The Study On Ockham’s Language Philosophy

In the history of western philosophy, medieval philosophy has its unique tradition and characteristics. It is not only closely related with religious belief, but also widely inherits the legacy of ancient Greek philosophy, comprehensively integrating religion and philosophy on a new base. This integration constructs the unique theological thought and expression and also produces new philosophical styles and thoughts. Many philosophical problems, propositions and concepts are recognized again and obtain new development. In the late middle ages, along with the evolution of different ideas, two kinds of thinking systems called "ancient route" and "modern route" are formed." Ockham (William of Ockham, or William Ockham, about1285-1349) is acknowledged as the advocate of modern route with the basic characteristics of nominalism. In the main universities and schools in Europe at that time, the opposition and criticism from the nominalism in the new route to the realism in the old route is prevailing.Ockham’s new explanation of logic plays an important role in the development of the middle ages. In the second half of the1lth century, logic education has become a main course of the schools in Europe. Some teachers through processing the names of things (nominalism) illustrate the universal problems, while other teachers hold that the names signifying genera and species have certain entity in things (realism), which is not a logical problem itself, but a metaphysical problem associated with the essence of the existence. In order to prove the reasonable existence of nominalism in philosophy, the logicians have to admit that logic itself is a kind of philosophy. Ockham is the representative figure of interpreting logical metaphysically and think that the concept in people’s thought is subjective. The main tone discussed in Ockham’s philosophical thought is to reject the realistic point of view and deny the existence of universal in reality, regarding them as the reproduction of the mind, and representing many signs of individual things. His theory of language philosophy with striking features is formed in this process. This dissertation aims to comprehensively and systematically introduce Ockham’s language philosophy and tries to reveal its historical value and contemporary significance. The full interpretation of Ockham’s language philosophy, is bound to mention the origin of his thought and the characteristic of his time, i.e. the dispute between nominalism and realism originating from ancient Greek, the development of logic in middle ages as well as the rationalism of Thomas, the voluntarism of Scott in the late middle ages. The feature shown in Ockham’s thought is his language philosophy, mainly including the following three aspects:First of all, Ockham is best known for his supposition theory. Based on the nature of the terms, this dissertation introduces Ockham’s classification to the terms and the definition of the supposition nature. It also explores the proposition of complicated supposition from the classification of the propositions composed of terms. Ockham thinks that the need for the internal entities should be reduced and what a term signifies is subordinate to its concept and the represented content. The identity of term supposition can be used to analyze the truth value of the categorical proposition. Through this method of interpretation, Ockham tries to delete the obvious ontology.Secondly, when Ockham uses the supposition theory to consider and study the natural language, he meets some unsolved problems, such as synonymy, polysemy, ambiguity, etc. He turns to find a way out from the angle of mind. In this way, mental language theory is discussed. This dissertation specially analyzes the mental terms and the semantic expression in mental language proposed by Ockham, illustrating the ideas of mental name, mental term, pseudoname and proposition structure in mental language and indicating universal as the mental quality. Meanwhile, it also points out the problems existing in Ockham’s language philosophy.Thirdly, behind the interpretation of terms and propositions in Ockham’s supposition theory and mental theory, cognitive problems are involved. In answering supposition and mental problems, he carefully considers the cognitive language. The cognitive mechanism revealed by Ockham includes comprehension acts, judgement acts and sensory cognition as well as the relationship between language and cognition, such as the cognition of terms and concepts, cognition of language memory and cognition of abstract species, which is both an important part of Ockham’s knowledge system and a strong support to his thinking of language philosophy. Overall, the semantic foundation of Ockham’s language philosophy is the ontology problem accompanied with the human cognitive abilities. Through a lot of logic analysis tools, Ockham emphasizes that the existence of single signification is the real object and base of true knowledge and language, only with which they can be signified in certain way by internal concept or conventional words. Certainly, the development of Ockham’s language philosophy in his sticking to the principle of nominalism also causes the thinking of science and he deems that science must go its own way, which furthers the disintegration of the unity of the middle ages.