Page 34 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

Language, Metaphysics, and Ontology
defined without implicit circularity of a sort which condemned them as useless for the purposes of a scien- tifically minded philosophy of language and knowl- edge. Only during the course of the twentieth century have philosophers been prepared once more to use these terms with confidence, thanks largely to the work of the modal logician and essentialist meta- physician Saul A. Kripke. Kripke points out that while the a priori/a posteriori distinction is an epis- temological one, the analytic/synthetic distinction is a semantic one and the necessary/contingent distinction is, as he terms it, metaphysical in character. Accord- ingly he holds that in principle the three distinctions
may cut quite across one another, and indeed Kripke has famously argued that there are both necessary a posteriori truths (such as that water is H2O) and contingent a priori truths (such as that the standard meter bar is one meter in length).
See also: Analyticity; Necessity.
Bibliography
Moser P K (ed.) 1987 A Priori Knowledge. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Stich S P (ed.) 1975 Innate Ideas. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA
The doctrine of 'abstract ideas' is most closely associ- ated, historically, with John Locke's theory of lang- uage, where they are invoked to explain the function of general terms. Locke's explanation is constrained by his commitment to nominalism, empiricism, and an ideational theory of thought and language. His nominalism and empiricism induce him to deny that general terms designate real extramental universals and to hold that an understanding of the meaning of general terms must somehow arise from experience of particulars, while his ideationism leads him to suppose that general terms must signify general ideas in the minds of those who use them. He postulates the pro- cess of abstraction as the mechanism whereby the mind generates the significata of general terms from its experience of particulars.
1. The Process of Abstraction
The process of abstraction supposedly consists in comparing various particulars which are encountered in experience, noting their similarities and differences, ignoring the latter and retaining the former in mind as a sort of pattern or template which can be employed in classifying further particulars that are met. These mental patterns or templates are the abstract general ideas. Locke illustrates the process by an example of how a child supposedly acquires the abstract general idea of a human being from its diverse experiences of the various individual people it encounters—its mother, father, and so on.
2. Criticisms of Abstraction
Locke's doctrine has been subjected to severe criti- cism, notably at the hands of his contemporary George Berkeley, and until the late twentieth century many philosophers considered it unworthy of serious consideration. First, there is the problem of inde- terminacy: if, for example, the abstract idea of a man leaves out differences of stature and coloration, one is left with the idea of a man who has no definite height or color, and this (Berkeley holds) is absurd. To this it may be replied that the abstract idea of a man is, rather, just an idea of a man which leaves the question of his height and color undetermined, and that this is perfectly intelligible if one does not (as Locke arguably did not) adopt an imagistic conception of ideas (as Berkeley himself did).
Second, there is the problem of individuation: Locke's account of abstraction fails to accommodate the fact that particular objects of experience are only individuable as objects of some sort, and hence as falling already under some scheme of classification. But this does not show that humans do not have abstract general ideas, only that at least some of them would have to be innate (contrary to Locke's empiri- cist assumptions).
Third, there are problems with the role that simi- larity or resemblance plays in the theory: for instance, it is said that similarity must always be similarity in some (general) respect, which threatens to reintroduce the reference to universals which Locke is attempting to eliminate; again, it is pointed out that in principle
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Abstract Ideas
E. J. Lowe