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Reconsidering Hobbes's Conventionalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Donald W. Hanson
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Extract

Hobbes's linguistic conventionalism is one of the most obvious themes of his work. But it has not been considered as closely as it should be, given its prominence. I argue that Hobbes reworked quite traditional materials in such a way as to produce a novel doctrine, but that this novelty did not involve him in the implausible claim that issues of scientific truth and proof could be settled simply on the basis of linguistic agreement. Rather, he grounded his conventionalism in the prelinguistic, naturally given experience he called “mental discourse,” and then linked it to the effort to outflank contemporary skepticism. For these reasons, Hobbes's specific form of conventionalism can then be seen to be central both to the limits of his claims and to what he thought could be established with a certainty robust enough to withstand skeptical challenge.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , Fall 1991 , pp. 627 - 651
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1991

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