was impossible for all but the most basic language to mirror the world, while to demand that it should was to demand the reduction of human capacity to communicate to the level of animals unable to form abstract concepts. In short, Bentham asserted that all language that deployed the names of anything other than really existing entities is figurative, or metaphorical (UC cii. 466 (1843: viii. 331)). The propositions it contains are fictitious; that is, they are strictly speaking falsehoods, asserting the existence of things that possess no independent existence.
Bentham was less clear than might be wished in delineating the category of real entities, but generally he regarded two sorts of things as real entities, namely particular physical substances or bodies on one hand, and certain psychical entities (that is sensations, impressions and ideas) on the other (1983c: 271n; 2016b: 424; UC ci. 341 (1843: viii. 262); UC ci. 347 (1843: viii. 267); UC ci. 417). All knowledge of external reality came through the mediation of sensory experience and reflection on it. Encounters with physical real entities deposited impressions via our sense organs, while the images or ideas created by those impressions could be recalled at leisure. Since all experience of the world came through our senses, the psychical entities, sensations, impressions and ideas were the direct objects of that experience, so that the existence of the external world was, properly speaking, inferential (1997: 180 (UC cii. 15); 1983c: 271n): we conclude that the wall before us exists because we make highly plausible inferences from the sensory data delivered by sight and touch.
Bentham wasted no time in querying the reality of the external world, arguing that no bad consequences could follow from such acceptance, in contrast to the pain quickly endured if we opted to disbelieve in the wall’s existence. In addition, he assumed not only that the world we perceive exists, but that sense experience is capable of delivering accurate information about it. The basis for accepting these assertions was twofold. First, our only source of information indicated its accuracy. Second, while that source of information might actually be deceptive, the consequences of accepting the evidence of sense were incomparably better than those of rejecting it: ‘in point of practice, no bad consequences can . . . possibly arise from supposing it to be true; and the worst consequences can not but arise from supposing it to be false’ (UC lxix. 52; see also 1997: 182 (UC cii. 15)).
The criterion that rapidly determines the reality of the existence of the external world is thus entirely utilitarian and pragmatic. How do we know that the evidence we perceive in the sensations we experience is reliable? We do not and cannot, but that evidence is the only kind available to us. At this point we might abandon hope of perceiving reality, but Bentham effectively dismissed this option because by denying any rational basis for preferring one course to another it would paralyse thought and action in pursuit of improvement. At this foundational level, utility, the demand that we prioritize pursuit of happiness, wins out over seeking truth in relation to questions that, given the informational constraints of human existence, we simply cannot answer. There is a deep connection here with Bentham’s goal, which was to fashion a discursive tool by which legal and political concepts could be rendered meaningful and determinate. Some philosophers have dismissed Bentham’s logic as revealing the shallowness of his approach and intellect (Peirce, 1931–58: v. para. 158). This, however, is to overlook the fact that, for him, investing effort in doubting the reliability of sensory data led nowhere and thus had little value: logic, like all other arts and sciences, aimed at happiness (UC ci. 92 (1843: viii. 219)).
There are both subjective and objective elements in Bentham’s approach to logic. In relation to the first, all human experience is subjective: we live our lives from the inside out, having no direct access to each other’s experience. Each of us inhabits a private reality, but language provides the bridge between these realities. The subjects of the most primitive communications were existing objects, to which reference was aided by the links between the objects, the names we gave them, and their mental images. When objects were present, we disambiguated our referents by pointing at them. When they were absent, we depended on the ability of their names to call forth the same image in our minds and that of our interlocutors. Such designation, the beginning of both language and logic, became embedded in the structure of language and thought, so that ‘a material image is the only instrument by which . . . conceptions can be conveyed from mind to mind’ (UC cii. 463). To exchange sense through words is, for Bentham, to exchange mental images (1843: iii. 189). Communication about real entities is facilitated by their presentation of unambiguous images, copies of sense impressions. Following Locke, Bentham distinguished between the names of ideas with natural archetypes, and those without: ‘What I assume then, is that of the objects . . . we are in use to speak of, some do, others do not exist. Those which do exist may be said to have their archetypes in nature: those which do not exist may be said not to have their archetypes in nature’ (UC lxix. 52; and see Locke, 1975: 372). However, because noun substantives often do name things, encountering a name produces ‘a disposition and propensity to suppose . . . the real existence, of a . . . correspondent thing’ (UC ci. 341 (1843: viii. 262)).
If we want to exchange meaning about abstract terms, the easiest way is to speak as if they were physical objects, even though this is a misdescription. The logical analysis by which ‘ripeness’, for instance, is first abstracted from a real ripe apple, then designated as a noun in its own right, and then attributed to other plants in a similarly appetizing state abounds in fictions, false propositions about the world, since the quality of ripeness has no existence in the absence of really existing objects in which it might inhere. Bentham anticipated Hans Vaihinger’s philosophy of ‘as if’ in regarding many basic categories with which thought seeks to understand the world as fictitious entities (1997: 88–120; Vaihinger, 1925: 157–66). However, while they both regarded qualities as fictitious, for Bentham the particular bodies to which qualities were attributed were impeccably real (UC cii. 461 (1843: viii. 330); 1983c: 262).
The metaphorical substantification of the immaterial is seen everywhere in language, in constructions like ‘in motion’ or ‘at rest’ and in designation of qualities. In referring to mental operations, we spatialize the mind as the container wherein they occur, and borrow names and images of real entities to designate them (1843: viii. 327–9).4 Abstract nouns are not only useful but essential, they permit the exchange of complex and subtle information relating indirectly to the exterior world, even though they do not designate actually existing objects: ‘A proper substantive, the name of a real entity, is understood immediately and of itself it offers a certain image to the conception. An improper substantive offers no such image. Of itself it has no meaning’ (2016b: 401).
Because fictitious entities are not associated with images that correspond to natural archetypes, they possess no obvious shared meaning. Insofar as propositions including such entities can have any meaning, it is only a connection with real entities that can bestow it: ‘The ideas we have are all ultimately derived from substances: that is, from the several natural bodies that surround us’ (2016b: 200). Fortunately, such connections are available for words like right and obligation, which form the currency of law, and Bentham’s three methods for defining those entities, phraseoplerosis, paraphrasis and archetypation,5 consist in making those connections explicit.
To make sense of a fictitious entity, it is necessary first to include its name in a proposition (phraseoplerosis). Modern philosophers have recognized the importance of Bentham’s insight that analysis of meaning was properly conducted at the level not of individual words, but of the proposition, anticipating later developments in analytical philosophy (Ogden, 1932: xlii–lii; Quine, 1981: 67–70; Harrison, 1983: 64–8). Paraphrasis consists in ‘that sort of exposition which may be afforded by transmuting into a proposition having for its subject some real entity, a proposition which has not for its subject any other than a fictitious entity’ (UC cii. 217 (1843: viii. 246); see also 1983c: 272n; 2016b: 386). In paraphrasis of normative abstractions, the real entities that do the work are the sensations of pleasure and pain (1977: 495n; 2010b: 286).6 Thus a man is under an obligation when he faces pain in consequence of failure on his part to act in a certain way. Harrison notes that a significant difficulty arises concerning the criteria by which we understand that the substituted proposition possesses the same meaning as the original,
