The Being Of Language And The Experiential Foundation Of Human Understanding

Despite the importance that John Locke has attached to issues of language, the aspect of philosophy of language in Locke’s works has received relatively little attention in academic circles, more or less having neglected Locke’s philosophical views on language. The reason for this neglect might result from a misconception that Locke is a mentalist whose view of linguistic meaning is exactly the target of criticism among such philosophers of language as Frege, Wittgenstein, Putnam, and their followers.The existing researches on Locke mainly center on Locke’s politic philosophy and moral philosophy, only to have brought up sporadic discussions on his language studies. Thus, a systematic examination of Locke’s philosophy of language has become an unavoidable task for the present study. This dissertation is led to present to its right readers a thorough survey of Locke’s philosophical views on language. The dominant method for this investigation is a philosophically retrospective study of Locke’s concepts of idea, language being, empirical foundation, language understanding and judgment, human understanding and judgment.On the focus of our reflective studies are the two questions which will guide our thoughts along all the way we endeavor to interpret Locke: What are the characteristics of language understanding and judgment and their corresponding functions? How human ideas correlate with human understanding and judgment? With these two questions, our retrospection is engaged in a process of philosophical investigation.It is a constant process of approaching the base of the rational being for us to take the path of Locke’s Experientialism, i.e. approaching the truth of the process of human being, because it is the necessary result met by the rational being. As for the being of our language, Locke’s experientialism also enlightens us with a new perspective to think about the language and to retrace the meaning of the question: what is language? In fact, to experience Locke’s experientialism as well as to experience language is to have the process of constantly experiencing the hardship and puzzlement of recognizing language phenomena; it is in such a process, we can surprisingly discover that we are not far away from the being of language, if we are only experiencing language in our world. The knowledge about language phenomena should be built upon the application of our language ability, upon the happening of experiencing language, and moreover, any interpretation about the being of language as well as the being of language activists should be built upon the happening of experience process. Though the being of language could not be simply identified with the being of rational subject, it could not be denied that the being of language is in the experiencing process of human being; human being is both starting point and destination for the being of language, and it necessarily contains language experience both in natural process and psychological process, the former considers about natural language, and the latter considers about language’s internal ideas. Under the standard of Experientialism, language phenomenon embodies the unity of natural process and psychological process, and the application of human being’s language ability has decided the result of the unity. If our language ability or understanding leaves the experiencing process of language phenomenon hoping to get pure world of language Idea, we can add nothing to our language knowledge or principle from doing so except multiple illusions in the mind, therefore, if we are being separated farther and farther from the real happening of language experience, we must have the road sign back, or we would be lost in the imagined world. Then, where is the sign? The theory of Lockian Experience as well as his Intelligence could help us realize that we are not only belonging to the world of language, but also to the world of language experience, in other words, it is the experience of language phenomenon that leads to the forming of language knowledge, leads to the forming of explaining what language is, and leads to the content of the explaining.The dissertation is composed of nine chapters.Chapter One begins with an introduction to the central topic and two research questions. Most importantly, what is aimed at in this chapter is to clarify the objectives and methods of this dissertation.Chapter Two offers a brief review of researches on Locke. The major purpose of our review is to bring Locke to the center of academic stage. It is assumed that Locke deserves much attention of philosophers of language.Chapter Three lays a theoretical foundation for our subsequent retrospective studies of Locke. Three key concepts have been examined for philosophical investigations: idea, experience, and being.Chapter Four concerns itself with the philosophical being of linguistic phenomena and the foundation of human experiences. In this chapter, the universal features of language being, language learning, human knowledge, and the being of language being have been expounded in line with Locke’s philosophy of language.Chapter Five centers on two concepts for explanation: Language competence and the classification of the object world.Chapter Six discusses on two big issues: the being of natural language and its corresponding internal experience and memory; the role of language competence and the formation of linguistic ideas.Chapter Seven emphasizes upon our discussion of the empirical foundation of human understanding and judgment. Elaborated in detail are such central topics as linguistic will, language understanding and judgment, linguistic subjectivity, experiential default and understanding.Chapter Eight concludes this dissertation by making the following assertions: Human understanding and judgment is realized through language. Therefore, language understanding and judgment reflects human reason in forms of understanding and judgment. The experiences of human being are not only the initiators of human cognition, but the foundation of human understanding and judgment.