Hobbes' Inductive Methodology

Hobbes' Inductive MethodologyAuthor(s): Fred WilsonSource: History of Philosophy Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Apr., 1996), pp. 167-186Published by: University of Illinois PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27744698Accessed: 06/11/2010 20:16

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History of Philosophy Quarterly Volume 13, Number 2, April 1996

HOBBES' INDUCTIVE METHODOLOGY

Fred Wilson

It

is usually stated that Hobbes' methodology of science is purely deduc tivist and, moreover, is an extreme conventionalism in which the prem

ises of the demonstrations of the deductive science are all true by definition. Thus A. E. Taylor1 states that "Only . . . the truly deductive type of

reasoning is rigidly certain and yields perfectly determinate conclusions"

(pp. 34-5), while ". . .the ultimate first principles of deductive science are

all. . . definitions, that is, statements of the meaning of names" (p. 36).

Everything in science, therefore, turns upon the original definitions; science is merely the correct deduction of the consequences implied in the giving of names (p. 35).

Hence there is no role for experiment in science:

[Hobbes] held that the Royal Society was proceeding on altogether false lines in attempting to advance physical science by direct experiment rather than by

reasoning deductively from preassumed general theories (p. 35).

In particular, then, there is

no place for 'Baconian induction' in his . . . conception of scientific method. Bacon's zeal for experiment ... is entirely alien to the essentially deductive and systematic spirit of the Hobbesian philosophy (p. 6).

Another who argues for this interpretation of Hobbes on method is Co

pleston,2 who speaks of Hobbes'"monolithic idea of science" in which there is "a progressive development from first principles in a deductive manner"

(p. 29). Watkins3 similarly holds that Hobbes was "unimpressed by the inductivist philosophy of Bacon" (p. 31). For Hobbes, in contrast, the

appropriate method is that of demonstration; the demonstrative method consists of "laying down first principles and proceeding deductively there from. . ." (p. 44). As for the first principles, these "first truths were arbi

trarily made by those that first of all imposed names upon things" (p. 106). The deductive methodology is more or less endorsed by Watkins as akin to the hypothetical-deductive methodology defended by Popper; but he sug

gests that the (non-Popperian) radical conventionalism is inadequate; the

appropriate premises in any hypothetical-deductive explanation are em

pirical truths, not statements true by definition or ex vi terminorum.

Clearly there must be something to this reading of Hobbes if it is endorsed by thinkers as diverse as Taylor, Copleston and Watkins. None

167

168 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY

theless, the reading is distinctly inadequate. Most have concluded that Hobbes learned nothing from Bacon when he worked as the latter's secre

tary. However, there is in fact a good deal of the inductive method in Hobbes and this includes something akin to Bacon's method of eliminative induc tion. We do not in fact know what Hobbes might have learned from Bacon. But the usual conclusion that, given his (alleged) deductivism, he must learned nothing, will be shown to be unfounded. To the contrary, the

presence of something like the method of eliminative induction shows that, when Hobbes worked as Bacon's secretary, he might well have become infected by the Lord Chancellor's inductivism.

I

Hobbes4 gives us "an exact notion ofthat which we call cause" as follows:

a cause is the sum or aggregate of all such accidents, both in the agents and the patient, as concur to the producing of the effect propounded; all which

existing together, it cannot be understood but that the effect existeth with

them; or that it can possibly exist if any one of them be absent (p. 77).

Causal relations thus involve generalities: "it cannot be understood but

that the effect existeth with" the cause. The cause is the set of conditions that are sufficient for the effect: the cause is the set of conditions that

"concur to the producing of the effect." Moreover, the cause is also neces

sary: the cause is absent if one or more of its parts are absent, and if the cause is absent then so is the effect, for "it cannot be understood. . .that

[the effect] can possibly exist if [the cause] be absent." Statements of causation are therefore general statements of necessary and sufficient

conditions.

How are we to discover these causal relations? Hobbes continues:

we must examine singly every accident that accompanies or precedes the

effect, as far forth as it seems to conduce in any manner to the production of

the same, and see whether the propounded effect may be conceived to exist, without the existence of any of these accidents; and by this means separate such accidents, as do not concur, from such as concur to produce the said effect; which being done, we are to put together the concurring accidents, and

consider whether we can possibly conceive, that when these are all present, the effect propounded will not follow; and if it be evident that the effect will

follow, then that aggregate of accidents is the entire cause, other wise not; but we must still search out and put together other accidents (p. 77).

If the effect can exist without a certain accident, then the latter is not (part of) the cause. Thus, the cause is common to all cases where the effect is

present. This is the Method of Agreement. Again, we must consider cases

where the effect is absent. The cause is then the set of accidents wherein

those cases where the effect is present differ from these cases where the cause is absent. This is the Method of Difference. The Method of Agreement yields necessary conditions, while the Method of Difference yields suffi

cient conditions. Hobbes applies these jointly. That is, what he describes is

HOBBES' INDUCTIVE METHODOLOGY 169

in effect the Joint Method of Agreement and Difference. This joint method

yields necessary and sufficient conditions, that is, precisely those condi tions that Hobbes has described as constituting the cause of an effect.

The Methods of Agreement and Difference and the Joint Method are, of

course, the eliminative methods of experimental science that Bacon had been the first to describe. Hobbes is thus arguing that the methods appro priate to the discovery of causes are the eliminative methods of Bacon.

There is little doubt that Bacon was the first to describe these methods of experimental science.5 Hobbes was secretary to Bacon during the latter 's retreat in disgrace from the world when he was devoting most of his time to experimentation at his residence at Gothambury. We shall never know whether it was here that Hobbes learned the logic of experiment. But as we have just seen, learn it he did. And it is not unlikely that he learned it at Gothambury. Certainly, Hobbes' clear knowledge of the methods and his connection with Bacon make doubtful indeed Taylor's claim that "the influence of Bacon . . . has left no trace on Hobbes's own matured thought"

(p. 6). Moreover, it makes clear that Hobbes'method is, contrary to Watkins, not simply hypothetical-deductive: Baconian induction, too, is present.

II

Philosophy aims to know the causes of things, either things by means of their causes or causes by means of their effects. As Hobbes puts it,

Philosophy is the knowledge we acquire by true ratiocination, of appearances, or apparent effects, from the knowledge we have of some possible production or generation of the same; and of such production, as has been or may be, from the knowledge we have of effects (p. 68).

What we find in the world are bodies qualified by certain accidents. Bodies in fact are singular things. These singular things are compounded of

accidents; the former are distinguished by their unique combinations of the latter (p. 68). These accidents taken as common to several singular things are referred to as universals (pp. 68-69). What we aim to know in the first place are the causes of universals. Then we can infer from these the causes of singular things. For "the causes of singular things are

compounded of the causes of universal or simple things" (p. 68). In order to find these causes, it is necessary to consider not singular things but the universals which are the parts of these things.

seeing universal things are contained in the nature of singular things, the

knowledge of them is to be acquired by reason, that is, by resolution. . ..by resolving continually, we may come to know what those things are, whose causes being first known severally, and afterwards compounded, bring us to the knowledge of singular things. I conclude, therefore, that the method of

attaining to the universal knowledge of things, is purely analytical (pp. 68-69).

The Baconian methods are therefore to be understood as part of the

analytic method.


As for universal things,

they have all but one universal cause, which is motion (p. 69).

This makes clear that Hobbes holds that all universal things ? and

therefore all singular things ? have causes, and, moreover, that these

causes are all of a certain kind, namely, motions of bodies. In order to

discover the cause of a particular universal thing, we can limit our search

to the variety of possible motions. From among this range, the Baconian methods will locate the cause.

Now, the Baconian methods of elimination will yield a true statement of cause only if two conditions are fulfilled: first, that there is a cause there to be discovered, and, second, that this cause is one member from among a certain limited variety. If the first condition is not fulfilled, then the elimination of all but one possible case will not guarantee that that case is a cause. And if there is no limit to the number of possibilities that must be

eliminated, then no application of the eliminative mechanisms, however

systematic and extended it might be, will succeed in reducing the possible cases to one. These two conditions have usually been called the principle of determinism and the principle of limited variety, respectively. Unless these principles hold, the eliminative mechanisms are logically incapable to yielding as a conclusion that such an such a property ("universal thing") is the cause of some other property.6 Hobbes, we have just seen, holds that these two principles obtain.

It is clear, then, that Hobbes' account of what he calls the "analytic method," or, what is the same, the methods of experimental science, is quite

in order.

Ill

Bacon's methods, however, are the methods o? empirical science. As such

they can yield no necessity. Unless, that is, the first principles themselves are somehow necessary. Hobbes does of course hold that these principles are somehow necessary. Specifically, he holds precisely this with respect to the principles of determinism and limited variety, as he understands them, those principles which are required if the experimental methods are to

yield conclusions concerning causes which are certain. As he puts it with

regard to his version of those principles,

the causes of universal things. . .are manifest of themselves, or (as they say

commonly) known to nature; so that they need no method at all; for they have all but one universal cause, which is motion (p.69).

However, it is notorious that such knowledge of first principles is held by Hobbes to be based on definitions. These principles are necessary precisely because they are simply true by definition, ex vi terminorum.

By the knowledge. . .of universals, and of their causes. . .we have in the first

place their definitions, (which are nothing but the explication of our simple

conceptions) (p. 70).


This in turn leads into the standard objection to Hobbes' account of method, that, since definitions are arbitrary, so are all first principles; this implies that there is no objective structure to the world to distinguish those parts of discourse which are true from those which are false; and this is then taken to be a reductio ad absurdum of Hobbes' position. And it indeed would be if it were an accurate reading of Hobbes' thought. However, one is left

wondering how so competent a philosopher as Hobbes could have fallen so

quickly into such an absurdity. It cries out for an alternative interpretation. Indeed, so does the presence of the Baconian method that we have already noted. If Hobbes does what we have seen that he does, namely insist that one proceed by the analytical method, that is, the method of Bacon, appeal ing to the observed facts of the case, how could he also conclude that all

principles are arbitrary, true by definition? Again, it cries out for an

alternative interpretation.

Such a re-interpretation is possible only if we recognize that Hobbes is

proposing to substitute an account of reason that is very different from the traditional. This becomes clear if we recall what he wrote about reason in his Objections to Descartes' Meditations. Here he wrote:

Now, what shall we say if it turns out that reasoning is simply the joining together and linking of names or labels by means of the verb 'is'? It would follow that the inferences in our reasoning tell us nothing at all about the nature of things, but merely tell us about the labels applied to them; that is, all we can infer is whether or not we are combining the names of things in

accordance with the arbitrary conventions which we have laid down in respect of their meaning. If this is so, as may well be the case, reasoning will depend on names, names will depend on the imagination, and imagination will depend (as I believe it does) merely on the motions of our bodily organs; and so the

mind will be nothing more than motion occurring in various parts of an organic

body7

For Hobbes, reasoning is a matter of words. As he later elaborated this

account, words are names: "Words so connected as they become signs of our

thoughts, are called speech, of which every part is a name" (p. 15). Names serve two functions, that of being marks and that of being signs:

seeing (as is said) both marks and signs are necessary for the acquiring of

philosophy, (marks by which we may remember our own thoughts, and signs by which we may make our thoughts known to others), names do both these

offices; but they serve for marks befor they be used as signs (p. 15).

Words taken to be marks are associated with thoughts in the sense of

images. These images resemble each other, and in particular resemble the

past images or phantasms from which they derive.

marks [are] . . . sensible things taken at pleasure, that, by means of them, such thoughts may be recalled to our mind as are like those thoughts for which we took them (p. 14).

At the same time, they can function as signs by calling to the minds of others similar or resembling ideas or images.


A name is a word taken at pleasure to serve for a mark, which may raise in our mind a thought like to some thought we have before, and which being pronounced to others, may be to them a sign of which thought the speaker had, or had not before in his mind (p. 16).

Names can have meaning without naming any actual thing; Hobbes gives as examples the names 'nothing' and less than nothing'. But where they do name, they name bodies. But these bodies are not to be considered to have essences or real natures of the sort which the Aristotelians and rationalists suppose things to have.

that the sound of this word stone should be the sign of a stone, cannot be understood in any sense but this, that he that hears it collects that he

pronounces it thinks of a stone. And, therefore, that disputation, whether names signify the matter or form, or something compounded of both, and other like subtleties of the metaphysics, is kept up by erring men, and such as

understand not the words they dispute about (p. 17; Hobbes' italics).

Descartes rejected Hobbes' account of reasoning. To Hobbes' objection he

replied:

I did explain the difference between imagination and a purely mental concep tion in this very example, where I listed the features of the wax which we

imagine and those which we conceive by using the mind alone. And I also

explained elsewhere how one and the same thing, say a pentagon, is under stood in one way and imagined in another. As for the linking together that occurs when we reason, this is not a linking of names but of the things that are signified by the names, and I am surprised that the opposite view should occur to anyone.8

What he is doing is simply insisting that there are ideas other than images, that these ideas are signified by our words, and these ideas provide the

ground for our reasoning about things. Now, traditionally, for Aristotelians, ideas are the essences or forms or natures of things qua existing in the

mind. But the same position is defended by such rationalists as Descartes.9

Thus, Descartes refers to actual being as "formal" being or reality (esse

formale): the formal being of a thing is constituted by its properties or

modifications. This he distinguishes from the objective being of a thing, that "mode of being, by which a thing exists objectively or is represented by a concept of it in the understanding."10 This is "the way in which its [the intellect's] objects are normally there."11 When a thing has objective being in the mind that thing is not a mode or property of the mind, that is, it is not "formally" in the mind; otherwise the mind would actually be the thing. Nonetheless, though the thing that is objectively in the mind lacks as such formal reality it is still not nothing,12 and is to be contrasted to ideas which are merely chimerical.13 Thus, as Descartes put it to Carterus in the replies to the First Set of Objections,

the idea of the sun is the sun itself existing in the intellect ? not of course

formally existing, as it does in the heavens, but objectively existing, i.e., in the

way in which objects are normally in the intellect. Now this mode of being is

of course much less perfect than that possessed by things which exist outside

the intellect; but, as I did explain [in Meditation III], it is not therefore simply nothing.14


One must of course distinguish the thing from the thing qua formally existing. It is the thing qua formally existing that is there in the world, existing as the entity with which other real objects, including ourselves, interact. Thus, when Descartes distinguishes the thing, e.g., the sun, from the sun qua formally existing, the thing that is said to be in the mind, that

is, the sun insofar as it does not formally exist, must be the essence of the

thing. In other words, what is present to the mind when the thing is

objectively in it is not this real object but its essence. For Descartes the

objective existence of things in the mind is constituted by the presence in the mind of the essence of the thing. But once we recognize this we also

recognize that the Cartesian account of perception is structurally that of

Aristotle, in which the mind knows the object by virtue of having the form or essence of that object literally in it. To be sure, Descartes rejects the mechanisms by which Aristotle explained the presence of the form or essence in the mind. For Aristotle the form was transported from the object known to the knowing mind through a process of abstraction. Using the wax example of Meditation II, Descartes argued that no such process could

provide us with the essence of any thing. Such essences are, he argued, following Plato, innate. This distinction between innatism and abstraction ism is, however, a difference that is, as it were, within the ring. The

important point is that both adopted a position concerning things, in which

things are distinguished from their natures or forms or essences, and

depending upon that, a position concerning the nature of ideas, in which the essences of things are in the mind of the knower.

Descartes thus in its central points retained the Aristotelian notion that science was, ideally, scientia in the Aristotelian sense, that is, in the sense

that at its best science consists of demonstrations proceeding from self evident propositions concerning the natures or essences of things. For both,

the eternal or necessary truths are connections among the essences of

things, connections that hold independently of the actual existence of

things. In fact, it is precisely this latter that is the ground of the necessity of these truths.

It is precisely this concept of reason that Hobbes is rejecting, whether it be the Aristotelian version or that of Descartes. There are no essences or

forms or natures of things that could in any way ground the necessity of the truth of the basic premises of science. Thus, for Hobbes there is no

objective ground for the necessity of causal propositions.

But knowledge, by the traditional definition, is scientia: it is a matter of demonstration from necessary truths. Wherein, then, can the necessity of

the first principles be located, given the Hobbesian framework? The answer

that Hobbes gives is clear in his Objection to Descartes: the necessity does not lie in the things, it lies rather in our thought about those things.

But to say this is not yet to give an account of such necessity. However, Hobbes does go on to attempt to provide an explanation of why we attribute


necessity to causal propositions and why we treat science as a matter of

demonstration from premises understood to be ? somehow ? necessary.

The model that he believes he has available to account for the necessity of our causal judgments and of the first principles by which we know causal relations is that of definition ? not, of course, the real definition of the Aristotelians nor the necessary connections of the rationalists, but simple nominal definition.

IV

Before elaborating this point, there is a possible mis-reading of Hobbes that must be excluded. For, it has determined some of the more radical

readings of Hobbes'account of science.

I refer to the charge that Hobbes is a radical nominalist who makes every truth a matter of convention. This is the reading, for example, of Taylor. Hobbes holds that the only names that denote realities are the names of individual bodies. Among these names are those that are proper to one

thing and those that are common. Upon Hobbes' account of things, there are no forms or natures or essences for these terms to denote.

when a living creature, a stone, a spirit, or any other thing, is said to be

universal, it is not to be understood, that any man, stone, &c. was or can be

universal, but only that these words a living creature, a stone, &c. are universal

names, that is, names common to many things; and the conceptions answering them in our mind, are the images and phantasms of several living creatures, or other things (p. 20).

But, as we have seen, "a name is a word taken at pleasure to serve for" a

mark or sign of our ideas (p. 16). It would seem, therefore, that all truth is

arbitrary or conventional. Indeed, Hobbes says almost this when he re

marks that

the first truths were arbitrarily made by those that first of all imposed names

upon things, or received them from the imposition of others. For it is true (for

example) that man is a living creature, but it is for this reason, that it pleased men to impose both names on the same thing (p. 36).

The result is an apparently silly position. For if is literally true that all truth is conventional then all propositions about individual bodies are

either necessary or contradictory. If'a'by convention denotes one individ

ual and 'F is by convention a common name that denotes the same indi

vidual, then the sentence Fa is true by virtue of its meaning, that is, the

meanings of the terms that it contains. If, similarly, it is decided that a is not among the bodies commonly denoted by 'G', then Ga is false by virtue of the meanings of the terms that it contains. But to say that the former is true ex vi terminorum while the latter is false ex vi terminorum is to say that the former is necessarily true while the latter is necessarily false. If it is further held that propositions that are self-contradictory are empty,


or say nothing, then all false propositions will be empty or say nothing. If one further understands this to mean that strictly speaking one succeeds in making an assertion only if one asserts a proposition that says some

thing, then one never says anything when one says anything false. Indeed,

since all is a matter of convention, a matter of what the speaker decides, it becomes questionable whether it is even possible to err with regard to the truth. At most one would have violated the conventions of the language, which would make it a matter of mis-speaking rather than one of genuine error.

Such a position seems to have been held in antiquity by Antisthenes,15 of whom it is reported by Aristotle that he held the paradoxical belief that

"contradiction is impossible" {Topics, 1, 104b20)16, and that he "foolishly claimed that nothing could be described except by its own formula, one

formula to one thing; from which it followed that there could be no contra

diction, and almost that there could be no error" {Metaphysics, 5,1024b30). It is likely that this view was the object of Plato's criticism in the Sophist.11 In any case, it is certainly true that Plato in the Theaetetus18 proposed a

solution that could avoid the paradoxes created by Antisthenes' view.

Specifically, Plato argued that one must draw a distinction between the

object to which the subject term of a proposition applies and that by virtue of which the predicate term applies to a that thing. One must distinguish, in other words, between a thing and its properties. Predicate terms will

have as it were a double reference. On the one hand they apply to the same

things to which subject terms apply. On the other hand, they apply to the

properties of things. Thus, the predicate term 6F will apply to the property F, and then apply to all those things which have this property. John Stuart Mill was later to draw the relevant distinction in terms of "connotation" and "denotation."19 A name which applies properly to a thing, that is, to

only one thing, is said to denote that thing. A name which applies commonly to several things is said to denote those things, but is also said to connote a certain property. Then, it applies correctly to a thing if that thing in fact

exemplifies the property that it connotes. In this way one can consistently hold both that common names name or denote individual things while also

holding that falsehood does not amount to contradiction and that it is after all possible to err and to assert what is false.

Hobbes does not speak o? connotation. But he says much the same. The

imposition of common names is not wholly arbitrary. Rather, it depends upon the resemblances of things, that is, the properties or accidents which

they exemplify.

Positive [names] are such as we impose for the likeness, equality, or identity of the things we consider; negative, for the diversity, unlikeness, or inequality of the same. Examples of the former are, a man, a philosopher; for a man

denotes any one of a multitude of men, and a philosopher, any one of many

philosophers, by reason of their similitude; also, Socrates is a positive name, because it signifies always one and the same man (p. 18)


Propositions are formed from subjects and predicates joined by the

copula. The subject and predicate are both names, and these

names raise in our mind the thought of one and the same thing; but the

copulation makes us think of the cause for which those names were imposed on that thing. As, for example, when we say a body is moveable, though we conceive the same thing to be designed by both those names, yet our mind rests not there, but searches farther what it is to be a body, or to be moveable, that is, wherein consists the difference betwixt those and other things, for

which these are so called, others are not so called (p. 31).

The cause for our saying that the body is moveable is "that it is moved or

the motion of the same" (p. 32). These reasons justifying the copulation, making the assertion true, are the similarities and dissimilarities in

things. These similarities and dissimilarities are objective, not merely the result of some arbitrary imposition of names upon things. For, Hobbes

holds, there is a ground in things for these similarities and dissimilarities.

Specifically, the ground in things for these objective similarities and dis similarities are the accidents in things. The things in which accidents inhere are all conceivable apart from those accidents (save for the one essential accident of extension), though we should not, Hobbes warns us, conceive of the separability as a matter of abstracting these parts and

making them into independent existents.

[the] causes of names are the same with the causes of our conceptions, namely, some power of action, or affection of the thing conceived, which some call the

manner by which any thing works upon the senses, but by most men they are

called accidents; I say accidents, not in that sense in which accident is opposed to necessary; but so, as being neither the things themselves, nor parts thereof, do nevertheless accompany the things in such manner, that (saving extension)

they may all perish, and be destroyed, but can never be abstracted (pp. 32-33).

Truth and falsity are therefore not merely a matter of arbitrary choice, and Hobbes cannot, therefore, be construed as some sort of radical nominalist

on the model of Antisthenes.

To be sure, it is arbitrary that we have chosen to apply this predicate rather than that to things by virtue of some objective similarity. For

example, it is arbitrary that we have chosen 'red' rather than 'der' to name

commonly all those things that are similar to each other in respect of a

certain colour. Given his position on the objective basis of similarities and dissimilarities in the accidents of things, it is no doubt just this that Hobbes had in mind when he stated that ". . .the first truths were arbitrarily made

by those that first of all imposed names upon things, or received them from the imposition of others. For it is true (for example) that man is a living creature, but it is for this reason, that it pleased men to impose both names on the same thing" (p. 36). Contrary to Taylor, then, this passage cannot be used to ascribe to Hobbes a radical conventionalism.

We may conclude that, whatever Hobbes has in mind concerning his account of first principles as definitions, it is not something that follows

simply from a radical conventionalism along the lines traditionally as


cribed to Antisthenes. For Hobbes holds no such radical view: like Aristotle and most subsequent philosophers, he agrees with Plato's solution to the

problem posed by Antisthenes, that we must distinguish between a thing and the properties of that thing, between a thing and the objective simi larities and dissimilarities in which that thing stands to other things.

V

The traditional account of science as scientia is that this proceeds deduc

tively from self-evident premises. For the Aristotelians there were many self-evident truths to function as premises in scientific demonstrations. For the new science the range was rather more limited. It was in fact restricted to that paradigm of demonstrative science, the geometry of Euclid. Galileo had advanced geometry as the tool of science. Descartes pursued the same

Galilean themes, but unlike Galileo put those themes in a rigidly meta

physical context. The axioms of geometry were the essential truths of body. These axioms were the necessary connections to be found in the essence or

nature of body, that essence which was the objective idea of body as innately present in our minds. Hobbes, as is well known, was immensely impressed by the work of Galileo, and took up the same themes as Descartes. But he

strongly objected to the metaphysical context upon which Descartes in sisted: there are no essences or forms or natures of things, and in this sense

no metaphysical necessity.

Yet it is science and therefore necessary. What, then, is the source of this

necessity? This is the question we asked previously. We have seen one answer ? that it derives from the conventionality of all truth ? that will not do. We must find another.

If Hobbes was committed to the Galilean ideal of a mathematical science, he was also committed to the traditional logic, including the account of demonstration that is part of the traditional logic.

On the traditional view,20 we can (to take a simplified example) explain

Corsicus is dissolving

using the syllogism

Whenever Corsicus is put in water Corsicus dissolves

Corsicus is in water

Corsicus is dissolving

provided that the premise is necessary. This is established as necessary through a scientific syllogism. Let Corsicus be C and let Abe the pattern of sensible events of dissolving if in water. Then C is A. The scientific

syllogism that we need will have this as its conclusion. The middle term that explains C being Ais the capacity (power, nature, essence, form, soul) of solubility. Let B be this capacity. Then the explanatory syllogism (S) is:


Whatever is soluble is such that whenever it is put in water it dissolves

(B is A) (SO Corsicus is soluble (C is B)

Corsicus is such that whenever it is put in water it dissolves (C is A)

Solubility is an active power, like the nutritive power, the activity of which accounts for the pattern of behaviour described in the conclusion. As the nutritive power is one of a set of powers, including the appetitive and the

ratiocinative, which make up the soul or form or nature of human beings, so also solubility will be one of the set of powers that constitute the set that

makes up the full nature or essence of Corsicus, e.g., the nature of Corsicus

may be sugar. Thus, the second premise of (SO is necessary because the nature or essence is inseparable from the substance Corsicus. Provided that the major premise of (SO is also necessary, then the conclusion will be

necessary, and the syllogism will establish a necessary connection among the events in the pattern mentioned in the conclusion. The necessity of the law derives from the form or essence; thus, explanation of a pattern of behaviour is not obtained by fitting that pattern into a more complex pattern, as in the new science, but by re-describing the object whose behaviour is being explained.21

Now, as Moli?re made clear, for the defenders of the new sciences, the

major premise of (SO is indeed necessary, but only trivially so, since it is true by nominal definition. For that reason, for the critics of Aristotle (SO is no more explanatory than

Whatever is a bachelor is an unmarried male

(S'O Callias is a bachelor

C allias is an unmarried male

(S'O doesn't explain since the minor premise merely re-states what the conclusion says. As for the major premise in (S"), that is in fact redundant; for the rule of language

'Bachelor' is short for 'unmarried male'

which licenses its assertion as a necessary truth equally licenses the

re-writing of the minor as the conclusion and therefore also licenses the inference of the conclusion from the minor premise alone.

On the other hand, for Aristotle (SO is explanatory. The major premise cannot, therefore, be true by definition. It must be a substantive truth.

Thus, for the empiricist capacities are analyzable in the sense that the term

'soluble' in the major premise of (SO can be defined by the right hand side

using only (the principles of logic and) terms that refer to observable characteristics of things; while for Aristotle, since the major premise of (SO cannot be a definitional truth, capacities (dispositions, tendencies, powers) cannot be analyzed into (patterns of) observable characteristics of things.

Aristotelian explanations are in terms of the unanalyzable active disposi

tions and powers of things.


If the major premise of (SO is not definitional, it is also not contingent; Aristotle holds, as we have seen, that the premises of a scientific syllogism are necessary. The empiricist divides propositions, as Hume does,22 into

two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive classes. There are, on the

one hand, those propositions which state relations of ideas, and which are

therefore necessary in the sense of being tautological, devoid of factual

import, and, on the other hand, those propositions which state matters of observable fact and which are therefore contingent. If the former proposi tions are, as they are often called, analytic and the latter synthetic, then for Aristotle, in contrast to the empiricist, there is a third category, that of

propositions which are both synthetic and necessary. (Kant's term, 'syn thetic a priori,'is not quite appropriate for Aristotle, but the point is much the same.)23

The tradition tried to fit the inferences of Euclid into this syllogistic framework. To be sure, as is well known, there are many inferences in

Euclidean geometry that cannot be captured within the limited logical apparatus of syllogistic. Be that as it may, it was the traditional view that the inference patterns of Euclid did indeed fit those of syllogistic. It is this view that Hobbes accepts.

What he rejects is the traditional account of unanalyzable powers. None

theless, he still accepts the traditional doctrine o? scientia in which science consists of demonstrative syllogisms having as their premises propositions

which are necessary truths. These necessary truths, traditionally, express

the real definitions of things. What Hobbes does is reject the doctrine of

unanalyzable dispositions but retains the idea that they nonetheless are

necessary. Except that he now construes them as nominal definitions.

Hobbes takes over the traditional model of science as demonstrations the

premises of which are necessary propositions, save that upon his account

the necessity derives not from the ontological structure of things but from the linguistic conventions which make the premises true by definition.

This, however, does not seem to leave us in any better a position in

interpreting Hobbes than did Taylor's account of the necessity of proposi tions in terms of a radical conventionalism. After all, if the premises of demonstrative science are all true by virtue of certain nominal definitions,

then in what way have we escaped attributing to him a conventionalism that makes all causal propositions true by definition? And if causal propo sitions are all true by definition, then why do we have to employ the Baconian methods of elimination in order to discover their truth?

VI

Hobbes does address this problem. He tells us that

the reason why I say that the cause and generation of such things, as have

any cause or generation, ought to enter into their definitions, is this. The end of science is the demonstration of the causes and generations of things; which


if they be not in the definitions, they cannot be found in the conclusion of the first syllogism, that is make from those definitions; and if they be not in the first conclusion, they will not be found in any further conclusion deduced from

that; and, therefore, by proceeding in this manner, we shall never come to

science; which is against the scope and intention of demonstration (pp. 82-83).

Three things are clear here. First, it is clear, as we have argued, that on

Hobbes' view, science aims to be demonstrative and if it is to be demonstra tive must begin from definitions. Second, it is clear that Hobbes holds that the definitions which he seeks are definitions of things, that is, of things insofar as they are effects. Third, these definitions of the things insofar as

they are effects must include the causes of those effects.

The traditional doctrine was of course that, in giving a real definition of a substance, one was giving a definition of the essence of the thing. In giving the real definition of being human one was giving the real definition of the essence of Socrates. One thereby defines the thing or substance in which the effect occurs. Hobbes' point is much the same. Except that he does not

distinguish the thing and its essence: there is no essence or form or nature. What one defines, then, upon Hobbes' scheme is the thing itself.

Now, as noted earlier, Hobbes'discussion of cause makes clear that we have

a cause only if we have a general proposition. We can correctly say that

A is the cause of B

only if we can affirm that

Whenever A then B

or, in the more traditional phraseology,

(@) (All) A is B

The Baconian methods of elimination are designed to discover the truth of

such propositions. Such a proposition cannot be necessary. For a proposi

tion is necessary only if it is true by definition. For, as Hobbes also says,

in every necessary proposition, the predicate is either equivalent to the subject. . .;

or part of an equivalent name. . ..But in a contingent proposition this cannot

be (p. 38).

However, even if it is true that universal causal propositions, as Hobbes calls them, are not necessary, there is for all that no reason why the

proposition that

(@0 Corsicus is such that whenever it is A then it is B

cannot be constituted as necessary.

Now, according to Hobbes, we achieve knowledge of what a thing is by resolution or analysis. Thus, he tells us that

if any man propound to himself the conception o? gold, he may, by resolving, come to the ideas of solid, visible, heavy, (that is, tending to the centre of the

earth, or downwards) and many other more universal that gold itself. . . (p. 69).


Since a singular thing is distinguished from other things by its accidents, our knowledge of singular things similarly proceeds by resolution or analy sis. Now, it is true that

something is heavy if and only if whenever it is unsupported then it move

downwards

This in fact is true by definition. There are similar definitions of the other

powers that enter into the definition o? gold itself. Indeed, the concept of

gold is just the conjunction of a set of such defined powers. Thus, the

concept of a sort of singular thing and, since singular things are distin

guished by their accidents, the concept of any singular thing itself, will be a conjunction of defined powers. But those powers are patterns of behav

iour: they relate universal things to their causes. These statements of the causes of universal things that enter into the definitions of singular things are contingent. But, though they are contingent, that they describe the behaviour of a certain singular thing will be true by definition. Thus,

although (@) as a statement of the cause of a universal thing is contingent, the statement (@') as the statement of causation applying to a singular thing will be necessary.

To see this, consider a simple example. Since to understand a singular

thing is to resolve it into the set of powers that define it, we can suppose Corsicus to be defined by two powers. If, for example, we have as true by definition the two disposition statements

D if and only if whenever A then B

D' if and only if whenever A' then B'

we may then further define

D* if and only if D and D'

This is what Hobbes refers to as a "compounded name," wherein a simple name "by joining another name to it, is made less universal, and signifies that more conceptions than one were in the mind, for which that latter name was added" (p. 24). Now, if we also take D* as defining the essence or form of Corsicus, then we have the syllogism

Whatever is D* is such that whenever it is A then it is B

(S") Corsicus is D*

ergo, Corsicus is such that whenever it is A then it is B

The concept D* functions as a middle term. The major premise is true by definition of this concept. Moreover, this concept is (part of) the concept defining Corsicus. So the minor premise is also necessary. That makes the conclusion necessary. We therefore have a demonstrative syllogism that establishes that (?') is necessary. But, to repeat, this does not mean that the statement (@) concerning the cause of the universal thing A is not

necessary.


The syllogism here is demonstrative in the sense of proceeding from

necessary premises. It is synthetic in the sense that presupposes that we have synthesized our knowledge of the causes of universal things into a

concept of a singular thing. Analysis is needed to discover the causes of universal things, that is, the parts of singular things. But in order to demonstrate the necessity of the causation of singular things, our method must be "compositive" (p. 71), putting together these statements of causa tion or power into the "compounded names" of things. It is the compounded names or definitions of singular things that enable us to construct a

demonstrative science based on the synthetic methods of syllogistic.

We thus obtain the following picture of science according to Hobbes: Bacon's methods of eliminative induction are used to establish the truth of the contingent statements of causation with regard to universal things, and these statements of causation or power then enter into the definitions of the

concepts of singular things. These definitions of things form the ultimate

premises of demonstrative science, which proceeds synthetically from them

by means of syllogisms. This science establishes the necessity of causal statements about singular things.

VI

We can see what Hobbes is trying to do. Bacon was the first to describe the

logic of the experimental method. These were the methods that were used by such scientists as Harvey. Others besides Bacon were prepared to defend the use of these methods. Descartes, in the Discourse on Method, for example, defended their use.24 We now see that Hobbes was another defender of these methods. Hobbes and Descartes both accepted that, at their best, causal

judgments have to be necessary. For Descartes one achieved such necessity if the causal judgments could be derived from necessary truths about the essences of things. Hobbes accepted this point. Tb this extent, commentators such as Taylor, Copleston and Watkins are correct. But, as these commentators

have not noticed, Hobbes also advanced a much more empiricist account of both things in the world and our knowledge of such things than that of Descartes. Specifically, for Hobbes unlike Descartes there are no essences, nor,

therefore, any objective necessities in things that our reason could grasp. But that means that the Hobbesian concept of reason is very different from that of Descartes. To be sure, they both use the language of ideas, but where, for

Descartes, the ideas that our reason grasps are the essences, the reasons, of

things, for Hobbes, in contrast, our ideas are images as, on the one hand,

representative of resemblance classes of images and appearances of things and as, on the other hand, associated with certain words that stand as marks and signs of those images. Since there are no objective necessities to be reflected in our ideas, those ideas or images in and of themselves stand in no

logical relations to one another. One obtains logical connections among ideas

only when one establishes those conventions which yield nominal definitions of things. The only necessity therefore that is possible for Hobbes is this


definitional necessity. This is, however, but a weak simulacrum of the

ontologically grounded necessity of Descartes and the rationalists. In

particular, it simply disguises the fact that what is crucial for any causal

explanation are the contingent causal relations that enter into the defini tions of things. These turn out to be merely contingent, and in fact the distinction between causation and accidental generality disappears.

The disguise did indeed have some success. It seems to have played some role at least in leading most commentators to overlook the fact that for

Hobbes there are certain basic causal propositions that are, on his own

view, contingent, and which are to be established by the Baconian elimi native methods of experimental science. Nonetheless, we now see that a

clear view of Hobbes' position allows that these empirical and non-demon strative methods have a central place in his account of science, and that

they cannot be eliminated in favour of the idea of a demonstrative science

proceeding from premises that are simply true by definition, ex vi termi

norum, however central to science Hobbes took such demonstrations to be.

In any case, as the commentators usually make clear, the conventionality of nominal definitions hardly provides a secure ground wherein to attempt to locate causal necessity. It is likely for this reason that Hobbes' approach to causal judgments proved unattractive to his empiricist successors. Hume adopted much the same view of ideas, and argued in detail the Hobbesian claim that there are no objective essences of things nor, there

fore, any objective causal necessities.25 Both thus agreed, for much the same sort of reason, that basic causal judgments are matter of fact gener

alities. Hume also defended what we have seen to be the Hobbesian view, derived from Bacon, that such judgments are established by the methods of eliminative induction, or, as Hume called them, the "rules by which to

judge of causes and effects."26 But Hume gave up the whole idea that science should somehow have demonstration as its goal. Locke had devel

oped the empiricist ontology and epistemology far enough that by Hume's

day it was no longer implausible to hold that our capacity to come to make reasonable causal judgments has an empirical and contingent basis rather

than the a priori demonstrations of traditional scientia.21 This meant that Hume did not feel constrained, as Hobbes apparently felt constrained, to locate such necessity as causation has in the notion of a demonstrative science. And so, according to Hume what distinguishes causal propositions from others is indeed their necessity. But it is neither the ontological necessity of the Aristotelians and the rationalists, nor the conventional

necessity of Hobbes. It is rather the simply psychological necessity of being moved to make such inferences as a matter of habit induced, in the first

instance, by the observation of constant conjunctions.28 This Humean altera

tion to the basic empiricist position of Hobbes proved in the longer run a more

congenial account of the (non-objective) necessity of causal judgments.29

University of Toronto Received August 8, 1995


NOTES

1. A. E. Taylor, Thomas Hobbes (London: Archibald Constable & Co, 1908). 2. F. Copleston, History of Modern Philosophy, vol. 5 ["Modern Philosophy: The

British Philosophers"], Pt. I ["Hobbes to Payley"] (Garden City, NY: Image Books,

Doubleday, 1964).

3. J. W N. Watkins, Hobbes's System of Ideas, Second Edition (London: Hutchin

son, 1973).

4. Thomas Hobbes, Elements of Philosophy, the First Section, Concerning Body, in W Molesworth, ed., The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, vol. I (London: John

Bohn, 1839). Unless otherwise noted, pages references are to this work.

5. Cf. J. Weinberg, "Induction," in his Abstraction, Relation, Induction (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965).

6. Cf. G. H. von Wright, The Logical Problem of Induction, Second Edition

(Oxford: Blackwell, 1957).

7. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), vol. II, p. 125.

8. Ibid.

9. For details, see F Wilson, "The Rationalist Response to Aristotle in Descartes and Arnauld," in E. J. Kremer, ed., The Great Arnauld (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994).

10. See Descartes, Meditations, III, trans. L. Lafleur, in L. J. Lafleur, trans., Descartes: Philosophical Essays (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964), p. 97ff.

11. Cottingham et al., II, p. 74.

12. Meditations, trans. Lafleur, p. 98.

IS. Ibid., p. 100.

14. Cottingham et al., II, p. 75.

15. For an extended discussion of Antisthenes, and the evidence concerning his

views, see C. M. Gillespie, "The Logic of Antisthenes," Archiv f?r Geschichte der

Philosophie, vol. 27 (1914), pp. 479-500 and vol. 28 (1915), pp. 20-38.

Gillespie carefully distinguishes the views of Antisthenes from the relativism of

Protagoras.

Gillespie also draws an interesting parallel between the views of Antisthenes and those of Hobbes.

16. All quotations from Aristotle are from The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. R.

McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941).

17. See, for example, Sophist 251A-B and 252 C where views are stated without attribution but which seem to be the same as those attributed by Aristotle to

Antisthenes.

18. See Theaetetus 202 A ff.

19. See J. S. Mill, System of Logic, Eighth Edition (London: Longmans, 1872), Bk. I, Ch. II, sec. 5.

20. In F Wilson, "The Rationalist Response to Aristotle in Descartes and Ar

nauld," there is a detailed textual analysis that shows the scheme as here adum brated is clearly to be found in Aristotle, and that it was the notion of science to

which the rationalism of Descartes and Arnauld was intended to be a response. It is clear that what Hobbes was taught when he was a student at Oxford was

a thoroughgoing diet of Aristotle. He rejected all this teaching, and later scoffed at

the University's "Aristotelity" (Leviathan, in The English Works, vol. Ill, p. 670) tricked out with the jargon of "vain philosophy" (p. 674); he argued that the "natural

philosophy [of the Greeks] was rather a dream than science" (p. 668), and dismissed


the "error of separated essences" (p. 675), which he said was "built on the vain

philosophy of Aristotle" (p. 674), as the source of "absurdities" (p. 675) in natural

philosophy, religion, and politics. In this condemnation of the Aristotelity of the

universities he was joined by other critics such as Clarendon and Bishop Butler; see Strickland Gibson, "The University of Oxford," in H. E. Salter and M. D. Lobel,

eds., Victoria History of the County of Oxford (London: Oxford University Press,

1954), vol. Ill, p. 270.

Bachelors, such as Hobbes was when he was a student, were expected to study, as part of their course of instruction, natural philosophy. For the latter they were

supposed to read Aristotle's Physics, the De c?elo et mundi, the De meteoris, and

the De partibus naturalibus or the De anima; see Mark H. Curtis, Oxford and

Cambridge in Transition: 1558-1642 (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 91. The tutors would presumably add supplementary texts, as they did at Cam

bridge {ibid., p. Ill); in natural philosophy, these might include Toletus' Commen

taria . . . in octo libros Aristotelis and Giacomo Zabarella's De rebus naturalibus

libri XXX {ibid.). Other textbooks were commonly available (for this tradition, see

P. Reif, "The Textbook Tradition in Natural Philosophy, 1600-1650," Journal of the

History of Ideas, vol. 30 [1969], pp. 17-32; and also L. Thorndyke, "The Cursus

Philosophicus before Descartes," Archive Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, vol. 4 [1951], pp. 16-24). There were of course many variations in this tradition, but there was an essential Aristotelian core that the textbooks represented not

inaccurately. The textbook tradition held, with Aristotle, that "science consists in

certain, universal, and unchanging knowledge achieved through causal demonstra

tion" (Reif, p. 21); and further, like Aristotle, the textbook tradition often ended up

trying "to resolve their difficulties by resorting to such pseudo-explanations as

'occult' qualities or simply 'nature'" {ibid.). It is these aspects of the Aristotelian

tradition to which Hobbes, like Descartes, Arnauld, Locke, and the rest of the early modern tradition, objected. And it is, therefore, these aspects that I am here trying to, albeit briefly, characterize. Again, for greater detail, see Wilson, "The Ration

alist Response to Aristotle in Descartes and Arnauld."

21. Cf. L. A. Kosman, 'Understanding, Explanation and Insight in Aristotle's

Posterior Analytics," in H. N. Lee et al., eds., Exegesis and Argument (Assen, The

Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1973), pp. 374-92:

"Prima facie. . .understanding the why of something is not understanding that

thing, but some other thing, namely its cause, that which is responsible for

it being the case.

"Any account of what leads Aristotle to identify understanding something and

knowing its causes must begin with the defeat ofthat prima facie expectation. For it must understand 'cause' to refer not to something other than the entity in question, but to the entity itself under that description which reveals

certain of its kath auto predicates. . ..The why in terms of which scientific

understanding is defined is simply the nature of the phenomenon in question. . ..The asking a why question is thus an attempt to understand more fully the

nature of the phenomenon being explained" (p. 376).

22. D. Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Knowledge, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, Second Edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), p. 25, p. 163.

23. This is why it is quite wrong to say, as Lesher does [James H. Lesher, "The

Meaning o?NOUS in the Posterior Analytics," Phronesis, vol. 18 (1973), pp. 44-68], that "If. . .we mean by 'intuition' a faculty which acquires knowledge about the

world in an a priori manner, then it will be inappropriate to think of the Aristotelian nous as intuition" (p. 64). To be sure, the knowledge, according to Aristotle, is not

innate, but acquired only after a certain amount of sense experience from which it

is abstracted; but the product ofthat process of abstraction is, contrary to Lesher, a rational intuition of a necessary structure that is not given in sense as such.


24. See Descartes, Discourse on Method, in Discourse on Method, Optics, Geome

try, and Meteorology, trans. P. J. Olscamp (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), pp. 37-38, p. 52.

For a discussion of the role of the experimental methods in the Cartesian

philosophy, see F. Wilson, "The Rationalist Response to Aristotle in Descartes and

Arnauld."

25. Cf. T. Beauchamp and A. Rosenberg, Hume and the Problem of Causation

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981).

26. D. Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, ed., L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1888), Bk. I, Part III, sec. 15.

27. For discussion of the transition from scientia to empirical science, see F

Wilson, "The Lockean Revolution in the Theory of Science," in S. Tweyman and G. Moyal, eds., Early Modern Philosophy. Epistemololgy, Metaphysics and Politics

(New York: Caravan Press), pp. 65-97; and also "Critical Review of I. Hacking, The

Emergence of Probability," Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 8 (1978), pp. 587

97.

28. Cf. F. Wilson, "Hume's Theory of Mental Activity," in D. F. Norton, N. Capaldi, and W Robison, eds., McGill Hume Studies (San Diego: Austin Hill Press, 1979),

pp. 101-20; and "Hume's Defence of Causal Inference," Dialogue, vol. 22 (1983), pp. 661-94.

29. For an extended discussion and defence of the Humean position, see F.

Wilson, Laws and Other Worlds (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1986).

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Hobbes' Inductive Methodology