© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008 DOI: 10.1163/156853408X360939 Vivarium 46 (2008) 302-317 www.brill.nl/viv viva rium Why Is hought Linguistic? Ockham’s Two Conceptions of the Intellect Martin Lenz Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Abstract One of Ockham’s fundamental tenets about the human intellect is that its acts consti- tute a mental language. Although this language of thought shares some of the features of conventional language, thought is commonly considered as prior to conventional language. his paper tries to show that this consensus is seriously challenged in Ock- ham’s early writings. I shall argue that, in claiming the priority of conventional language over mental language, Ockham established a novel explanation of the syste- maticity of thought—an explanation which anticipates the idea that thought becomes systematic through the acquisition of conventional language. Keywords concepts, mental language, priority of language over thought, semantics, systematicity 1. Introduction One of the central questions that William of Ockham tackled throughout his academic writings is how the human intellect works, or more precisely, what we have to assume about the intellect in order to explain cognition and thought. As is well-known, Ockham could appeal to long-standing traditions according to which thought is like language, since it is by means of language that we communicate our thoughts. Ockham, however, was rather cautious and readily admitted that we do not really know what kind of entities are in the intellect. 1 So rather than relying on the analogy between thought and 1) See Ockham, Scriptum in librum primum Sententiarum, d. 27, q. 2, Oh IV, 196-197, where he addresses this issue as a difficultas realis as opposed to mere terminological problems (difficul- tates vocales).