Abstract

In this dissertation I argue that there is more of interest in J. S. Mill's 1843 A System of Logic than his comments on the proper name "Dartmouth." Those comments are famous because they show that Mill, in contrast to his peers, treats proper names as if their reference is not determined by speakers' concepts. However, it is thought that Mill's views on other terms, indeed his overall approach to language is more conventional. What I reveal in Mill is a commonsensical approach to language constructed to reflect speakers' basic assumptions and abilities over, at times, accepted philosophical theories. Here are the results that best support that reading. ;First, Mill questions whether abstract terms such as "beauty" or "civilization" should even be treated as referring terms. His suggestion is that they are terms speakers construct to allow them to speak of the similarities they suppose to, but need not exist among things they call by the same general term such as, say, "beautiful" or "civilized." Second, in company with Wittgenstein, Mill states that not all general terms do apply to things that share specific similarities. Third, Mill maintains that speakers' concepts of to what their general terms apply are generally speaking, not just in the above instances where one would expect as much, too imprecise to determine their reference, a view touted by contemporaries such as Kripke in connection with proper names. Fourth, and in contrast with Kripke, Mill questions the wisdom of calling on scientific understandings of to what general terms such as "man" or "water" apply to determine their reference. Mill argues that the scientific understanding of to what such a so-called "natural kind term" applies cannot accurately represent its application in ordinary use. ;Mill seems, in short, to repeatedly defeat attempts at explaining what determines reference, yet this seems a central concern. By way of response, in my final chapter I call on the work of the eighteenth-century philosopher Condillac to construct an approach to language on which reference is depicted as a natural outgrowth of our instinctive urges, not as a mystery in need of a solution