Nonsense: a user's guide

Oza, Manish

doi:10.1080/0020174x.2022.2107059

Cited by 2 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…Furthermore, I deny that nonsensical Organon F 30 (4) 2023: 372-411 sentences have logical forms (or partially interpreted logical forms). Oza (2022) claims that logical forms characterise sentences in general, and he argues that this view is necessary to explain the mechanism of understanding nonsense. 15 In my opinion, uninterpreted sentences are just physical objects and don't have logical properties.…”

Section: A Pretence Theory Of Understanding Nonsensementioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is an additional complication in Oza's (2022) views on the relation between pretence and logical form. According to him, we pretend that a nonsensical proposition expresses a logical form, but the pretended logical form is the one that the nonsensical sentence really has.…”

Section: View Of the Semantics Of Referential And Attributive Usesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Section 3, I will present a framework that is the correct answer to the riddle of understanding nonsense. In Section 4, I will point out the shortcomings of Manish Oza's (2022) pretence account of nonsense. In Section 5, I will show that L. J. Keller and J.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nevertheless, from the theoretical point of view, we should consider that the speakers are engaged in a game of make-believe and understand these fragments of discourse as involving pretence. 22 There is a standard conception of games of make-believe, but the details of how to understand them vary (Armour-Garb 2015, Crimmins 1998, Evans 1982, Oza 2022, Walton 1990. The rules of make-believe can be divided into direct and indirect ones.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the next two sections, I will describe rival theories of understanding nonsense and show why they are unsatisfactory. Section 4 discusses Oza's (2022) pretence account of nonsense and explains why my pretence theory of understanding nonsense is more promising. Section 5 examines how L. J.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Riddle of Understanding Nonsense

Bogucki

2023

OrgF

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Typically, if I understand a sentence, then it expresses a proposition that I entertain. Nonsensical sentences don't express propositions, but there are contexts in which we talk about understanding nonsensical sentences. For example, we accept various kinds of semantically defective sentences in fiction, philosophy, and everyday life. Furthermore, it is a standard assumption that if a sentence is nonsensical, then it makes no sense to say that it implies anything or is implied by other sentences. Semantically uninterpreted sentences don't have logical characteristics. Hence, the riddle of understanding nonsense arises. We seem to use nonsensical sentences in reasoning, thinking, judging, and drawing conclusions, but they convey no propositions, which are the vehicles of their semantic properties. In this article, I propose the pretence theory of understanding nonsense to explain the riddle of understanding nonsense, and discuss alternative frameworks that are insufficient to solve it.

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Section: A Pretence Theory Of Understanding Nonsensementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: View Of the Semantics Of Referential And Attributive Usesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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The Riddle of Understanding Nonsense

Bogucki

2023

OrgF

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A defence of the austere view of nonsense

Bogucki

2023

Synthese

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The austere view of nonsense says that the source of nonsense is not a violation of the rules of logical syntax, but nonsense is always due to a lack of meaning in one of the components of a sentence. In other words, the necessary and sufficient condition for nonsensicality is that no meaning has been assigned to a constituent in a sentence. The austere conception is the key ingredient of the resolute reading of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that presents a therapeutical interpretation of the work, and rejects a possibility of conveying some ineffable truths by means of nonsensical sentences. In this paper, I defend the austere view against the most important objections. Firstly, I discuss textual sources for ascribing to Wittgenstein the austere view that have not been sufficiently thoroughly discussed yet. Next, I indicate that the apparent occurrence of words out of the context of a sentence on lists of verbs and in definitions is not in conflict with the version of the context principle recommended by austere theorists, since this argument does not sufficiently take into account the distinction between sign and symbol. Furthermore, I argue that the austere conception and the principle of compositionality are jointly tenable, for the former view does not exclude the existence of syntactic and semantic rules, but only shows that they are recognizable conditionally. Finally, I indicate that the austere view of nonsense should be seen as a viable option by a contemporary theorist of nonsense, for it helps us to avoid making controversial assumptions about the nature of meaning and content.

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Nonsense: a user's guide

Cited by 2 publications

References 47 publications

The Riddle of Understanding Nonsense

The Riddle of Understanding Nonsense

A defence of the austere view of nonsense

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