Yet it cannot stand. In arithmetic, and in other disciplines as well, truths remain the same even if notations are changed, and it does not matter whether a decimal or a duodecimal number system is used Leibniz , However, he does endorse various claims about aspects of language and truth being conventional and arbitrary.
Some such claims are widely agreed upon: whether we write from left to right or right to left, for instance, and what particular marks we choose to represent words on paper. But Hobbes also endorses other, more controversial, claims of this sort.
Most controversially perhaps, Hobbes thinks that there is a conventionality and arbitrariness in the way in which we divide the world up in to kinds. That is, the groupings and kinds, though based in similarities, are not determined by those similarities alone, but also and primarily by our decisions, which involve awareness of the similarities, but also an arbitrary element.
Hobbes describes reasoning as computation, and offers sketches of the computation that he thinks is going on when we reason. In De Corpore Hobbes first describes the view that reasoning is computation early in chapter one.
And to compute is to collect the sum of many things added together at the same time, or to know the remainder when one thing has been taken from another. In the section that follows, Hobbes gives some initial examples of addition in reasoning, which are examples of adding ideas together to form more complex ones.
Hobbes also describes propositions and syllogisms as sorts of addition:. In some sense we add the propositions, or at least bits of them: we add the subject of the first proposition to the predicate of the second, aided in this by the middle term. This is an intriguing suggestion, but seems not to be very far developed. This addition has to follow some rules, especially in the syllogistic case.
But its conclusion too involves the addition of parts of the premises. Presumably syllogistic addition, like arithmetic addition, must have its rules. And of course, Hobbes was aware of the properties of various good and bad arguments. Nor, indeed, is it clear what he really added to his discussion of the workings of the mind by his occasional use of such language. Nevertheless, the notion that reasoning is computation has been referred back to more than once.
And the idea appears to have continued to hold some appeal for him. The central idea of a modern computational theory of mind is that the mind is a sort of computer. And very roughly, we might see Hobbes as saying the same thing. There are various mental processes compounding ideas, forming propositions, reasoning syllogistically that we can describe without knowing that reasoning is computation.
By the time of Leviathan and De Corpore , Hobbes was convinced that human beings including their minds were entirely material. This was not a popular or widely-held position at the time. Hobbes, however, was a materialist. Why was he a materialist? What need is there to postulate an immaterial mind when this perfectly good, and more minimal, explanation is available? However, for the most part we do not find Hobbes explicitly stating that argument.
All other names are but insignificant sounds; and those of two sorts. One when they are new, and yet their meaning not explained by definition; whereof there have been abundance coined by schoolmen, and puzzled philosophers.
Another, when men make a name of two names, whose significations are contradictory and inconsistent; as this name, an incorporeal body , or which is all one an incorporeal substance , and a great number more. For whensoever any affirmation is false, the two names of which it is composed, put together and made one, signify nothing at all Hobbes , 4. Thus Hobbes apparently thinks that talk about incorporeal substances such as Cartesian unextended thinking things is just nonsense.
But why does he think that? The gross errors of certain metaphysicians take their origin from this; for from the fact that it is possible to consider thinking without considering body, they infer that there is no need for a thinking body; and from the fact that it is possible to consider quantity without considering body, they also think that quantity can exist without body and body without quantity, so that a quantitative body is made only after quantity has been added to a body.
Hobbes attacks various views associated with the Scholastic Aristotelian tradition as resting on that mistake. One aim of this critical passage is to support materialism by showing a problem with the belief that there can be thought without a body. When Hobbes talks about Aristotelian views, one might ask whether his target is Aristotle himself, or some later Aristotelians. That exchange has several elements: the condemnation of the philosophical view as nonsensical; the claim that some philosophers aim to confuse; and the claim that views are promoted in order to control the public and take their money.
However, though Hobbes rejected many of the views of the Scholastic Aristotelian tradition, his work had several connections to it, as is illustrated by Leijenhorst Descartes argues, via that claim, from his ability to clearly and distinctly conceive of mind apart from body and vice versa, to the conclusion that mind and body are really distinct i. Abstracting away from the details, we have an argument from the conceivability of mind without body to the conclusion that the mind is not physical.
Overall then, something of a puzzle remains. Hobbes clearly was a materialist about the natural world, but the explicit arguments he offers for the view seem rather weak. Perhaps he just had a good deal of confidence in the ability of the rapidly developing science of the his time to proceed towards a full material explanation of the mind. Just as his contemporary William Harvey, of whom he thought very highly, had made such progress in explaining biological matters, so too Hobbes might have thought might we expect further scientists to succeed in explaining mental matters.
Hobbes was very much interested in scientific explanation of the world: both its practice which he saw himself as engaged in and also its theory. Chapter 9 of Leviathan tells us something about the differences between scientific and historical knowledge, and the divisions between sciences.
Chapter 6 of De Corpore gives a much fuller treatment of issues in the philosophy of science, issues of what Hobbes calls method. Method tells us how to investigate things in order to achieve scientia , the best sort of knowledge. This has often been developed into a story about the particular influence on Hobbes of the works of Giacomo Zabarella, a sixteenth-century Aristotelian who studied and taught at the University of Padua, which influence is then often said to have been somehow mediated by Galileo.
Here the notions of analysis and synthesis are key. This section tells a version of the first story. For a helpful recent critical discussion of such an approach, see Hattab Still, one should note that Hobbes sometimes uses the language of mathematical method, of analysis and synthesis, in describing his general method Hobbes , 6.
Several commentators have seen this, together with his clear admiration for the successes of geometry, as evidence of a more general use of mathematical notions in his account of method Talaska Resolution moves from the thing to be explained, which is an effect, to its causes, and then composition brings you back from causes to effects.
At a suitably general level that is correct, but it misses much detail. A crucial though somewhat mysterious third step stands between the move from effect to cause and that from effect to cause. The complete sequence, the arguments from effect to cause and back again, Zabarella calls regressus. This sequence improves our knowledge, taking us from confused to clear knowledge of something.
But how do we do this? The first step is to move from having confused knowledge of the effect to having confused knowledge of the cause. The second step moves from confused to clear knowledge of the cause. This step works, Zabarella thinks, by a sort of intellectual examination of the cause.
The aim is not just to know what thing is the cause, but to understand that thing. The final step then moves from the clear knowledge of the cause to clear knowledge of the effect. That is, your new full understanding of the cause gives you better understanding of the thing caused by it. There Hobbes lays out a model of the proper form of a scientific explanation. A proper explanation tells you three things: what the cause is, the nature of the cause, and how the cause gives rise to the effect.
Thus Hobbes accepts the Aristotelian idea that to have the best sort of knowledge, scientific knowledge, is to know something through its causes.
Here Hobbes defines philosophy as knowledge acquired by correct reasoning. It is both knowledge of effects that you get through conception of their causes and knowledge of causes that you get through conception of their visible effects. Already we see signs of the Aristotelian picture in which you come to know the cause by knowing the visible effect and to know the effect by knowing the cause.
The requirement to know how the cause works, not just what it is, is analogous to the Zabarellan requirement to have distinct knowledge of a cause. Knowledge that the cause exists comes from the first step of regressus. Complete regressus , i. For Hobbes, analogously, to get to scientia of the effect you need to understand, not just what the causes are, but how they work.
In a more fully Aristotelian picture, explanations are causal, but causes can be of several sorts. Moreover, he thinks the efficient causes are all motions, so the search for causes becomes the search for motions and mechanisms.
One story is that Hobbes learned about this method from Galileo, but that claim is problematic. Harvey, whose work Hobbes greatly admired, and who studied at the medical school in Padua, might also have been an intermediary Watkins , 41—2.
This section focuses on two central questions: whether Hobbes believes in the existence of God, and whether he thinks there can be knowledge from revelation. Hobbes at one point rules a good deal of religious discussion out of philosophy, because its topics are not susceptible to the full detailed causal explanation that is required for scientia , the best sort of knowledge.
Also excluded are discussion of angels, of revelation, and of the proper worship of God. But despite these not being, strictly speaking, philosophy, Hobbes does in fact have a good deal to say about them, most notably in Leviathan. Things outside philosophy in its strict sense may not be amenable to thorough causal explanation in terms of the motions of bodies, but they may well still be within the limits of rational discussion.
Many people have called Hobbes an atheist, both during his lifetime and more recently. They thought, however, that he was a rather dubious sort of Christian. Other critics, however, have thought that Hobbes in fact denied the existence of God. This might seem a curious allegation, for Hobbes often talks about God as existing.
Certainly, to read Hobbes in this way requires one to take some of his statements at something other than face value. In the Elements of Law Hobbes offers a cosmological argument for the existence of God Hobbes , So when we seem to attribute features to God, we cannot literally be describing God Hobbes , Those three views — support for a cosmological argument, the belief that God is inconceivable by us, and the interpretation of apparent descriptions of God as not really descriptions — appear to recur in Leviathan Hobbes , However, in later work, such as the appendix to the Latin edition of Leviathan , Hobbes proposes a different view.
The older Hobbes thought that we could know God to have at least one feature, namely extension. By this he means at least that God is extended. However, Hobbes does seem in his Answer to Bishop Bramhall and the Appendix to the Latin edition of Leviathan to believe this strange view sincerely. Indeed, he goes to some pains to defend this as an acceptable version of Christianity.
Whether or not one believes that, this is still on the surface an odd theism rather than atheism. This is notable to some extent in his critical reading of biblical texts, which was not at all a standard approach at the time. Indeed, Hobbes and Spinoza often get a good deal of credit for developing this approach.
In chapter 2 of Leviathan Hobbes comes to these topics at a slightly surprising point. In the course of discussing the workings of imagination, he talks naturally enough about dreams. Emphasizing the occasional difficulty of distinguishing dreams from waking life, he turns to talk of visions. Dreams had in stressful circumstances, when one sleeps briefly, are sometimes taken as visions, Hobbes says.
He uses this to explain a supposed vision had by Marcus Brutus, and also widespread belief in ghosts, goblins, and the like. Later he uses it to account for visions of God Hobbes , And Hobbes explicitly uses this to undermine the plausibility of claims to know things because told by God:. To say he [God] hath spoken to him in a dream is no more than to say that he dreamed God spake to him, which is not of force to win belief from any man that knows dreams are for the most part natural and may proceed from former thoughts … To say he hath seen a vision, or heard a voice, is to say that he hath dreamed between sleeping and waking; for in such a manner a man doth many times naturally take his dream for a vision, as not having well observed his own slumbering Hobbes , This does not rule out the possibility that God might indeed communicate directly with an individual by means of a vision.
But it does rule out other people sensibly believing reports of such occurrences, for the events reported are easily and usually if not necessarily always correctly given a natural explanation as dreams, which themselves have natural causes.
Hobbes takes a similarly sceptical attitude to reports of miracles. The case has often been made, however, that Hobbes was not just somewhat sceptical about some religious claims, but actually denied the existence of God.
The idea is that, though Hobbes says that God exists, those statements are just cover for his atheism. Moreover, these interpreters claim, there are various pieces of evidence that point to this hidden underlying view.
Opinions differ on what the crucial evidence of the hidden atheism is. If Hobbes is aware of this circularity, he does not call attention to it. Perhaps he just did not notice it.
Perhaps, as Strauss might have suggested, he leaves it to the reader to discover this for himself. There are some tricky general methodological questions here, about when we can reasonably say that an author is trying to communicate a view other than the one apparently stated. Note, however, that for someone allegedly covering up his atheism to avoid controversy, Hobbes took the curious approach of saying many other intensely controversial things.
He was opposed to free will and to immaterial souls, opposed to Presbyterianism and to Roman Catholicism, and managed to have anti-royalists thinking he was a royalist, but at least one prominent royalist Clarendon thinking he supported Cromwell. This was not a recipe for a quiet life. Hobbes was a widely read and controversial author. In many cases, the discussion of his philosophy was about his political philosophy Goldie , Malcolm The Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth, for example, devoted considerable energy to arguing against Hobbesian atheism and materialism.
On the other hand, later empiricist philosophers, in particular Locke and Hume, develop several Hobbesian themes. Indeed, one might well speak of Hobbes, not Locke, as the first of the British empiricists. And Leibniz twice in the s wrote letters to Hobbes, though it is unclear if Hobbes ever received them, and there is no evidence of any replies. And Hume, like Hobbes, combines apparent acceptance of a basic cosmological argument with scepticism about many religious claims.
Though the vast majority of work on Hobbes looks at his political philosophy, there are general books on Hobbes that look at his non-political philosophy, such as Sorell and Martinich The best modern biography is Martinich This should enable readers to find references in editions other than the ones used here even though most editions of Leviathan do not print paragraph numbers.
All other references are given by volume and page number. Life and Works 2. Mind and Language 2. Materialism 4. Method 5. Philosophy of Religion 6. Life and Works Thomas Hobbes was born on 5 April Hobbes also describes propositions and syllogisms as sorts of addition: a syllogism is nothing other than a collection of a sum which is made from two propositions through a common term which is called a middle term conjoined to one another; and thus a syllogism is an addition of three names, just as a proposition is of two Hobbes , 4.
Materialism By the time of Leviathan and De Corpore , Hobbes was convinced that human beings including their minds were entirely material. Method Hobbes was very much interested in scientific explanation of the world: both its practice which he saw himself as engaged in and also its theory.
And Hobbes explicitly uses this to undermine the plausibility of claims to know things because told by God: To say he [God] hath spoken to him in a dream is no more than to say that he dreamed God spake to him, which is not of force to win belief from any man that knows dreams are for the most part natural and may proceed from former thoughts … To say he hath seen a vision, or heard a voice, is to say that he hath dreamed between sleeping and waking; for in such a manner a man doth many times naturally take his dream for a vision, as not having well observed his own slumbering Hobbes , Reception Hobbes was a widely read and controversial author.
Bibliography Though the vast majority of work on Hobbes looks at his political philosophy, there are general books on Hobbes that look at his non-political philosophy, such as Sorell and Martinich Primary Literature Aubrey, J. Clark ed. Captions English Add a one-line explanation of what this file represents. It is recommended to use the other file.
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