language fit for the accurate expression of scientific knowledge. It is through reason, and reason alone, that we gain knowledge about the world of nature, and language does not play any relevant role in this process. One may say that the only really positive role given to language in obtaining knowledge is in the case of geometry, and there what we have is a constructive method applied to a formal science, which can be seen in connection with the maker's knowledge tradition, and as such it is not related to the knowledge of the physical world. Following the same line of argument, The Port Royal Logic (II, p.1) emphasizes that words are conventional signs, and as such arbitrary, but ideas associated with them are natural signs of things and therefore have cognitive content, and it is only through this process of association with ideas that words can have any real meaning. Descartes and the rationalist tradition 6 in general use intuition to try to overcome the limits of human knowledge and reject the maker's knowledge argument, since they need to know the essence of reality in order to establish the foundations of the new science. Language, seen as the vernacular, as ordinary, spoken language, cannot have, for the reasons we have seen above, any role in this process. We can contrast the rationalist standpoint, illustrated above by Descartes, with that of the skeptics, who attacked intuitive thought as a source of evident knowledge and as a form of privileged access into reality in itself or as a sure way of grasping first principles. By skeptics I mean here not only the self-proclaimed skeptics, but also materialists and empiricists, that is those who made use of skeptical arguments against rationalism and the various versions of the doctrine of the light of reason. 7 A brief examination of skeptical arguments by these philosophers is important in relation to my hypothesis that they open the way to a consideration of language as an alternative for the definition of knowledge. 6Leibniz is an exception to that among the rationalists, since he gives an heuristic role to language, albeit to a perfect language, the linguacharacteristicauniversaliswhich is fit for his mathesisuniversalis. In fact, the whole project of a perfect language, be it the recovery of the original Adamic language, or the creation of an artificial one, can be seen as part of this discussion about the contribution of language to knowledge. 7See Lennon (1993).
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I am considering here as 'skeptical', arguments having the following general features, basically questioning: 1. The presuppositions of real&m, i.e. the doctrine that reality exists in a determined way and that we can know it as it is. 2. The distinction between appearance and reality, phenomenon and essence; considering unwarranted the presumption of a privileged access into reality/essence. 3. The notions of certainty and evidence, denying the possibility of concluding criteria for the application of these notions. 4. The conception of subjectivity as characterized by a mind having a privileged faculty of knowledge (such as natural light). Due to these features, skeptical arguments can be seen as arguments establishing
limits to knowledge in the sense discussed above (section 2). The main skeptical argument I have singled out as representing this position as a whole, is the ' m a k e r ' s knowledge argument'. It consists in an open attack against classical realism, and has as a consequence the restriction of the power and reach of intuitive thought. According to this argument we cannot know nature such as it is, its essence, because we did not create it, and no intuitive faculty is capable of this kind of knowledge, as intuition is not creative, but merely passive or receptive. Arguments limiting the reach and power of knowledge, of which the maker's knowledge argument is perhaps one of the most important, lead, throughout the debate found in early m o d e m philosophy, to a redefinition of the very notions of science and scientific knowledge. This amounts to the progressive a b a n d o n m e n t of the conception of science as a corpus of universal, necessary and eternal truths, explaining the nature of reality in a definite manner and determining its final causes. Language, being conventional and variable cannot contribute to knowledge understood in this sense, likewise, there can be no science of language since it is not adequate as an object of scientific knowledge. This conception is progressively replaced by a view of scientific theories as explanatory models, of conjectural and hypothetical nature, probabilism and constructivisrn becoming more central as a result of that than classical realism. Although skeptic philosophy has a leading role in this process, its arguments are employed without leading to the more radical consequences such as the contention that knowledge is impossible. We may not have absolute knowledge, certain and evident in a conclusive way about reality such as it is and in its totality, but this does not mean that we cannot have science, if we redefine the traditional conception of science, as it was done by moderate skeptics for example Mersenne and Gassendi in France s Renouncing the presumption to having knowledge of essences and first principles does not necessarily lead to having to renounce science, but only to a redefinition of scientific knowledge, which is thus separated from speculative metaphysics and purely theoretical knowledge. Skepticism becomes, therefore, a preparatory stage to building up a legitimate science. 8See Popkin (1979, ch. VII).
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The maker's knowledge argument seems to depend, in the final analysis, on a strong conception of the role of causality, especially on the notion of efficient cause, as a creative principle. We cannot be the cause of reality, but only of our representations of reality. Since rationalism demands the objects of knowledge to be permanent and changeless, as essences and first principles alone are, ,our subjective representations do not really amount to knowledge. According to skeptical arguments, intuition, however, is no solution to this problem, since it is not creative, i.e. it is not capable, by itself, of creating this stable object of knowledge. Skeptics, while rejecting the appeal to intuition as capable of giving origin to evident knowledge, accept that knowledge is always partial and limited, although, in spite of that, still remaining knowledge. The alternative to the intellectual intuition of first principles and essences is a kind of knowledge that develops from sense data and concrete experience, which is experimental and observational, consisting of conjectures and hypotheses, some more probable than others, according to empirical criteria. And for this kind of knowledge, language becomes of central importance.
4. The relevance of language Let us go back then to our initial question on the role of language for those philosophers who adopted the maker's knowledge argument. We can see the tendency to give relevance to language as a result of the coincidental effort of the following different trends: 1. The legitimization of the vernacular by means of the revival of rhetoric and eloquence, and of philological analysis in the Renaissance. This movement is also related to the development of hermeneutics, especially of biblical texts, found at the same period. 2. The skeptical attack on human mind as providing certainty, making necessary the use of language in the development of scientific knowledge and leading to the revision of the concept of science itself.
4.1. Lorenzo Valla and the renaissance 9
The first major break with the traditional view of language prevalent in Ancient and medieval philosophy is found in Renaissance Humanism. The Humanists' more immediate target was mainly Aristotelian logic such as developed by the late scholastics with their often excessive formalism. Against this conception of logic, the Humanists sought to restore the importance rhetoric, eloquence, oratory and philology had in Classical Rome. Their inspiration was Cicero, Horace, Quintilian. Since in Ancient Greece Plato and Aristotle opposed the sophists, rhetoric and eloquence were considered philosophically irrelevant. Philosophy had as its aim to lead the way to science, the real knowledge of an unchanging, stable reality, whereas rhetoric and oratory were at best arts (technai), crafts using language with the aim of 9For a detailed analysis see Waswo (1987).
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influencing and persuading a simple minded audience. As language, due to its conventionality and changeability, was considered irrelevant for the establishment of the true path to knowledge, philosophers traditionally paid very little attention to it. The Humanists, of whom Lorenzo Valla is perhaps the best example in relation to our central question above, did not initially disagree with the traditional view that meaning is conventional and that it is not through language that we gain scientific knowledge of reality, but they did not thought this made language altogether irrelevant, since they were more interested in what we could call performative features of language, than in scientific theories built after the Aristotelian model, which anyway were soon to be discredited during the Scientific Revolution of the XVIth and XVIIth centuries. Valla made a major contribution to the change in the way language was dealt with by his medieval predecessors. He clearly wasn't a skeptic and was not influenced by the revival of ancient skepticism, for in fact he precedes it by a few decades, but he shares with the skeptics the questioning of established authority, the emphasis on dialectics and the art of disputation, and the rejection of the scholastic conception of science. For these reasons he can be considered part of the context which forms the background of the rediscovery of skeptical philosophy, and indeed anticipates it in many respects. In fact his contribution was multiple, and the following points can be stressed: (a) the importance of the study of the vernacular, (b) the analysis of language as an important tool in his argument against the scholastic reading of Aristotle, illustrated by his revision of the Aristotelian categories, (c) his philological and hermeneutic work, (d) the central role given to rhetoric as replacing logic. Valla was one of the foremost thinkers in the legitimization of the vernacular in the Italian Renaissance, which had started in fact a century before with Dante and Petrarch, and which would spread out through Europe in the following century with Rabelais and Montaigne in France, with Nebrija and Cervantes in Spain, with Shakespeare in England, with Luther in Germany, a few of the best known just to give some examples. He interpreted language as having a historical nature, and as constitutive of the identity of a nation. He criticized the employment of Latin by intellectuals during the Middle Ages, pointing out that Latin was after all just the language of Rome. In spite of that he was an accomplished classical scholar and gained fame by exposing through a careful philological analysis the famous Donation o f Constantine l° as a forgery. His philological analysis of the Bible had a direct influence in the development of the hermeneutic methods of Erasmus and Luther. The political context of Renaissance Italy, made the rediscovery of rhetoric and eloquence important tools in the newly established communes where commercial activity was intense, of which Florence was perhaps the best example. Realizing that language has a historical nature and is essentially a product of culture, Valla maintained that meaning should be seen as a creative activity and not just as the representation of reality through signs, and that in consequence the use of language ~°A document in which the Emperor Constantine gave Rome and the surrounding territory to Pope Sylvester after being miraculously cured of leprosy, and which was the basis of the temporal power of the Pope.
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shapes our experience of the world both social and natural. The rhetorical use of language, due to its performative character, is also a creative work, and has a fundamental role in social life as an instrument of debate and negotiation. These features of Valla's conception of language certainly justify his inclusion in the maker's knowledge tradition. Giambattista Vico (in his Seienza Nuova, 1725, 1744) (1948), represents already in the eighteenth century a new version of the Humanist's position, illustrated above by Valla. He understood language as having a cultural and historical nature and was one of the most important defenders of the notion of maker's knowledge, which he defined as verum faetum xl, also questioning natural science as sure knowledge of reality. He maintained, on the other hand, that history, the science of culture and society, is the only authentic or legitimate form of knowledge we have, since it is knowledge of a h u m a n creation. F o r this reason, he gives philology, as a science of signs and of interpretation, a capital role in the constitution of h u m a n knowledge. Language, as a system of signs, is now given importance precisely as a h u m a n product, in the opposite direction of rationalism which thought it imperfect for this very motive. If signs and meaning are h u m a n creations, then the meanings of these signs are plainly accessible to h u m a n beings. Vico was an early advocate of the notion of H u m a n Sciences and a strong opponent of Descartes and the Cartesians, the proper subject of science for him being not Nature, which is inaccessible to us, but society and history, which can be understood through a semantic and philological analysis of the use of language and the constitution of meaning. He was a pioneer of the view giving a central role to language in the Humanities, seeing the science of language as a h u m a n science.
4.2. Early modern philosophy Whereas the Renaissance Humanists tried to re-establish a link with the Classical tradition of rhetoric and eloquence, scientifically oriented modern philosophy, on the other hand, decided to sever the link with tradition since ancient scientific theories were considered plainly false, and rhetoric and eloquence did not contribute to knowledge of the natural world. Descartes was seen above as a representative of the view relying on the intuitive powers of the mind to guarantee certainty, therefore doing without language altogether, except in the specific case of the adoption of algebra as the language of geometry. A brief examination of Hobbes and Locke 12, will show them as representing this tradition in modern thought, although in different ways. They both have in c o m m o n an opposition to Descartes and the rationalist tradition and a rejection of the appeal to intuitive knowledge, or at least a restriction to this faculty (as in Locke). But in what sense can it be said that for these philosophers the maker's knowledge argument points to language as an alternative way in the explanation of the i i L i t e r a l l y verum ipsumfactum, o r "the t r u e is i d e n t i c a l t o w h a t is m a d e ' . 12 See L a n d ( 1 9 8 6 ) .
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possibility of knowledge? What are the features of these philosophers' conceptions of language which can be understood in the light of the maker's knowledge argument? Hobbes can be seen as a philosopher who accepting the skeptical arguments about the limits of human mind in knowledge, particularly as regards memory, gives a prominent role to language, understood as the employment of signs, in the acquisition of knowledge, a view having roots in the ancient skeptics' interpretation of the commemorative sign as a possibility condition of human experience 13. Two features of Hobbes' conception of language are important for us. The first is precisely the need of signs for advanced thinking and reasoning due to the fallibility of memory. Descartes relied on intuition to validate a chain of reasoning, since it enables us to grasp a whole argument in a flash. Since Hobbes does not accept that mind has intuitive powers of this kind, he must resort to linguistic signs. Language is therefore a possibility condition for knowledge, according to this view. The second important feature of Hobbes' philosophy which is relevant to our discussion of language is his celebrated nominalism ~4, which is a consequence of his radical empiricism. Since all our experience is rooted in sense perception, universals are just names and nothing real corresponds to them. It is for this reason that our knowledge depends on our language, on the definitions we give in it. As Hobbes says in his Objections to Descartes" MeditationslS: But what shall we now say, if reasoning chance to be nothing more than the uniting and stringing together of names or designations by the word is? It will be a consequence of this that reason gives us no conclusion about the nature of things, but only about the terms that designate them. Locke can be considered an intermediate case, restricting the power of intellectual intuition to geometry, but making the meaning of signs depend on their association with ideas in spite of adhering to the maker's knowledge tradition. He is seen by many as a philosopher of language because of Book III, Of Words, of his Treatise on Human Understanding, where he analyzes the contribution of words for knowledge, although some specialists have puzzled about the lack of clarity for his inclusion of this whole book in the treatise 16 After all the meaning of words depends on ideas associated with them, and as he says, "words in their primary or immediate signification stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them" (Locke, 1952, III, ii.2). In this sense Locke is in agreement with the Cartesians, particularly with the Port Royal tradition, in spite of his rejection of their notion of innate ideas. However, Locke is really one of the first thinkers of this period to give importance to communication, and he justifies the need of language for the communication of our 13Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, 1976, II, pp. 151 152. 14As the specialists point out, Hobbes' views concerning language are not uniform (but then whose are?), and there are parts of his works in which he interprets conceptions (mental entities) as the meaning of linguistic signs, See Land (1986). ~SQuoted by Land (1986, p. 25). J6 For instance, Land (1986).
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thoughts as part of the development of knowledge and scientific theories. This should be understood in the context of his commitment to the whole project of the Royal Society, that is of a community of scientists, of which he was a kind of philosophical mentor. Another important aspect that should be stressed is his definition of semiotics, that is of a general theory of signs, in Book IV, as having a central role in an analysis of knowledge. Locke has been criticized for defining words as signs of ideas, and ideas as signs of things, although clearly 'signs' cannot mean the same in both cases since the relation between words and ideas is conventional, whereas the relation between ideas and things is natural. My suggestion is that this should be interpreted as part of the context of Locke's idealism, especially of his 'semantic idealism'. 'Signs' should be understood in a broad sense, precisely as part of the cognitive process and as a result of the way we apprehend reality through representations, either linguistic (words) or mental (ideas). As we do not have direct, intuitive access into reality as it is, our knowledge inevitably consists of something of our making, namely representationsl7. For Hobbes, as well as for Locke, knowledge results from names and definitions we ascribe to things and from connections and deductions we make starting from these definitions. Only in theses cases can we have demonstrable science. Therefore, geometry and politics (as well as Morals for Locke) are sciences because the concepts they are made of are a h u m a n creation, and so there can be knowledge of what they are about. However, in relation to the physical world, our knowledge is limited, and can only be hypothetical or probable, since we cannot know things as they are in their ultimate nature or essence.
5. Concluding remarks Language is, of course, what gives meaning to our experience, the ultimate human creation, from the magical and ritual use of symbols to their scientific employment in mathematics, language is seen as a way of knowing and creating, of mastering reality and manipulating it. Rationalists thought this kind of knowledge too limited, and aimed at a deeper and more complete way of access into reality, grasping its essence. But they could only do this at the expense of metaphysical presuppositions which were perhaps too hard to sustain. The defenders of the maker's knowledge tradition, however, saw theirs as the only kind of knowledge we could legitimately get. In a sense, the development of our conception of science and knowledge resulted from this conflict. Probabilism and constructivism, the idea of h u m a n sciences, the notions of interpretation and of meaning as use, are some of the best known consequences of the underlying presence of the maker's knowledge tradition in our culture. ~7For the central role of this notion in Locke, as well as in modern and contemporary philosophy, see Watson (1995).
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L o o k i n g ahead from the context we have briefly examined, it can be said that there is m o r e t h a n one way in which skeptical a r g u m e n t s such as the m a k e r ' s knowledge influenced the so called 'linguistic t u r n ' . The first is the H u m a n i s t tradition, o f Valla a n d Vico, which saw language as a historical a n d social p h e n o m e n o n . The second, perhaps more indirect, b u t o f n o less i m p o r t a n c e , is the reaction against the idealism towards which the m a k e r ' s knowledge a r g u m e n t lead to a certain degree, for example in philosophers like Locke. The revival o f realism a n d a new a t t e m p t at o v e r c o m i n g skepticism will be again possible when the first philosophers o f language, in the analytic tradition, such as Frege, Russell a n d the early W i t t g e n s t e i n p u t f o r w a r d a c o n c e p t i o n of language as a logical structure, having as its central n o t i o n the logical form of the p r o p o s i t i o n , which they saw as i s o m o r p h i c to reality, thus e l i m i n a t i n g the need for the appeal to intellectual i n t u i t i o n , b u t at the same time o p e n i n g the way to a c o n c e p t i o n o f universal a n d necessary truths o f a logical nature. This new conception, will have, of course, to face its own p r o b l e m s a n d difficulties, b u t it can be seen as a n a t t e m p t to surpass skepticism as well as a r g u m e n t s o f the kind o f the m a k e r ' s knowledge. O n the other h a n d , its m a i n rival, in the same tradition, the p r a g m a t i c c o n c e p t i o n of language, can be seen as heir to the m a k e r ' s knowledge tradition. But this is a different chapter o f o u r history.
References Arnauld, A., Nicole, P., 1981. Logique, ou I'Art de Penser. Vrin, Paris. Chomsky, N., 1966. Cantisian Linguistics. A Chapter in the History of Nationalist Thought. Harper and Row, New York, USA. Descartes, R., 1996. R6gles pour la direction de l'esprit, Principes de la Philosophie, Discours de la M/~thode, Correspondence. In: Ouevres. Vrin, Paris. Empiricus, S., 1976. Works in 4 vols. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Funkenstein, A., 1986. Theology and the ScientificImagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Hobbes, T., 1839-1845. The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, Vol 1. Ed. Sir William Wordsworth, London. Jolley, N., 1988. The Light of the Soul. Clarendon Press, Oxford. Land, S.K., 1986. The Philosophy of Language in Britain: Major Theories from Hobbes to Thomas Reid. AMS Press, New York. Lennon, T., 1993. The Battle of Gods and Giants. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Locke, J., 1952. A Treatise on Human Understanding. Great Books of the Western World, Encyclopedia Britannica, Chicago, IL. Montaigne, M., 1952. Essais. Great Books of the Western World, Encyclopedia Britannica, Chicago, IL. Perez-Ramos, A., 1988. Francis Bacon's Idea of Science and the Maker's Knowledge Tradition. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Popkin, R., 1979. The History of Skepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA. Vico, G., 1948. The New Science. Connel University Press, Ithaca. Waswo, R., 1987. Language and Meaning in the Renaissance. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Watson, R., 1995. Representational Ideas: From Plato to Patricia Churchland. Kluwer Academic Press, Dordrecht, The Netherlands and Boston. MA. Zagorin, P., 1984. Vico's theory of knowledge: a critique. Philosophical Quarterly, 34 (134) 15-30.
PERGAMON
Language & Communication 18 (1998) 111-124
Skepticism and language in early modern thought Danilo Marcondes Philosophy Department, Pontificia UniversidadeCat6lica do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro. Brazil Keywords: Skepticism; Maker's knowledge;Philosophyof science; Descartes; Locke
[...] for truth consists in speech, and not in the things spoken of [...] From hence also this may be deduced, that the first truths were arbitrarily made by those that first of all imposed names upon things. Thomas Hobbes (1839-1845, pp. 35-36)
1. Introduction
The revival of ancient skepticism in the early XVIth century has been considered one of the major forces in the development of modern thought, especially as regards the discussion about the nature of knowledge and the sciences. Richard Popkin in his History o f Skepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (1979) has shown that skeptical arguments were influential in the attack against traditional scholastic conceptions of science, opening the way to the development of the new scientific method. The dispute between those who embraced skepticism and those who tried to refute or surpass it was central to the philosophical scene well into the XVIIIth century. However, the importance of the discussion of the nature and role of language in this process and its relation to sceptical arguments has scarcely been examined. My objective in this paper is to extend Popkin's analysis of the influence of skepticism in the formation of modem thought to the consideration, in general lines, of some of the main features of early modern theories about language. The skeptical arguments against the possibility of sure knowledge of reality were dealt with by rationalists, such as Descartes and his followers, by appealing to natural light or divine illumination as a characteristic of human mind capable of guaranteeing this privileged access into nature's essence. According to this view, it is this kind of intuitive aprehension that grounds the possibility of sure knowledge. Skeptics, on the other hand, attacked the very notion of intuitive knowledge, either rejecting it, or, such as the more moderate ones, restricting its application to specific domains, for instance, mathematics. 0271-5309/98/$19.00 © 1998 Elsevier ScienceLtd. All rights reserved PII: S0271-5309(98)00003-2
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My main contention is that skeptical arguments, which were mainly arguments purporting to establish limits to knowledge, opened the way to the consideration of language as an alternative to mind's intuitive powers in the apprehension of reality. Linguistic representation became important as a way of avoiding some of the main problems affecting mental representation. I intend to concentrate here on one specific skeptic argument known as 'the maker's knowledge argument '~, basically stating that we can only know what we create. My starting point is that the philosophical interest in language can be understood in m a n y cases as a result of an interpretation of language as a h u m a n creation and therefore as part of the so called ' m a k e r ' s knowledge tradition'. The theories of language in the Renaissance as well as in Early Modern Philosophy had as background assumptions two related questions which had been a central concern of almost every philosophical discussion on language since Ancient Greek Philosophy: • First, does language contribute to knowledge, i.e. to the scientific knowledge of nature? • Second, is language itself capable of being known in a scientific way, i.e. is a science of language possible, and if so what kind of science is it? These questions are part of a broader discussion on the nature and possibility of scientific knowledge found at this time: What is science? Is it possible? And if so, how? I intend to show that these questions undergo a deep change during the period considered here, which can be seen as a turning point in the treatment of this subject, and I hope to analyse some of the main aspects of this change, especially as regards language. My basic hypothesis is that those thinkers who favor the maker's knowledge argument tend to value language, whereas those who reject it do not give a significant role to language in their systems. I intend to investigate then how those thinkers for whom the maker's knowledge argument was central considered language, and on the other hand, I shall ask what place those that had an opposite view of knowledge and science, such as Descartes and the Cartesians, gave to language in their system. I shall restrict myself to the period going from Humanist theories on language to the beginning of the X V I I I century--roughly from Lorenzo Valla (1405-1457) to Giambattista Vico (1668 1744), as during this period a number of new and original arguments concerning the main questions that interest me here can be found. I do not intend to cover this whole period in detail, but only to select a few representative thinkers, following some of the main threads of the complex fabric of modern thought in its early stages. However, there is no basic view shared by Humanist thinkers and early modern theoreticians of language, on the contrary, there are very different conceptions of the nature and function of language, depending on different viewpoints adopted by various thinkers, as well as on different purposes according to which language was considered. iI use this notion as characterized by Zagorin (1984) and Perez-Ramos (1988).
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Nevertheless, in a broad sense, we can make a general distinction between those thinkers who adopted a version of the maker's knowledge tradition and those who rejected it and sought to defend the need for a knowledge of essences, appealing directly to divine illumination or to the light of the soul as ways of getting access into the deepest nature of reality.
2. Skepticism and the maker's knowledge argument In the late XVth and early XVIth centuries, the Humanist's interest in classical texts of Ancient Greece and R o m e made available new translations and editions of the skeptical works of Sextus Empiricus, Cicero and Diogenes Laertius. Moreover, the conflict of theories found at that period between scholastic and Renaissance philosophies, between the Catholic tradition and the new doctrines of the Reformation, as well as between ancient scientific views and the new born modern science, gave fertile ground for the revival of ancient skeptic arguments and disputation strategies, giving birth to what Popkin (1979) has named 'nouveau p y r r h o n i s m e '2. In a period of crisis and transition, of deep changes and the questioning of established authority, the skeptical arsenal supplied important weapons for this combat. As I said above I chose to concentrate on one central argument found at this period, which is to some extent characteristic of modern thought in science and p h i l o s o p h y - - t h e so called ' m a k e r ' s knowledge argument', or ergetic conception of knowledge, as it has also been called (Funkenstein, 1986). Although earlier versions of it can be found, this argument clearly belongs to this context, and becomes pervasive during this period. It has a long tradition in modern thought and can be found in a variety of versions in different philosophers. It is one of the most central ideas of our cultural tradition, the idea of human beings as creators, as in their own little way, getting as close as possible to G o d himself, through the act of creation. The maker's knowledge tradition can be seen as one of the major undercurrents of modern thought, often working more as a presupposition than as a fully explicit argument, in fact it is frequently a tacit assumption more than a developed argument. It does not have one single formulation, but several, having at least one positive and one negative aspect, as two faces of the same coin; although it can also be argued that all these different formulations share a general basic background assumption--precisely the idea that we know only what we make. The origin of the argument is somewhat remote and obscure. It can be found already in the Renaissance and it contains much of the spirit of Renaissance H u m a n i s m seeing man as creator, as well as drawing together the two main fields of h u m a n creativity: art and technique, in the sense of craftsmanship. After all ars is the Latin equivalent of the Greek techn~. Art seems to be the field par excellence in which h u m a n beings can surpass their limits, can make or create something. However, artistic creation is not considered a cognitive or scientific experience, and, in 2,New pyrrhonism' after Pyrrho, the founder of skepticism in the 3rd century BC.
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the field of knowledge, h u m a n experience remains limited, for how can we know something we have not created. But then what is the maker's knowledge argument? One of the main contentions of skeptical arguments is that human beings are limited in their capacity to know reality as it is, that is, to know its essence, its ultimate causes. Skeptics were the first in Ancient philosophy to question the definition of science as having as its objective 'rerum cognoscere causas'. The limits of h u m a n knowledge are of two kinds: the first is epistonic, due to h u m a n nature itself, the reach of our senses and of our reasoning as sources of knowledge is limited since we are imperfect, finite beings. The second is logical, due to our incapacity of proving or demonstrating conclusively the truth of any thesis or proposition. Doubts, objections, alternative views always seem possible in these cases. The maker's knowledge argument can be understood in two ways, depending on the consequences derived from it, positive or negative. According to the interpretation emphasizing its sense as establishing limits to h u m a n knowledge, we can only know what we create. The link between this argument and Christian tradition seems obvious, and this makes it new in relation to Ancient Skepticism. If only G o d can create, then G o d alone is capable of knowledge of His Creation, the natural world. H u m a n knowledge, in its limited effort to understand reality can only generate representations and concepts, which are the actual objects of knowledge, and not reality in itself. We dot not know reality as it is, but only through the way we represent it. Since G o d is the creator of Nature, only G o d can know reality as it is. H u m a n knowledge, if it deserves that name, is confined to mere appearances, to phenomena, and cannot be considered true, demonstrable or grounded, in any definite way. We find this line of argumentation mainly in religious thinkers, and its starting point in the Renaissance seems to be Nicholas of Cusa. The same principle, however, that one knows only what one creates, can be interpreted in the opposite sense. H u m a n beings can know what they create, and although they did not create Nature, and therefore cannot know it in itself, they can imitate or reproduce it through technique and can know what they create. A human being is in this sense an imitator Dei. This version of the argument is found in the so called philosophers of technique, whose main representative at that period was perhaps Francis Bacon. This can be considered the constructivist or positive sense of the argument, and it opens the way to knowledge and science, since as human beings can effectively know what they create, knowledge is possible, although not knowledge of reality in itself. Mathematics and the world of culture are the two most frequent examples of maker's knowledge in this constructive sense.
3. The debate about science
In general lines we can understand the rationalists' philosophical project as a defense of modern against ancient science. The scientific revolution from Copernicus to Galilee not only replaced the ancient geocentric model of the Cosmos by a new o n e - - t h e heliocentric m o d e l - - b u t introduced a new conception of science, the
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scientia activa, the observational and experimental view, against the scientia contemplativa, the essentially theoretical conception of the tradition. The downfall of ancient science, mainly of Aristotelian descent such as interpreted by late medieval scholastics, gave rise to a skeptical challenge which can be illustrated by a passage of Michel de Montaigne's Apologie de Raymond Sebond (Essais, II, 12): So that when any new doctrine presents itself to us, we have great reason to mistrust it, and to consider that before it was set on foot, the contrary had been in vogue; and that as that has been overthrown by this, a third invention in time to come, may start up which may knock the second on the head (Montaigne, 1952, II, p. 12). Descartes' philosophical project can be seen, in m a n y respects, as an attempt to meet this challenge. If Montaigne is right, science, as it was then conceived, would be impossible. Whereas ancient science had effectively represented the Universe in a wrong way, modern science gives a correct explanation of Nature as it is. To defend the essential correctness of the new science we need a method capable of establishing its sure foundations. Since the authority of tradition is unreliable and m a n y of its assumptions have been proved wrong, philosophy must rely on something else as a starting point for its new method. The rejection of tradition is explicit in m a n y of Descartes' (1996) writings (notably the Discourse on Method, part I and the Preface to his Principles of Philosophy). The alternative to false and unreliable knowledge acquired from tradition is knowledge having an innate origin. Language is seen as part of tradition, and as a vehicle of mistakes and prejudices. If we must not accept traditional knowledge, and if the authorities of the past have lost their credibility, since they were frequently wrong, we should then find another authority to establish new and sure criteria of reliable knowledge. This is to be found in our consciousness, in innate reason, in natural light. Popkin (1979) has shown that Descartes' way was, in many respects, preceded by a century, by Martin Luther's appeal to consciousness and subjective religious experience, his rule of faith, as a sure criterion for the correctness of his interpretation of the Scriptures. It is for this reason that Descartes' philosophy was known to his contemporaries as 'a Reformation in Philosophy', in spite of his remaining a catholic. This natural light, or intuitive thought, as a faculty of the human mind, is capable of producing evident knowledge, and therefore it can establish sure foundations for science 3. As Descartes says (Rules for the Direction of the Mind, III): By intuition I understand, not the fluctuating testimony of the senses, nor the misleading judgment that proceeds from the blundering constructions of imagination, but the conception which an unclouded and attentive mind gives us so readily and distinctly that we are wholly freed from doubt about that which we understand. Or, what comes to the same thing, intuition is the 3For a detailed discussion of the different ways this notion was defined, see Jolley (1988).
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u n d o u b t i n g conception o f an unclouding and attentive mind, and from the light o f reason alone (Descartes, 1996). We can define intuitive t h o u g h t as conceived by rationalist philosophers o f the X V I I t h century according to the following features: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
It It It It It
is capable o f direct or immediate access to reality in itself. is evident or certain, i.e. it c a n n o t lead to error. is non-linguistic, i.e. non-predicative or non-propositional. is independent of the senses i.e. it is innate. emerges from a faculty o f the mind, and in this sense is purely subjective.
These features make intuitive t h o u g h t independent from a r g u m e n t and d e m o n stration, not relying on acquired knowledge, which is to be mistrusted. It also results from an inner, strictly individual experience, which makes possible the contrast, in rationalist philosophy, between the inner (reliable) and the outside (doubtful) world. It is thus highly significant that Descartes gave so little importance to language. Considered as belonging to the outside world, as a p r o d u c t o f culture and h u m a n usage, as a conventional system o f signs, language is seen as changing and unreliable. It does not and c a n n o t contribute to the acquisition o f scientific knowledge o f reality. It is in fact part o f the tradition Descartes sees the need to reject since it has been the source o f errors, illusions, prejudices. However, we m a y distinguish four different ways in which Descartes discusses language, two can be considered positive and two negative. The two positive ones are: 1. The language o f geometry, when in rule X I V o f the Rules for the Direction o f the Mind he puts forward the construction o f a projection m e t h o d from geometry into algebra, his major contribution to the development o f mathematics 4. In this case he is successfully proposing the a d o p t i o n o f algebra as the 'language' o f geometry. O f course, language is here u n d e r s t o o d as an abstract, formal system, and as such free from the imperfections o f ordinary language. L a n g u a g e is not seen as a system o f signs representing reality, but as a formal system representing in an abstract way spatial relations. 2. The second positive sense is language as an expression o f human reason or rationality, found in a short passage in the Discourse on the Method, part V 5. In this passage Descartes maintains that only h u m a n beings are capable o f using language as an expression o f thoughts, and not just in a purely mechanical way, such as parrots. A l t h o u g h language, in this case ordinary language, is given a positive role, it is a role as expression o f their thoughts, which precedes it and does not depend on it. L a n g u a g e is not constitutive o f t h o u g h t and does not contribute to knowledge, but 4 See Watson (1995). 5This is by the way one of the passages Chomsky (1966, p. 4) refers to in his interpretation of Cartesian philosophy as one of the sources of his own theories. See also Descartes' letter to the Marquis of Newcastle (1646) (Descartes, 1996). I disagree with Chomsky's (1966) attribution to Descartes of a creative principle related to language. I do not see any textual basis in Descartes' works supporting this interpretation.
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in spite of that the meaningful use of language can be seen as evidence of human reason. The two negative senses are: 1. The view found in the Principles of philosophy (I, p. 74), which seems the opposite of (2) above, that words distort the thought they express, that words are an imperfect medium for the expression of thoughts, and that errors frequently result from our habit of paying more attention to words which seem familiar to us, than to the thought they express. Words, to be meaningful, depend on being associated with ideas in the mind (Reply to the Second Objections on the Meditations, AT IX- 1, p. 124). 2. The rejection in a letter to Mersenne (20 November 1629) of artificial languages as having any usefulness for scientific knowledge. On the contrary, according to Descartes, only after science being completed we would be able to have adequate criteria for the construction of a language fit for the accurate expression of scientific knowledge. It is through reason, and reason alone, that we gain knowledge about the world of nature, and language does not play any relevant role in this process. One may say that the only really positive role given to language in obtaining knowledge is in the case of geometry, and there what we have is a constructive method applied to a formal science, which can be seen in connection with the maker's knowledge tradition, and as such it is not related to the knowledge of the physical world. Following the same line of argument, The Port Royal Logic (II, p.1) emphasizes that words are conventional signs, and as such arbitrary, but ideas associated with them are natural signs of things and therefore have cognitive content, and it is only through this process of association with ideas that words can have any real meaning. Descartes and the rationalist tradition 6 in general use intuition to try to overcome the limits of human knowledge and reject the maker's knowledge argument, since they need to know the essence of reality in order to establish the foundations of the new science. Language, seen as the vernacular, as ordinary, spoken language, cannot have, for the reasons we have seen above, any role in this process. We can contrast the rationalist standpoint, illustrated above by Descartes, with that of the skeptics, who attacked intuitive thought as a source of evident knowledge and as a form of privileged access into reality in itself or as a sure way of grasping first principles. By skeptics I mean here not only the self-proclaimed skeptics, but also materialists and empiricists, that is those who made use of skeptical arguments against rationalism and the various versions of the doctrine of the light of reason. 7 A brief examination of skeptical arguments by these philosophers is important in relation to my hypothesis that they open the way to a consideration of language as an alternative for the definition of knowledge. 6Leibniz is an exception to that among the rationalists, since he gives an heuristic role to language, albeit to a perfect language, the linguacharacteristicauniversaliswhich is fit for his mathesisuniversalis. In fact, the whole project of a perfect language, be it the recovery of the original Adamic language, or the creation of an artificial one, can be seen as part of this discussion about the contribution of language to knowledge. 7See Lennon (1993).
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I am considering here as 'skeptical', arguments having the following general features, basically questioning: 1. The presuppositions of real&m, i.e. the doctrine that reality exists in a determined way and that we can know it as it is. 2. The distinction between appearance and reality, phenomenon and essence; considering unwarranted the presumption of a privileged access into reality/essence. 3. The notions of certainty and evidence, denying the possibility of concluding criteria for the application of these notions. 4. The conception of subjectivity as characterized by a mind having a privileged faculty of knowledge (such as natural light). Due to these features, skeptical arguments can be seen as arguments establishing
limits to knowledge in the sense discussed above (section 2). The main skeptical argument I have singled out as representing this position as a whole, is the ' m a k e r ' s knowledge argument'. It consists in an open attack against classical realism, and has as a consequence the restriction of the power and reach of intuitive thought. According to this argument we cannot know nature such as it is, its essence, because we did not create it, and no intuitive faculty is capable of this kind of knowledge, as intuition is not creative, but merely passive or receptive. Arguments limiting the reach and power of knowledge, of which the maker's knowledge argument is perhaps one of the most important, lead, throughout the debate found in early m o d e m philosophy, to a redefinition of the very notions of science and scientific knowledge. This amounts to the progressive a b a n d o n m e n t of the conception of science as a corpus of universal, necessary and eternal truths, explaining the nature of reality in a definite manner and determining its final causes. Language, being conventional and variable cannot contribute to knowledge understood in this sense, likewise, there can be no science of language since it is not adequate as an object of scientific knowledge. This conception is progressively replaced by a view of scientific theories as explanatory models, of conjectural and hypothetical nature, probabilism and constructivisrn becoming more central as a result of that than classical realism. Although skeptic philosophy has a leading role in this process, its arguments are employed without leading to the more radical consequences such as the contention that knowledge is impossible. We may not have absolute knowledge, certain and evident in a conclusive way about reality such as it is and in its totality, but this does not mean that we cannot have science, if we redefine the traditional conception of science, as it was done by moderate skeptics for example Mersenne and Gassendi in France s Renouncing the presumption to having knowledge of essences and first principles does not necessarily lead to having to renounce science, but only to a redefinition of scientific knowledge, which is thus separated from speculative metaphysics and purely theoretical knowledge. Skepticism becomes, therefore, a preparatory stage to building up a legitimate science. 8See Popkin (1979, ch. VII).
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The maker's knowledge argument seems to depend, in the final analysis, on a strong conception of the role of causality, especially on the notion of efficient cause, as a creative principle. We cannot be the cause of reality, but only of our representations of reality. Since rationalism demands the objects of knowledge to be permanent and changeless, as essences and first principles alone are, ,our subjective representations do not really amount to knowledge. According to skeptical arguments, intuition, however, is no solution to this problem, since it is not creative, i.e. it is not capable, by itself, of creating this stable object of knowledge. Skeptics, while rejecting the appeal to intuition as capable of giving origin to evident knowledge, accept that knowledge is always partial and limited, although, in spite of that, still remaining knowledge. The alternative to the intellectual intuition of first principles and essences is a kind of knowledge that develops from sense data and concrete experience, which is experimental and observational, consisting of conjectures and hypotheses, some more probable than others, according to empirical criteria. And for this kind of knowledge, language becomes of central importance.
4. The relevance of language Let us go back then to our initial question on the role of language for those philosophers who adopted the maker's knowledge argument. We can see the tendency to give relevance to language as a result of the coincidental effort of the following different trends: 1. The legitimization of the vernacular by means of the revival of rhetoric and eloquence, and of philological analysis in the Renaissance. This movement is also related to the development of hermeneutics, especially of biblical texts, found at the same period. 2. The skeptical attack on human mind as providing certainty, making necessary the use of language in the development of scientific knowledge and leading to the revision of the concept of science itself.
4.1. Lorenzo Valla and the renaissance 9
The first major break with the traditional view of language prevalent in Ancient and medieval philosophy is found in Renaissance Humanism. The Humanists' more immediate target was mainly Aristotelian logic such as developed by the late scholastics with their often excessive formalism. Against this conception of logic, the Humanists sought to restore the importance rhetoric, eloquence, oratory and philology had in Classical Rome. Their inspiration was Cicero, Horace, Quintilian. Since in Ancient Greece Plato and Aristotle opposed the sophists, rhetoric and eloquence were considered philosophically irrelevant. Philosophy had as its aim to lead the way to science, the real knowledge of an unchanging, stable reality, whereas rhetoric and oratory were at best arts (technai), crafts using language with the aim of 9For a detailed analysis see Waswo (1987).
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influencing and persuading a simple minded audience. As language, due to its conventionality and changeability, was considered irrelevant for the establishment of the true path to knowledge, philosophers traditionally paid very little attention to it. The Humanists, of whom Lorenzo Valla is perhaps the best example in relation to our central question above, did not initially disagree with the traditional view that meaning is conventional and that it is not through language that we gain scientific knowledge of reality, but they did not thought this made language altogether irrelevant, since they were more interested in what we could call performative features of language, than in scientific theories built after the Aristotelian model, which anyway were soon to be discredited during the Scientific Revolution of the XVIth and XVIIth centuries. Valla made a major contribution to the change in the way language was dealt with by his medieval predecessors. He clearly wasn't a skeptic and was not influenced by the revival of ancient skepticism, for in fact he precedes it by a few decades, but he shares with the skeptics the questioning of established authority, the emphasis on dialectics and the art of disputation, and the rejection of the scholastic conception of science. For these reasons he can be considered part of the context which forms the background of the rediscovery of skeptical philosophy, and indeed anticipates it in many respects. In fact his contribution was multiple, and the following points can be stressed: (a) the importance of the study of the vernacular, (b) the analysis of language as an important tool in his argument against the scholastic reading of Aristotle, illustrated by his revision of the Aristotelian categories, (c) his philological and hermeneutic work, (d) the central role given to rhetoric as replacing logic. Valla was one of the foremost thinkers in the legitimization of the vernacular in the Italian Renaissance, which had started in fact a century before with Dante and Petrarch, and which would spread out through Europe in the following century with Rabelais and Montaigne in France, with Nebrija and Cervantes in Spain, with Shakespeare in England, with Luther in Germany, a few of the best known just to give some examples. He interpreted language as having a historical nature, and as constitutive of the identity of a nation. He criticized the employment of Latin by intellectuals during the Middle Ages, pointing out that Latin was after all just the language of Rome. In spite of that he was an accomplished classical scholar and gained fame by exposing through a careful philological analysis the famous Donation o f Constantine l° as a forgery. His philological analysis of the Bible had a direct influence in the development of the hermeneutic methods of Erasmus and Luther. The political context of Renaissance Italy, made the rediscovery of rhetoric and eloquence important tools in the newly established communes where commercial activity was intense, of which Florence was perhaps the best example. Realizing that language has a historical nature and is essentially a product of culture, Valla maintained that meaning should be seen as a creative activity and not just as the representation of reality through signs, and that in consequence the use of language ~°A document in which the Emperor Constantine gave Rome and the surrounding territory to Pope Sylvester after being miraculously cured of leprosy, and which was the basis of the temporal power of the Pope.
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shapes our experience of the world both social and natural. The rhetorical use of language, due to its performative character, is also a creative work, and has a fundamental role in social life as an instrument of debate and negotiation. These features of Valla's conception of language certainly justify his inclusion in the maker's knowledge tradition. Giambattista Vico (in his Seienza Nuova, 1725, 1744) (1948), represents already in the eighteenth century a new version of the Humanist's position, illustrated above by Valla. He understood language as having a cultural and historical nature and was one of the most important defenders of the notion of maker's knowledge, which he defined as verum faetum xl, also questioning natural science as sure knowledge of reality. He maintained, on the other hand, that history, the science of culture and society, is the only authentic or legitimate form of knowledge we have, since it is knowledge of a h u m a n creation. F o r this reason, he gives philology, as a science of signs and of interpretation, a capital role in the constitution of h u m a n knowledge. Language, as a system of signs, is now given importance precisely as a h u m a n product, in the opposite direction of rationalism which thought it imperfect for this very motive. If signs and meaning are h u m a n creations, then the meanings of these signs are plainly accessible to h u m a n beings. Vico was an early advocate of the notion of H u m a n Sciences and a strong opponent of Descartes and the Cartesians, the proper subject of science for him being not Nature, which is inaccessible to us, but society and history, which can be understood through a semantic and philological analysis of the use of language and the constitution of meaning. He was a pioneer of the view giving a central role to language in the Humanities, seeing the science of language as a h u m a n science.
4.2. Early modern philosophy Whereas the Renaissance Humanists tried to re-establish a link with the Classical tradition of rhetoric and eloquence, scientifically oriented modern philosophy, on the other hand, decided to sever the link with tradition since ancient scientific theories were considered plainly false, and rhetoric and eloquence did not contribute to knowledge of the natural world. Descartes was seen above as a representative of the view relying on the intuitive powers of the mind to guarantee certainty, therefore doing without language altogether, except in the specific case of the adoption of algebra as the language of geometry. A brief examination of Hobbes and Locke 12, will show them as representing this tradition in modern thought, although in different ways. They both have in c o m m o n an opposition to Descartes and the rationalist tradition and a rejection of the appeal to intuitive knowledge, or at least a restriction to this faculty (as in Locke). But in what sense can it be said that for these philosophers the maker's knowledge argument points to language as an alternative way in the explanation of the i i L i t e r a l l y verum ipsumfactum, o r "the t r u e is i d e n t i c a l t o w h a t is m a d e ' . 12 See L a n d ( 1 9 8 6 ) .
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possibility of knowledge? What are the features of these philosophers' conceptions of language which can be understood in the light of the maker's knowledge argument? Hobbes can be seen as a philosopher who accepting the skeptical arguments about the limits of human mind in knowledge, particularly as regards memory, gives a prominent role to language, understood as the employment of signs, in the acquisition of knowledge, a view having roots in the ancient skeptics' interpretation of the commemorative sign as a possibility condition of human experience 13. Two features of Hobbes' conception of language are important for us. The first is precisely the need of signs for advanced thinking and reasoning due to the fallibility of memory. Descartes relied on intuition to validate a chain of reasoning, since it enables us to grasp a whole argument in a flash. Since Hobbes does not accept that mind has intuitive powers of this kind, he must resort to linguistic signs. Language is therefore a possibility condition for knowledge, according to this view. The second important feature of Hobbes' philosophy which is relevant to our discussion of language is his celebrated nominalism ~4, which is a consequence of his radical empiricism. Since all our experience is rooted in sense perception, universals are just names and nothing real corresponds to them. It is for this reason that our knowledge depends on our language, on the definitions we give in it. As Hobbes says in his Objections to Descartes" MeditationslS: But what shall we now say, if reasoning chance to be nothing more than the uniting and stringing together of names or designations by the word is? It will be a consequence of this that reason gives us no conclusion about the nature of things, but only about the terms that designate them. Locke can be considered an intermediate case, restricting the power of intellectual intuition to geometry, but making the meaning of signs depend on their association with ideas in spite of adhering to the maker's knowledge tradition. He is seen by many as a philosopher of language because of Book III, Of Words, of his Treatise on Human Understanding, where he analyzes the contribution of words for knowledge, although some specialists have puzzled about the lack of clarity for his inclusion of this whole book in the treatise 16 After all the meaning of words depends on ideas associated with them, and as he says, "words in their primary or immediate signification stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them" (Locke, 1952, III, ii.2). In this sense Locke is in agreement with the Cartesians, particularly with the Port Royal tradition, in spite of his rejection of their notion of innate ideas. However, Locke is really one of the first thinkers of this period to give importance to communication, and he justifies the need of language for the communication of our 13Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, 1976, II, pp. 151 152. 14As the specialists point out, Hobbes' views concerning language are not uniform (but then whose are?), and there are parts of his works in which he interprets conceptions (mental entities) as the meaning of linguistic signs, See Land (1986). ~SQuoted by Land (1986, p. 25). J6 For instance, Land (1986).
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thoughts as part of the development of knowledge and scientific theories. This should be understood in the context of his commitment to the whole project of the Royal Society, that is of a community of scientists, of which he was a kind of philosophical mentor. Another important aspect that should be stressed is his definition of semiotics, that is of a general theory of signs, in Book IV, as having a central role in an analysis of knowledge. Locke has been criticized for defining words as signs of ideas, and ideas as signs of things, although clearly 'signs' cannot mean the same in both cases since the relation between words and ideas is conventional, whereas the relation between ideas and things is natural. My suggestion is that this should be interpreted as part of the context of Locke's idealism, especially of his 'semantic idealism'. 'Signs' should be understood in a broad sense, precisely as part of the cognitive process and as a result of the way we apprehend reality through representations, either linguistic (words) or mental (ideas). As we do not have direct, intuitive access into reality as it is, our knowledge inevitably consists of something of our making, namely representationsl7. For Hobbes, as well as for Locke, knowledge results from names and definitions we ascribe to things and from connections and deductions we make starting from these definitions. Only in theses cases can we have demonstrable science. Therefore, geometry and politics (as well as Morals for Locke) are sciences because the concepts they are made of are a h u m a n creation, and so there can be knowledge of what they are about. However, in relation to the physical world, our knowledge is limited, and can only be hypothetical or probable, since we cannot know things as they are in their ultimate nature or essence.
5. Concluding remarks Language is, of course, what gives meaning to our experience, the ultimate human creation, from the magical and ritual use of symbols to their scientific employment in mathematics, language is seen as a way of knowing and creating, of mastering reality and manipulating it. Rationalists thought this kind of knowledge too limited, and aimed at a deeper and more complete way of access into reality, grasping its essence. But they could only do this at the expense of metaphysical presuppositions which were perhaps too hard to sustain. The defenders of the maker's knowledge tradition, however, saw theirs as the only kind of knowledge we could legitimately get. In a sense, the development of our conception of science and knowledge resulted from this conflict. Probabilism and constructivism, the idea of h u m a n sciences, the notions of interpretation and of meaning as use, are some of the best known consequences of the underlying presence of the maker's knowledge tradition in our culture. ~7For the central role of this notion in Locke, as well as in modern and contemporary philosophy, see Watson (1995).
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L o o k i n g ahead from the context we have briefly examined, it can be said that there is m o r e t h a n one way in which skeptical a r g u m e n t s such as the m a k e r ' s knowledge influenced the so called 'linguistic t u r n ' . The first is the H u m a n i s t tradition, o f Valla a n d Vico, which saw language as a historical a n d social p h e n o m e n o n . The second, perhaps more indirect, b u t o f n o less i m p o r t a n c e , is the reaction against the idealism towards which the m a k e r ' s knowledge a r g u m e n t lead to a certain degree, for example in philosophers like Locke. The revival o f realism a n d a new a t t e m p t at o v e r c o m i n g skepticism will be again possible when the first philosophers o f language, in the analytic tradition, such as Frege, Russell a n d the early W i t t g e n s t e i n p u t f o r w a r d a c o n c e p t i o n of language as a logical structure, having as its central n o t i o n the logical form of the p r o p o s i t i o n , which they saw as i s o m o r p h i c to reality, thus e l i m i n a t i n g the need for the appeal to intellectual i n t u i t i o n , b u t at the same time o p e n i n g the way to a c o n c e p t i o n o f universal a n d necessary truths o f a logical nature. This new conception, will have, of course, to face its own p r o b l e m s a n d difficulties, b u t it can be seen as a n a t t e m p t to surpass skepticism as well as a r g u m e n t s o f the kind o f the m a k e r ' s knowledge. O n the other h a n d , its m a i n rival, in the same tradition, the p r a g m a t i c c o n c e p t i o n of language, can be seen as heir to the m a k e r ' s knowledge tradition. But this is a different chapter o f o u r history.
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