Johnson, Alexander Bryan;
A treatise on language: or, The relation which words bear to things, in four parts
Harper & brothers, 1836, 274 pages
topics: | philosophy | language
This book holds a number of insights for an 1836 author who was doing philosophy on the side, as a successful banker in Utica. The section numbers in each "Lecture" (chapter) are arbitrary since many sections are missing. e.g. Ch. XIII has only six sections, numbered 1,14,23,24,25,29. The 1828 version has some of the missing sections.
I. Introductory (15) 33
II. External sensible existences (22) 43
III. Language implies a non-natural oneness (12) 52
IV. Language affects physical speculations (17) 59
V. Language implies nonexistent identities (54) 66
VI. Words can be divested of signification (38) 83
VII. Meaning of a word varies with application (21) 96
VIII. Every general proposition possesses many significations (36) 107
3. One particular may constitute the meaningof numerous propositions
IX. Negation of a proposition (12) 121
X. Language can do no more than refer us to the information of our senses (18) 126
XI. Internal phenomena may also be sensible (19) XII. Literal, sensible and internal meanings (31) 145 --Part Third. Language w.r.t. the relation that words bear to each other-- XIII. Language we agree with because they are logical (6:29) 163 XIV. Language we agree to based on sensible experience (9) 172 XV. From reference to sensible experience to abstraction (12:28) 178 XVI. From sensible experience to Abstraction in the sciences (5:24) 189 XVII. Philosophical speculations are often verbal deductions (17) 199 XVIII. Theoretical [constructs] (26) 206
XIX. Questions about the universe not answerable by the senses are insignificant (17) 217
XX. Questions internal to us not answerable by consciousness are
insignificant 225
XXI. Inquiries after a theory we mistake for an investigation of nature (19) 228
XXII. Definitions we mistake as being from nature (13) 238
XXIII. Discriminating the relevant sense (13) 244
XXIV. We interpret our senses by our words than words by senses (10) 249
XXV. We mistake the inapplicability of a word to an anomaly of nature (9:) 255
XXVI. Language cannot be made significant beyond our knowledge (3:)
XXVII. (1:)
XX8. We mistake words as the ultimate objects of knowledge (5:) 267
Conclusion 273
V.15. A spark causes gunpowder to explode. ... one wonders at the connexion which exists between the spark and the explosion. [The word "connexion" attaches] the spark to the explosion - but if we infer that this [word] is identical with the "connexion" between two links, we are deluded. V.17 [A painter uses the same colour sometimes to portray the moon and then the water]. V.18. [He discovers an analogy in the moon and the water; similarly the speaker discovers an analogy in what joins the links to what causes the explosion from the spark, which makes the word "connexion" appropriate to both]. VII.1. Words may be compared to a mirror. It is naturally void, and varies its representations as you vary the object which is placed before it VII.3. Every word is a general term, and applies to a multitude of diverse existences VII.7. We must resort to our senses for the sensible meaning of a word, and not to a dictionary [senses of "Diffused" : - colour indigo in water - taste sugar in water - light through the window ] VII.11. Nearly every word possesses a verbal meaning as well as a sensible meaning. VII.12. The sensible signification of a word nothing can reveal but our senses; the verbal signification can be disclosed by words. VII.13. We rarely discriminate between the verbal signification of a word.and its sensible signification. When Locke says that tho meaning of rainbow can be reyealed to a person who never saw one, providod he has seen red, violet, green, &c., Locke is alluding to the verbal meaning of rainbow. This meaning can be known to the blind, and I once saw a company surprised when a blind youth was exhibiting what was esteemed a triumph of education over natural defects, by giving an explanation of the appearance of rainbows. The company knew not that rainbow possesses two aignitications ;- one a sight which nothing can reveal but seeing, and the other words that can be learnt by hearing. VII.16 If he has seen such a combination, he has seen a rainbow; but if he has not seen the combination, language is inadequate to reveal it. VII.17. The ancients thought that definitions are applicable to all words, while the moderns exclude from the power of definition all such words as white, loud, &c., that signify sensible information only. XII.25. Words are sometimes the ultimate meaning of words. What is conscience ? The dictionary says, "the faculty by which a man judges of the moral quality of his own actions." But conscience is not these words. What is conscience apart from words? It is x. And what is x? What I experience within myself. If I experience nothing within myself; if I employ the word conscience with reference to nothing but the dictionary definitions, or some other words, the xx will signify those words. The x will in every case signify the ultimate meaning of the word to which it is applied, whether the ulti- mate meaning be words, the information of my senses, or an internal feeling, &c. XV.2. The implications of language, though significant of nothiug but our sensible experience, are applied often where nothing sensible is discoverable XV.6. Words possess no inherent signification. Their signification must be interpreted by we see, feel taste, smell and hear. [So also for the predicability of words. ] Conclusion. 1. Language was designed for a communication between man and man, and not for a communication between nature and man. Concl. 6. Our misapprehension of the nature of language has occasioned a greater waste of time, and effort, and genius, than all the other mistakes and delusions with which humanity has been afflicted. It has retarded immeasurably our physical knowledge of every kind, and vitiated what it could not retard. The misapprehension exists still in unmitigated virulence; and though metaphysics, a rank branch of the error, is fallen into disrepute, it is abandoned like a mine which will not repay the expense of working, rather than like a process of mining which we have discovered to be constitutionally incapable of producing gold.
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Sep., 1948), pp. 164-167
Alexander Bryan Johnson (1786-1867) was a British immigrant who made a fortune
from banking in Utica, New York, where, after what the complacent are pleased
to call a full life (eighty-one years, three wives, eleven children), he died.
"His works ... fall into four groups: philosophical, economic and financial,
political, and moralistic" (5). The Treatise is an 1836 revision of lectures
delivered in 1825 and published in 1828, reprinted together with some passages
in the 1828 edition that Johnson excised or altered in the revision.
The following of Johnson's doctrines are readily to be found in one or another
of the empiricists whom he had read. [FN Including Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown,
and the author(s) of Rees's Cyclopaedia (15), but not, apparently, Hartley,
Bentham, or James Mill. ]
(1) That language is purely the result of conventionally giving names to
things. Johnson accordingly admonishes us (28 et passim) to interpret
language by nature, not nature by language, since (154, etc.) language can
effect no more than to refer us to phenomena.
(2) That the only things, and a fortiori the only name- ables, are phenomena,
external and internal-God not excepted (161, 165).
(3) That every idea is a copy of phenomena, and is called general when itis a
blurred montage and is thereby able to represent many phenomena.
[FN. Johnson regards ideas as inaudible words (92; but cf. 161)
(4) that, nevertheless, a general idea does not represent (mean) some one thing
(universal) *common to all these particulars, which may be similar but have
nothing in common with each other (nominalism)
Johnson's originality lies (1) in working out the linguistic implications
of these doctrines, more consistently and more elaborately than his
predecessors had done; and (2) in adding two important innovations. First,
his concept of verbal versus sensible meaning: the meaning of a word may
be in terms of other words or in terms of phenomena. Second, his doctrine
that we mean just what we refer to. That is, the meaning of any assertion,
on a certain particular occasion when it is uttered, is precisely those of the
utterer's prior experiences which prompted him to make the assertion. I
shall call this the retrospicient doctrine. For instance,
If I have been hurt by riding a vicious horse, I may [say] ...: What in
animals we call a vicious practice, is probably performed without any
vicious intention.... A person who is ignorant of the accident to which I
refer ... may insist that animals are conscious when they perform a
vicious action. He alludes to his dog, who, after killing a sheep,
exhibited symptoms of fear. My proposition was not intended to controvert
this. I meant only that starting at his shadow, a practice by which my
horse threw me from his back, was performed without any intention of
dismounting his rider (126-7). p.108 #3-4
The retrospicient doctrine forces Johnson (140) to interpret statements
apparently about the future as really referring to the speaker's feelings of
expectation. It results that every statement, whether its apparent reference is
to the future or to the past, is true; it can never be false, though it may
very easily be meaningless and very easily be misunderstood. (Johnson does
recognize meaningless statements (288 ff.), and points out that the grammatical
form of a statement is no proof of its meaningfulness, but sometimes
(140-1)-not always (cf. 202)-holds that the negate of a meaningless statement
is automatically true.)
Tied up with the retrospicient doctrine are two other major errors of
Johnson's:
(1) He rejects inductive reasoning (135, ?27; 236); occasional glimmerings
(138, 237) do not affect his prevailing viewpoint. He must not be supposed
to have anticipated the Mach-Pearson account of explanation as
comprehensive description, because for him one fact does not in any sense
explain another fact (e.g., 176, ?21; 208, lines 1-2). The linguistic
consequence is that a statement general in form merely means those
instances that the speaker has in mind (134, and see the quotation above).
(2) He virtually (e.g., 243) repudiates the Principle of Derivative Meaning, so
clearly formulated by Russell (though of course implicit long before him):
"It is of the essence of the use of language that we can understand a
sentence correctly compounded out of words that we understand, even if we
have never had any experience corresponding to the sentence as a whole"
(Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, p. 386).
This repudiation results from Johnson's not distinguishing two senses of
'understanding' and knowing' (cf. 367). Quoting Hume's speculation whether one
who has experienced all colors except a particular shade of blue could not
imagine that one unexperienced shade, he comments (146): "Hume asserts that he
can. He is wrong.... The law which prevents blind men from knowing any color,
disenables him from knowing the absent shade." It certainly disenables him
from recollecting it; but does it disenable him from knowing it in the sense
that he has an expectation which, if ever he is presented with the hitherto
lacking shade, will be satisfied, and not otherwise? There would be no
difficulty within the framework of Johnson's philosophy about discussing and
emphasizing knowledge in this second sense; on the basis of it his promising
but very undeveloped concept (149 if., 163 ff., 174 bot., 178, 250) of verbal
(versus sensible) meaning could be elaborated. See 152, ?13.
Johnson's Treatise was decidedly worth disinterring for its historical
interest alone. I think its present-day value, not duplicated in any other
single work, is its wealth of clear, trenchant examples. The wearisome
iteration both of principles and of illustrations makes it a natural for a
streamlined edition; but the illustrations, even when the principles are
wrong,5 will stick in the memory. Johnson's discussion (e.g., 191) of the
alleged marvel "that fight, itself a body, should pass freely through solid
crystal" (Thomas Brown), is particularly good. And after reading Johnson
one will be on his guard to examine every disagreement for the possibility
that it is purely verbal; for (Plato, Euthydemus, 286b) "when I describe
something and you describe another thing, ... is there any contradiction?"