Locke: Philosophy of Language, Misc

My philosophico-poetical system is a highly unlikely creation, given the tradition of philosophy I was educated in and the country I live in and a lot else probably. I would like to say that it is totally my own, but actually it has at its foundation Paul Valéry’s claim, “To write regular verses… destroys an infinite number of fine possibilities but at the same time it suggests a multitude of distant and unexpected thoughts.” From this, I infer an objection to (...) Locke on language, an objection to specialization, an explanation of how the poet can escape his (or her etc.) time, and an argument for the translatability of true poetry. (I have added an appendix which specifies some extensions to my system: on the unpredictability of the philosophical poet, against Freudian interpretation of rhyming poetry, and on the value of univocalic poetry.). (shrink)

I show that Locke anticipates key features of Hume’s more celebrated analysis of convention. I do so by developing Lenz’s account of Lockean (linguistic) convention and its normativity as presented in Socializing Minds. Locke’s account of linguistic convention shares structural features also visible in Locke’s treatment of the convention money and property. I show that Locke’s ‘Humean’ account of convention responds to a lacuna in Pufendorf’s treatment of linguistic convention that Lenz argues is significant to Locke.

This paper shows that Locke anticipates key features of Hume's more celebrated analysis of convention. It does so by developing Lenz's account of Lockean (linguistic) convention and its normativity, as presented in Socializing Minds. Locke's account of linguistic convention shares structural features also visible in Locke's treatment of the convention of money and property. The paper shows that Locke's ‘Humean' account of convention responds to a lacuna in Pufendorf’s treatment of linguistic convention that Lenz argues is significant to Locke.

Volume 32, Issue 6, December 2024, Page 1467-1475.

I argue that Locke’s distinction between ‘determined’ and ‘undetermined’ ideas incorporates an account of semantic indeterminacy: if the complex idea to which a general term is annexed is ‘undetermined’, the term lacks a determinate extension. I propose that a closer look at this account of semantic indeterminacy illuminates various charges of confusion, misuse and abuse of language Locke levels against his philosophical contemporaries.

A Critical Introduction to Philosophy of Language is a historically oriented introduction to the central themes in philosophy of language. Its narrative arc covers Locke's 'idea' theory, Mill's empiricist account of math and logic, Frege and Russell's development of modern logic and its subsequent deployment in their pioneering program of 'logical analysis', Ayer and Carnap's logical positivism, Quine's critique of logical positivism and elaboration of a naturalist-behaviorist approach to meaning, and later-Wittgenstein's 'ordinary language philosophy'-inspired rejection of the project of logical (...) analysis. Thus, it historically situates the two central programs in early twentieth-century English-speaking philosophy -- logical analysis and logical positivism -- and discusses the central critiques they face later in the century in the works of Quine and the later-Wittgenstein. Unlike other secondary studies in philosophy of language, A Critical Introduction to Philosophy of Language is not just a 'greatest hits album', i.e., a discontinuous compilation in which classics in the field are presented together with their standard criticisms one after the other. Instead, Fennell develops a particular, historical-thematic narrative in which the figures and ideas he treats are introduced in highly intentional ways. And by cross-referencing them throughout his discussions, he highlights the contributions they make to the narrative they comprise. (shrink)

This chapter contextualizes Locke’s critique of logical and metaphysical maxims within the framework of the Cartesian critique of the topical tradition. It makes clear that Locke, targeting the Scholastic, proof-theoretic conception of maxims, replicates argumentative patterns found in the work of the Cartesian logicians Johannes Clauberg and Antoine Arnauld, who argued against the topical (Ramist) conception of maxims. Locke also inherits certain weaknesses of this Cartesian critique, which, it is argued, does not adequately capture the view of Petrus Ramus and (...) others in the topical tradition that maxims only make explicit the rules that implicitly govern various areas of discourse. (shrink)

The chapter claims that in order to understand Locke’s doctrine of assent, his philosophy of mind needs to be seen in conjunction with his philosophy of language, which in turn gains from being compared with Port-Royal’s logic and grammar. It points out two conflicting facts in Locke’s account of affirmation and negation in the _Essay_. First, Locke entrusts affirmation and negation with the task of signifying both the assertion by which we manifest our assent to a proposition and the junction (...) or separation of the ideas constituting the proposition. The other fact is that Locke accepts a great variety of ways of considering a proposition. This diversity of ‘postures’ is poorly expressed by the limited number of syncategorematic terms, ‘particles’. The first fact fosters a one-act view of the assent we give to propositions. The second opens the way to a multiple-act view. (shrink)

A Review of Paweł Sikora’s Pojęciowa treść percepcji w filozofii nowożytnej, Wyd. UMCS, Lublin 2016.

Locke’un dile ilişkin düşüncelerinin en ayırt edici yönü uzlaşımsallıktır. Locke’un dil anlayışında sözcükler ile ideler arasındaki bağlantının bir parçası olarak ortaya çıkan uzlaşımsallık unsuru, Locke’un sağın bilgiye erişmedeki amacında ilk elde her ne kadar dildeki bir yetersizlik olarak ortaya konmuş da olsa, gerek yine de bu imkana yaklaşmayı sağlayacak tek unsur olarak düşünülmesi, gerekse de iletişimin imkanını sağlamasıyla ön plana çıkmaktadır. Öyle ki, Locke’ta hakikat olsun, bilgi olsun, anlam olsun gerçek varoluşun bir iz düşümünü veren gösterilenlerde bulunduğu kadar, iletişimin birliğinde (...) ve temelde de bu birliği kuran uzlaşımsallığın kendisinde bulunmaktadır. Dilin bu uzlaşımsal karakteri hiç şüphe yok ki, bizi dilin toplumsal yönünü ele almaya iten en önemli unsurdur da. Dolayısıyla onun dil anlayışındaki uzlaşım unsuruna ayrıca toplumla ilgili düşüncelerini de gözetecek bütünleyici bir bakış açısıyla da bakmak gerekir. Öte yandan dilin hem dünyayı, hem de içinde yaşadığımız toplumu kavrama ve tasarlama şekli ile yakından ilişkili olduğu da gözetildiğinde, Locke’un dili uzlaşım temelinde düzenleyerek sözcüklerin yanlış ve yanıltıcı soyut genelliğinden kurtulup ‘sağın bilgiye’ ulaşmak suretiyle ideal bir topluma ulaşmak istediği de varsayılabilir. Bu bakımdan çalışmamız bütünleyici bir bakış açısıyla, Locke’un hem sözcüklerin kurulumunda, hem de dil dolayımıyla toplumun kurulumunda “uzlaşım” unsuruna yüklemiş olduğu rolü ve sonuçlarını ortaya koymayı amaçlamaktadır.The most distinguishing aspect of Locke’s thoughts pertaining to language is conventionalism. In Locke’s understanding of language, the factor of conventionalism emerging as a part of connection between words and ideas comes into prominence both through its being considered as the only element to ensure approaching this possibility and through its providing the possibility of communication although it has been presented as an insufficiency in language at once in his aim to obtain exact knowledge. So much so that, in Locke be it truth, be it knowledge or be it meaning, these exist in the unity of communication and in the conventionalism itself that essentially establish this unity as well as that they exist in those demonstrated which provide the projection of actual existence. This conventional characteristic of language, for sure, in the most significant element that leads us to deal with the social aspect of language. Thus, it is necessary to analyze the factor of conventionalism in his understanding of language from an integrative perspective that will take into account his thoughts regarding the society as well. On the other hand, when it is considered that language is closely related to both the world and the way it conceives and designs the society in which we live, it can be assumed that Locke, by organizing the language on the basis of conventionalism, wanted to reach an ideal society through getting rid of the words’ erroneous and deceptive abstract generality and obtaining exact knowledge. From this point of view, our study aims to reveal with an integrative perspective the role which Locke assigned to the factor of “conventionalism” both in organization of the words and in organization of the society thanks to mediation. (shrink)

John Locke, long associated with the “standard” approach to fallacies and the “logical” approach to valid inference, had both logical and dialectical reasons for favoring certain proofs and denigrating others. While the logical approach to argumentation stands forth in Locke’s philosophical writings, a dialectical approach can be found in his contributions to public controversies regarding religion and toleration. Understanding Locke’s dialectical approach to argumentation not only makes his work more relevant to the contemporary discipline of informal logic, but this understanding (...) also prompts a reconsideration of Locke’s rhetorical purpose. He approached argumentation dialectically because he wanted to appeal to a universal audience of free rational subjects, people not unlike the real historical audience whom Locke addressed: radical Whigs, latitudinarian Anglicans, early-Enlightenment philosophes. (shrink)

How language works — its functions, mechanisms, and limitations — matters to the early moderns as much as it does to contemporary philosophers. Many of the moderns make reflection on language central to their philosophical projects, both as a tool for explaining human cognition and as a weapon to be used against competing views. Even in philosophers for whom language is less central, we can find important connections between their views on language and their other philosophical commitments.

Al final del Libro II del An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke manifiesta que «hay una relación tan íntima entre las ideas y las palabras […] que es imposible hablar clara y distintamente de nuestro conocimiento, que consiste completamente en proposiciones, sin considerar, primero, la naturaleza, uso y significación del lenguaje». De varias y diversas maneras Locke insiste en la tesis que ‘las palabras significan ideas’. En este ensayo me propongo: 1º resumir la teoría general del lenguaje de Locke; 2º (...) revisar algunas objeciones regulares a esta teoría, y 3º intentar una explicación de lo que Locke quiere decir cuando enuncia que ‘las palabras significan ideas’. Con respecto a este punto mostraré, apoyando la interpretación de E. J. Ashworth, que en su tesis semántica Locke usa el vocablo ‘significar’ (‘signifying’) no del modo como es usado por los teóricos contemporáneos del siglo XX, sino en el sentido que algunos escolásticos usaron el término ‘significare’. At the very end of Book II of ‘An Essay Concerning Human Understanding’, Locke finds out «that there is so close a connexion between Ideas and Words […] that it is impossible to speak clearly and distinctly of our Knowledge, which all consists in Propositions, without considering first the Nature, Use, and Signification of Language». In various and diverse ways Locke defends the thesis that ‘Words signify Ideas’. My aim in this paper is first, to sum up Locke’s general theory of Language; secondly, to revisit some regular objections concerning this theory, and thirdly, to intend an explanation of what Locke means when he points out that ‘Words signify ideas’. In regard to this point, I shall hold up E. J. Ashworth’s interpretation to show that Locke semantic thesis involves the use of the verb ‘to signify’ (‘signifying’) not in the manner that it is used by contemporary theorists of the twentieth century, but in the sense that some scholastics used the term ‘significare’. (shrink)

Review article of Martin Lenz, Locke's Sprachkonzeption, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010.

ExtractLocke's analysis of the origins of meaning is clear, coherent, cogent and devastating to our commonsense beliefs. His analysis establishes that in the last resort the meaning, he would say ‘Signification’, of words is ineluctably private, subjective, personal. Where meanings are concerned we are, Locke judged, irremediably solipsistic. ‘Words’, he notes, ‘in their primary or immediate Signification stand for nothing but Ideas in the Mind of him that uses them.’Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure (...) [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.LOCKE'S SECOND ‘SECRET REFERENCE’Volume 12, Issue 33Terence MooreDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175612000334Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. LOCKE'S SECOND ‘SECRET REFERENCE’Volume 12, Issue 33Terence MooreDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175612000334Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. LOCKE'S SECOND ‘SECRET REFERENCE’Volume 12, Issue 33Terence MooreDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175612000334Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation. (shrink)

From the late seventeenth century to the middle of the eighteenth, an important shift occurred in attitudes to the arbitrariness of the first human words. While authors such as Locke and Pufendorf emphasized linguistic arbitrariness and human liberty, mid-eighteenth-century thinkers highlighted the natural aspects of language and the limited scope of freedom and reason. This change is linked to the contemporary view of the cultural world as a natural artifice, strongly molded by social and environmental factors. The article highlights hitherto (...) neglected similarities between Leibniz’s ideas on language and mid-eighteenth-century theories, by contrast to the usual focus on Locke. (shrink)

Several contemporary philosophers, above all Paul Churchland and Peter Gärdenfors, have held that concepts may be conceived as regions of a mental similarity space. This chapter reviews an empirical study by Barbara Malt and her collaborators that casts doubt on this theory. It also argues that regions of similarity space are not concepts because they cannot serve as the building blocks of judgments. They do not persist across learning, they cannot represent what we learn through verbal communication, and they cannot (...) represent logically complex judgments. (shrink)

At least since Locke, philosophers and psychologists have usually held that concepts arise out of sensory perceptions, thoughts are built from concepts, and language enables speakers to convey their thoughts to hearers. Christopher Gauker holds that this tradition is mistaken about both concepts and language. The mind cannot abstract the building blocks of thoughts from perceptual representations. More generally, we have no account of the origin of concepts that grants them the requisite independence from language. Gauker's alternative is to show (...) that much of cognition consists in thinking by means of mental imagery, without the help of concepts, and that language is a tool by which interlocutors coordinate their actions in pursuit of shared goals. Imagistic cognition supports the acquisition and use of this tool, and when the use of this tool is internalized, it becomes the very medium of conceptual thought. (shrink)

Concepts may be defined as the building blocks of judgments. Concepts are the components of judgments that stand to whole judgments as (open class) words stand to whole sentences. Psychologists and philosophers ask different questions about concepts, but they mostly share this conception of what they are. The traditional conception of concepts is bound up with a conception of linguistic communication according to which the function of language is to express conceptual thoughts. In rejecting all theories of the origin of (...) concepts that treat concepts as having the necessary independence from language and in arguing language rests on imagistic cognition, this book will cast doubt on the very existence of concepts as traditionally conceived. However, it will be proposed that the concept of concepts may be assimilated into the new framework by identifying conceptual thought with thinking in language. (shrink)

Twentieth century philosophers have often thought of concepts as words in a discursive form of mental representation. The objective of this chapter is to distinguish between what is right and what is wong in such views, as a preparation for the version of that view that will be defended in this book. The chapter criticizes the functionalist theory of meaning of Wilfrid Sellars, but finds usable ideas in Sellars's ‘myth of Jones’ and his theory of perception. The chapter also criticizes (...) Jerry Fodor's theory of an innate language of thought and Robert Brandom's scorekeeping conception of discourse. (shrink)

A great deal of cognitive problem solving takes the form of thinking in mental imagery. This chapter illustrates these capacities and analyzes imagistic cognition into several aspects: object tracking, imagistic representation of causation, and perceptual similarity spaces, which include acquired dimensions grounded in representations of particular objects. The chapter also argues that the cognitive powers of nonhuman animals and prelinguistic human infants are limited to imagistic cognition. As case studies, the chapter examines the achievements of infants in Paul C. Quinn's (...) experiments and the achievements of chimpanzees in Sue Savage‐Rumbaugh's experiments and argues that they can be explained in terms of imagistic cognition. (shrink)

This chapter characterizes a paradigmatic sort of discourse aimed at the achievement of practical goals and explains how a language serving such discourse might be learned on the basis of imagistic cognition. The account first defines in terms of perceptual similarity space the conditions under which an agent will be disposed to utter an atomic sentence. In terms of this the theory then defines the conditions under which an agent will accept an atomic sentence. Production and acceptance rules for negations (...) are defined in terms of a kind of incompatibility between imagistic representations and sentences. Finally, the theory is extended to disjunctions, conditionals, and universally quantified sentences. (shrink)

The 17 th century philosopher John Locke had three different, seemingly incompatible theories of ideas, here dubbed the _composition theory_, the _abstraction-as-subtraction_ theory and the _abstraction-as-representation_ theory. In each of them general ideas are constructed or extracted from the inputs of the senses. This chapter argues that none of these theories is successful. One of the main problems is that Locke cannot explain how ideas go together to form judgments. The chapter also reviews recent versions of these theories in the (...) works of living psychologists and philosophers. (shrink)

The 18 th century philosopher Immanuel Kant ascribed to concepts a dual role. Concepts were the building blocks of judgments, but they were also rules by which the _manifold given in intuition_ is _synthesized_ to form perceptual representations. This chapter argues that the conception of concepts as rules of synthesis is a mistake. The chapter also reviews Kantian conceptions of concepts in contemporary psychology and philosophy. In the course of this discussion it is argued that perceptual representations do not have (...) conceptual content and do not provide justifications for beliefs. (shrink)

This chapter addresses a number of obstacles to the assimilation of conceptual thought to thinking in language. It answers a number of naïve objections to the thesis that we think in language, such as that our words are context-relative while our thoughts are not. It explains how thinking in language can do serious cognitive work. Finally, it sketches an approach to explaining the role of ordinary semantic terminology in discourse.

This chapter addresses several arguments to the effect that similarity relations can be recognized only by means of concepts. First, it is argued that we can recognize that _x_ is more like _y_ than like _z_ even when this cannot be accounted for by appeal to a property that _x_ and _y_ share that _z_ lacks. Second, it argued that we do not need to think of representations as conceptual in order to define a kind of correctness. A sense in (...) which a mark in perceptual similarity space may accurately represent an object or scenario is defined. Finally, it shown that Tversky's well-known account of similarity in terms of shared and differentiating features is not well supported by his experimental results. (shrink)

RESUMEN: La teoría causal formulada por Kripke y Putnam es la teoría semántica dominante de los términos de género natural y, en especial, de los términos de sustancia. La teoría semántica de los términos de sustancia de Locke ha sido, supuestamente, refutada por aquélla. Según Putnam, la teoría de Locke ha pasado por alto dos importantes contribuciones a la semántica, y principalmente a la referencia, de los términos de sustancia, a saber, la contribución de la sociedad y la del entorno. (...) El objetivo de este artículo es argüir que la teoría de Locke puede incorporar la primera contribución y que alguien que en principio sostuviese una teoría como la de Locke podría verse llevado a aceptar también la segunda contribución.ABSTRACT: The causal theory put forward by Kripke and Putnam is the dominant semantic theory of natural kind terms and especially of substance terms. Locke’s semantic theory of substance terms has supposedly been rebutted by it. Locke’s theory has, according to Putnam, overlooked two significant contributions to the semantics, and mainly to the reference, of substance terms, namely, the contribution of the society and that of the environment. This paper aims to argue that Locke’s theory is able to embrace the first contribution and that someone who initially held a theory like Locke’s could be led to accept also the second one. (shrink)

These are my comments on Ken Winkler's account of Locke's philosophy of language.

Although a fascination with language is a familiar feature of 20th-century empiricism, its origins reach back at least to the early modern period empiricists. John Locke offers a detailed (if sometimes puzzling) treatment of language and uses it to illuminate key regions of the philosophical topography, particularly natural kinds and essences. Locke's main conceptual tool for dealing with language is 'signification'. Locke's central linguistic thesis is this: words signify nothing but ideas. This on its face seems absurd. Don't we need (...) words to signify things as well? But its very absurdity – our inclination to dismiss Locke as a 'linguistic idealist'– should signal to us that we have not yet understood Locke. Doing so must begin with an analysis of signification. Each of the three main interpretations on offer allows Locke to escape the charge of linguistic idealism, although they do so in very different ways. Locke's text also offers an influential account of linguistic particles, words like 'is', 'and' and 'if'. These signify, not ideas, but acts of the mind. These acts can either take place within a proposition, uniting its constituent ideas into a thought that admits of a truth-value, or they can take propositions as their objects, in which case they express attitudes like doubt, assertion and so on. Even this seemingly innocuous sketch of Locke's view is controversial, and many writers, from J.S. Mill onwards, have argued that Locke cannot make sense of propositional attitudes. Apart from the intrinsic interest of these questions, understanding how Locke thinks language works is a prerequisite for understanding his arguments against scholastic essentialism. It also illuminates later discussions of language in Berkeley, Hume and Mill. Author Recommends: 1. Losonsky, Michael. 'Language, Meaning, and Mind in Locke's Essay. ' The Cambridge Companion to Locke's Essay . Ed. Lex Newman. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. 286–313. In addition to making some original points, Losonsky provides an excellent overview of the three main competing positions on Lockean signification: the Fregean reading, the Scholastic reading and the Indicator theory (see entries 2–5 in the following). 2. Kretzmann, Norman. 'The Main Thesis of Locke's Semantic Theory.' Locke on Human Understanding . Ed. I. C. Tipton. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1975. 123–40. Kretzmann's influential paper offers a broadly Fregean analysis, according to which primary signification is sense and secondary, reference. Locke can then avoid the charge of linguistic idealism, as it is not the case that words signify only ideas. 3. Ashworth, E. J. 'Do Words Signify Ideas or Things?' Journal of the History of Philosophy 19 (1981): 299–326. Ashworth rejects Kretzmann's view, partly on the grounds of anachronism, and sets Locke in his historical context. As she reads Locke, he holds a scholastic position, according to which signification amounts to 'making known' or 'expressing'. This preserves the portmanteau analysis of Kretzmann: words can primarily signify or express ideas, while secondarily signifying things. 4. Lowe, E. J. 'Language and Meaning,' chapter 4. Locke . London: Routledge, 2005. This is a spirited defense of Locke's claim that words signify ideas against contemporary prejudices. Like Ian Hacking (see entry 7 in the following), Lowe argues that Locke is not offering a semantic theory in anything like the contemporary sense; rather, he is concerned with explaining human communication. 5. Ott, Walter. Locke's Philosophy of Language . Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. On the interpretation offered in chapter 1, Lockean signification is indication: words signify ideas in the same sense in which clouds signify rain. If this view is correct, Locke is departing from the particular scholastic tradition Ashworth focuses on, and embracing instead a tradition running from the Stoics through Thomas Hobbes. http://www.springerlink.com/content/xv362655719101n3/ 6. Winkler, Kenneth. 'Signification, Intention, Projection.' Forthcoming, Philosophia . http://www.springerlink.com/content/xv362655719101n3 Although previous commentators acknowledge the role of intentions in Locke's view (see especially Kretzmann's argument from the uses of words), Winkler claims that they are far more central to Locke's view than has been supposed. In particular, Winkler uses these considerations to criticize the indicator interpretation. 7. Hacking, Ian. Why Does Language Matter to Philosophy? Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1975. Much broader in focus than these other works, Hacking's classic text has much to say about early modern views on language. Hacking argues that Hobbes and Locke do not, properly speaking, even have theories of meaning. Online Materials The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on Locke, by William Uzgalis: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/ > The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on Locke, author unknown: http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/l/locke.htm > Sample Syllabus Weeks 1–2: What is Locke's linguistic thesis? Is it a semantic thesis at all? Ashworth, E. J. 'Do Words Signify Ideas or Things?' Journal of the History of Philosophy 19 (1981): 299–326. Kretzmann, Norman. 'The Main Thesis of Locke's Semantic Theory.' Locke on Human Understanding . Ed. I. C. Tipton. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1975. 123–40. Locke, Essay III. i–iii. Lowe, E. J. 'Language and Meaning,' chapter 4. Locke . London: Routledge, 2005. Week 3: Propositions and attitudes Locke, Essay III. vii. Ott, Walter. 'Propositional Attitudes in Modern Philosophy.' Dialogue 41 (2002): 1–18. Owen, David. 'Locke on Judgment.' The Cambridge Companion to Locke's Essay . Ed. Lex Newman. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. 406–35. If one wanted to explore whether and how Locke applies his semiotic theory in his anti-essentialist argument, one might add (or perhaps replace Week 3 with): Week 4: Applications Bolton, Martha. 'The Relevance of Locke's Theory of Ideas to his Doctrine of Nominal Essence and Anti-Essentialist Semantic Theory.' Locke . Ed. Vere Chappell. Oxford: OUP, 1998. pp. 214–225 Locke, Essay III. vi; III.xi. 4–22. Ott, Walter. 'Locke's Argument from Signification.' Locke Studies 2 (2002): 145–76. Focus Questions 1. What is a semantic theory? What do we want out of such a theory, and does Locke even purport to provide one? 2. What are the differences among the three main competing readings of Locke? What is at stake here? What, if anything, turns on which of them accurately captures Locke's view? 3. How does Locke think his linguistic thesis tells against competing views, such as those of the scholastics? 4. What is the difference between a proposition and a list? Can Locke account for this difference? 5. There is clearly a difference between merely thinking that the cat is on the mat and asserting that it is. Can Locke account for this difference? (shrink)

With the publication of Walter Ott’s Locke’s Philosophy of Language and Michael Losonsky’s Linguistic Turns in Modern Philosophy, serious scholarly attention has returned to Locke’s philosophy of language. In this exhaustively-researched book, Hannah Dawson presents a dark vision of language and the desperate seventeenth-century struggles against it, culminating in Locke’s complete and catastrophic capitulation. She argues that the dominant issue is something called “the problem of language in philosophy.” Seventeenth-century philosophers started seeing the language they used in philosophy as unstable (...) and, consequently, as a veil cutting us off from reality. Prior to Locke, most believed that this “semantic instability” was accidental and remediable, but Dawson argues that Locke viewed it as inherent to language and that he abandoned any hope of reforming language. It turns out that what dissolves the semantic ties between words and reality, making “the problem of language in philosophy” intractable, is the old problem of skepticism and the radical subjectivism entailed by it. Because words signify ideas and. (shrink)

Designed for readers new to the subject,_ Reading Philosophy of Language_ presents key texts in the philosophy of language together with helpful editorial guidance. A concise collection of key texts in the philosophy of language Ideal for readers new to the subject. Features seminal texts by leading figures in the field, such as Austin, Chomsky, Davidson, Dummett and Searle. Presents three texts on each of five key topics: speech and performance; meaning and truth; knowledge of language; meaning and compositionality; and (...) non-literal meaning. A volume introduction from the editors outlines the subject’s principal concerns. Introductions to each chapter locate the pieces in context and explain relevant terminology and theories. Interactive commentaries help readers to engage with the texts. (shrink)

This article canvases the main areas of controversy: the nature of Lockean signification and his position on propositions and particles.

The view of language is greatly changed from early modern philosophy to later modern philosophy and to postmodern philosophy. The linguistic question in early modern philosophy, which is characterized by rationalism and empiricism, is discussed in this paper. Linguistic phenomena are not at the center of philosophical reflections in early modern philosophy. The subject of consciousness is at the center of the philosophy, which makes language serve purely as an instrument for representing thoughts. Locke, Leibniz and Descartes consider language from (...) a representationalist point of view. To them, language itself is idealized and represents thought as if it were thought representing itself. Like the structural linguist Saussure, the founders of phenomenology and analytical philosophy give much attention to the logical or static structure of language, and stick up for the representationalism of early modern philosophy. However, their successors refuse to accept this attitude, meaning the final collapse of representationalism. (shrink)

In a powerful and original contribution to the history of ideas, Hannah Dawson explores the intense preoccupation with language in early-modern philosophy, and presents a groundbreaking analysis of John Locke's critique of words. By examining a broad sweep of pedagogical and philosophical material from antiquity to the late seventeenth century, Dr Dawson explains why language caused anxiety in writers such as Montaigne, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Gassendi, Nicole, Pufendorf, Boyle, Malebranche and Locke. Locke, Language and Early-Modern Philosophy demonstrates that new developments (...) in philosophy, in conjunction with weaknesses in linguistic theory, resulted in serious concerns about the capacity of words to refer to the world, the stability of meaning, and the duplicitous power of words themselves. Dr Dawson shows that language so fixated all manner of early-modern authors because it was seen as an obstacle to both knowledge and society. She thereby uncovers a novel story about the problem of language in philosophy, and in the process reshapes our understanding of early-modern epistemology, morality and politics. (shrink)