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Single Idea 7308

[filed under theme 19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 2. Meaning as Mental ]

Full Idea

Words in their primary or immediate signification, stand for nothing, but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them.

Gist of Idea

Words stand for the ideas in the mind of him that uses them

Source

John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.02.02)

Book Ref

Locke,John: 'Essay Concerning Human Understanding', ed/tr. Nidditch,P.H. [OUP 1979], p.405

A Reaction

This is notorious and usually dismissed contemptuously. However, if the ideas themselves 'stand for' reality, our words are not just trapped in mental space. If my mental space contains things, presumably we can name them.

The 15 ideas with the same theme [meanings are essentially mental events]:

2337 For Aristotle meaning and reference are linked to concepts [Aristotle, by Putnam]
7716 Words were devised as signs for inner ideas, and their basic meaning is those ideas [Locke]
7308 Words stand for the ideas in the mind of him that uses them [Locke]
6716 Language is presumably for communication, and names stand for ideas [Berkeley]
9167 Frege felt that meanings must be public, so they are abstractions rather than mental entities [Frege, by Putnam]
9583 Psychological logicians are concerned with sense of words, but mathematicians study the reference [Frege]
9584 Identity baffles psychologists, since A and B must be presented differently to identify them [Frege]
23481 Propositions assemble a world experimentally, like the model of a road accident [Wittgenstein]
18283 Language pictures the essence of the world [Wittgenstein]
23482 The 'form' of the picture is its possible combinations [Wittgenstein]
8212 Everything that is experienced in consciousness is meaning [Derrida]
19149 If we reject corresponding 'facts', we should also give up the linked idea of 'representations' [Davidson]
3450 Philosophy of language is a branch of philosophy of mind [Searle]
7013 The Picture Theory claims we can read reality from our ways of speaking about it [Heil]
7722 If meaning is mental pictures, explain "the cat (or dog!) is NOT on the mat" [Lowe]