1

Introduction

Seneca describes the Stoic notion of lekton as a ‘movement of thought’ which makes an

enunciation about a body, and this movement of thought is further expressible in

language, as the thing said by an utterance.1 There are different ways to characterize this

notion of lekton, and one point of debate has been over whether the lekton is properly

interpreted as a mind-dependent or a mind-independent entity. If a lekton is primarily

viewed as a semantic notion, then it becomes natural to characterize it as mind-

dependent; if it is the content of thoughts and utterances then it is in some important

sense parasitic upon these products of the mind, and thus dependent on the mind.

However, Michael Frede and David Sedley both interpret the notion of lekton as akin to

our notion of facts, and thus attributes to them a significant mind-independency and

ontological self-sufficiency. Frede holds that the ontological status of a lekton is such that

it subsists whether or not it is the content of an actual or even possible content of a

thought. David Sedley maintains that lekta form a rational structuring of the world which

our thoughts map on to, and this rational structuring is not dependent on the mind.

In what follows I will assess these two interpretations of the ontological status of

the lekton characterized as the content of thought. Frede’s interpretation has strong

explanatory powers, but I will argue that the ontological status he attributes to the lekton

is inconsistent with the metaphysical properties defined for this notion in Stoic doctrine.

Neither does Sedley’s argument convince us that the mind-independency of the lekton

involves a certain degree of ontological self-sufficiency. I will argue that the only kind of

mind-independency that is needed to explain all we wan to explain is a logical or

1
Seneca: Letters 117.13, Long and Sedley: The Hellenistic Philosophers, Vol. 1, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge 2002 (henceforth LS), 33E.
 2

conceptual distinction between the mind and the lekton. A logical or conceptual

distinction does not carry with it a commitment to an ontological fortification of the

lekton, and certainly not a mind-independency in any substantial sense.

The Ontological Status of the Lekton

In the Stoic theory, the notion of a lekton refers to an incorporeal entity, which is

distinguished from a corporeal, or body, in two ways: By its ontological status, and by its

causal role. As an incorporeal, the lekton was explained as an entity, but not an existing

entity. The Stoic criterion for an entity to exist was that the entity had the powers to cause

change in another body, that is, the power to act upon or be acted upon by another

corporeal. The lekta were regarded as entities, but not existing entities, and consequently

did not have the causal powers of existing things. The ontological status of the

incorporeal lekta was subsistence. The commentary in Long and Sedley suggests that the

notion of a lekton was originally put forward in the Stoic account of causality.2 The

sources distinguish between the body, which is the cause, and the predicate, which is the

effect of the cause. According to Sextus Empiricus “[t]he Stoics say that every cause is a

body which becomes the cause to a body of something incorporeal. For instance the

scalpel, a body, becomes the cause to the flesh, a body, of the incorporeal predicate

‘being cut’”.3 Clement states that “becoming and being cut – that of which a cause is a

cause – since they are activities, are incorporeal. […] Causes are causes of predicates, or,

as some say, of sayables [lekta]”.4 Why did the Stoic theory insist that the ‘activity’

related to a body is an incorporeal predicate? According to the commentary in Long and

2
LS p. 164ff.
3
Sextus Empiricus: Against the Professors 9.211, LS 55B.
4
Clement: Miscellanies 8.9.26.3-4, LS 55C.
 3

Sedley, the notion of a lekton served a particular theoretical role in this account, namely

to explain how the identity of objects was preserved across changes in the object. If the

effect or change to a body were to be regarded as a body in itself, that would have as a

consequence that every time a body underwent a change, a new body would be produced.

When the flesh was cut by the knife, the original ‘flesh’ no longer existed, but would

have been replaced by a new body describable as ‘cut flesh’. If a body and its changed

state would both be corporeals, then there would be no explanation of the intuition that

the original body remained the same, even though it was subject to certain minor

changes. Classifying the changes of the body as incorporeal predicates (lekta) caused by

something acting on the body, the Stoics could maintain that the original object persisted

through change. Because the original body persisted even as it underwent various

activities and changes, the incorporeal predicate is in a certain sense distinct from the

body itself; as Long and Sedley call it, they subsist objectively.5

This metaphysical account characterizes the lekton as non-identical to the

corporeal it is associated with. Michael Frede takes the metaphysical account of the

lekton to suggest that the lekta are in a certain sense independent of the corporeals they

are associated with. This, Frede claims, is also the case with the lekton as it is associated

with mental corporeals as thoughts and utterances; the proper way to interpret the notion

of lekton is to regard it as a mind-independent entity. This is a surprising suggestion. It

would seem that the lekton that is signified by an utterance or the propositional content of

thought, is at least parasitic on its linguistic or mental corporeal, and certainly not mind-

independent. Frede in fact argues that the lekton has an ontologically self-sufficient

independency from its mental corporeal, that is, the lekton subsists even though it is not
5
LS, commentaries p. 340and p. 164.
 4

the content of an actual or even possible thought or utterance. This is a strong claim, but

in a moment we will discover that this interpretation has a strong explanatory force as it

is able to account for important phenomena in thought.

How does the mind-independency of the lekton follow from the metaphysical

characterization of the lekton? Frede takes the metaphysical account of lekta as primary,

and claims that the status of the lekta in the metaphysical theory as objectively or

independently subsistent entities is reflected in the Stoic theory of mind. When we

observe an event, say the above of the flesh being cut, we have an impression of that

which is happening in front of us. Because the hegemonikon (characteristic ‘governing

faculty’, or mind) of humans is rationality, that is, the power of articulated thought and

speech, our impression of the event in front of us is a conceptualized impression. The

event is, as we saw above, accounted for in the metaphysical theory as an object

(corporeal) undergoing a change (incorporeal lekton). Given this metaphysical account,

what is the object of the observer’s thought?

The Stoic theory of mind and knowledge holds that the human hegemonikon is a

corporeal entity, that is, the mind qua mind (not just brain) is a physical thing.

Knowledge is defined as the corporeal hegemonikon’s grasp of something which is also

corporeal, namely the object that is revealed by the impression we have. This is

consistent with the Stoic theory of causality, where we saw that only a body had the

causal powers to cause a change in another body, which is exactly what happens when

the human hegemonikon obtains knowledge of a thing or event. The human mind grasps

the object revealed by the impression and the hegemonikon is altered as a consequence of

this. Given this theory of the mind, what is it that the Stoic mind grasps when the thinker
 5

observes the event of the flesh being cut? As the mind can only grasp something

corporeal, it cannot grasp the activity, or ‘cutting-of-flesh’, which is an incorporeal

predicate or lekton. What the hegemonikon grasps must be the object with its properties

(the flesh with ‘cut’ properties) since this is corporeal, and not what we would call the

fact or state of affairs of the-flesh-is-being-cut, that is, not the lekton, which cannot be

grasped since it is defined as incorporeal and thus without the ability to affect the

hegemonikon. So the object of thought is not the lekton, it is the object of the impression

we are having.

However, we briefly noted above that the human hegemonikon is rationality,

defined as the capacity of articulated thought and speech. Therefore our impressions are

conceptualized impressions. The impression we have when we observe the event of the

flesh being cut is thus, according to doctrine, a conceptualized impression, and Frede sees

this conceptualized feature of thought as the mental equivalent of the metaphysical

lekton. He identifies this mental lekton as the propositional content of the thought.

Articulation or conceptualization will result in some form of propositionality. In Stoic

theory of language lekta are characterized as that which is signified by an utterance,

which is also described as that which is said. ‘That which is said’ is regarded as the

meaning of the sentence uttered, that is, what results from the concatenation of the words

with their meanings.6 Roughly, a proposition. But in addition to this linguistic or

semantic characterization, Frede refers to Sextus as saying that lekta are ‘things that are

said’ in the sense that “to say something is to utter an expression which is significative of

6
Sextus Empiricus: Against the Professors 8.11-12, LS: 33A.
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the thing one has in mind”,7 that is, some feature of thought. This ‘thing one has in mind,’

which is that which is expressible by a proposition, is regarded by Frede as the content of

the thought.

Frede makes a further claim about this content. This conceptualized or

propositional mental item is not identical to the thought itself (Frede p. 112-113), and

moreover, this non-identity implies a certain independence of this content from the

thought itself. Taking the metaphysical account of lekta to be primary, Frede notes that

lekta are metaphysical items of a certain kind that are specifically contrasted with bodies,

and as such are considered separately subsisting items. A degree of metaphysical

independency from the body that caused them was theoretically necessary in order to

preserve the identity of the body itself. Frede infers that the same distinction should

pertain between the corporeal hegemonikon and the incorporeal propositional content of

thought.

Frede’s argument is best taken as more of a cautionary tale and interpretative

suggestion than a positive argument for the mind-independency of the lekton. The

strength of Frede’s proposal lies in its explanatory power, but before we evaluate its

theoretical merits, an outline of the motivation for this interpretation is in order.

According to Frede, the traditional assumption that the semantic notion is theoretically

primary yields the interpretation of lekta as mind-dependent entities. In the semantic

theory, the lekton is characterized as that which is signified by an utterance, and thus a

lekton as a semantic entity seems to be entirely dependent on there being an utterance (or

sentence) for the lekton to be signified by. Consequently, when the understanding of the

7
Sextus Empiricus: Against the Professors, 8.80, Michel Frede. “The Stoic Notion of a Lekton,” in Stephen
Everson (ed.): Language, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1994, p. 111.
 7

mental function of the lekton is modeled on the semantic function, the analogous claim

will be that a lekton can only subsist in so far as there exists a thought of which it is the

content. In this way the lekton is taken to be a mind-independent entity (Frede p. 116 ff.).

But, Frede cautions, we should be hesitant to assume this too readily, because we

may instead take the metaphysical account as formative of the interpretation of the

mental function of the lekton. When we take the metaphysical account to be the foil of

our understanding of the mental function of the lekton, the notion of subsistence should

make us hesitant to assume that the mental lekton only exists “as the actual or even the

possible contents of thought” (Frede p. 118). Frede’s proposal has many levels, and it is

not at all obvious that one level entails another. Let us take them in order. The weakest

claim that Frede’s interpretation makes is the suggestion that thought and its

propositional content are not identical. The content of a thought should not be conflated

with the thought itself, because whereas the thought is a state of the hegemonikon and

thus corporeal, the content is incorporeal and subsists, rather than exists. Frede’s

subsequent inference is made with reference to Sextus Empiricus’ claim that the lekton is

something which we grasp as something which subsists upon our thought.8 This,

according to Frede, now indicates that lekta are something that subsists alongside our

thoughts, which can be considered the second stage of his inference. What is the

significance of this ‘alongside’ or ‘upon’? The non-identity of the corporeal thought and

the incorporeal lekton has driven an ontological wedge between the thought and its

contents, and now Frede seem to infer that the propositional content is distinct from the

thought itself in a sense that is presumably stronger than the non-identity of the two

entities. A stronger sense of independency is necessary for Frede to associate the

resulting notion of lekton with his notion of facts, which are such that “whether or not

anybody has thought of them or will ever think about them, whether or not they get stated

is completely irrelevant” (Frede p. 115). It is clear that we are presented with a

hypostasized propositional item that is ascribed a certain self-sufficient ontological status.

So, to summarize the argument: The lekta are not identical to the corporeal

thought they are associated with, but ontologically independent in such a way that it

occurs “alongside” the thought itself, which suggests a kind of ontological juxtaposition

rather than dependency. This association is fortified by Frede’s final claim, that it is

possible for a lekton to subsist even though it is not the actual or even possible content of

thought. This third and final move is not defended separately, but seems to be taken to

follow from the preceding two levels of the argument. I will not address this gap in the

argument, but assume that some support can be found for this interpretation if it is

explanatory forceful. It will appear that Frede’s account has much explanatory power

already as a consequence of the first theoretical level of his argument. However, the final

and third inference finds no such support, and I will show how this strong claim has

untenable theoretical consequences.

The Explanatory Powers and Failures of the Hypostasized Lekton

Frede’s focus on the non-identity of a thought and its propositional content allows for a

number of phenomena in philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. When the

thinker observes, say, Socrates strolling across the Agora, the thinker has an impression

that reveals to his mind the object Socrates disposed in a certain way, and the corporeal

mind grasps this object. The lekton is the propositional articulation of this physical
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change of the mind, and we now take it to subsist alongside, or with a certain

independence from the physical state of the mind. Now, when the thinker misconceives

the event in front of him, the man is not actually Socrates but someone else, then, because

the lekton is characterized as non-identical to the thought itself, there is no inconsistency

between the thought grasping a different object than the object figuring in the

propositional articulation of the thought. Moreover, the claim that the lekton is not

identical to the thought also allows for the same lekton being caused by two different

mental states, that is in particular, two different minds. The lekton expressed by “Socrates

is walking” corresponds to one observer’s hegemonikon being disposed in a certain way

and to another observer’s hegemonikon being disposed in a certain way. The two

hegemonika are non-identical as they are the minds of two distinct thinkers, but by

identifying the content of the thought with the lekton, we can hold that the two thinkers

entertain thoughts with the same content. The idea of the content of thought being the

same in two thinkers is also a necessary condition for communication between thinkers.9

For one thinker to communicate with another thinker, one thinker must be able to

understand what another thinker has in mind. For this to be possible, the thoughts must be

sufficiently similar, which is only possible when the lekton is not identical to the mind

itself. This articulated thought can be expressed through language and can be

communicated by utterance of the sentence “Socrates is walking”, which signifies the

corresponding lekton.

Frede’s characterization of lekta has, however, an implication that must be

unattractive for an interpretation that has as aim to establish that lekta are significant

metaphysical entities. Frede insists that the lekta’s incorporeal subsistence signifies that
9
I use a loose sense of ‘same’ in this context and do not problematize this notion.
 10

lekta must be understood as hypostasized, self-sufficient facts, that is, as proper entities in

the ontology that are not dependent on thought and speech to subsist. As entities ascribed

full membership in the ontology, one should expect the lekta to have a distinct and

essential function in the ontology. Otherwise, the ontological status ascribed to the entity

appears to be unwarranted. Above, we briefly looked at the role that the lekta play as

mental entities under Frede’s interpretation. As we saw, the object of thought is a

corporeal entity in the extramental world that is revealed by an impression and grasped

by the mind. What the hegemonikon grasps is the object-property combination itself, the

properly existing flesh that has the property ‘cut’. But as we saw, this object-property

combination is related to a lekton, or predicate, namely the incorporeal activity, or

‘cutting-of-flesh’ which the object undergoes, and according to Frede, this lekton is a fact

with a self-sufficient ontological status. But it is not this lekton that the mind grasps,

because the lekton is an incorporeal, and according to the definition, incorporeals have no

causal powers and can not affect the corporeal mind. The ontologically self-sufficient

lekton apparently has no role in the process in which the mind obtains knowledge of the

external world.

Moreover, a lekton is also the content of the resulting state of the hegemonikon,

and an adequate interpretation of the lekton ought to be able to provide a story about how

the mental and the extramental occurrences of the lekton are related. However, given the

inability of the hypostasized metaphysical lekton to affect the mind, it is left unexplained

how the corresponding entity that is the propositional content of a thought is related to

the occurrence of the incorporeal predicate. According to Stoic doctrine, the causal route

is closed for the lekta, therefore, Frede’s fortification of the ontology of the two kinds of
 11

lekta does not provide an adequate explanation. The metaphysical lekton has no power to

produce its mental equivalent, and it is the corporeal objects that do all the work of the

causal interaction. If the mental and the extramental lekta correspond, it is no thanks to

each other, they are only products of the respective corporeals, which are causally

efficacious.

As a consequence of these shortcomings, Frede’s interpretation of lekta as

ontologically self-sustained, mind-independent facts seems unmotivated. If the lekta are

ascribed an status as self-sufficient entities in the ontology, we should expect them to

have an essential and non-substitutable function in the ontology. What we have seen

however, is that lekta are ontologically dispensable, because they perform no function of

the kind expected from a member of the ontology. They are causally inefficacious

entities, therefore insisting on their ontological independency seems rather superfluous,

as long as they simply do not have an essential role in the metaphysics. Therefore,

Frede’s efforts to argue for the ontological self-sufficiency of the lekta has left unclear

the relationship between the content of thought and the predicates associated with

extramental objects. An interpretation that insists on a fortification of the ontology of the

lekta should be able to use the new theoretical apparatus to account for the interaction

between the mental and the extramental, but we have argued that such an account fails.

Why Does Mind-Independency Matter?

Frede insisted that lekta were mind-independent entities in the strong sense; namely as

self-supporting ontological entities that were not dependent on being the actual or

possible content of thought. We argued that this characterization of lekta is not supported
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by the role of the lekta in the ontology. Their ontological status as subsisting undermines

the interpretation that lekta are metaphysically independent entities, that is, entities with a

self-supporting and thus fully adequate role in the ontology. So, contrary to Frede’s

claim, lekta cannot be mind-independent in this strong sense.

What hangs on interpreting the lekta as mind-independent? What would such an

interpretation explain? We saw that Frede’s suggestion was able to account for thoughts

being false. However, it is also the case that to account for the truth of thoughts, or for

thoughts to have a substantial content at all, we need the content of thoughts to be in

some sense or other independent of the mind itself. We can see why this is the case if we

consider a version of Wittgenstein’s argument against a private language, modified for

thought. As we briefly rehearsed above, according to Stoic doctrine, the mind is a

corporeal entity and a thought is a state of this corporeal entity. The mind of one thinker

is thus a different entity than that of another thinker. One of our conclusions above was

that this characterization of the mind necessitated something that could transfer from one

mind to another, or, as we indicated, something that could be sufficiently similar for the

two distinct minds, in order to be recognized by both minds as a particular lekton, i.e., a

particular propositional thought-content. However, the Wittgensteinian argument

emphasizes that this transferability is also necessary for the very coherence of the notion

of content and a fortiori for the applicability of the notions of true and false.

If the content of a thought is identical to the thought itself, then, under the Stoic

theory of the mind, it will be impossible for another thinker to access the thought. This

has as a corollary that the thought of the first thinker cannot be assessed as correct or

incorrect by another thinker. This, according to Wittgenstein, entails that it makes not
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sense to say that the thought has a content at all. Why? Whenever a thinker would have a

certain non-cognitive impression (which are not self-evidently true impressions) this

would result in him having a thought with, say, the content c. Whenever he has a

different non-cognitive impression he would have another thought, one with the content

d, and so on for a number of different impressions of this kind. According to the Stoic

doctrine, if the content of the thought is identical to the hegemonikon, the content of the

particular thoughts would non-transferable and thus only accessible to the thinker

himself. However, if the content of a thought is only privately accessible, then it is only

the thinker himself that can decide whether he has a thought with the content c or d, that

is, (roughly) whether he is having an impression of an object c or an object d. The thinker

might identify the object of the non-cognitive impression wrongly, but no one else can

access his mental content, so only he can correct the content of his thought. The question

‘Am I thinking that c, or am I thinking that d?’ can only be determined by himself.

According to Wittgenstein, it is not sufficient that the thinker himself determines the

content of the thought he is having, because there would be no distinction between

seeming right and being right, and ‘seeming right’ is an unacceptable definition of

‘right’. That the non-cognitive impression seems to be of c is not sufficient to determine

that the object of the impression is c. It might be that his impression is of d, but no one

can correct him, and any self-correction only amounts to more ‘seeming that’. When

there is no distinction between whether a thought is of c or of d or of any other

impression, then the thought has no determined content and a fortiori cannot be assessed

for truth or falsity. Such a thought is in any event a poor candidate for a Stoic lekton, as

one of the main properties of a lekton is being determinately true or false.10 A complete
10
Sextus Empiricus: Outline of Pyrrhonism, 2.81-3, LS: 33 P2.
 14

mind-dependency, and thus privacy of thought makes this determination entirely

impossible. So, a lack of mind-independency makes the entire notion of content

problematic, and as a consequence violates a Stoic doctrinal requirement to lekta as that

which is true or false.

A Different Understanding of Mind-Independency

As a result of our discussion so far we have established that the relationship between

lekta and the mind must be of a kind somewhere between identity and self-sufficient

independency. A strong, or self-sufficient mind-independency of the lekton was not

supported by the ontological properties of the lekton. On the other hand, we argued that it

is necessary for the lekton to have a certain independency from the mind, or else the

theory of mind would be subject to a version of the private language argument.

Moreover, an interpretation of the lekton must explain how thoughts can be false, and it

must make clear how the propositional content of thought relates to the metaphysical

predicates that are the effects of changes in objects of the extramental world, while

attributing a theoretically viable ontological status to the lekton. These are the

requirements an adequate interpretation must satisfy. Since the focus of Frede’s

interpretation was the independency of the lekta, his account clearly accommodates false

thoughts and the transferability of thoughts. Neither is his interpretation vulnerable to the

private language argument. However, the fortified ontological status that he attributed to

the lekta was not supported by Stoic doctrine, and as a result of this, it became unclear

how the propositional content of thought was related to the extramental equivalent of the

predicate associated with bodies in the external world.

David Sedley11 also subscribes to an interpretation of the lekta as mind-

independent entities with a certain metaphysical self-sufficiency, and he also takes this

ontological status to follow from the metaphysical account. According to Sedley, the

lekta are mind-independent and self-sufficient as they form a rational structure in the

extramental world, a structure which is there for our thoughts to map on to. Thus, Sedley

offers an explanation of how the propositional thoughts and the extramental predicates

are related, which is what Frede was unsuccessful in doing. Does Sedley’s account give

us an argument for the mind-independent and ontologically self-sufficient status of the

lekta? As we will see shortly, rather than convincing us that this status is entailed by the

metaphysical account, the self-sufficiency is presupposed by the argument. Moreover, the

reasoning on which Sedley bases his argument can be used to establish the exact

opposite, namely that the lekton that is the effect of a change in an extramental object is

dependent on propositional thought, not the other way around.

To remind ourselves, the Stoic doctrine holds that in metaphysics, a lekton is the

effect of one body affecting another body. This effect is an incorporeal predicate that is

non-identical to its corporeal. Compressed, Sedley’s argument is the following. The

lekton is the item that makes it possible for the causal process to be analyzed (Sedley p.

400). Then, he says, because causal processes presumably go on in the same way whether

or not anyone is there to analyze them, the lekton may be seen as “a formal structure onto

which rational thoughts […] must be mapped” (Sedley p. 401). Thus, this “structure” is a

mind-independent structure with a significant sense of reality because causal processes

are not dependent on minds. We have a proposal for a relationship between propositional

11
David Sedley: “Hellenistic Physics and Metaphysics” in The Cambridge History of Hellenistic
Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999.
 16

thought and extramental events, and, Sedley encourages us, the idea that this formal

structure has a reality is entirely appropriate within the Stoic system: “[I]f rationality is as

much of an intrinsic feature of the Stoic world as dimensionality [time, place], we should

not resist the implication that there are objective parameters against which its rational

structures can be measured” (Sedley p. 401).

Sedley’s argument solves the problem of making sense of the relation between the

metaphysical lekton and the mental lekton by connecting them by a mapping relation

such that the lekta are the metaphysical facts or extramental state of affairs that our

thoughts map on to. By the conveniently vague notion of ‘mapping’, we are not

immediately committed to clarify how the extramental rational structure and the mental

lekta interact, that is, how the predicative lekton results in the mental lekton. As we saw,

the only relevant players in that story were the causally efficacious corporeals at either

end. Characterizing the relation between the extramental and the mental definitions of

lekta as one of ‘mapping onto’ we conceptually relate the lekta of the two realms through

some idea of ‘match’. This match can be construed as a fairly weak relation, namely in

terms of the weakest sense of ‘sameness’ that is plausible.

Sedley takes the “mind-independent reality” to follow from the commonsensical

observation that causal processes “go on in the same way whether or not anyone is there

to analyze them” (Sedley p 401). This observation is hardly false, and the claim seems to

be that the occurrence of the effect, i.e. the lekton, is independent of thinkers in the sense

that the human mind is not responsible for the occurrence of the effect. However,

Sedley’s first premise, that the lekton is the item that makes it possible for the causal

process to be analyzed, does not in itself contain the idea that the lekton is independent of
 17

the mind. To see this, consider the following. The Stoic doctrine dictates that the causal

effect is identified with the notion of the lekton. Moreover, it is a tenet of the doctrine

that the metaphysical lekton has a propositional form; paradigmatically, it consists of an

object connected with a ‘predicate,’ a construction containing the change that the object

undergoes. There are three possible explanations of the propositional form of the

metaphysical lekton: (1) it is the structure of the extramental world itself, (2) it is

propositional because it is a part of God’s thought, and (3) it is propositional because it is

a product of human thought. Sedley holds (1) and explicitly excludes (2), thus I will

disregard this case. Sedley’s (1) thus amounts to the claim (4), that a propositional

structuring of the world has taken place without the need for human rationality being

there to perform this structuring. Unless we presuppose (4) and thus that the lekton is a

mind-independent, ontologically self-sufficient item, (1) can be as true as it can be false,

and thus the lekton that is referred to in Sedley’s first premise, that item which makes it

possible for the causal process to be analyzed, can originate from human rationality and

propositional thought as well as not. Unless we already take the ontological self-

sufficiency for granted, the origins, and thus mind-independency of the causal lekton, is

up in the air.

Now, what about the commonsensically true second premise, that that causal

processes “go on in the same way whether or not anyone is there to analyze them”? In

Stoic doctrine, the bodies themselves and their properties are corporeal, whereas the

attribute that is considered the effect of a change is incorporeal, and we have seen how

the effect must be considered distinct from the body itself in order to preserve the identity

of the body across changes in the body. But so far, it is nothing which dictates that this
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preservation of identity must regard the body itself, rather than our conceptual grasp of

the body. Presumably, the objects in the world do their things completely independent of

human presence. However, the analysis and grasp of the objects is ours, and what a

thinker need in order to analyze is concepts and a certain kind of ordering. In order for a

thinker to analyze the causal processes that takes place without him, it is necessary that

he structures the world conceptually. Therefore, the account of the lekton as separated

from its body can be taken to state that which is necessary for rational thinkers to have a

conceptually coherent account of the world. Thus, unless we presuppose an independent

propositional or rational structuring of the world, there is nothing in Sedley’s argument

that forces us to conclude that the lekta are ontologically prior to or independent of the

mind.

Now, where does this leave us with regard to the account we are looking for, of

the relationship between the lekton of the extramental causal processes, and the

propositional content of thought? We have argued that any interpretation of lekta must

distinguish them from the mind itself, lest the construal fall prey to a private language

argument for thought. What about our present interpretation, which insists that rather than

the metaphysical predicates being mind-independent, they are on the contrary products of

the human mind? Can we both reconcile this with the private language argument, and

produce an account of the relationship between the two types of lekta? Sedley’s notion of

‘mapping’ would explain the relation in a less ontologically committing way by way of

an appropriate degree of ‘sameness’, which in itself does not require ontological

fortification of the two sides. However, if we could show that what we have been

referring to as the metaphysical lekton is identical to the mental lekton, then there
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wouldn’t even be two sides, and the ‘sameness’ would give itself. We have distinguished

between the two types of lekta and done so mainly for didactic reasons, but it is clear that

it follows from our argument against Sedley, that if the lekton that contains the

metaphysical predicate is a product of the human rationality’s conceptual structuring of

the world, then the ‘metaphysical lekton’ simply is the lekton that is the propositional

content of thought. Wouldn’t this immediately fall prey to the private language

argument? Not if it is the case that the mental lekton is logically distinct from the mind,

and if the metaphysical lekton is identical to the mental lekton, then it is still non-

identical to the mind. Moreover, our account of the relationship between the two

characterizations of the lekton has left no gap between the side of the mind and the

predicates that are caused by objects in the external world. When there is no gap, there is

no association of one thing at each side. There is no need to match our thoughts onto the

metaphysical predicates, because these two things are simply the same thing.

What kind of mind-independency?

The two accounts of the Stoic notion of lekton that we have considered, have both taken

it to follow from aspects of the theory that the mind-independency of the lekton involved

an ontological self-sufficiency. I have argued that in either case, this fortified ontological

status does not follow. The present interpretation has frugally reduced the mind-

independency of the lekton to a logical or conceptual distinction between the lekton and

its corporeal. It has turned out that such a distinction is sufficient for our interpretation to

accommodate the important features of thought that Frede and Sedley’s interpretations

can explain. Stoic metaphysics required that the predicative lekton was not identical to
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the corporeal itself, it had to be disassociated enough to preserve the identity of its

corporeal object throughout change. As a matter of doctrine, lekta are distinguished from

their corporeals in terms of the difference in ontological status; lekta subsist, whereas

corporeals exist. We claimed that it was sufficient for this to be a logical or conceptual

distinction, that is, a feature of the thinkers’ analysis of the extramental world. Further,

our discussion identified requirements of distinctness from the mind. In order for an

interpretation to account for false thoughts, and for thoughts to have content, the lekton

cannot be identical to the thought itself. To obtain the required non-identity it is sufficient

to logically or conceptually distinguish between the thought and the content of thought.

The same kind of distinction allows for the sameness of propositional thought in two

thinkers. So far, we merely have a requirement of a logical or conceptual non-identity of

the lekton to its associated corporeal. This is a very weak form of independency, and

consequently of independency of the mind. Characterizing mind-independency as a non-

identity to the mind entails no substantiated ontological status beyond being ‘not nothing’

accompanied by the appropriate definitional accoutrements of a notion of subsistence.

Moreover, we have not been given a need to claim more of an ontological status of the

lekta. They are not nothing, and they are not identical to their corporeals, and to satisfy

these requirements we need to postulate no more ontological status for them than being a

conceptual or logical ‘something,’ which would thus be our interpretation of the notion of

subsistence. Mind-independency has been defined in the weakest possible sense, a sense

that certainly does not involve an ontological self-sufficiency of the kind assumed by

Frede and Sedley. However, our argument has been that this ontologically very weak
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characterization of the notion of lekton ca explain everything that this notion should be

able to explain.

Bibliography:
Frede, Michael: “The Stoic Notion of a Lekton,” in Stephen Everson (ed.): Language,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1994.
Long, A.A., and Sedley. D.: The Hellenistic Philosophers, Vol. 1, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge 2002.
Sedley, David: “Hellenistic Physics and Metaphysics” in The Cambridge History of
Hellenistic Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999.