From the mundane to the profound, most of what we do depends on communication. People are social creatures. We go about our lives intimately connected with one another and the world around us. These connections play a large part in the everyday language we use to communicate. When people share these connections through their common ground, a simple utterance of a familiar expression can be packed with meaning. Communication, then, seems to depend heavily on relations: the mind’s relation to reality and the mind’s relation to others.

The tendency in modern thought toward voluntarism (emphasizing will over intellect) undermines the nature of communication. By turning human nature upside down, it essentially rejects the relational aspects of communication. Though it is typically brought up with regard to morality, voluntarism creates a number of problems for the way we think about everyday language use. Moreover, it has become so central to modern thought that most people aren’t even aware they ascribe to it. While we could spend a whole series of posts on voluntarism in modern thought, I’d like to just focus in this article on introducing the problems voluntarism creates for ordinary, everyday communication. Let’s start by looking at what we do with words.

Doing Things with Words

As the Oxford philosopher J. L. Austin demonstrates in the book How to Do Things with Words, well…we do things with words. We don’t just say things, we do things with words. We promise, persuade, inform, instruct, amuse, consent, criticize, enlighten, etc. These speech acts are the building blocks of communication. In them we see the relations on which communication depends.

To borrow an illustration from Austin, when someone utters “the salt please” at the dinner table, there is a relation between an object (the salt shaker) and an intended audience (the person nearest the shaker). There is also another level of the relation between the speaker and their listener. The speaker is doing something with their utterance that involves the previous two relations. Grounding their utterance in the context of these relations, the speaker requests that their listener pass the salt. Taken out of context, uttering “the salt shaker” is extremely ambiguous and not really all that informative. However, given the mind’s tenacity for making connections, the meaning of the utterance is unambiguous and readily comprehended by the listener who would then pass the salt.

What does all of this have to do with intellect and will? After all, this is what voluntarism is about in the first place. The fact that we are so fluent in our everyday language use, in spite of the complex connections that underlie it, implies a certain ordering of the intellect and will.

Intellect, Will, & Speech Acts

Intellect and will refer to particular faculties that are distinct but related. Moreover, there is an ordering of intellect and will that is seen in the nature of communication. Specifically, that intellect is prior to will. This is significant in the thought of St. Thomas because will is seen as deriving from intellect. This is illustrated in the concept of speaking authentically.

When we speak, it is expected that we speak authentically; “…let the speaker speak truly” says Socrates in the Apology. What we intend to do with words should directly correspond to what we say with words. This, however, presupposes that we actually have the ability to speak authentically: the ability to mean what we say and intend what we mean. Catholic intellectual tradition, in rejecting voluntarism, preserves the fundamental understanding in Western thought of our ability to speak authentically. This is due to the understanding that intellect is prior to will.

Now for the critical (i.e., tedious) point. As we have seen, speech acts and communication depend on relations. In normal circumstances, the meaning of an utterance is almost instantaneous. How? Utterances are not interpreted in a vacuum. The context specificity of an utterance directly corresponds to the contextual information readily available within the cognitive processes of the listener. In other words, we interpret an utterance by grounding it in the relations that support it. Speech acts imply an ordering of intellect and will (for those of you well versed in cognitive science, note that this ordering is metaphysical, not functional). The implication is that the doing in speech acts derives from the understanding shared by the speaker and listener.

Speech acts imply this ordering, authentic speech entails it. When someone speaks authentically, there is alignment between what is said and what is intended. For example, someone who is accountable for a promise is expected to have known and understood the details of the promise prior to their intention to keep the promise (indicated in the carrying out of the speech act itself). We don’t hold people accountable for making promises they don’t know. Why? Because will is not prior to intellect. The intention to keep a promise derives from the understanding supporting the promise. It is nonsensical to hold that the understanding is derived from the mere intention. (An illustration: try and intend to glofurt and see if understanding the term follows from your intention to do it.) Despite this nonsensical notion, this is what people commit themselves to when they ascribe to voluntarism.

Conclusion

Without the natural ordering of intellect over will, there is no ability to speak authentically. Given the extent to which communication depends on relation, lacking the ability to speak authentically would imply that we are not capable of communication in the first place—there would essentially be no relation between speaker and listener that facilitates communication. You could never really know what I mean by an utterance. At best, you could assume that what you think I mean is what I in fact mean, but since the relations between objects and others are severed by voluntarism, there is no necessary connection between what I mean and what you understand. In this and other respects, voluntarism tends toward radical individualism. It turns human nature on its head; in doing so it precludes the relation between persons, the relation on which successful communication rests. What we consider to be common ground is no longer something we share, it becomes something we impose.

Without shared common ground, there’s no foundation with which we can speak authentically. Again, this is exactly what voluntarism entails. One possible area of language use that we see the consequences of this entailment is the decline of verbal contracts in business. Everyone wants external evidence of a contract. I think this is in part due to the influence of voluntarism on modern thought. The real relation between persons that takes place when we communicate is no longer thought about as part of the interaction. Without this relation, there is no evidence to hold someone to their word, to consider them as speaking authentically. So we no longer ground our interaction in the nature of persons but in a piece of paper (or a data file nowadays). Much of this is speculation, but it seems a plausible scenario where voluntarism can corrupt how we communicate.

Insane as it is, the tendency toward voluntarism and the decline of communication are necessarily linked to the extent that all out voluntarism would deny that successful communication actually exists between persons. If there is no ability to speak authentically, then there successful communication is only an illusion. On the contrary, it should appear obvious that people are, in fact, capable of successful communication. (If it doesn’t, I’m not sure you could be convinced by means of communication.) Believing people do not have a capacity for speaking authentically is insanity for the reason that such a belief can be articulated in the first place (at least that it could be articulated and believed). Funny how many of the -isms of the modern world end in contradiction. What’s not so funny is that if we believe them long enough, we may loose the mental gaze that allows us to see such a contradicting end.