Locke: Philosophy of Language, Misc

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

The author argues that Locke's theory of signification in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding is a theory of meaning and defends it against criticisms.

Dept. of Philosophy. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis1987 .F355. Source: Masterss International, Volume: 40-07, page: . Thesis --University of Windsor , 1987.

There is an exegetical quandary when it comes to interpreting Locke's relation to logic.On the one hand, over the last few decades a substantive amount of literature has been dedicated to explaining Locke's crucial role in the development of a new logic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. John Yolton names this new logic the "logic of ideas," while James Buickerood calls it "facultative logic."1 Either way, Locke's Essay is supposedly its "most outspoken specimen" or "culmination."2 Call this reading the (...) 'New Logic interpretation.'On the other hand, from the typical standpoint of a philosopher accustomed to the modern conception of logic, whatever Locke—indeed, whatever most of the... (shrink)

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)

John Locke, in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , condemns the "artificial and figurative application of words" as "perfect cheat." Although some scholars have maintained that this attack ushers in a reformation of rhetoric, this work argues that Locke, throughout his writings, calls into question all of rhetoric as a legitimate persuasive tool. His concern for limiting and shaping discourse can best be understood by examining his model of the mind found in the Essay and his works on education, and (...) by tracing the development of his ideas on the primacy of reason, the dependence on natural law, and the autonomy of the individual, as found in his works on politics, toleration, and religion. In this work, these facets of Locke's thought are examined against the backdrop of traditional features of rhetoric and philosophy, e.g. tropes, truth, order, decorum, consensus, and clarity. (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)

Our reading is a passage from John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book III, Chapter II, § 2. When a man speaks to another, it is that he may be understood; and the end of speech is that those sounds, as marks, may make known his ideas to the hearer. … Words being voluntary signs, they cannot be voluntary signs imposed by him on things he knows not. That would be to make them signs of nothing, sounds without signification.

This book traces the linguistic turns in the history of modern philosophy and the development of the philosophy of language from Locke to Wittgenstein. It examines the contributions of canonical figures such as Leibniz, Mill, Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Austin, Quine, and Davidson, as well as those of Condillac, Humboldt, Chomsky, and Derrida. Michael Losonsky argues that the philosophy of language begins with Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. He shows how the history of the philosophy of language in the modern period (...) is marked by a dichotomy between formal and pragmatic perspectives on language and that modern philosophy has not been able to integrate these two aspects of human language. Language as a human activity and language as a syntactic and semantic system remain distinct and competing focal points, although the interplay between these points of view has driven the development of the philosophy of language. (shrink)

This book examines John Locke's claims about the nature and workings of language. Walter Ott proposes an interpretation of Locke's thesis in which words signify ideas in the mind of the speaker, and argues that rather than employing such notions as sense or reference, Locke relies on an ancient tradition that understands signification as reliable indication. He then uses this interpretation to explain crucial areas of Locke's metaphysics and epistemology, including essence, abstraction, knowledge and mental representation. His discussion challenges many (...) of the orthodox readings of Locke, and will be of interest to historians of philosophy and philosophers of language alike. (shrink)

The sentence ‘x is square’ might have had different truth conditions from those it in fact has. It might have had no truth conditions at all. Its having truth conditions and its having the ones it has rest on empirical facts about our use of ‘x is square’. What empirical facts? Any answer that goes into detail is inevitably highly controversial, but we think that there is a rough answer that is, by philosophers’ standards, relatively uncontroversial. It goes back to (...) Locke 1689 and beyond, and is best known to contemporary philosophers through the work of Grice 1957 and Lewis 1969. It is that we (usually implicitly) agreed, as a matter of contingent fact, to use ‘x is square’ as a way of conveying our taking it to be the case that x is square. (shrink)

This dissertation is mainly a consideration of figurative language in Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The introduction establishes three contexts for this consideration: literary history, studies in the distinction between literature and philosophy, and literary theory. The second chapter is an account of the complexity of Locke's figurative description of mind: descriptions of an impressed, struck, engraved, or imprinted tabula rasa are persistently rejected in favor of terms of containment, ownership, labor, vision, and socio-erotic acquaintance. Because Locke explicates vision (...) in terms of the impact of particles against the eye, however, his ocular language recuperates the scene of impact and impression as a representation of the mind and its activity. This account contests the general principles and several specific claims of major versions of post-Renaissance literary history. The third chapter documents Locke's use of the term "force" to describe language and the mind. It presents the specific conceptual difficulties posed by this usage, and confirms the traditional view that figurative language may pose difficulties for the establishment of coherent epistemological doctrine. The principal observation of the final chapter concerns Locke's description of the substitutions of ideas which are involved in various mental processes and in the formation of various concepts: these substitutions are structured the same as the substitutions of specific words which, in rhetorical tradition, are designated as tropes. This observation is the grounds for a critique of Paul de Man's writing on Locke and Nietzsche. It is also the basis for the conclusions that empiricism is a major precedent for Nietzsche's rhetorical critique of conceptuality, that empiricism is continuous in crucial respects with the rhetorical tradition which it ostensibly rejects, and that a rhetorical critique of conceptuality relies on basic concepts within western philosophical tradition. (shrink)

What does Locke mean when he says 'words signify ideas'? What role does this play in his empiricism and in his rejection of Aristotelian doctrines about real essence? ;The dissertation attempts to answer these two main questions. I show that none of the interpretations dominant in the literature provides an adequate understanding of Lockean signification. Rather than sense, reference, or 'making something known,' signification is indication. A sign in this sense is a symptom or a portent. This reading allows us (...) to understand why Locke says that words and ideas are both signs, and to see in some key texts a reasonably sound argument for the thesis that words signify only ideas. By contrast, the dominant interpretations saddle Locke with a grossly fallacious argument. ;Locke also says that particles do not signify ideas, but acts of the mind. How can this be made consistent with his semiotic thesis? Is there any motivation for this view? On the basis of considerations advanced by the early Wittgenstein and by John Wisdom, I argue that the view is well-motivated. I also show how it can be made to fit with the semiotic thesis: if signification is indication, it is easy to understand how acts of the mind can be signified by words. ;The new interpretation of signification requires us to revise our understanding of the relation between Locke's philosophy of language and his anti-Aristotelian arguments. Locke thinks that considerations simply about the way words function are sufficient to show the Aristotelian project incoherent. By exploring the 'secret references' Locke thinks we give our words, and by exploiting the notion of signification as indication, I am able to connect Locke's arguments about language with his anti-Aristotelian arguments in a way that makes both intelligible. (shrink)

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

This is a review of Peter Anstey's John Locke and Natural Philosophy.

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.’Export citation.

An exploration of the relationship between thought and language.

If, as Locke believed, our words stand for Ideas hidden away inside our minds, how do we know that we all mean the same thing by them?

El hecho de que este año 2004 se cumpla el tercer centenario de la muerte de J. Locke ya de por sí es una ocasión para repasar su pensamiento como uno de los más influyentes en la tradición filosófica, especialmente en la anglosajona. Más oportuno aún es repensarlo a la luz de las consecuencias de sus planteamientos no sustancialistas. En el terreno gnoseo lógico, si de la sustancia no tenemos una idea clara y distinta entonces se alza con toda crudeza (...) el problema del correlato de nuestras ideas: su significado y su referencia. De la consideración de las ideas como signos surge una visión de las posiciones de Locke, inicialmente catalogadas de representacionistas, que las sitúa en el ámbito de la expresión. (shrink)