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Condillac and the language of sensation
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Cardinal, Daniel (1995) Condillac and the language of sensation. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3879660
Abstract
This thesis addresses the empiricist project as it came to be formulated in the 18th century and specifically the attempts to determine the limits of human knowledge through its reduction to sensation. Taking Locke's departure from Cartesianism as my starting point, I pursue the efforts of Condillac to complete this reduction in two early works: the Essai sur l'origine des connoissances humaines (1746) and the Traité des sensations (1754). By according a central role to language in the Essai, Condillac attempts a radical solution to the problem of how sensation alone can be a sufficient basis for the development of advanced faculties. I argue that Condillac's conception of signs as the principle which develops human understanding is best conceived as a means of circumventing what is arguably the central difficulty for Lockean empiricism, namely the problem of idealism.
In the Traité Condillac attempts to complete his account of the development of the understanding by uncovering the conditions under which a pre-linguistic awareness is generated. However his efforts to discover the conditions of human knowledge within the sensible, inevitably involve Condillac in a negotiation with the 'rationalist' system-building from which he tries to distance himself. The recent discovery of an overtly Leibnizian tract, Les Monades (1746), provides, I argue, the key to a full understanding of Condillac's philosophy. In the thesis I describe the line of tension traced by Condillac as he accepts and rejects by turns some form of monadological system as the basis to his sensationalism. Through an analysis of the relationship with Leibniz I argue that the empiricist project inevitably becomes caught within the Condillacian dilemma: a dilemma arising from the dual obligation to place constraints on, and to uncover the conditions of possibility for, human inquiry.
| Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BD Speculative Philosophy P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics |
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| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Condillac, Etienne Bonnot de, 1714-1780 -- Criticism and interpretation, Senses and sensation -- Philosophy, Comprehension (Theory of knowledge), Linguistics -- Philosophy | ||||
| Official Date: | 1995 | ||||
| Dates: |
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| Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
| Theses Department: | Department of Philosophy | ||||
| Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
| Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
| Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Benjamin, Andrew | ||||
| Format of File: | |||||
| Extent: | vii, 298 pages | ||||
| Language: | eng |
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