Stuart Mill, Locke, Hobbes, language, meaning, sign

Abstract

The article discusses J. S Mill's criticism in the early System of Logic to the semantic idealism which characterized the theory of language in Anglo-Saxon modernity, to wit, the thesis which the immediate reference of words are ideas and not things themselves. Although, in general terms, the semantics of Hobbes and Locke converge, insofar as they defend that the meaning of words are mental entities, they diverge in important points: Hobbes's semantics is inferential whereas Locke's is referential. Mill, in his critique, will take Hobbes' text as a target and direct his arguments against him. Two questions then arise: 1) why Mill, in his critique of semantic idealism, turned to Hobbes's De Corpore and not to Book III of Locke's Essays Concerning Human Understanding, a later and considerably more elaborate work, at least regarding idealist semantics? 2) Would Mill's argument be able to refute Locke's referential semantics equally effectively? This article argues that the answer to the second question is negative and, consequently, suggests a possible and natural answer within the context to the first question.