Abstract
Arnauld and Nicole begin with the premise that language is secondary to and dependent on thought: language is a purely conventional means for expressing thoughts. So, all theorizing about language is really theorizing about the relationship between ideas and conventionalized sounds. This thesis was key to maintaining that language was a uniquely human (and rational) phenomena. The classification of meaning types occupied much of the first part of the Port Royal Logic. The second part of the selection concerns propositions, propositional structures, and propositional meaning. Unlike a more holistic use theory of propositional meaning, they push for a notion of propositional meaning that is a function of the words composing the proposition. They also address the important notion of truth/falsity and attempt to explain how not just propositions but also ideas and definitions can themselves be false.
Text from: Buroker, J.V. ed. 1996. Logic or the Art of Thinking. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Notes
- 1.
[This example is borrowed from Descartes. See Sixth Meditation, Philosophical Writings, vol. 2, pp. 50–51.]
- 2.
[Cf. Descartes to Mersenne, July 1641, Philosophical Writings, vol. 3, p. 185.]
- 3.
[Cf. Hobbes, Third Set of Objections to Descartes’ Meditations and Gassendi, Fifth Set of Objections to Descartes’ Meditations, Philosophical Writings, vol. 2, pp. 127, 199–200.]
- 4.
[This refers to the Protestant minister, Louis de Dieu (1590–1642).]
- 5.
[Cf. Hobbes. Third Set of Objections to Descartes’ Meditations, Philosophical Writings, vol. 2, pp. 125–126.]
- 6.
[Löringhoff and Brekle identify this as referring to Jean Claude (1619–1687), a Calvinist minister who carried on polemics against Jacques Bossuet, Nicole, and Arnauld. His principal work was the Reply to the Perpetuity of the Faith (Reponse au traité la perpétuité de la foi [Charenton, 1668]) of Arnauld. Clair and Girbal identify the minister as Andre Lortie; cf p. 72 n. 2.]
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Sullivan, A. (2017). Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole. In: Cameron, M., Hill, B., Stainton, R. (eds) Sourcebook in the History of Philosophy of Language. Springer Graduate Texts in Philosophy, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26908-5_25
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