The Thoughts Of Locke In Systemic Functional Linguistics [6]

Russell (1961: 675):

Locke says … 'Since the mind, in all its thoughts and reasonings, hath no other immediate object but its own ideas, which it alone does or can contemplate, it is evident that our knowledge is only conversant about them.'

Blogger Comment:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, thoughts, reasonings, ideas, knowledge are names of meaning.  Meaning is a semiotic construal of experience.  That is, meaners assign semiotic values to experiential tokens, cognitively and verbally.  Meaning is "in" the semiotic values thus assigned, not "in" the tokens of experience that realise semiotic values.  This is the sense in which meaning is 'immanent' rather than 'transcendent'.