Malebranche’s Neoplatonic Semantic Theory
The International Journal of the Platonic
Tradition
8 (2014), pp. 33-71.
Abstract
This paper argues that Malebranche’s semantics
sheds light on his metaphysics and epistemology, and is of interest in its own right.
By recasting issues linguistically, it shows that Malebranche assumes a
Neoplatonic semantic structure within Descartes’ dualism and Augustine’s theory
of illumination, and employs linguistic devices from the Neoplatonic tradition. Viewed semantically, mental states of
illumination stand to God and his ideas as predicates stand in Neoplatonic
semantics to ideas ordered by a privative relation on “being.” The framework sheds light on interpretive
puzzles in Malebranche studies such as the way ideas reside in God’s mind, the
notion of resemblance by which bodies imitate their exemplar causes, and the
issue of direct vs. indirect perception through a mechanism by which agents can
see bodies by “seeing” ideas. Malebranche’s semantics is of interest in its own
right because it gives a full (if implausible) account of the mediating relations that determine indirect
reference; lays out a correspondence theory of truth for necessary judgments;
defines contingent truth as based on an indirect reference relation that is
both descriptive and causal but that does not appeal to body-mind causation;
and within his theory of perception, works out an account of singular reference
in which singular terms carry existential import, refer indirectly via causal
relations, but describe their referents only in a general way.