Title: "Hobbes's Conceptualism"

Marcus Adams

Abstract:

Hobbes insists repeatedly that there are no universals, whether in the world or in the mind (EL I.5.6; Leviathan IV.6; De Corpore 2.9). Recent scholarship has emphasized the role of language for Hobbes to the point that without language there would not only be no universality but a fortieri no capacity for human cognition.[1]

However, such a view about language puts Hobbes in a strange position, for two reasons. First, Hobbes himself identifies “our simplest conceptions” as “universals” in De Corpore 6.6, and he provides an extended thought experiment in De Corpore 7-8 to clarify these universals. It is only with this conceptual clarity in place that definitions are provided for SPACE, PLACE, and BODY. These universals are foundational to Hobbes’s system and recur in first philosophy (Part II) and geometry (Part III). Second, if all cognition depends upon language it is unclear in Leviathan IV how we know that we have arrived at the correct level of generality when we “register” our “invention” of the connection between the name ‘triangle’ and ‘angles sum to two right angles’. Contemporary scholarship has focused on how names, such as ‘triangle’, function (they denote “the conceptions we have of infinite singular things,” DCo 6.11) but has neglected how we know that qualities such as ‘angles sum to two right angles’ hold for a given triangle qua triangle and not, say, qua isosceles triangle.

I propose that we must distinguish between talk of language’s usual role for citizens and its role following discoveries of universality and generality. To do this, I argue for three claims. First, I show that in Elements of Law, Anti-White, and De Corpore Hobbes develops an account of the mind according to which the primary furniture is conceptions. Second, I argue that in these works Hobbes articulates an ability to consider particular conceptions as and find general or universal conceptions contained in them. These first two claims entail that for Hobbes there must be sub-linguistic cognition wherein we make discoveries of generality or universality. Third, I argue that language helps us remember our conceptual discoveries. I conclude by suggesting that Hobbes should still be seen as a nominalist even with these views regarding universal conceptions since he can hold the following simultaneously: (1) we never access universals qua universals as independent conceptions; and (2) we find universals (and generals) as contained in particulars by ‘considering as’.