George Berkeley’s language of vision and the occult tradition of linguistic Platonism. Part II: George Berkeley’s language of vision and linguistic Platonism

This case study on the linguistic ideas of George Berkeley is intended to exemplify the clandestine intrusion of ‘linguistic Platonism’, i.e. occult conceptions of language, into linguistic theories in modern times. The assumption underlying the study is that occult linguistic thought has played an important role in the formation of all modern theories of language which argue for a cognitive function alongside, or instead of, the communicative function of language. In Section 3, I argue that the apparent contradictions and inconsistencies of Berkeley’s statements on language can be reconciled, if and only if we view them as grounded in the complex architecture of the two-languages metaphysics, or linguistic Platonism. Section 4 places the results in the wider perspective of linguistic theorizing in modern times.