Ockham’s Intervention

This chapter is dedicated to William of Ockham’s full-fledged theory of mental language. It shows how it was first developed on the basis of a reflection on what the objects of knowledge are, Ockham’s answer being that they are mental propositions composed of concepts. The ontological status of concepts is then examined—a question over which Ockham importantly changed his mind over the years. It is then shown how the technical apparatus of grammar and semantics was systematically transposed by Ockham to the fine-grained analysis of thought, with the result that thought itself could now be seen as a compositional semantic system. And finally the Ockhamistic idea that concepts are natural signs is discussed.