First and Second Intentions: Buckner on Zabarella, Kant, Frege, and Wittgenstein

The following two quotations are from the Facebook Medieval Logic forum.

 

Giacomo Zabarella (1533 – 1589). “Now first intentions are names immediately signifying realities by means of a concept in the soul, for instance, animal and human being, or those concepts of which these names are signs. But second intentions are other names imposed on these names, for instance, genus, species, name, verb, proposition, syllogism, and others of that sort, or the concepts themselves that are signified through these names.”

Edward Buckner comments:

 

The distinction [between first and second intentions] is rediscovered in various ways by subsequent philosophers. I see something like it in Kant’s distinction between concepts which are ‘pure’, and concepts which are not, in Frege’s distinction between concept and object words, and possibly in Wittgenstein, who viewed logic as a sort of scaffolding through which we conceive the world, a scaffolding which cannot be described in words. (4121 “Propositions cannot represent logical form: it is mirrored in them”). If I understand Wittgenstein, it is that there can be no science of second intentions in Zabarella’s sense, for such a science would be a futile attempt to represent logical form. The Tractatus of course is such an attempt, which is why he says (654) his propositions, while nonsensical, can be used as steps [in a ladder] to climb up beyond them, then throw away the ladder.

 

Kant

 

I think Ed is wrong above about Kant.  For Kant, the pure is the opposite of the empirical. Every concept is either pure or empirical and no concept is both. A pure concept is one that is not drawn from experience, ein solcher der nicht von der Erfahrung abgezogen ist, but originates from the understanding in respect of both form and content, sondern auch dem Inhalte nach aus dem Verstande entspringt. The form of all concepts, including pure concepts, arises from reflexion Reflexion, and thus from the understanding. Empirical concepts arise from the senses, entspringen aus den Sinnen,  by comparison of the objects of experience. Their content comes from the senses, and their form of universality, Form der Allgemeinheit, alone from the understanding.

 

If Buckner is telling us that Kant's pure-empirical distinction runs parallel to Zabarella's first intention-second intention distinction, then that can't be right. For Zabarella's animal and human being, which are first intentions for him, count as empirical concepts for Kant. 

 

Any comparison of Zabarella (1533-1589) the Aristotelian and Kant is bound to be fraught with difficulty because of the transcendental-subjective turn of modern philosophy commencing with Descartes (1596-1650).  For Aristotle, the categories are categories of a real world independent of  our understanding; for Kant, the categories are precisely categories of the understanding (Verstandeskategorien) grounded in the understanding both in their form and in their content.  The categories of Aristotle are thus objective, categories belonging to a world to be understood, and not subjective, categories whereby a mind understands the world.

 

Pure Concepts of Reason as Limit Concepts

 

Kant also speaks in his Logic and elsewhere of Ideas which are pure concepts of reason, Vernunft, and not of understanding, Verstand. Die Idee ist ein Vernunftbegriff deren Gegenstand gar nicht in der Erfahrug kann angetroffen werden. (Logik, sec. 3)  The objects of these pure concepts of reason cannot be known by us because our form of intuition, Anschauung, is sensible, not intellectual. We can know only phenomena, not noumena. Among these Ideas, which are plainly limit concepts, are God, the soul, the world-whole, and freedom. And they are not merely negative limit concepts. Free will, for example, is objectively real despite its not being obejctively knowable. But more on this later.

 

Frege

 

I also think Ed is wrong about Frege.  But I'll leave that for later. Wifey wants to go out to dinner. Philosophy before bread, but happy wife, happy life!

 

As for Wittgenstein, I think Ed is on the right track. 

 

 

Comments

[oz the ostrich]

"Edward Buckner comments: The distinction [between first and second intentions] is rediscovered in various ways by subsequent philosophers. "

You have taken this rather out of context. I suggested three hypotheses - an hypothesis is a proposition which I invite you and others to entertain without committing myself to its truth.

Hypothesis 1 was that the distinction between first and second intentions is inherited by Zabarella, not discovered or rediscovered. The forum accepted this as true.

Hypothesis 2 was that the distinction between first and second intentions as a tradition, i.e. inherited or handed down, disappears entirely after the 16th century. After discussion, and after I discovered that Hobbes mentions it in his Logic, the forum rejected this as it stands (though I think it still stands in modified form).

Hypothesis 3 is as you put it above. But it is merely a speculation.

“If Buckner is telling us that Kant's pure-empirical distinction runs parallel to Zabarella's first intention-second intention distinction, then that can't be right. For Zabarella's animal and human being, which are first intentions for him, count as empirical concepts for Kant.”

That’s exactly the wrong way round. I was speculating that first intentions = empirical concepts and second intentions = pure concepts.

“Any comparison of Zabarella (1533-1589) the Aristotelian and Kant is bound to be fraught with difficulty because of the transcendental-subjective turn of modern philosophy commencing with Descartes (1596-1650).”

Not quite as simple as that. The scholastics recognised a concept akin to the data of sense, namely the sensible species. Aquinas “Species intelligibilis se habet ad intellectum, sicut species sensibilis ad sensum” – the intelligible species is related to the understanding as the sensible species is related to sense. So the extent of the ‘turn’ is questionable. However, the scholastics strictly (and rightly, IMO) distinguished between the material that belongs to logic, which Aristotle deals with in the Organon, and that which belongs to the theory of perception, which Aristotle deals with in De Anima.

“For Aristotle, the categories are categories of a real world independent of our understanding”

Zabarella (I appreciate you haven’t seen his text, or the translation we are working on) discusses precisely that claim in his Logic. E.g. he mentions Averroës’ claim that “the ten categories are the subject both in the sciences and in logic, but in two different ways. In logic, as secondary concepts apply to them, that is, as second intentions are imposed upon them, and in the sciences as they are concepts of realities which exist outside the soul, which is as though to say, as they are cognizable. For we cognize realities through their concepts, which we grasp in the mind.”