Just because of an interesting point raised on a discussion forum, I thought I would post some of my notes on Condillac's ideas about the importance of sensations in human language. A much fuller and better explanation can be found on the fantastic Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy - but for what it's worth... Like Locke, Condillac founded his ideas on language on an attempt to understand the natural state of humanity. Locke determined that human understanding was an 'empty closet' or a 'blank slate'. This means that language is something which is developed through experience, and that the formation of words can only be through convention just as Hermogenes argued. As Condillac's ideas developed throughout his career, he came to disagree with this notion. For him, the nature of human understanding was to be found in sensations. Some of these sensations arrives to us through the faculty of attention – which means that they are sensations ...