In John Locke’s work, An Essay on Human Understanding, he offers an account of language and its relationship with human ideas. In the third book of An Essay on Human Understanding, Locke states "it is a perverting of the use of words, and brings unavoidable confusion and obscurity into their signification, whenever we make them stand for any thing but those ideas we have in our own minds" (Essay, III.ii.5). For the purpose of this paper, I will look to explain what Locke means in making this claim, and then offering an evaluation of the claim. This will be done by establishing what Locke believes the purpose of words is, how he connects ideas with experience, and how this forms his theory of language.
In order to understand the assertion that it is incoherent to make words represent things other than ideas, it becomes paramount to first understand Locke’s view of words. In An Essay on Human Understanding, Locke claims that words are sounds that are created by a human body that can be used as a means of communication. As such, “Man has to be able to use these [articulate] sounds as signs of …show more content…
This is because, as shown above, Locke believes that ideas exist prior to language. In fact, language is derivative of ideas, as the words that make up the language only exist in so far as to express a certain thought.
If a word were to represent something other than an idea that is held in a mind, then that would result in confusion, as there would be no meaning to that word. Given that a word is only created to represent as an idea, if you remove the idea, then one would vacate the grounds for the existence of that word in the first
In order to understand the assertion that it is incoherent to make words represent things other than ideas, it becomes paramount to first understand Locke’s view of words. In An Essay on Human Understanding, Locke claims that words are sounds that are created by a human body that can be used as a means of communication. As such, “Man has to be able to use these [articulate] sounds as signs of …show more content…
This is because, as shown above, Locke believes that ideas exist prior to language. In fact, language is derivative of ideas, as the words that make up the language only exist in so far as to express a certain thought.
If a word were to represent something other than an idea that is held in a mind, then that would result in confusion, as there would be no meaning to that word. Given that a word is only created to represent as an idea, if you remove the idea, then one would vacate the grounds for the existence of that word in the first