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Imagination and Harmony in Leibniz's Philosophy of Language

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Imagination and Harmony in Leibniz's Philosophy of Language Philosophie Imagination and Harmony in Leibniz‘s Philosophy of Language Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades „Dr. phil.― an der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität, Münster (Westf) Vorgelegt von: Lucia Oliveri aus Reggio Calabria 2016 Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 20. Juli 2016 Dekan: Prof. Dr. Tobias Leuker Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Stephan Meier-Oeser Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. Thomas Leinkauf ACKNOWLEDGEMENT V INTRODUCTION VII THOUGHT AND JUDGMENT 1 1.1. Sketching the Problems of Nouveaux Essais: Some Preliminaries 3 1.1.1. About Ideas before Locke: Old Solutions to New Problems? 10 1.2. Leibniz‘s Arguments Against Locke 17 1.2.1. Leibniz as Interpreter of Locke 18 1.2.2. On the Distinction Between Ideas, Concepts, and Actual Thoughts 26 1.2.3. Actual Thoughts and the Distinction Between Perceptions and Concepts 29 1.2.4. The Process of Judging 34 1.2.5. Leibniz on Deceptive States and Error 41 1.2.6. Conclusion 45 1.3. Apperception, Reflection, and Consciousness 47 1.3.1. The Puzzle of Apperception 51 1.3.2. The Relation between Action and Perceptual activity: Putting it in Context 56 1.3.3. The Structure of Animal Action 61 1.3.4. Animal and Human Knowledge: Two Different Species of Knowledge 75 1.3.5. Instincts and Habits 80 1.3.6. Conclusion 83 1.4. The I-Perspective 85 1.4.1. Reflection 87 1.4.2. Descartes‘ Cogito as Truth of Fact and Consciousness 90 1.4.3. Leibniz‘s Criticism of Locke‘s Theory of Consciousness 95 1.4.4. Minute Perceptions and the Self 100 1.4.5. The I-Perspective: Conclusion 105 1.5. From the I- to the I-Thou Perspective 107 1.5.1. Aquinian Roots of Leibnitian conscientia 109 1.5.2. Conscientia as Social Knowledge 116 1.5.3. Ruling out Solipsism: Conscientia as Source of Social Knowledge 118 1.5.4. Commercium mentium 127 1.5.5. Conclusion 133 CONCEPTS AND IDEAS 135 2.1. Leibniz‘s Theory of Concepts 137 2.1.1. On the Cognitive Role of Signs and Imagination 137 2.1.2. The Priority of Thought over Language: Leibniz as Innatist 145 2.1.3. Leibniz as an Extreme Innatist? 148 2.1.4. Leibniz‘s Commitment to the Variety of the Stimulus Argument 158 2.2. Concepts as Possibilities 165 iii 2.2.1. The Chimerical Character of Locke‘s Ideas 165 2.2.2. Concepts as Possibilities and Finite Minds‘ Mathematization of the World 171 2.2.3. An Axiomatic Approach to Truths: Intensional Interpretation of Concepts 177 2.2.4. Typicality Effects: Between Psychological and Logical Use of Concepts 179 2.2.5. Essences and Beings 185 2.2.6. Leibniz‘s Conceptualism and the Necessity of the Ideas in God‘s Intellect 192 2.2.7. Necessary Truths and Truths of Facts 201 2.2.8. Conclusion 210 2.3. Ideas as Constraints on Thought 211 2.3.1. Concepts as abilities or dispositions 211 2.3.2. Dispositions and Leibniz‘s Theory of Substance 218 2.3.3. Dispositions to Truths and Ideas 221 2.3.4. Spontaneity and Self-Determination. 224 2.3.5. Innate Ideas as Constraints on Thought 231 2.3.6. Logical and Historical Order of Truths 234 2.3.7. Conclusion 238 THE MUTUAL DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT 239 3.1. Constraints on Thought and Language: The Place of The Other 241 3.1.1. The Analogy between Mind and Body 241 3.1.2. Constraints on Thought and Language 244 3.1.3. Experiencing Other Minds and General Concepts 251 3.1.4. Innate Ideas and Generality 257 3.1.5. Innate Ideas and the Acquisition of Moral and Metaphysical Concepts 267 3.1.6. Conclusion: What is the Place of Harmony in All This? 271 3.2. The origins of languages 275 3.2.1. Blind Thoughts and Language Origins: Towards Articulated Sounds 276 3.2.2. Interjections 282 3.2.3. Etymology and Imagination 285 3.2.4. The Role of Blind Thoughts in Reasoning. A Case Study: Preposition 292 3.2.5. Constraints on Thought and Language Origins 298 3.2.6. Conclusion 308 CONCLUSION 309 BIBLIOGRAPHY 315 iv Acknowledgement Every achievement in life is like a journey. On your way to the end, there are people that accompany you through it. Some of them make it special. Others make you wish you‘d never met. Few of them make it possible, help you in finding orientation, support you with every aspect of your life and work. From each of these persons you will learn a lot and become stronger. I wish to thank few people and institutions that made this journey possible. My utmost gratitude goes to the Leibniz-Forschungsstelle of Münster, and especially to my supervisors Prof. Stephan Meier-Oeser and Prof. Thomas Leinkauf for their constant support. This work would have never found its way without the possibility of philosophical discussions on any topic concerning the philosophy of Leibniz and his historical background. I am grateful to Prof. Heinrich Shepers for his trust and support as well. I still remember when I was a master student and we met for the first time. To my question ―from which texts of Leibniz shall I begin?‖, he replied pointing at the critical edition. Thanks to the editors Stefan Jenschcke, Stefan Lorenz, Henrik Wels, but especially Herma Kliege-Biller and Gerhard Biller for introducing me to ―the art of the edition‖ and for their friendship. Thanks also to the rest of the team: Jörg Dieckhoff, Manon Dutz, Magdalene Grosse-Fattorini, Anne-Sophie Naujoks, Monja Reinheirt, Angelika Rüter. The Leibniz-Forschungsstelle became in these years like a second family to me, thank you. I would like to thank the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes who funded my PhD research, as well as a short stay at Rutgers University, with a scholarship. I am deeply grateful to Martha B. Bolton, my sponsor at Rutgers, for intense discussions that made me gain more insight into both Leibniz‘s philosophy and my interpretation. Thanks also to my proof-reader, Josh Rosario, for his wonderful work on the text. Parts of this work have been presented at the Research Colloquium of Prof. Leinkauf. A special thanks to the participants: Christian Zeuch, Marc Heimann, Dorothee Zucker. Other parts were presented at the Research Colloquium in Philosophy of Paderbon University; at the Summer School epistemology and Cognition in Groningen; at the Dutch Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy in Nijmegen; at the Workshop Concepts and Categorization in Linguistics, Cognitive Science, and Philosophie at the University of Düsseldorf. The very first draft of the dissertation project was presented at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. I am thankful to people met during those events and especially to: Matteo Favaretti- Camposampiero, Stefano Di Bella, Elena Ficara, Stefano Gensini, David Hommen, Michael v Kempe, Martin Lenz, Wenchao Li, Cristina Marras, Massimo Mugnai, Antonio Maria Nunziante, Carla Rita Palmerino, Volker Peckhaus. Achievements are void if you cannot share them with family and friends. I am lucky to have a big family to thank. They know how much I love them. I would not have made it through the German winters without the following people: Nemanja, Iva, Armando, Felicitas, Jonas, Denitsa, Sebastian, Gianluca, Evelina, Iulia, Jonathan. A special thanks to Anna, Stefano, Luca, Francesco, Federico, Angelo Matteo, Giulia. Finally, I want to thank three persons who changed my life, supported me, and loved me all the way through this difficult path: my philosophy teacher in high school, Professoressa Maria Rita Abramo and her philosophy teacher in high-school, Professoressa Pina Spataro. My lovely husband, Matteo Bozzon. They believed me capable of things I would have never been able to achieve without their encouragement and love. This work is for you. vi Introduction The aim of the work is to inquire into Leibniz‘s conception of natural languages from a particular angle: his theory of the cognition of finite minds. Two basic theses structure his theory of human cognition. The first thesis can be labelled as cognitive necessity of signs and states that finite minds necessarily need signs or some other kind of characters to reason. The second thesis is what I call imagination thesis and claims that finite minds tend to represent through the imagination what is not subject to it. An analysis of Leibniz‘s theory of human cognition must answer the question of why finite minds‘ thinking activity needs languages or other kinds of characters. The result of my inquiry is the demonstration of a more substantial thesis directly derivable from cognitive necessity of signs and imagination thesis: a mutual development between language and thought. Finite minds cannot reason without a language intended as a syntactically and grammatically ruled system of signs. The developments of natural languages support a mind‘s cognitive stages of development of its reasoning capacity. A consequence of this view is that language and thought develop mutually. Languages are expedients of the human mind to overcome its cognitive and metaphysical limitations. Languages and in general any ruled system of signs enable a rational cognitive subject to evolve and develop its inborn cognitive skills. Given this function of language and assuming the imagination thesis, it follows that languages and thought evolve through cognitive stages: first minds acquire notions and express thoughts concerning sensible knowledge domain. Once they learn to manage this domain, minds reflect on sensible knowledge, develop more abstract notions, like knowledge about morality and metaphysics; motivated by cooperation with other peers, they learn to use their language figuratively, via tropes, to express knowledge of what is not subject to imagination.
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