Hobbes's Theory of Meaning

Abstract

Hobbes said in De Corpore that "Names are signs not of things, but of our cogitations(17)". He wanted to stress that there was a close connection between "names" and "our cogitations" because the former was a sign of the latter. He used words such as "signify" and "denote" to speak of the relationship between "names" and "our cogitations". Consequently, this led most commentators to assume that Hobbes thought that "names" means "our cogitations". R.Peters, one of those commentators, criticized Hobbes's view ; Hobbes gave no proper account of the relationship between "names" and "our cogitations" because "it is a relationship which is impossible to characterize in terms of the causal theory (Hobbes ; 120 )". This, he claimed, is one of the defects of Hobbes's treatment of names. But can we admit Peters's comment? It is certain that Peters misunderstood what Hobbes actually meant. We should approach Hobbes's theory of names in a modern way. In this paper, I will prove that there are some similarities between Hobbes's theory of names and C. K. Ogden and L. A. Richards's theory of signs in The Meaning of Meaning(11).