This article canvases the main areas of controversy: the nature of Lockean signification and his position on propositions and particles.

How language works — its functions, mechanisms, and limitations — matters to the early moderns as much as it does to contemporary philosophers. Many of the moderns make reflection on language central to their philosophical projects, both as a tool for explaining human cognition and as a weapon to be used against competing views. Even in philosophers for whom language is less central, we can find important connections between their views on language and their other philosophical commitments.

With the publication of Locke’s early manuscripts on toleration and the drafts for the Essay, it is possible to understand to what extent Locke’s ideas on religious toleration have developed. Although the important arguments for toleration can already be found in these early texts, Locke was confronted with a problem in his defence of toleration that he needed to solve. If faith, as a form of judgement, is involuntary, as Locke claims, how can one be held accountable for the faith (...) one has? In answer to this question reason comes to play a more prominent role in Locke’s notion of faith and in his defence of religious toleration, and in his philosophy in general. This notion of reason is not the reason we use for mathematical demonstrations. It is rather reason as we use it in discussion, and is thus fallible. It is precisely this kind of reason that played a central role in the Remonstrant religion to which Locke was closely connected at the time he developed a new argument for religious toleration when he was in the Netherlands. (shrink)

To understand pre-Fregean theories of judgment and proposition, such as those found in Locke and the Port-Royal logic, it is important to distinguish between propositions in the modern sense and propositions in the pre-Fregean sense. By making this distinction it becomes clear that these pre-Fregean theories cannot be meant to solve the propositional attitude problem. Notwithstanding this fact, Locke and Arnauld are able to make a distinction between asserted and unasserted propositions (in their sense). The way Locke makes this distinction (...) turns out to be very different from the way it is made by Arnauld. (shrink)