Epistemic feelings and the making of the statement as a meaningful linguistic structure. Revisiting Heinrich Gomperz’s psychoaffective model of semantics and semiotics and its significance today

ABSTRACT

In the present article, I revisit the feeling-based model of semantics and semiotics proposed in 1908 by the Austrian philosopher Heinrich Gomperz (1873–1942) within the framework of his “semasiology” (Semasiologie). I discuss how Gomperz regarded epistemic (“intellectual”) feelings as the foundations of both conceptual and grammatical meanings, but also of the “semiotization” of the statement (Aussage). Special emphasis is placed on how, for him, affective states help make the statement a global meaningful structure. An analysis of Gomperz’s psychoaffective model leads me to wonder about the soundness of the provocative view that epistemic feelings may be the core psychological components of linguistic meaning.

KEYWORDS:

• Heinrich Gomperz
• semantics
• semiotics
• epistemic feeling
• semantic internalism
• image schema

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Lorenzo Cigana and Henrik Jørgensen for having given me the opportunity to present my research on Gomperz and semasiology within the framework of the thematic workshop “Between Form and Meaning: The Structural Quest for ‘Gesamtbedeutungen’,” held on the occasion of ICHoLS XV – the present article being partly based on the text of my presentation. As the two guest editors of this issue of Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, Lorenzo and Henrik also deserve special thanks for their patience and commitment regarding the preparation of my manuscript. I am also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers and Hartmut Haberland and Lars Heltoft, the two journal’s editors, whose insightful comments permitted me to improve the quality of the manuscript, and to Barbara Every for proofreading the English text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ In spite of recent renewed interest in his work, the literature on Gomperz is astonishingly scarce, especially in English. For an overview of Gomperz’s thought and life, see Gomperz (1943), Seiler and Stadler (1994), and Hacohen (2000, 149–155). For a detailed analysis of the issues discussed in the present article, see my recent contributions (Romand 2019a; 2019b; 2022a). Further developments on Gomperz’s Weltanschauungslehre and theory of language can be found in Henckmann (1988), Kiesow (1990), and Seiler (1991).

² On the conceptual and genealogical link between empiriocriticism and pathempiricism as two instances of “affectivist” immanentist positivism, see Romand (2019a). Although Gomperz prepared his doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Ernst Mach, the views expounded in his Weltanschauungslehre prove to be much more closely related to Avenarius’s feeling-based model than to Mach’s sensation-based positivist model. Among other characteristic features of his pathempiricist doctrine, his conception of the “statement” (Aussage) as the basic structural and functional unit of language and experience has its roots, at least partially, in the Kritik der reinen Erfahrung (1888–1890). Cf. Romand (2019a; 2022a).

³ On the notion of internalism in epistemology and semantics, see Kornblith (2001) and Riemer (2016).

⁴ On naturalism in epistemology, see Rysiew (2021).

⁵ On the notion of the “psychoaffectivist”/”psychoaffective” approach to language, see Romand (2021, 2022a).

⁶ The notion of “epistemic feeling” or “emotion” is an old concept, much debated in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, which has recently experienced a renewed interest in the philosophy of emotions and the philosophy of mind. Cf. Arango-Muñoz and Michaelian (2014), Candiotto (2020), and Romand (in press^a).

⁷ As one of the article’s two anonymous reviewers emphasized, Gomperz’s semasiology can be said to be, by using the fashionable language of current psycho- and neurolinguistics, an attempt at grounding semantic knowledge in feeling. This is true, but I specify that, here, “feeling” is not a general term to refer to a variety of psychological or bodily processes, but a well-defined expression for a specific category of mental states. More specifically, Gomperz’s intention is to “ground” linguistic meaning in elementary experiential entities that, as evaluative factors of the mind, carry an intuitive and abstract form of cognizance. In Chapter 2 of the Semasiologie (Gomperz 1908, 140–219), Gomperz critically reviews the three chief approaches that, in his view, have been contemplated so far to solve “the problem of linguistic meaning”, namely, “realism”, “nominalism”, and “rationalism” – the conceptions according to which the origin of semantic knowledge lies in, respectively, some property of the external world, the representational activity of the mind, and “the faculty of thought.” As he strives to demonstrate, the pathempiricist view has the advantage of combining the theoretical and epistemological benefits of each of the three other views while avoiding their drawbacks. Gomperz’s internalist and naturalist feeling-based approach to semantics, conceived as a reaction against more traditional approaches to linguistic meaning, acquires increased topicality when placed in the context of current psycho- and neurosemantics. In this respect, it contrasts with both (a) the embodied perspective of concepts, the view that conceptual knowledge roots first and foremost in perceptual and motor systems and corresponds, mutatis mutandis, to what Gomperz called the “nominalist” stance, and (b) the amodal theory of concepts, the view that conceptual knowledge has a format of its own and roots in “the language of thought” and should be identified with a neo-rationalist stance. Cf. Kiefer and Pulvermüller (2012). In this article’s conclusion, I will say a word about the significance of Gomperz’s ideas in light of current research on embodied cognition, while emphasizing that it can serve as a fruitful interpretative framework for the cognitive psychology research program on “image schemas.”

⁸ All herein proposed translations, from German and French, are mine.

⁹ According to the prevalent view among the late 19^th- and early 20^th-century German-speaking psychologists of language, although both are constituent elements of mental life, Vorstellung and Gefühl are two distinct types of psychical entities that, because they consist of different distinctive properties, are irreducible to each other. This ontological distinction goes hand in hand with a functional one, each of the two categories of mental states being supposed to play a role of its own in the making of linguistic consciousness. The driving force beyond this idea is that, as evaluative and metacognitive factors of the mind, feelings or affective states help experientially differentiate and diversify the information inherent to representational contents by proving them with an additional kind of information that is not directly contained in them. Cf. Romand (2021; 2022a).

¹⁰ The term is directly borrowed from Avenarius who, in the Kritik der reinen Erfahrung (1888–1890), referred to “feeling” (Gefühle) as “characters” (Charaktere).

¹¹ Although the expression has been popularized only recently, the issue of epistemic feelings, contrary to common belief, is by no means new and had achieved great popularity in Gomperz’s time, especially in the German-speaking countries. Here we are dealing with a question that became particularly relevant in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries in the wake of the emergence of “the multidimensional theory of feeling” in affective psychology – the view that pleasure-displeasure is only one experiential “dimension” of affective life, among others. Gomperz, as a theorist of epistemic feeling, drew inspiration, first and foremost, from Avenarius and Lipps, two major theorists of feeling whom he briefly commented on in the Weltansschauungslehre (Gomperz 1905, 377–378). Avenarius, in the second volume of the Kritik der reinen Erfahrung (Avenarius 1890), had proposed a clear-cut distinction between hedonic and epistemic feelings and had also attempted, probably for the first time, to establish a complete taxonomy of these feelings. Cf. Romand (forthcoming). In the first edition of Vom Fühlen, Wollen und Denken (Lipps 1902), Lipps had proposed, for his part, a sophisticated phenomenological analysis of affective states and of how they are involved in the making of the forms of cognizance and intellectual processes – a conception of affective life that, in all likelihood, would have also have a significant impact on Gomperz’s way of envisioning the nature and function of epistemic feelings. Cf. Romand (2019a; 2022a; in press^a). Wundt, as a proponent of the “tridimensional theory of feeling,” whose views are also briefly commented on in the Weltanchauungslehre (Gomperz 1905, 377), was a further source of inspiration for Gomperz’s affective psychology and epistemology. Cf. Romand (2022b).

¹² As encountered in the present essay, the terms “phenomenological” and “phenomenology” are used with the meaning they traditionally have in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of emotions and refer here to affective states’ property of being experienced with a definite “coloration” (Färbung) or “quality” (Qualität). In any case, here, the use of such terminology does not allude to phenomenology as an established philosophical movement.

¹³ See in particular Gomperz (1908, 229–232, 236–237). See also Romand (2019b; 2022a).

¹⁴ See in particular Gomperz (1908, 220, 231–238). Gomperz’s notion of logisches Formalgefühl and its historical context of appearance is discussed at length in Romand (2019b).

¹⁵ Here, as in many other occasions in the Semasiologie (“substance,” “accident,” “categorematic”/”syncategorematic parts of speech,” etc.), we are dealing with an expression that demonstrates Gomperz’s close familiarity with the scholastic (and ancient) research tradition on language – a familiarity that is particularly palpable in the erudite developments he proposes in the chapter “Entwicklung des Bedeutungsproblems” (Gomperz 1908, 140–219). Nevertheless, as one of the reviewers highlighted, although Gomperz may give the impression of “recasting the tradition in a new affective perspective,” the impact of scholastic and ancient authors on his semasiology should not be, in my view, overemphasized. The fact is that the chief concepts and the explanatory model he proposes make sense, first and foremost, in light of the “psycholinguistic” tradition that was then prevailing in the German-speaking area. Cf. Romand (2019b; 2022a).

¹⁶ Here it is worth noting that Gomperz’s feeling-based semiotic model is reminiscent of the theory of “nominal judgment” (Namenurtheil) that Lipps had expounded 15 years earlier in Chapter XIX of his Grundzüge der Logik (Lipps 1893, 75–79; see also Romand 2022a, 176). What Lipps called “nominal judgment” is “the consciousness of the objective togetherness of a word representation (Wortvorstellung) – or of an association of word representations and of the representation (Vorstellung) of a thing – or of an object – that is designated (bezeichnet) by the word or the association of words” (Lipps 1893, 75). As he explains, on the basis of such a judgment or consciousness, “I think of the word as being the object of a will (Willens)” (Lipps 1893, 75) and so experience it, in accordance with the linguistic use, as a sign (Zeichen) referring to a definite semantic content. Although Lipps does not speak of either “feeling” or “mediacy,” he still clearly expresses this idea that, in order to be construed as a signifier relating to a signified, a word or a group of words must be accompanied by a subjective factor that gives it the experiential status of a linguistic sign. Considering that Gomperz was familiar with Lipps’s ideas and that the Grundzüge der Logik was a widely read book in the early 20^th century, it seems consistent to regard Lipps’s theory of nominal judgment as a direct source of inspiration for Gomperz’s psychoaffective semiotics. Interestingly, Gomperz’s model of the linguistic sign also resonates, to some extent, with Benveniste’s semiotic views, as expounded in his famous article “Nature du signe linguistique” (Benveniste 1966 [1939]). Here Benveniste (1966 [1939], 55) writes: “(…) the sign, the basic element of the linguistic system, encompasses a signifier and a signified, whose interconnection must be recognized as necessary (nécessaire), these two components being consubstantial with each other.” Although he proves to be, in this respect, less explicit than Gomperz and Lipps, Benveniste also advocates the idea that, in order to be apprehended as a linguistic sign, the signifier, in addition to relating to the signified, must be experienced in its relation to it. Gomperz’s, Lipps’s, and, to some extent, Benveniste’s contributions can be regarded as three instances of one and the same research tradition on the foundations of semiotic consciousness, an approach whose ins and outs deserve further theoretical and historical investigations.