Meaning and the Scepticist Worry

Locke’s Theory of Perception

Abstract

This essay gives a response to the scepticist worry that the resemblance between the outside world and our experience of it cannot be proven. Jonathan F. Bennett shows that this worry arises from an interpretation of John Locke as an indirect realist. This interpretation focusses on Locke’s distinction between our ideas of objects and these objects’ qualities themselves. Bennett shows that if we only ever have indirect access to real objects, there can be no recourse to empirical proof for the claim of the resemblance between the outside world and our experience of it. J.L. Mackie claims that Bennett conflates two problems: that of acquiring a meaning for the term “outside world” and that of the justification for believing in the existence of this outside world beyond our experience. Mackie shows that these problems can be separated and answered. This essay approaches the meaning problem, not by disproving Bennett’s scepticist worry, but by showing its triviality. It claims that the search for meaning beyond what our mind creates as meaning is in itself meaningless.