Locke and Mill [Arthur Toland-Barber]

I think the combination of both theories makes more sense than one or the other. I say this because when I utter a single word, I am referring to the name of that object as a fact instead of my idea of whatever I am naming as Mill would say. When I string together several words I am using all of them to create an idea as Locke describes it.


Locke claims that language has the purpose of communicating ones thoughts, and concepts which don't do so are unnecessary in language (such as the argument that having a name for each individual thing would be useless). I'm wondering if marks that don't communicate thought are also useless such as those said in a song.

I think Mill's theory has some holes in it when we can use different names to refer to the same thing. An example of this is how we can refer to James Brown by his name, but by other names such as Godfather of Soul or Mr. Dynamite, which all refer to the same object but give different ideas or meaning when we use his different names/nicknames.