Sem.

Jonathan DePadua Racelis Philosophy of Language and Culture

Philosophy IV Fr. Jayson Gaite

Locke on Words

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke studies the human

mind's capacity to comprehend and know. It is regarded as a pioneering study of
contemporary epistemology, establishing a close link between knowledge and language.
Locke's primary goal is to disprove previously held false notions about knowing. Ideas are
significant because they give ingredients for learning, and information is eventually filled
into the human mind by way of experience. In their fundamental or immediate meaning,
words stand for nothing but the thoughts in the sense of the person who uses them, no matter
how poorly or carelessly those ideas are gathered from the objects they are meant to
represent.

Words externalize the concept, which is a unit of cognition. For Locke, language
serves two purposes. The first is to communicate a man's thoughts to another man's mind,
and the second purpose is to keep track of our thoughts to be consulted later. Locke
distinguishes between primary (direct) and secondary (indirect) representations formed by
words. Words are explicit representations of ideas, while things are represented indirectly.
"Words being voluntary signs, they cannot be voluntary signs imposed by him on things he
knows not," Locke adds.

Science, according to John Locke, is "all that can fall within the compass of human
understanding, being either the nature of things, as they are in themselves, their relations,
and their manner of operation" or "that which man himself ought to do, as a rational and
voluntary agent, for the attainment of any end, especially happiness." According to Harris
and Talbot, Locke's definition removes numerous formerly considered knowledge items.

According to John Locke's essay, a word is an arbitrary symbol that conveys an idea.
The imperfection of language might be seen as a potential danger to knowledge acquisition
and dissemination. The human mind, according to Locke, hides both the meaning of a word
and the concept communicated during communication. "Words, which are said to be based
on a standard form, enable a flow of ideas between the speaker and the listener," Martin
says. Locke is at the core of the mentalist theory of meaning because he explains the
importance of a word as a concept inside the mind.