Locke-ing onto Content

Summary

Our reading is a passage from John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book III, Chapter II, § 2.

When a man speaks to another, it is that he may be understood; and the end of speech is that those sounds, as marks, may make known his ideas to the hearer.… Words being voluntary signs, they cannot be voluntary signs imposed by him on things he knows not. That would be to make them signs of nothing, sounds without signification.

What is Locke telling us in this passage?

Suppose that you and I are involved in some kind of conspiracy, and we have agreed that I will put a pot plant on the balcony of my flat if the ‘coast is clear’. What I will do is put the plant on the balcony when I believe that that the coast is clear; I won't put a pot plant on the balcony when the coast is clear independently of my opinion on the subject. To enter an agreement to do such and such when things are thus and so is to do such and such when you believe that things are thus and so. The point here is not one about what counts as success in following an agreement. When you agree to stop when the light turns red, you succeed in following that agreement to the extent that you stop when the light turns red, whether you believe that it has or not.