Preface
An overall study of the classical works on publicity and meaning is bound to be selective, and this introductory chapter even more so. I have exercised selectivity by starting with the works of early empiricists, and almost ignoring everything published before that. Furthermore, I have felt compelled to shorten the section on Wittgenstein somewhat and, in particular, to leave out most of his adherents. Among contemporary philosophers, I have recklessly chosen those that are best suited to sustain my own account (presented in Chapter 3).
The overall aim for this very chapter is to introduce (what I take to be) the most essential tenets and arguments in this debate, in their historical context . In doing this, I hope to be as fair as I can in my interpretation of these "deep" problems and their solutions delivered by great philosophers as Locke, Berkeley, Frege, Carnap, Wittgenstein, and Fodor, and I hope to avoid some canonized and widespread misunderstandings, which seem to have made a muddle of a large part of the debate.
1

1. Introduction: The “Lockian view”
In the contemporary debate on publicity and meaning, John Locke is demoted to a "whipping boy
1
". It is commonly held that Locke's ideational theory of meaning has the consequence that the speaker's meaning is inaccessible to the hearer, and therefore impossible to communicate.
Thus, communication is impossible, on Locke's theory, according to the accepted characterization.
Kretzmann gives voice to this view when he writes that Locke’s view that words signify ideas
“has become established as one of the classic blunders in semantic theory” 2
. Martinich, in the same vein, claims that "[w]hat makes communication problematic on Locke's theory of meaning is that only one person has access to it, because no one can look into the mind of another person."
3
. Alexander Miller makes a similar point, and takes Locke's well-known passage on inverted spectra to "basically amount to an admission that his account of sense is unable to play any role in the task of explaining linguistic communication.
4 ". Michael
Losonsky comments on the same excerpt that "[a]fter all, if words were ideas, which for
Locke are private, invisible, and inaudible to others, they could not be used to communicate our ideas to other people. Therefore, I think the judicious conclusion is that Locke simple had not worked through this issue carefully
5
". It is hard to find any contemporary philosopher who do not speak disparagingly of Locke's view of language
6
.
My aim is to show why the accepted characterization is not really to the point. Firstly, because the “Lockian view” is not really Locke’s: The notorious problem of inverted spectra that is associated with Locke, is not a major problem in Locke's view. On the contrary,
Locke's chief concern was the very complex ideas of "modal modes". Moreover, Locke did work through the issue of private ideas and communication carefully. He worried about the privacy of ideas, and put a lot of effort to explain how we get access to other minds thorugh words, and how we successfully communicate our thoughts to others. In fact, Locke's remedy for private meaning, was crucial to his epistemological project. Secondly, Locke’s actual view is mainly unoriginal, following the scholastic tradition that was already almost two thousands years old in Locke’s days.
1 Lycan, Willian G. (2008) Philosophy of Language, a contemporary introduction , 2nd. ed,
Routledge, New York, p. 66.
2
Norman Kretzmann (1968) “The Main Thesis of Locke’s Semantic Theory” Philosophical
Review, Vol. 77, p. 177
3
A.P. Martinich (2001) The Philosophy of Language , 4th ed, OUP, Oxford, ed. Martinich, p.
502
4
Miller, Alexander (2007) Philosophy of Langugage , 2nd ed, Routledge, London p. 41.
5
Michael Losonsky (2007)
The Cambridge Companion to Locke’s “Essay Concerning
Human Understanding , pp 304-305.
6
Though there are exception as Lowe (2005) and Dawson (2003, 2007). I highly recommend the profound and comprehensive book of Dawson: Locke, Language and Early-Modern
Philosophy , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007
2

In what follows, I will start with the basic tenets of Locke’s philosophy of language, tenets he inherits and shares with most of his contemporaries. Next, I will deal with the rather unique contributions of Locke, and his chief concerns of meaning and privacy, as these are overlooked in the standard characterization.
2.1 The basic tenets
During Locke’s lifetime, the scholastic tradition still had a vigorous impact upon philosophy.
It was mostly, but not exclusively, maintained by catholic philosophers who placed them selves within the tradition, and, at the same time, made use of sixteenth-century developments in Aristotelian studies. Students at European academic schools and universities, like e.g.
Oxford where Locke himself was an undergraduate student, also read the scholastic texts.
7
Although Locke himself would not approve, most scholars today agree that the scholastic
“semiotic tradition” had a huge influence upon Locke’s philosophy of language.
8
The theses that constitute Locke’s account of language, which all can be traced back to its semiotic counterparts, are, broadly:
(1) Words are perceptible signs of ideas.
(2) Words are generated by human conventions, whereas ideas are universal and common to all men.
(3) The chief purpose of language is to communicate thoughts, that is, to make them knowable to others.
In what follows I shall give a brief digest of the scholastic sources of these presuppositions.
2.2 The legacy of Aristotle
The starting point for virtually all medieval philosophy of language was Aristotle’s (384 BC -
322 BC) first chapter of De Interpretatione, particularly in Boethius’s translation.
In its locus classicus, De Interpreataione 16 a 3 , Aristotle says that spoken words (ea quae sunt in voce) are signs (notae) of the passions in the mind; and the scholastic commentators all agreed that
“passions” should be taken as mental concepts , rather than in its normal sense
9
. The passage in the translation of Ackrill
10
runs:
Now spoken sounds are symbols of affections in the soul, and written marks symbols of spoken sounds. And just as written marks are not the same for all men, neither are spoken sounds. But what these are in the first place signs of – affections of the soul –
7
Ashworth E. J. (1981) ‘“Do Words Signify Ideas or Things?” The Scholastic Sources of
Locke’s Theory of Language’
Journal of the History of Philosophy 19 , p. 299
8
See e.g. Ashworth E. J. (1981); and Dawson, Hannah (2007) Locke, Language and Early-
Modern Philosophy , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
9
E. J. Ashworth (1981), p 300
10 Aristotle’s Categories and De Interpretatione , translated with notes by J.L. Ackrill, OUP,
1963
3

are the same for all; and what these affections are likenesses of – actual things – are also the same.
(De Interpreataione 16 a 3)
The envisaged excerpt was constantly reviewed, and yielded plenty of issues and an abundance of heterogeneous comments. For instance the question about the relation between written and spoken language, the issue whether mental concepts resemble the things they represent, and the matter whether words are standing for ideas rather than things.
Notwithstanding, scholastic philosophers mostly agreed on certain generic points: firstly, that ideas “are the same for all”. Secondly, that external things are uniform, as well. And thirdly, most medieval philosophers subscribed to the view that words signify ideas 11 . Thus, the triad the mind – the world – the linguistic meaning, tended to be universalized
12
. Specifically the
Aristotelian doctrine of the universality of mental concepts maintained a commonplace to
Locke's time
13
.
2.3 Augustine: conventional signs and their raison d’être
Augustine’s (354 – 430) chief contribution to the semiotic tradition is his generic definition of signs. Distinguishing between natural and conventional signs, Augustine presents an account that persists throughout western history of philosophy and finely is adopted by Locke 14
The natural ones are those which, without a will ( voluntas ) or any kind of urge to signify, cause something else beyond themselves to be recognized from them. An example is smoke signifying fire, which it does without willing to signify; rather by observation of and attention to familiar phenomena it is recognized that there is fire lurking, even if only smoke is apparent. The track of a passing animal belongs to this kind; and a face will signify the state of mind of someone who is angry or sad, even without any will on the part of the angry or sad person… Given signs are those which living things give among themselves for demonstrating, so far as they are able, the impulses of their mind ( motus animi sui ), or whatever it may be that they have sensed or understood. There is no reason for our signifying – that is, giving a sign – except to express and transmit ( depromendum et traiciendum
) to someone else’s mind what is going on in the mind of him who gives the sign. ( De doct. christ. 2.1.2-2.2.3)
15
This very passage ends with another recurrent theme in Augustine’s philosophy of language, that is, that the communicative function, which consists in transmission of thoughts, is essential to the linguistic sign. Augustine maintains that words fulfill the epistemological need of making one’s thoughts knowable to others. The chief purpose of signifying is to expose one’s mind and to “express and transmit to another’s mind what is in the mind of the person
11
Though there are important challenges as Roger Bacon’s (c.1214-1292) defense of extensionalist reference semantics. But this notwithstanding, even Bacon maintains the ideational view to that extent that he takes words as natural signs of ideas , since words signify the corresponding idea’s presence in the mind of the speaker.
12
Dawson (2007) pp 92-97
13
Dawson (2003) pp 618 – 629
14
E. J. Lowe (1995) Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Locke on Human Understanding ,
London, p 148
15 The Cambridge Companion to Augustine , ed. Stump & Kretzmann, Cambridge University
Press, 2001; p 191
4

who gives the sign” 16
This thesis (which is the third in the previous section “The basic tenets”) is prevalent throughout the scholastic period and in Locke’s works too, as we will see.
As for the mental concepts, these are not conventional or even taught, Augustine seems to claim, but developed before the age of language acquisition. In the except of Confession that
Wittgenstein famously attacked in the opening remark of Philosophical Investigations ,
Augustine describes language acquisition as a matter of learning the words of the answering concepts, concepts that are already possessed. The learning process of “pairing” words with concepts heavily relies on ostensive definition, which, as it were, excites ideas in the mind of the child by means of the corresponding external objects. As every child, Augustine recognizes those external objects (and thereby the corresponding concepts) through “the natural language of all peoples”, which consists in “bodily movements”, “the expression of the face”, and “tone of voice” etc:
When they (my elders) named [appellabant] some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and I grasped that the thing [rem illam] was called by the sound they uttered when they meant [vellent] to point it out. Their intention was shewn by their bodily movements, as it were the natural language [verbis naturalibus] of all peoples: the expression of the face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other parts of the body, and the tone of voice which expresses [indicante] our state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting or avoiding something. Thus, as I heard words repeatedly used in their proper place in various sentences, I gradually learnt to understand what objects they signified [quarum rerum signa essent]; and after I had trained my mouth to form these signs, I used them to express [enuntiabam] my own desires.” (Augustine,
Confessions I
8 [13])
17
In assuming that children are not really taught their first language, but rather more or less
“finding out for them selves”, Augustine anticipates the now widely influential hypothesis of a universal language of thought , as Fodor himself points out
18
. We will soon return to this subject matter in the sections on Wittgenstein; now, it is sufficient to note that Augustine assumes an inherited universal mental language, which is communicated through public signs
(words), and that language acquisition is possible through ostensive definition and a great deal of “stage settings”.
19
In his later works, Augustine develops his “inner speech theory”, were the mental words
(“verbum mentis”) are considered as words in its most proper sense, whereas external words are merely signs for them. Inner and external language coincides in speech-thought isomorphism, and this explains why communication of complex thoughts is possible by means of sentences.
20
16
Augustine, On Christian Teaching, p 30, se Dawson (2003) p 622, and Stump & Kretzmann
(ed.) (2001), pp 192-193
17
Stump & Kretzmann (ed) (2001) p 187
18
Fodor (1975) The Language of Thought , Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, p 64.
19 Stump & Kretzmann (ed.) (2001), p 190.
20
Ibid. pp 200-202
5

2.4 Mental concepts and communication in medieval philosophy
After Augustine, the assumption of the uniformity of the mind and its mental concepts was maintained by the contributions of Boethius (480-528), and made central by Anselm of
Canterbury (1033-1109) in the 11 th
century. Anselm revives the view of Augustine of
“verbum mentis” and combines it with the Aristotelian view that inner concepts are universal.
In the opening chapter of Peri Hermeneias he presents this view of the mind: mental words are natural words and thus identical for all human beings (they are “verba …naturalia…et apud omnes gentes eadem” (Monolog, 1968: 25) 21
The universal mental concepts were distinguished as either simple (and expressed in simple words), or complex (and expressed in combinations of words), by medieval philosophers.
22
This thought, which stems from Aristotle as well, was developed in Saint Tomas of Aquinas’s
(1225-74) significant works on the nature of language and thought, and uses in his anti-
Platonist arguments to show that universal concept cannot exist anywhere outside the human intellect
23
.
William of Ockham’s (c. 1287 – c. 1347) theory of “natural universals” and “conventional universals” parallels the Aristotelian doctrine of universal mental concept and their nonnatural signs too, but stresses the first assumption in terms of human nature. All human beings share a common, natural language, Ockham asserts, and the conventional languages like
English and Latin are all derived from that
24
.
In Locke’s time the belief in an original and universal language is espoused by representatives of the then flourishing universal language program. These philosophers urged to link mental concepts to the external world and explain the uniformity of concepts as reflections of the uniformity of the external world 25 . Even their opponents who believed in certain innate ideas, subscribed to the view that ideas about the external world derive from that unitary world by means of universal sense experience. Thus the Aristotelian tripartite doctrine of the mind-the language- the world as uniform, still persevered. Locke himself adopted it, albeit in a different guise
26
.
Consistent with that view, communication of ideas is rarely considered as problematic. The
Augustinian account, which holds that signifying serves the epistemological object of showing to others the content of one’s mind, is echoed in several scholastic works. For instance Petrus Margallus declares that to signify is to “make (someone) know (something)” ;
Albert of Saxony writes that signifying is “to represent something to an intellect” 27 . Locke’s himself was influenced by his contemporary Tomas Hobbes, who gave voice to this view too:
21
Stanford Encyclopedia; Medieval semiotics , 3 Semiotic beginnings in the 11 th
and 12 th century
22
A Kenny, Anthony (2005) A New History of Western Philosophy, Volume 2: Medieval
Philosophy , OUP, p 132
23
ibid. pp 137 – 138
24
Ibid. p 144
25
Dawson (2007) pp 102-103
26
Dawson (2003) p 626
27 Stanford Encyclopedia. Medieval semiotics 8. The concept of sign in scholastic logic of 15 th and early 16 th
-century
6

Men learn Names, and use them in Talk with others, only that they may be understood; which is then done, when by Use or Consent, the Sound I make by the Organs of
Speech, excites in another Mans’ Mind, who hears it, the Ideas I apply it to in mine, when I speak it.
28
1 Words signs of ideas
With parallels in the envisaged scholastic tradition, Locke considers language as a system of signs, generated by human conventions. The ultimate linguistic signs are words , and Locke’s view of words is that they are non-natural signs of ideas.
As other seventeenth-century philosophers, he subscribes to the Augustinian definition of a sign as ”a thing which of itself makes some other thing come to mind, beside the impression that it presents to the senses” 29
, and that words thereby have an essential role in communication: “Words are sensible signs, necessary for communication of ideas.” (Essay III.ii.1; p 298) 30
Locke defines an idea as “Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding” (Essay II.viii.8; p 89) Used in this broad sense, ideas can be either of sensations , that is, perceived by the five senses, or reflections , i.e. “that notice which the mind takes of its own operations, and the manner of them” (EII.i.4; p 65).
Further more, ideas are either simple or complex (i.e. compound by simple ideas).
2.1 Simple ideas
Our understanding of the external world is ultimately based on simple ideas, which are caused by the perceived objects . Those simple ideas are either of primary qualities or secondary qualities
. The former represent the “intrinsic properties” of material objects and resemble those properties. Primary properties are, Locke says, “solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number” (Essay, II.viii.9; p 90), to which he later adds “bulk” and “texture” (Essay
II.viii.10; p 90)
31
Secondary properties then, are equally caused by primary properties, but they do not resemble the qualities they represent . What we experience of tastes, odors, sounds, colors, heat, and pain etc. are solely in the Mind – the corresponding properties of the objects, are nothing but
“power to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities” (E II.viii.10; p 90)
28
Ayer (1991) p 269
29
Hannah Dawson (2003) Locke on Private Language, British Journal for the History of
Philosophy 11 (4); p 621-2. See also: E. J. Lowe (1995) p 148
30
Locke John (1690) An Essay Concerning the Human Understanding ; eBook of Gothenburg
University ( www.ub.gu.se
) Publication: Raleigh, N.C. Alex Catalogue
31
See also E. J. Lowe (1995) p 48
7

2.3 Complex ideas
Complex ideas divide from reality even more, as additional voluntary human capacities inevitably are involved: to select ideas and to provide a structure by virtue of which they constitute separate ideas. As these operations are voluntary and therefore arbitrary, the generated complex ideas can differ dramatically from person to person, in contrast to the causal processes of the uniform sense organs, which yield simple ideas of the same kind for every (normal) person 32 . The inconstancy of complex ideas are the chief problem of privacy and communication, as we will see, and nothing else.
However, specifically ideas of natural kinds are less arbitrary than other complex ideas, as they have palpable external standards. For, though Locke is a nominalist, he maintains that it appears to be natural kinds out there, and therefore that the corresponding complex ideas are not completely arbitrary but ‘refer to standards made by nature” 33
Still, Locke keeps in mind, the peculiar human perspective, which effects the creation of ideas: The distinction between “sun” and “stars”, for example, are probably a “false” one, generated from the essential role it plays in our lives.
34 workmanship of men” (E.III.vi.37; p 343).
After all “sorting of things is the
As for the complex ideas of “mixed modes”, their creation is more willful, among other things because: “First, The ideas they stand for are very complex, and made up of a great number of ideas put together. Secondly, Where the ideas they stand for have no certain connexion in nature; and so no settled standard anywhere in nature existing, to rectify and adjust them by.”
(Essay III.ix.5; p 356. My italics) 35 Words of ideas of mixed modes include “the greatest part of the words made use of in divinity, ethics, law, and politics, and several other sciences” (E
II.xxii.12; p 208)
36
. The arbitrariness and inconstancy of these ideas, are constantly called to attention. “Hence it comes to pass that men's names of very compound ideas, such as for the most part are moral words, have seldom in two different men the same precise signification; since one man's complex idea seldom agrees with another's, and often differs from his own- from that which he had yesterday, or will have to-morrow”. (Essay III.ix.6; p 356)
32
Dawson (2007), p 221
33 Locke remarks in E.III.vi.37; p 343: ”The manner of sorting particular beings the work of fallible men, though nature makes things alike. I do not deny but nature, in the constant production of particular beings, makes them not always new and various, but very much alike and of kin one to another: but I think it nevertheless true, that the boundaries of the species, whereby men sort them, are made by men; since the essences of the species, distinguished by different names, are, as has been proved, of man's making, and seldom adequate to the internal nature of the things they are taken from. So that we may truly say, such a manner of sorting of things is the workmanship of men”. See also Dawson (2007) pp 206-207.
34
Dawson (2007) p 208, E III.vi.I, p 325
35
See also: Dawson (2007) p 224
36 See also: A Cambridge Companion to Locke’s ”Essay Concerning Human Understanding ”, ed. Lex Newman, Cambridge, 2007; p 91-92
8

Hence, a radical discontinuity between appearance and reality follows from Locke’s account of ideas. Ideas are, by and large, creations of our selves, and they are the only things immediately accessible. Thus, being in this predicament, we are left with no knowledge about the things them selves, their “real essence”. Locke sweeps aside the Aristotelian view that bare experience is a route to nature, and the Cartesian view that reason can grasp things essentially; our connection to the world is merely casual.
3.1 Knowledge of meaning
When Locke holds that ideas are the building material of all knowledge, he includes knowledge of meaning equally. Locke addresses a twofold account: Firstly, Locke embraces the persistent view that one can only mean what one knows .
37
In his approach this means that one can only mean what is within one’s realm of ideas. Hence, he constantly insists that one can only refer to one’s own ideas: words, in their primary or immediate signification, stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them , how imperfectly soever or carelessly those ideas are collected from the things which they are supposed to represent. 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. That then which words are the marks of are the ideas of the speaker: nor can any one apply them as marks, immediately, to anything else but the ideas that he himself hath : for this would be to make them signs of his own conceptions, and yet apply them to other ideas; which would be to make them signs and not signs of his ideas at the same time, and so in effect to have no signification at all. 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.” (Essay III.ii.2; p 298. My italics)
3.2 The presupposition of a secret reference
Locke’s view that word meaning is the corresponding ideas of the speaker, was a commonplace in Locke’s days, just as in the forgoing semiotic tradition. As E. J. Ashworth points out: “Locke was original and innovative, but not when he said that words signify ideas” 38 Still, this was the situation in the learned world, and Locke himself was perfectly aware of how implausible his account would appear to untaught people – those who give “a secret reference” to external things and to other people’s ideas:
But though words, as they are used by men, can properly and immediately signify nothing but the ideas that are in the mind of the speaker; yet they in their thoughts give them a secret reference to two other things.
First, They suppose their words to be marks of the ideas in the minds also of other men, with whom they communicate: for else they should talk in vain, and could not be understood, if the sounds they applied to one idea were such as by the hearer were
37
Dawson (2007) pp188-189
38 Ashworth, E. J. (1981) ‘“Do Words Signify Ideas or Things?” The Scholastic Sources of
Locke’s Theory of Language’, Journal od the History of Philosophy 19; p 300
9

applied to another, which is to speak two languages. But in this men stand not usually to examine, whether the idea they, and those they discourse with have in their minds be the same: but think it enough that they use the word, as they imagine, in the common acceptation of that language; in which they suppose that the idea they make it a sign of is precisely the same to which the understanding men of that country apply that name.
…Secondly, Because men would not be thought to talk barely of their own imagination, but of things as really they are; therefore they often suppose the words to stand also for the reality of things. …though give me leave here to say, that it is a perverting the use of words, and brings unavoidable obscurity and confusion into whenever we make them stand for anything but those ideas we have in our own minds.
(Essay. III.ii. 4-5; p 299)
Drawing on this very passage, some scholars like e.g. John Yolton, have taken Locke to mean that, after all, we do refer to other thing than our own ideas, despite Locke’s adamant dismissals elsewhere. Yolton (and others) also imposed on Locke the view that this is an necessary presupposition which underpins successful communication.
39
But, Locke never
“admits that we give words a ‘secret reference’ to other men’s ideas and also to things’ 40 ;
Instead, Locke gives an account for what ordinary people normally, though incorrectly believe, and in fact, this not even remotely helps to sustain communication, but leads to gross errors. Again ”it is a perverting the use of words, and brings unavoidable obscurity and confusion into whenever we make them stand for anything but those ideas we have in our own minds.” (Essay III.ii.5)
This is so, of two reasons. First, it leads us to think that we can grasp nature essentially, an assumption that runs counter Locke’s epistemology. Secondly, it tempts us to think that ordinary language use is far more uniform and unproblematic than it is, which in turn, might lead us to elude the obstacles of mutual understanding that occur when speaker and hearer do not share the same ideas
41
. (I will return to this latter matter presently).
Thus, Locke rules out two assumptions about meaning that are closely related to the most effective arguments against his and akin views in recent years: Putnam’s externalist argument presented in the Twin Earth argument; and Burge anti-individualistic argument for social externalism
42
. Those two influential arguments subscribe to the same line of thought, which is basically, that despite not everyone, or even the majority of people have knowledge of the real meaning of a certain word, they can notwithstanding understand it (as they can use it correctly). In Putnam’s version it is principally possible that every competent speaker are ignorant about the meaning; in Burge’s full knowledge is excluded to a small minority.
39 Yolton, John (1970) Locke and the Compass of the Understanding , Cambridge University
Press, London; p 205: Yolton writes: “Locke admits that we give words a ‘secret reference’ to other men’s ideas and also to things. He explains the first secret reference by saying that unless we assume that our words stand for similar ideas in each other’s mind, we would not put any faith in communication….The other secret reference of words is to the reality of things, we suppose our words for substances stand for bodies (3.2.5). This supposition is made because we take our talk to be about the world, not just about our ‘own imagination’.
With his strong interest in the science of nature and with his recognition of the importance of language, Locke needed a doctrine of signs which could do more than stand for our ideas.”
40
ibid. p 205
41 See Dawson (2003) pp 615-617
42
See Ayers (1991) pp 270 – 276.
10

Locke, contrary, relies on the intuition that the understanding of the meaning for a word reflects the knowledge (or belief) one has about the object it is employed for.
If one wants to speak for Locke, Locke’s account might easier explain the apparent mutuality of a subject’s knowledge of meaning vis-à-vis her knowledge of a subject matter. It appears as a matter of fact that increased knowledge of a certain thing often entails an equally increased ability to correctly use and understand the corresponding word. Profound knowledge of the tree elm, for example, results in competence in the usage of the corresponding word “elm” that is higher than the ordinary laymen’s. Thus, when encountering a rare kind of elm, or a misshapen sample of a common kind, for example, the scientists, unlike the laymen, are able to recognize the tree as an elm. The need for an explanation appears even more pressing in cases of a priori knowledge, like when a pupil who fails to understand a mathematical proof due to insufficient knowledge of certain mathematical concepts, for instance. Here the subject’s competence (or incompetence) of meaning and her knowledge (or ignorance) of the subject matter apparently coincide, and the pupil is not even remotely helped by the experts and their competence he is supposed to have parasitically. The only way out is to obtain the lacking conceptual knowledge himself, one might claim.
43
The problem actualized here, is akin to the one of internalism and externalism and specifically of a priori knowledge and externalism. I will return to it later on; here I merely want to suppose some intuitive (albeit not unproblematic) assumptions that underpins Locke’s story about knowledge of language.
3.3 Knowledge of what other mean
The second part of Locke’s account of knowledge of meaning explains the epistemological presuppositions for the receiver . Her knowledge of what other people mean by their utterances is within the reach of her mind, that is her own ideas, and based on perception of the their utterances. Albeit its apparent semiotic roots, this point is essential to Locke’s account, as it sticks to the very project of empiricism to found knowledge on experience of the five senses.
In fact, nothing discerns the thoughts of others, but their signifying words. Per se, ideas are epistemologically private , i.e. known by the subject who have them, but no one else
44
:
Words are sensible signs, necessary for communication of ideas. 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 to appear.
(Essay III.ii.1; p 298)
To recapitulate briefly, Locke is expressing the rather intuitive idea, correct or not, that the thoughts a subject possible can convey are those of her
. And the receiver’s ability to grasp those thoughts is exclusively dependent on her internal cognitive abilities, which in Locke’s philosophy is her mastering of ideas.
43 This point is made by Ayer, see ibid. p 176
44
See also Dawson (2007) p 240
11

Thus, words serve as the essential public vehicle of communication
, used “for the communication of our Thoughts to others” (E II.ix.1). Like earlier semiotic philosophers, e.g.,
Augustine, Locke describes the communicative function as words’ raison d’être:
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 (E III.ii.1; p 298)
4.1 Successful communication
Regarding its success , Locke writes in EIII.ix.4; p 355 (italics mine):
The chief end of language in communication being to be understood, words serve not well for that end, neither in civil nor philosophical discourse, when any word does not excite in the hearer the same idea which it stands for in the mind of the speaker.
Moreover, Locke seems to put rather strong sameness constraints on communication. Later, in the same chapter (E III.ix.6), he emphasizes this thus:
To make words serviceable to the end of communication, it is necessary, as has been said, that they excite in the hearer exactly the same idea they stand for in the mind of the speaker. Without this, men fill one another's heads with noise and sounds; but convey not thereby their thoughts, and lay not before one another their ideas, which is the end of discourse and language.
But in this part of Book III, were Locke deals with “the imperfection of words”, he constantly admits its rareness. Therefore, in distinguishing between two kinds of discourse: “civil uses” and “philosophical use”, Locke elsewhere admits that there might be “some tolerable latitude” within which men uses there words, “that may serve for ordinary conversation” (E III.xi.25; p
390) Furthermore, that civil usage is regulated by “the common use” (E III.ix.8; p 357). Not so for philosophical discourses, which deals with far more complex ideas and have additional demands on meaning:
By the philosophical use of words, I mean such a use of them as may serve to convey the precise notions of things, and to express in general propositions certain and undoubted truths, which the mind may rest upon and be satisfied with in its search after true knowledge. These two uses [i.e. civil and philosophical] are very distinct; and a great deal less exactness will serve in the one than in the other, as we shall see in what follows. (Essay III.ix.3; p 355)
On that account, Locke often mistrusts in the success of communication on philosophical matters as ethics, politics etc. The depressing picture of philosophical discourses he gives, displays endless quarrels on meaning: moral words are in most men's mouths little more than bare sounds; or when they have any, it is for the most part but a very loose and undetermined, and, consequently, obscure and confused signification. And even those themselves who have with more
12

attention settled their notions, do yet hardly avoid the inconvenience to have them stand for complex ideas different from those which other, even intelligent and studious men, make them the signs of. Where shall one find any, either controversial debate, or familiar discourse, concerning honour, faith, grace, religion, church, &c., wherein it is not easy to observe the different notions men have of them? Which is nothing but this, that they are not agreed in the signification of those words, nor have in their minds the same complex ideas which they make them stand for, and so all the contests that follow thereupon are only about the meaning of a sound. And hence we see that, in the interpretation of laws, whether divine or human, there is no end; comments beget comments, and explications make new matter for explications; and of limiting, distinguishing, varying the signification of these moral words there is no end. These ideas of men's making are, by men still having the same power, multiplied in infinitum.” (III.ix.9; p 358)
4.2 Locke vis-à-vis his interpreters on successful communication
Accordingly, Locke’s doubts about successful communication is not what present day philosophers use to saddle him with: Obviously it has nothing to do with the problem of privacy of ownership: Needless to say, it is the type , and not the token , that Locke has in mind: communication is successful whenever speaker and hearer mutually grasp a qualitatively identical thought. That is, privacy of ownership is never considered as a problem. Neither is the inherent epistemological privacy of ideas, or at least not as an insuperable problem. For, as we have seen Locke (just like other semiotic philosophers) believes that thoughts are knowable to others by means of words. Words gain entrance to the thoughts of others, and make them “public”.
The presupposition that underpins this view, as already shown, is the assurance in the uniformity of ideas. In Locke’s time, the mind was recognized as the same of all men.
Philosophers then, just like their scholastic predecessors, used to think uniformly on the triad: language – mind – reality. Since human cognitive capacities are the same to all men, and the world is uniformly built as well, men create similar ideas from that homogenous world, philosophers agreed. Therefore, it goes without saying that communication of one’s thoughts is possible, Locke and his contemporaries maintained.
45
Hence, and thirdly, Locke objections are not principal or exclusive. They are not a priori considerations on sufficient vis-à-vis necessary conditions, like those that occurred last century, which tried to establish principal evidence for the impossibility of private meaning.
The problem Locke poses depends on the specific nature of certain ideas , and never hit meaning generally. And there are remedies, to which Locke devotes a large part of his third book.
Finally, Locke is often accused for being unaware about the problem of publicity and communication. For instance, Michael Losonsky writes, in The Cambridge Companion to
Locke’s “Essay Concerning Human Understanding ”:
After all, if words were ideas, which for Locke are private, invisible, and inaudible to others, they could not be used to communicate out ideas to other people. Therefore, I
45
Dawson (2003) pp 621-633
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think the judicious conclusion is that Locke simple had not worked through this issue carefully
46
But as we have seen, and will see, Locke did work through this issue carefully. He worried about the problem of privacy and was occupied by miscommunication. In effect, Locke is far more aware of the problem of the semiotic account of communication that he inherits, than any antecedents before him.
4.3 What makes successful communication possible?
In accordance with the new program of empiricism, Locke establishes the need of external, perceptible references and the profit of ostensive definition, to settle the signified ideas and to ascertain a uniform use. Accordingly, two generic presuppositions sustain Locke’s story about communication:
(1) The uniformity of minds
(2) Public references and ostensive definition
47
Locke assumes that men in general are endowed with sense organs that function in the same way. Therefore, when we draw on the same things we will normally produce similar ideas.
Thus, in learning their first language, children relay on ostensive definition. A certain idea is then exited in the mind of the child by means of the adult’s pointing on the corresponding object, and spontaneously the word is taught. Locke writes: if we will observe how children learn languages, we shall find that, to make them understand what the names of simple ideas or substances stand for, people ordinarily show them the thing whereof they would have them have the idea; and then repeat to them the name that stands for it; as white, sweet, milk, sugar, cat, dog. (EIII.ix.9; p 358)
The fact that children encounter things that differ in their appearance, for instance that all of us learned the word “cat” from cats that differed in color, shape, marking, and fur, etc, does not entail different ideas, which would be incommunicable, Locke makes clear
48
. Gifted with the peculiar human capacity of abstraction , we are able to produce general ideas , which are applicable to other individuals of, as it were, the same kind
49
.
4.4 Communication and simple ideas
46 Michael Losonsky (2007) The Cambridge Companion to Locke’s “Essay Concerning
Human Understanding , pp 304-305.
47
See Dawson (2003) pp 630-632
48
Essay III.iii.3; p 302; Dawson (2003) pp 629-630
49
Locke writes: ”ideas become general, by separating from them the circumstances of time and place, and any other ideas that may determine them to this or that particular existence. By this way of abstraction they are made capable of representing more individuals than one; each of which having in it a conformity to that abstract idea, is (as we call it) of that sort.” (Essay
III.iii.6; p 303)
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The “old problem of privacy” 50
is associated with the possibility of inverted spectra and its diversity of simple ideas of secondary qualities, and located in Essay II.xxxii.15, according to the secondary literature. But, Locke himself, rather contrary, considers the possibility of inverted spectra as a minor concern – in effect, simple ideas are the most uniform of all ideas
51
. As for simple ideas of secondary qualities, this is so, because the causal processes of the sense organs, which are the same for all men, generate them. And furthermore, their corresponding words are learnable ostensively, drawing on the external object as a public standard. Therefore most men (who are not blind) have an agreed and determined idea of blue
52
.
Thus, the aforementioned EIIxxxii.15 – the supposed “ locus classicus of the problem of privacy” – is a siding in the investigation of a rather different subject, truth and falsehood of ideas, and the inverted spectra problem is said in the passing before Locke proceeds to his chief subject:
15. Though one man's idea of blue should be different from another's. Neither would it carry any imputation of falsehood to our simple ideas, if by the different structure of our organs it were so ordered, that the same object should produce in several men's minds different ideas at the same time; v.g. if the idea that a violet produced in one man's mind by his eyes were the same that a marigold produced in another man's, and vice versa.
For, since this could never be known, because one man's mind could not pass into another man's body, to perceive what appearances were produced by those organs; neither the ideas hereby, nor the names, would be at all confounded, or any falsehood be in either. For all things that had the texture of a violet, producing constantly the idea that he called blue, and those which had the texture of a marigold, producing constantly the idea which he as constantly called yellow, whatever those appearances were in his mind; he would be able as regularly to distinguish things for his use by those appearances, and understand and signify those distinctions marked by the name blue and yellow, as if the appearances or ideas in his mind received from those two flowers were exactly the same with the ideas in other men's minds. I am nevertheless very apt to think that the sensible ideas produced by any object in different men's minds, are most commonly very near and undiscernibly alike. For which opinion, I think, there might be many reasons offered: but that being besides my present business, I shall not trouble my reader with them; but only mind him, that the contrary supposition, if it could be proved, is of little use, either for the improvement of our knowledge, or conveniency of life, and so we need not trouble ourselves to examine it.
4.5 Communication and complex ideas
Locke’s principal concern about successful communication is the complex ideas . As they are produced voluntarily, they need public standards, which basically are: patterns in nature
(which sustain the production of complex ideas of substances), and ordinary use (which underpins most daily intercourses). But Locke never claims they ascertain uniformity . As for natural kind terms because, first, its ”standard is not easy to be known”; and second, ”the
50
Alexander Miller’s label, see
Lowe´s Locke on Human Understanding
, The Locke
Newsletter 26, 1995; p 155
51 Ayers, Michael (1991) Locke, Volume I: Epistemology, Routledge, London, pp 271- 272
52
ibid. p 272
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signification of the word and the real essence of the thing are not exactly the same”.
Accordingly, men’s diverting experiences and layers of knowledge cannot but make their understanding differ:
…it is plain that this complex idea [i.e. of ”essences of species”]… is by different men made very differently… The yellow shining colour makes gold to children; others add weight, malleableness, and fusibility; and others yet other qualities, which they find joined with that yellow colour, as constantly as its weight and fusibility… And therefore different men, leaving out or putting in several simple ideas which others do not, according to their various examination, skill, or observation of that subject, have different essences of gold, which must therefore be of their own and not of nature's making.(E III.vi.31; p 340)
Regarding ideas of mixed modes (which constitute the discourses of ethics, politics, religious, among other things) public standards are distressingly absent, “because they have no standards in nature” (E III.ix.7; p 357) This, together with their extensive complexity, are the reasons why ”Mixed Modes are most liable to doubtfulness and imperfection” (E III.ix.5; p
356). Locke continues: “Though the names glory and gratitude be the same in every man's mouth through a whole country, yet the complex collective idea which every one thinks on or intends by that name, is apparently very different in men using the same language”.
(E III.ix.8; p 358)
4.6 Remedies for miscommunication
Book three ends with a chapter on ”the Remedies of the Foregoing Imperfections and Abuses of Words”. Locke gives us four chief remeides: ”First remedy: To use no word without an idea annexed to it….Second remedy: To have distinct, determinate ideas annexed to words, especially in mixed modes…Third remedy: To apply words to such ideas as common use has annexed them to…Fourth remedy: To declare the meaning in which we use them.”
The last remedy can be made either by “definitions”, that is ”nothing else but the showing the meaning of one word by several other not synonymous terms” (E III.xi.6)” or
“demonstrations” of external samples. Both ways may be used for terms of substances, whereas the former is necessary for mixed modes. “[D]efinition is the only way whereby the precise meaning of moral words can be known; and yet a way whereby their meaning may be known certainly, and without leaving any room for any contest about it.” (E III.xi.17; p 386).
4.7 Locke’s account on common use
Finely, I want to make a few remarks on Locke’s first and third remedy. On common use,
Locke writes:
Thirdly, it is not enough that men have ideas, determined ideas, for which they make these signs stand; but they must also take care to apply their words as near as may be to such ideas as common use has annexed them to. For words, especially of languages already framed, being no man's private possession, but the common measure of commerce and communication, it is not for any one at pleasure to change the stamp they
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are current in, nor alter the ideas they are affixed to; or at least, when there is a necessity to do so, he is bound to give notice of it. (E.III.xi.11; p 383, my italics)
Locke, again stresses the need of public standards to ascertain communication, which is “the chief end of language”. This is sometimes seen as an anticipation of Berkeley’s account of meaning as use, which in turn, can be associated with the subsequent works of Wittgenstein; yet there are crucial points to make. First, Locke appeals to common use in order to facilitate daily conversations, and not to give an account of meaning. Locke persists in his opinion that meaning is the ideas in the speaker’s mind
, no matter whether those ideas coincide with other’s. If someone links the word “cat” to his ideas of dogs, for instance, “cat” means dog to him, albeit this is “false” or improper. Hence, Locke puts no normative constraints on meaning.
53
A second point, closely related to the first, is that appliance to common use is not by it self a good thing. Public use must always be followed by ideas in the mind of the speaker; lest he falls a victim of the abuse of words in “first remedy”. Locke constantly insists on this point:
Parrots can do that, but this doesn’t mean the parrots means what they say.
54
Thirdly, common use turns out to be “a very uncertain rule which reduces itself to the ideas of particular men” (E.III.ix.8) and that there must be a great latitude in usage. More than philosophers within the last century’s rule-following debate, Locke is explicit about the inconsistence of the supposed “ordinary use”. In fact Locke did not believe in one “ordinary use” but in several more or less overlapping idiolects. To think that others’ ideas are precisely the same as those of mine is to give away to the presupposition of “a secret reference” to others
55
.
Locke’s view that words signifies the ideas present in the mind of the speaker, was common sense in his time and the foregoing tradition, and not at all peculiar to Locke. Neither is his account of communication. But it was Locke’s own contention that cases of truly mutual understanding described in that account of communication, are relatively rare. Hence, Locke tried to reform language, especially the discourses of science and ethics. But although he displays profound and innovative insights of the problems of publicity and meaning that belong to his account, this is unfairly neglected in the second literature.
53
Dawson (2003) pp 617-618.
54
See Bennett Jonathan (1971) Locke, Berkeley, Hume Central Themes , Clarendon Press,
Oxford; pp 5-6
55
Ayers (1991) pp 269-276
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