Studies in the Understructure: The Semiotic Basis of John Locke's Empirical Epistemology

Dissertation, The University of Iowa (2003)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

It has long been recognized that 'idea' was Locke's central epistemological concept. So important was it that most commentators consider it necessary to first fix what that concept was before attempting to interpret Locke's epistemology. However, identifying what it was is only possible by reconstructing how it functioned within the development and defense of his epistemology. Traditionally, in other words, scholars have approached the question the wrong way around. This dissertation is devoted to the first step of such a reconstruction, recovering the nature of the ideational understructure---what Locke called Semeiotike---infixed into and informing his epistemology. ;Semeiotike was the doctrine of signs, of which Locke recognized two types: ideas and words. Word-signs were, for Locke, significant yet it was his semiotic of idea-signs that was, philosophically, the most basic; thus that is the cynosure of this dissertation. Two basic doctrines comprised Locke's semiotic: psychological empiricism and ideational semantics. Locke, it is argued, melded an empirical account of ideas as psychological elements, an account taken from his understanding of ancient medical empiricism , to the termist semantics of the late Scholastics. This melding produced something altogether new, a semiotic neither Scholastic nor empiric, one utterly unique but retaining many of the hallmarks of both. ;In the dissertation's first part Locke's empirical psychology is addressed. After examining the failure of the debate about ideas, new interpretations of Locke's attack on innatism, his defense of empiricism, and his historical plain method are proffered. Furthermore, it is argued that abstraction was, for Locke, a form of non-inferential experience and that reflection and sensation were both representational, but in a very different way than scholars have taken them to be. In the second part ideational semantics is addressed. A logical interpretation of Lockean simplicity is defended followed by close examinations of how his complex ideas were constructed out of those simple semantic elements. Finally, it is shown how the properties of ideas---clarity, distinctness, reality, adequacy, and truth---follow from their semantics

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

  • This entry has no external links. Add one.
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Empiricism and Meaning in Locke.Walter Richard Ott - 2000 - Dissertation, University of Virginia
Locke on human understanding: selected essays.I. C. Tipton (ed.) - 1977 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Reality and Knowledge in Locke and Kant.Bum Cho - 1994 - Dissertation, University of Miami
John Locke on Real and Nominal Essence.James P. Danaher - 1990 - Dissertation, City University of New York
Reason and experience in Locke's epistemology.Elliot-D. Cohen - 1984 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 45:71-86.
Locke's Representational Theory of Language.Sally Ann Ferguson - 1995 - Dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin
Locke on perception.Michael Jacovides - forthcoming - In Matthew Stuart (ed.), A companion to Locke. Blackwell.
Locke and the Controversy over Innate Ideas.Douglas Greenlee - 1972 - Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (2):251.
Reconciling Locke’s Definition of Knowledge with Knowing Reality.Benjamin Hill - 2006 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 44 (1):91-105.
John Locke: champion of modern democracy.Graham Faiella - 2006 - New York, N.Y.: Rosen Pub. Group.
Locke's theory of reflection.Kevin Scharp - 2008 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 16 (1):25 – 63.
John Locke and the Theory of Natural Law.Peter Paul Cvek - 1987 - Dissertation, University of Kansas

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-02-04

Downloads
1 (#1,769,934)

6 months
1 (#1,040,386)

Historical graph of downloads

Sorry, there are not enough data points to plot this chart.
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Benjamin Hill
University of Western Ontario

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references