Mixed Modes are Impossible

Multiple times throughout John Locke’s piece, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” I felt like he was trying to physically hammer things into my head. For example, the statement, “If the signification of the names of mixed modes be uncertain, because there be no real standards existing in nature to which those ideas are referred, and by which they may be adjusted” (Locke 820).

That statement seems awfully familiar to when Locke talks about mixed modes:

“the names of mixed modes for the most part want standards in nature, whereby men may rectify and adjust their significations therefore they are very carious and doubtful. They are assemblages of ideas put together at the pleasure of the mind, pursuing it’s own ends of discourse, and suited to it’s own notions” (Locke 818).

The only real difference I can see between both statements is that the first is an introduction regarding the different reasons why substances are a doubtful significance. The second statement is helping explain the seventh proposition. So in a way they’re the same thing but are serving different functions. Granted, he’s expanding on all of the ideas that he introduces in the beginning of the essay so he’s trying to really show what he’s thinking and why. Even though the process is annoying to read, it is incredibly effective. When I finished reading his piece, I remembered his ideas and his reasoning behind them.

Another statement that is similar to the two above confused me a little. “Men fail of conveying their thoughts with all the quickness and ease that may be, when they have complex ideas without having any distinct names for them. This is sometimes the fault of the language itself, which has not in it a sound yet applied to such a signification; and sometimes the fault of the man, who has not yet learned the name for that idea he would show another” (Locke 825).

Does he mean that mixed modes are essentially a fault of language unless it’s the “fault of the man, who has not yet learned the name for that idea he would show another” (Locke 825). Mixed modes aren’t possible to have the same meaning because of how complex and multilayered they are. That idea is repeated multiple times. How could it ever be the fault of the man though? Why would someone be faulted for not having the same understanding of a word when it is not necessarily their fault? People don’t just go out into the world and think, “I should go to a crime scene so I can really figure out what murder really is”. Life just happens and people learn (hopefully) from it.

“The chief end of language in communication being to be understood, words serve not well for that end, neither in civil nor philosophical discourse, when any word does not excite in the hearer the same idea which it stands for in the mind of the speaker” (Locke 817).

“Hence it comes to pass that men’s names of very compound ideas, such as for the most part mortal words, have seldom in two different men the same precise signification since one man’s complex idea seldom agrees with another’s and often differs from his own—from that which he had yesterday or will have tomorrow” (Locke 818)

Looking at both statements, how can one achieve the chief end of language? Because if people are not able to fully communicate what they are thinking and even if they were able to, the hearer would not be able to fully comprehend what the speaker is trying to say when complex ideas are used.

All of the statements I’ve used are related to one another. They all present the problem that humans have hit a wall essentially when they try to communicate. I’m left a little depressed after reading the article since I was not able to find a solution to the issue presented. It’s like humans will never be able to fully communicate which is a sad thought. That makes me think of all the lost messages there are floating in the world right now. If so much is lost, then where’s the motivation to even try?

 Locke, John. “From An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.” The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, Second Edition. Ed.  Patricia Bizzel and Bruce Herzberg. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. 814- 827.