more from this thinker
|
more from this text
Single Idea 7716
[filed under theme 19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 2. Meaning as Mental
]
Full Idea
It was necessary that man should find some external sensible signs, whereby those invisible ideas might be made known to others; ..words, then, in their primary or immediate signification stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them.
Gist of Idea
Words were devised as signs for inner ideas, and their basic meaning is those ideas
Source
John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.02.01-2)
Book Ref
Locke,John: 'Essay Concerning Human Understanding', ed/tr. Nidditch,P.H. [OUP 1979], p.405
A Reaction
This very unpopular theory could be defended. Note Locke's qualification about 'primary signification'. His Wittgensteinian opponents go on about community or communication, but maybe these are parasitic on the initial grunt referring to an inner idea?
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]
|