Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole

Abstract

Arnauld and Nicole begin with the premise that language is secondary to and dependent on thought: language is a purely conventional means for expressing thoughts. So, all theorizing about language is really theorizing about the relationship between ideas and conventionalized sounds. This thesis was key to maintaining that language was a uniquely human (and rational) phenomena. The classification of meaning types occupied much of the first part of the Port Royal Logic. The second part of the selection concerns propositions, propositional structures, and propositional meaning. Unlike a more holistic use theory of propositional meaning, they push for a notion of propositional meaning that is a function of the words composing the proposition. They also address the important notion of truth/falsity and attempt to explain how not just propositions but also ideas and definitions can themselves be false.

Text from: Buroker, J.V. ed. 1996. Logic or the Art of Thinking. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.