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Background
Background
In Book II, Locke had described a picture of human cognition in which there was a veil of perception between the atomic world and our ideas about it. He believed that we could never really know the true or real essence of a thing because we can never have direct contact with the atoms (or corpuscules as he called them) which constitute the thing.
Overview
Overview
The key features of Locke’s views of language were the following:
Language is primarily for the communication of private ideas
Words are the names of ideas.
The meaning of a word is given by a kind of checklist of descriptions of nominal essences. Locke believed that we could never really know the object because we can’t directly perceive atoms (so we cannot know an object’s real essence).
This checklist of ideas is improved over time as, through science, we discover the meaning of words. The nominal essences will gradually converge on the real essences of things.
- Language is primarily for the communication of private ideas (communication is telementation)
So when we speak, we are trying to convert those ideas into words and transmit them to someone else so that they might have the same ideas produced in their heads.
For Locke, what is communicated are the private ideas of individual people. Ideas are internal to individual minds and are intrinsically private. The privacy of individual ideas makes finding ways of communicating all the more necessary.
Man, though he have great variety of thoughts, and such, from which others, as well as himself, might receive Profit and Delight; yet they are all within his own Breast, invisible, and hidden from others, nor can of themselves be made appear. The Comfort, and Advantage of Society, not being to be had without Communication of Thoughts, it was necessary, that Man should find out some external sensible Signs, whereby those invisible Ideas, which his thoughts are made up of, might be made known to others.
Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, III. 2. 1.
Discussion
Discussion
Does a sentence really describe something private? Does 1+1=2 describe a private truth or a public one? Are facts private or public?
Think about a baby learning their first words. When they interact with their mother or father, is this the baby finally being able to transmit their thoughts to their parents?
2. Words are the names of ideas
2. Words are the names of ideas
The meaning of a word is the idea or mental representation that it stands for. Judgements or sentences are combinations of ideas.
Words in their primary or immediate signification signify nothing but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them
Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, III.2.2Discussion
Discussion
Is it true that a word is the name of an idea?
When a child says 'Mama', are they naming the idea of their mother?
Think about the following quotation from JS Mill:
When I say, ‘the sun is the cause of the day’, I do not mean that my idea of the sun causes or excites in me the idea of day
Mill, A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive, bk 1, ch. 2, § 1)It follows from this that words have a meaning independently of their context.
3. The meaning of a word can be given by a checklist of descriptions of nominal essences.
3. The meaning of a word can be given by a checklist of descriptions of nominal essences.
Locke believed that we could never really know the object because we can’t directly perceive atoms (so we cannot know an object’s real essence). However, whilst the real essences of a thing are entirely unknown and undiscoverable by us, the nominal essences can be known. The nominal essences are the collections of all the observed features that an individual thing has - the features that have been named (i.e. that have a nomina). So the nominal essence of a piece of gold would include the ideas of yellowness, a certain weight, malleability, dissolvability in certain chemicals, and so on.
According to Locke, language is fundamentally descriptive. We combine names to represent the world. So for Locke, the way to determine the meaning of a word is by observing examples of the things the word signifies and coming up with a checklist of necessary and sufficient features or conditions that we can tick-off. The meaning of the word 'mug' for example, is a utensil...
with a handle,
attached to a container
normally made of porcelain,
for the temporary containment with hot drinks.
Discussion
Discussion
Can we give the meaning of all words in this way? What's the checklist for the meaning of 'pain' or 'love', for example? Would there be a difference between the checklist for the word 'angry' in these two sentences?:
She is angry
I am angry
Locke seems to be focussing primarily on sentences that are descriptive. Are all sentences descriptive? Think of examples of sentences that are not descriptive and see if you can break the meanings of the words in those sentences down to a checklist of qualities.
4. This checklist of ideas is improved over time as, through science, we discover the meaning of words.
4. This checklist of ideas is improved over time as, through science, we discover the meaning of words.
Locke argues that language is created as a tool for carrying out ordinary practices of everyday life.
Vulgar Notions suit vulgar Discourses; and both though confused enough, yet serve pretty well for the Market and the Wake. Merchants and Lovers, Cooks and Taylors, have Words wherewith to dispatch their ordinary affairs; and so, I think, might Philosophers and Disputants too, if they had a mind to understand and to be clearly understood.
Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, III.11.10According to Locke, the job of the scientists is then to establish whether the ordinary use of words is correct - whether the qualities contained in our 'checklists' is accurate.
Sometimes, the scientists find that the ordinary or folk ideas are incorrect. For example, in the past people might have thought that whales were fish. But nowadays a whale is not characterised by biologists as a fish, but a mammal. There is a characteristic group of qualities that fish have that whales do not have. There is a characteristic group of qualities that mammals have that whales also have. To classify a whale as a fish, therefore, is a mistake.
Locke thinks that we can an should criticise such ideas, either because it does not conform to current usage or because it inadequately represents the archetypes that it is supposed to copy in the world. Locke thinks that such criticism is a good thing because it helps to improve our understanding of the world. He thinks that over time, our understanding of the meaning of words will improve as our ideas improve.
He thinks that gradually, the nominal essences will converge on the real essences.
Discussion
Discussion
Do you think that we discover the meanings of words as John Locke seems to imply?
Imagine you wanted to establish the meaning of the word 'horse'. How would you go about doing it? Wouldn't you gather together all the horses and see what they had in common? What's the problem with this method?
Think about what the word 'table' means. Nowadays, we know that the nuclei of atoms only take up a tiny proportion of the table and the rest is empty space. Does that mean that our understanding of the word table changed with that discovery? Does it mean that we were wrong before about what the word table meant?
Think about the difference between these statements:
The earth is flat
A whale is a fish
1+1=3
Are they all 'wrong' in the same way?
Tasks
Tasks
According to John Locke, what is the function of words?
According to John Locke, what are words?
According to John Locke, how can we give the meaning of a word?
According to John Locke, what role does science have to play in establishing the meaning of words?
Do you agree with John Locke's views on language? Refer to each of the four main points in your answer.
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