Bentham

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) did almost all his work in philosophy of language during the last twenty years of his life, primarily under the influence of Locke, the idéologues, and the universal grammarians. In a passage distinctly reminiscent of Locke's call for the development of "the doctrine of signs," Bentham expressed his own conviction that "a demand exists for an entirely new system of Logic, in which shall be comprehended a theory of language, considered in the most general point of view" (Works, edited by John Bowring, 8.119–120). His belief in the importance of a theory of language within a system of logic seems to have made an impression on J. S. Mill and may mark the beginning of the return to a view of the interrelations of logic and language more like that prevailing in the later Middle Ages than...