Thirdly, it is not enough that men have ideas, determined ideas, for which they make these signs stand; but they must also take care to apply their words as near as may be to such ideas as common use has annexed them to. For words, especially of languages already framed, being no man's private possession, but the common measure of commerce and communication, it is not for any one at pleasure to change the stamp they are current in, nor alter the ideas they are affixed to; or at least, when there is a necessity to do so, he is bound to give notice of it. Men's intentions in speaking are, or at least should be, to be understood; which cannot be without frequent explanations, demands, and other the like incommodious interruptions, where men do not follow common use. Propriety of speech is that which gives our thoughts entrance into other men's minds with the greatest ease and advantage: and therefore deserves some part of our care and study, especially in the names of moral words. The proper signification and use of terms is best to be learned from those who in their writings and discourses appear to have had the clearest notions, and applied to them their terms with the exactest choice and fitness. This way of using a man's words, according to the propriety of the language, though it have not always the good fortune to be understood; yet most commonly leaves the blame of it on him who is so unskilful in the language he speaks, as not to understand it when made use of as it ought to be.--Locke An Essay Concerning Human(e) Understanding, 3.11.11
In his entertaining and instructive book, Socializing Minds (recall yesterday's post), Martin Lenz calls attention to (and partially quotes) the passage quoted above. For Lenz the passage describes what he (Lenz) calls the "acceptance conditions" as "consolidated by other members of the speech community." (p. 130; see also. p. 131.) Lenz emphasizes, correctly, that for Locke the meaning of words is, in part, established by their proper common use. There is -- as Locke's use of 'propriety' signals -- something normative about this 'proper'. And this normativity is the effect of the desire to be understood and the fact that the correct usage (see below on 'speaking properly') has already been established.
Of course, at 3.11.11, the situation is a bit complicated because Locke defines 'propriety of speech' that 'which gives our thoughts entrance into other men's minds with the greatest ease and advantage.''And the 'advantage' here is to us (the speaker) and not to the community. So, that Locke is not merely describing acceptance conditions in 3.11.11 (although I do not deny that this is involved in the proper significantion and use of terms), but also the rthe art of persuasion (again not the role of skill in speaking) here. So, in context, Locke is not merely discussing acceptance conditions, but the role of such acceptance conditions in (a poetics of) rhetoric. (I don't think Lenz needs to disagree with this, but he doesn't mention it; and later in the book (p. 174) Lenz draws a a perhaps too sharp contrast between Locke and Hume on the significance of rhetoric to their account of language.)
The contrast between private property and a common measure (about which more below) that Locke invokes (at 3.11.11), of course, echoes his treatment of convention. And Lenz had prepared the reader to notice it not just by quoting these words, but because earlier he had discussed Locke's account of convention and tacit consent when he introduced the idea of 'speaker consolidation' (p. 110) which is how linguistic conventions are themselves established and (now I quote Lenz again) "set the standard for use." (p. 111). Lenz appeals to Locke's earlier account at 3.2.8, which I quote in full:
Words, by long and familiar use, as has been said, come to excite in men certain ideas so constantly and readily, that they are apt to suppose a natural connexion between them. But that they signify only men's peculiar ideas, and that BY A PERFECT ARBITRARY IMPOSITION, is evident, in that they often fail to excite in others (even that use the same language) the same ideas we take them to be signs of: and every man has so inviolable a liberty to make words stand for what ideas he pleases, that no one hath the power to make others have the same ideas in their minds that he has, when they use the same words that he does. And therefore the great Augustus himself, in the possession of that power which ruled the world, acknowledged he could not make a new Latin word: which was as much as to say, that he could not arbitrarily appoint what idea any sound should be a sign of, in the mouths and common language of his subjects. It is true, common use, by a tacit consent, appropriates certain sounds to certain ideas in all languages, which so far limits the signification of that sound, that unless a man applies it to the same idea, he does not speak properly: and let me add, that unless a man's words excite the same ideas in the hearer which he makes them stand for in speaking, he does not speak intelligibly. But whatever be the consequence of any man's using of words differently, either from their general meaning, or the particular sense of the person to whom he addresses them; this is certain, their signification, in his use of them, is limited to his ideas, and they can be signs of nothing else.--John Locke An Essay Concerning Human(e) Understanding, 3.2.8
What's neat about Locke's account is that he inscribes his account of linguistic convention into his political theory in two explicit ways. First, and less significantly, he argues that once a linguistic convention is established even an absolute ruler has very limited power to tinker with it. In fact, Locke goes much further than this and has Augustus deny that he cannot innovate in language by stipulation. A moment's reflection does allow one to recognize that on Locke's account, Augustus' power allows one to corrupt (by force law) existing words and disassociate them from established ideas.* (This is a sufficiently common phenomenon in political speech that I will leave it to the reader to find some examples.)
Second, the linguistic convention the implied measure or the existing common use of words and its stability, in particular, rests, and this might be thought paradoxical, on the inviolable liberty each and every one of us has to make words stand for any of our ideas! Notice, first, that this is a commitment to an egalitarianism of a sort that is akin to Locke's account of our relative status in the state of nature. Second, the analysis of the convention rests on a kind of methodological individualism. It is in virtue of the fact that 'naturally' all individuals have the power to innovate that Augustus is denied once the convention is up and running (in linguistic social life)! This fact (a kind of natural equality to innovate) is ground in the fact that 'naturally' we don't have access to each other's ideas (which are inacessible to others without some mediation of language or other signs).
What 3.2.8 adds is that convention isn't just needed for what Lenz calls speaker 'consolidation' or 'acceptance conditions' in making us adhere to pre-existing standards of use, but also helps explain why there can be different language communities. Because once there is (say) some geographic or political (or religious) distance between different language users, acceptance conditions can stabilize in locally different equilibria. Once they interact again (through trade or migration) these conditions may well shift given the needs of exchange and social persuasion. (From here, it's really a very small step to Adam Smith's account of certain kinds of language use as non-servile persuasion.)
Given all these appeals to property and credit in the passage(s) above, it is tempting (recall) to look at Locke's account of convention in the second Treatise. But today, I postpone this and focus on an earlier passage in the Essay, where Locke explicitly appeals to tacit consent. And this passage makes explicit (in the context of discussion moral terms) the role of convention in linguistic diversity:
Thirdly, the LAW OF OPINION OR REPUTATION. Virtue and vice are names pretended and supposed everywhere to stand for actions in their own nature right and wrong: and as far as they really are so applied, they so far are coincident with the divine law above mentioned. But yet, whatever is pretended, this is visible, that these names, virtue and vice, in the particular instances of their application, through the several nations and societies of men in the world, are constantly attributed only to such actions as in each country and society are in reputation or discredit. Nor is it to be thought strange, that men everywhere should give the name of virtue to those actions, which amongst them are judged praiseworthy; and call that vice, which they account blamable: since otherwise they would condemn themselves, if they should think anything right, to which they allowed not commendation, anything wrong, which they let pass without blame. Thus the measure of what is everywhere called and esteemed virtue and vice is this approbation or dislike, praise or blame, which, by a secret and tacit consent, establishes itself in the several societies, tribes, and clubs of men in the world: whereby several actions come to find credit or disgrace amongst them, according to the judgment, maxims, or fashion of that place. For, though men uniting into politic societies, have resigned up to the public the disposing of all their force, so that they cannot employ it against any fellow-citizens any further than the law of the country directs: yet they retain still the power of thinking well or ill, approving or disapproving of the actions of those whom they live amongst, and converse with: and by this approbation and dislike they establish amongst themselves what they will call virtue and vice.-- Locke An Essay Concerning Human(e) Understanding, 2.28.10
Locke here anticipates the Humean observation (in the appendix to the Second Enquiry) that there is remarkable stability in moral terminology while there is enormous diversity what the content (qua behavior or character) applies to. And this is an effect of the fact that the meta-ethical measure that regulates the local linguistic conventions just is local approval and disapproval (not again the role of credit here).
Again, at 2.28.10 Locke uses the contrast with an explicit political social contract to illustrate the nature of the tacit convention. And he claims that this convention operates orthogonally to the official political social contract. And that there are practices of approval and disapproval that are not regulated by law, but by independent judgment presumably in light of one's interest (like/dislike/approbation) and evaluation of what is (to use Smithian language) praiseworthy. The point echoes Hobbes's and Spinoza's observation that the law cannot fully control (although certainly corrupt) the minds of the ruled, and these maintain a kind of informal credit economy (or score in a language game) that tracks local judgments of merit. So, here, too, we see that the privacy of ideas is presupposed to maintain the conventionality of the shared linguistic social world.
I am struck, anew, how much of Locke's account anticipates Hume's official treatment of a convention, which has (recall) seven (or eight) parts: (i) a sense of common interest (i*) felt in each person's breast; (ii) and it (that is, (i)) observed in others; (iii), this fact (the existence of (i&ii) creates collaboration; (iv) the collaboration is structured in non-trivial ways; (v) and this has good consequences or positive externalities for society. (I avoid the language of 'utility' to avoid issues pertaining to utilitarianism.) And (vi) a Humean convention is contrasted with practices founded in promises and in practice regulated by formal governmental law. In addition, (vii), the process (i-iii) need not be verbalized at all. It can be entirely tacit.
Of these, all are explicitly present except (i-ii), although (i*) is in Locke's account of linguistic conventions in the Essay (and so kind of entails (i)). And (ii-iii) are implied once the convention is up and running (as the example of Augustus illustrates). The fact that in his account of convention Locke embraces (i-vii), while being a bit ambigious about (i-iii) is as I noted (recall) also true of Locke's account of the conventions of property and money in the Second Treatise. So, that is to say, Locke has an internally consistent 'template' of what a convention is that he applies to a number of large scale social institutions, and this template anticipates in crucial ways Hume's account who refines it by making some features (and implied mechanisms of stability) more explicit.
That's enough for today on this topic. TBC with a nod to Pufendorf.
*It is worth reflecting on why Locke thought it prudent not to make this fully explicit.
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