Monday, August 26, 2013

Where was I?

I want to explain secondary sense, absolute sense, understanding, talking lions, and much else besides. But I can't. Here goes...

In a documentary about religion in India (Extreme Pilgrim, about 25 minutes and 40 seconds in) the British narrator, Peter Owen-Jones, sees a man behaving strangely by the side of the road and asks his Indian guide what is going on. The guide explains that this is a holy man performing some kind of ritual. Roads attract holy men because they are places where energy is concentrated. In one sense this explains the situation, it provides a category in which to place the man's behavior, which had seemed so odd. Do we now understand the behavior or the man himself? Well, in one sense we do, but only in a superficial sense. We understand that he is engaged in religious behavior of some kind, but we do not understand how he comes to be living this way. We are probably not, for instance, tempted to join him in this life. It is not a live option for us. I won't speak for you, but I would not say that I get him or what he is doing. But I can make some sense of his behavior. I know that he is not just crazy (he might be crazy as well as holy, of course) or playing a game, for instance. (Wittgenstein's lion, I imagine, is something like this. We would not recognize it as talking unless we could make some sense of its words, but we would not get the lion itself. An opposite case might be reading the Tractatus and understanding its author but not its propositions. Although in this case, too, we might think that we understand the propositions at first. And in the lion case we might come to think that we had never understood the lion's words either.)

This makes it sound, though, as though there are two kinds or levels of understanding, the superficial and the deep, understanding in the categorizing sense and understanding in the empathizing sense. But that seems oversimple. There are, surely, degrees of understanding, and not just two such degrees but infinitely many shades. Correspondingly, explaining something, providing or enabling understanding of it, comes in different degrees as well. Some cases of explanation might be all or nothing (either you understand now or you don't) but others will admit of degrees. Reshef has said (in his comment at 10:20):
getting others to understand a secondary use is a matter almost of luring them to a place where it would be natural for them to use the term in this way, and then ask them to reflect where they are.   
This is understanding of the empathetic kind, and it is tricky for several reasons. For one thing, this explanation of what an explanation of secondary use would be is figurative. Secondly, it is offered with that qualifying "almost." Thirdly, what if a person in that kind of place is, by virtue of being in it, not well placed to reflect on where they are? This seems likely to me. So I'm going to try to rely on my memory of being in this kind of place and reflect on that.

First, though, some introduction of the kind of place we're talking about. In the Lecture on Ethics Wittgenstein says:
in ethical and religious language we seem constantly to be using similes. But a simile must be the simile for something. And if I can describe a fact by means of a simile I must also be able to drop the simile and to describe the facts without it. Now in our case as soon as we try to drop the simile and simply to state the facts which stand behind it, we find that there are no such facts. And so, what at first appeared to be simile now seems to be mere nonsense.
He is talking about absolute sense here, but this impossibility of simply stating the facts that stand behind the use of words in question is also a feature of secondary sense. It raises the question of what counts as simply stating facts. And that, I think, is not very clear. It isn't that the words cannot be paraphrased (although that might well be true in some cases). Wittgenstein says that the experience of wondering at the existence of the world is:
exactly what people were referring to when they said that God had created the world; and the experience of absolute safety has been described by saying that we feel safe in the hands of God. The third experience of the same kind is that of feeling guilty and again this was described by the phrase that God disapproves of our conduct.
So the experiences he uses as examples can all be described in other words. Or so he believes. But these descriptions do not count as simply stating the facts. Even, apparently, "I feel guilty" does not count as a simple statement of fact. Presumably because Wittgenstein has in mind a feeling that could be accurately paraphrased as the feeling that God disapproves of one's conduct. And not in the sense that one might then seek a cure for this feeling. It is a feeling, so to speak, that one buys into. "I am guilty" or "I am conscious of my guilt" might have been a better choice of words. ("How conscious are you of your sin?" is a question asked by another holy man in the Extreme Pilgrim series.) To make another presumption about Wittgenstein, he seems to understand these uses of words well enough to claim to be able to paraphrase them, and to use them to describe his own experiences. He has been there. He gets it. But he still concludes that they really are nonsense. Because they cannot be paraphrased by simple statements of fact. Because they were attempts to go beyond the world, beyond significant language. When he said them he wanted to go beyond significant language. He wanted to talk nonsense. It seems to me that it is perfectly reasonable to call such uses of language nonsense. But what the speaker acknowledges that he wants or means is important (because of first-person authority and because it is rude--not a matter simply of stating a fact--to accuse people of talking nonsense).

That was absolute sense. Now the related idea of secondary sense:
Given the two ideas 'fat' and 'lean', would you be rather inclined to say that Wednesday was fat and Tuesday lean, or vice versa? (I incline decisively towards the former.) Now have "fat" and "lean" some different meaning here from their usual one?—They have a different use.—So ought I really to have used different words? Certainly not that.—I want to use these words (with their familiar meanings) here.—Now, I say nothing about the causes of this phenomenon. They might be associations from my childhood. But that is a hypothesis. Whatever the explanation,—the inclination is there. Asked "What do you really mean here by 'fat' and 'lean'?"—I could only explain the meanings in the usual way. I could not point to the examples of Tuesday and Wednesday.
Here one might speak of a 'primary' and 'secondary' sense of a word. It is only if the word has the primary sense for you that you use it in the secondary one.
Only if you have learnt to calculate—on paper or out loud—can you be made to grasp, by means of this concept, what calculating in the head is.
The secondary sense is not a 'metaphorical' sense. If I say "For me the vowel e is yellow" I do not mean: 'yellow' in a metaphorical sense,—for I could not express what I want to say in any other way than by means of the idea 'yellow'.
We have here cases of the same meaning but different use, different sense. The only explanation of the meaning that can be given is the normal, primary one. That is the meaning that the speaker wants. He does not want to go beyond significant language, at least not explicitly. He wants, on the contrary, to use the usual, familiar meanings of his words. But not in the usual kind of context. If the result is nonsense this seems to be involuntary. And "Wednesday is fat" does sound like nonsense. Especially if, when asked to explain, the speaker gives the usual explanation of what 'Wednesday' and 'fat' mean.

On the other hand, "calculating in the head" does not sound like nonsense at all. It means "doing mental arithmetic." But then paraphrasing 'in the head' as 'mentally' or 'in the mind' is not using a simple statement of facts, is it? "In the mind" is not simple. The word 'calculating' might be used in a secondary sense in the expression "calculating in the head," but are the words "in the head" also used in this way? Unlike the case of the vowel e, you can express what you want to say in another way than by means of the word 'head'. The word 'mind', however problematic it might be, would work perfectly well. Or is this cheating, like saying you could use the word 'buttercup-colored' instead of 'yellow'?

In referring to 'yellow' and 'fat' and 'lean,' Wittgenstein talks about ideas rather than words or meanings. Secondary use involves bringing in a word or idea that you know does not in any ordinary sense belong there but that is nevertheless exactly, and without substitute, what you want. Understanding this kind of use involves understanding what people who make it want. You have to know the primary meaning of a word, not just in the sense that you know how to use it but in the sense that you get the idea of it. And you have to get how that idea could be wanted in this anomalous situation. Now, if somebody does not get all that, how can it be explained to them? As Reshef says, getting them into the same kind of situation would be one way, and perhaps the only way.

Wittgenstein provides a few examples of how this might be done. In his first example of secondary sense he gives you two pairs of words or ideas and asks you how you would match them up (if you had to). His pairs are each of similar types, but they might not have to be. Given the ideas 'whale' and 'cucumber,' would you rather be inclined to say that Jupiter is a cucumber kind of planet and Mars a whale planet, or vice versa? I have no inclinations one way or the other here, but you might. And we can keep going until we find an example that works, that is, an example where you find that you do have a noticeable inclination one way or the other. Now, can you give a reason for this inclination, one that is not a hypothesis about your inclination's cause? Presumably, a priori, not. Reason has no foothold here. In that sense you are talking nonsense. The whole exercise is an exercise in  nonsense, or in getting someone to feel inclined to talk nonsense.

The case of the yellow e is not like that, because there is no mention of 'yellow' and 'e' having been picked from a limited range of options. The person who says "For me the vowel e is yellow" may or may not have been asked to associate a color with a vowel. But there is something that they want to say, and only those words with their usual (albeit ill-fitting) meaning will do to express it. Or, at any rate, this is what they say. Whether there really is an it that they want to express remains to be seen. That might sound too skeptical, as if the default attitude to people who speak is doubt, and the onus on them to prove that their words have meaning. I don't think that can be true. [Flag--there seems to be something important here that I am not saying much about.] But it is true that we have not (yet) seen that there is an it that they want to express.  Perhaps someone else will say that they get it, that for them e is yellow too. Or they might strongly disagree, and insist that e is purple. Would such a conversation make sense? I don't know. I wouldn't be able to make sense of it, at least at first. Perhaps at some point I would start to get it, start to feel inclined to take one side or the other, or my own third position (e is green!). Not having any inclination to talk like this at all I want to leave this one alone.

Different again is the case of calculating in one's head. This is a perfectly normal expression and, at least it seems to me, not even close to being nonsense. It may be secondary in the sense specified by Wittgenstein--you won't understand what it is unless you know how to calculate--but it is not very different from calculating out loud. It could almost be said to be merely a difference in volume (if you move your lips while doing it). That is how I would teach someone to calculate in their head, anyway, if I had to do so. Start with calculation on paper or a board, then move to calculation out loud, then move to a whisper, then silently. It might not work (calculating in the head isn't just calculating out loud at very low volume even if it is very close to this--it isn't close at all if you can't make the transition from quiet to silent), but those are the stages through which I would try to lead them. And virtually everybody can calculate in their head and does understand what this activity is. How do I know? Well, they say they can do it, they think they can do it, when asked to do it they are not thrown by the question, and they usually come up with the right answer as long as the question is simple enough.

Now what if we apply these criteria to "e is yellow"? Imagine that a large number of people say things like this. They claim to be able to identify the colors of vowels, they are sincere when they make such claims, if asked to say what color u is they react as if to a normal question, and they usually agree in their answers (I mean, let us imagine that all this is the case). Does "the color of a vowel" mean something in this case? I can't say what it means, but it looks as though it has meaning for them, as though they are able to do something that I can't, and that I don't understand. I am on the outside of this game, if it is a game, and cannot get inside it, cannot get it, by means of words because the only meanings they can give of the words they use are the usual ones that I'm familiar with--it's this secondary use that I don't get. What I don't understand is not words but a use of words, a practice or form of behavior. And in a (limited) sense I do understand it, just as I might understand that the holy man in India is engaged in a religious practice. They are naming the colors of vowels. I have a name for the practice and can do something with this concept (namely, most likely, leave them to it). I am like a (completely) blind (from birth) man with the concept seeing--I know it as something I cannot do or imagine, but that seems to have a role in other people's lives. [Flag 2--something feels off here.]

Wonder at the existence of the world is foreign to me, but the feeling of absolute safety is something that I think I understand. I have never wanted to put any experience of mine in quite those words, but I have felt a couple of times that everything is all right and (inevitably) will be all right (no matter what happens). I would at these times have been quite happy to express this with the words "We are safe in God's hands," or something of that sort at least, something referring to God. I feel that I know exactly what kind of experience Wittgenstein is talking about when he talks about these experiences that seem "to have in some sense an intrinsic, absolute value." I am inclined to say that I have felt the same thing. And so are lots of other people. Wittgenstein counts, in his lecture, on members of the audience being able to relate, getting what he is saying, even if it is "nonsense." He doesn't mean nonsense in a technical sense but in the ordinary sense of something whose meaning one cannot explain in terms of simple facts. The word nonsense, in the (or an) ordinary sense, doesn't just mean this though. It means rubbish. "When a sentence is called senseless, it is not as it were its sense that is senseless. But a combination of words is being excluded from the language, withdrawn from circulation." To call sentences like "God created the world" nonsense, then, is to recommend that they be withdrawn from circulation. Qua philosopher I don't think anyone has any business doing this. [Flag 3--I don't think I'm wrong here, but a lot more could be said about it.]

Wait though. Can we be sure that these words (i.e. "God created the world," etc.) are even in the language to begin with, that they do anything there? The fact that many people talk like this is no guarantee that these words mean what these people want them to mean, or that what these people want is to make sense, to operate within significant language. And is that even a fact? I just googled "God created the world" and got nearly 6,000,000 hits. But the only relevant ones are the ones that could equally have said "I wonder at the existence of the world." And that is surely not most of them. Usually when people say that God created the world they are not expressing wonder but repeating a kind of cliche or bit of dogma. They are not describing an experience that they have had. Still people do have this kind of experience. What kind? The kind that inclines them to use expressions like these. Can I explain in words what this is like, beyond repeating the examples? Ex hypothesi, No. I can imagine sitting around with other people who have had such experiences and sharing our stories while someone else looked on feeling very much as I would in a group of people naming the colors of vowels. It might be much like the case of someone for whom "calculating in the head" means nothing, because he can only calculate with perceptible signs. In that case, though, the people who talk of calculating in their heads can at least produce answers to mathematical questions. What can the wonderers at the world and the feelers of guilt do? Not much. Have certain kinds of conversations maybe (if these really are conversations and not orgies of gibberish). Enjoy reading certain kinds of books. Maybe they behave differently from other people. Does this show that their words make sense? No. Cranks have conversations, books, and behavior of their own.

How, then, are we to decide whether these uses of language make sense, or what kind of sense they make, or in what ways they do and in what ways they do not make sense? Is "God created the world" said as an expression of wonder at the very existence of a world more like "The letter n is brown" or "Today I did some mental arithmetic"? What kind of question is that? It surely can't be about how many people utter words like these, and yet that seems to be highly relevant. [Flag 4--I suspect that numbers seem relevant because they causally affect what we count as sense. But numbers are no criterion of sense, no grammatical reason to count something as sense. The authors of the OED care about numbers, but it is not part of the concept of 'sentence that makes sense' that such a sentence must be widely used. And "This is nonsense even though everyone says it all the time" is not some kind of self-contradiction. Maybe this is changing though.] The question rather is about what, if anything, people are doing when they use words like these. They are describing experiences that cannot be described, for which normal language has no words. So they are not really, not exactly, describing experiences. They are expressing feelings, but not in the way that people who laugh or cry are expressing their feelings, and not in the way that people who say "I am excited" or "I am afraid" are expressing their feelings. What they are doing cannot be separated, cannot be understood separately, from the words they are using, and these words are not being used in their usual way, but do have (are required to have) their usual meanings. This is something that humans do. Any given instance of it might be nonsense or might be understood, but the general phenomenon is part of human life. A big part of it. Talk about the colors of vowels is a tiny part, at most, of our lives. But talk about what we take to be profoundly important experiences is a bigger part. And talk about such phenomena as calculating in one's head is part of everyday life. It is presumably something that all human beings, or all readers of this blog at least, get. In other words, I can't explain it but you know what I mean. Don't you?

If we now reflect on the times when we talk like this, what do we see? I just don't think it's possible to say very much about this. There are cases of more or less plain nonsense ("I am inclined to say that a is green") and cases of more or less obvious sense ("calculating in one's head"). When we find ourselves talking like this without any trouble, indeed in ways we find useful (e.g. when teaching children to add in their heads), we seem to me to have all we need to call these uses of language meaningful. Might someone point out something that stops us in our tracks and makes us want to stop talking like this? I suppose so. Then we might say that we had been talking nonsense all along. But that hypothetical possibility isn't a reason to be skeptical now.

The in-between cases are perhaps the most interesting. I keep finding myself thinking of the song "Once in a Lifetime" by Talking Heads: You may find yourself in a beautiful house ..., You may tell yourself: This is not my beautiful house..., You may ask yourself, what is that beautiful house?, etc. What does it mean to say that you may find yourself in the house where you live? Here it surely means that you stop and think about something you haven't stopped and thought about before. And when you do it might all seem unreal. Not in the sense that you believe it is an illusion, but in the sense that you have a feeling that you associate with illusions, with unreality. You become aware of the dreamlike or film-like state in which you have done the things that led to your living in this house, with this beautiful wife, etc. Although what seems unreal is not your past decision-making but its results.

Reshef quotes Wittgenstein on this sense of unreality:
Wittgenstein, Remarks on Philosophy of Psychology 1, §§125-126:
The feeling of the unreality of one's surroundings. This feeling I have had once, and many have it before the onset of mental illness. Everything seems somehow not real; but not as if one saw things unclear or blurred; everything looks quite as usual. And how do I know that another has felt what I have? Because he uses the same words as I find appropriate.
But why do I choose precisely the word "unreality" to express it? Surely not because of its sound. (A word of very like sound but different meaning would not do.) I choose it because of its meaning. 
But I surely did not learn to use the word to mean: a feeling. No; but I learned to use it with a particular meaning and now I use it spontaneously like this. One might say—though it may mislead—: When I have learnt the word in its ordinary meaning, then I choose that meaning as a simile for my feeling. But of course what is in question here is not a simile, not a comparison of the feeling with something else.
The fact is simply that I use a word, the bearer of another technique, as the expression of a feeling. I use it in a new way. And wherein consists this new kind of use? Well, one thing is that I say: I have a 'feeling of unreality'—after I have, of course, learnt the use of the word "feeling" in the ordinary way. Also: the feeling is a state.    
The "feeling of unreality" is a lot like "calculating in one's head," it seems to me. We understand the feeling by having it [Flag 5--this sounds odd], or others like it, and we understand those who speak this way because they spontaneously choose the same words we do, despite the novelty of this way of speaking.

I have five flags and have gone on at some length for a blog post, so I'll stop. I also don't know what more I could say except about those flags. But I feel as though I've been saying that all along. So that's another reason to stop.

47 comments:

  1. This is a very rich blog, so I’ll limit myself to some specific points. As I’ve written about elsewhere (http://languageisthingswedo.blogspot.fi/2013/03/waiting-for-wednesday.html and http://languageisthingswedo.blogspot.fi/2013/08/is-this-really-happening-now.html), I suspect that the activity of trying to establish whether it would make sense for someone to utter such and such a sentence is one that philosophers should abstain from engaging in.

    There are two versions of this: either imagining a person uttering a sentence and then discussing whether it would make sense, or seizing on something actually uttered by a person and then questioning whether it made sense for him to do so. (If I may make a joke, I should like to say that until someone has actually uttered the words, the question doesn’t arise, and once she has, it has already been settled. I.e. her words then confront us as something on which, if the situation requires, we will have to take a stand. To call what someone has actually said nonsense in the philosophers’ sense is, roughly, to make as if she didn’t say anything. --- I’m sorry, I know this is too cryptic.)

    About “e is yellow”, I take this to be due to Wittgenstein’s having had synaesthesia, i.e. a spontaneous tendency to associate, say, numbers, letters or weekdays with colours, etc. (I have it too and for a long time I thought everybody did. But I’ve discovered that isn’t the case.) Comparing the colours of weekdays or vowels, say, might be a pastime among people with this tendency, but of course it doesn’t get them anywhere. (So doesn’t “make sense” in that sense.) Perhaps another instance of secondary sense which is much more widely shared is calling music happy or sad.

    (By the way I remember liking the chapter on secondary sense in Benjamin Tilghman’s *But is it Art?* very much.)

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    1. Regarding the hypothesis that Wittgenstein gave the ‘e is yellow’ example because he had synaesthesia: Wouldn’t that not just show a literal (non-secondary) use of 'e is yellow’? I mean, if by saying that e is yellow, all that one means to say is that when one hears a certain sound there is a certain color that happens to come to mind for them, if it is simply translatable into: ‘This sound makes me think of that color’, this would just be an empirical claim, wouldn’t it? (In the same way that a certain song always reminds me of a certain event.)

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    2. I’m not sure synaesthesia would render “e is yellow” empirical. After all, it’s a matter of expressing what the vowel is like to me, not reporting an association.

      We could imagine a conversation between two synaesthetics: “To me the number five is light green.” – “You don’t say, to me it’s definitely bright red!” Does this conversation “make sense”? Well, neither more nor less than such conversations do. Does it make sense to spot shapes in the cloud: “A cat? No, it’s definitely a cow!”

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    3. How to describe the experience of the synaesthetic?

      You say: After all, it’s a matter of expressing what the vowel is like to me, not reporting an association.

      But this is the whole question. You accept without question that there are two language games here—expressing what a vowel is like, and reporting an association. But by the words ‘expressing what a vowel is like’ one could just mean ‘reporting an association that a vowel has.’ So it is not obvious that we have two language games here. And the grammar of the discussion you describe between the two synaesthetics is likewise in question here. The fact that they express themselves in the way you described does not in itself precludes the possibility that they could accept a translation of what they said into the language of reporting associations: “To me the number five bring light green to mind.” – “You don’t say, to me it definitely brings bright red!” – So there is still a question about how to describe the experience of the synaesthetic.

      Is the synaesthesia hypothesis helpful?

      What I find difficult to accept in the synaesthesia hypothesis is that it makes this particular use of words dependent on a particular psychological condition. But not only those with this condition are tempted to talk this way. Many people who are not synaesthetics can, for instance, compare the relative lightness of vowels: “U is darker than E.” So the meaning of such forms of words does not depend on such a psychological condition.

      Perhaps we should separate here two questions: (1) one about how to describe the experience of the synaesthetic (I’m not one, so I can use your help), and (2) the other question is about the sort of experience that leads people to use such form of words independently of any synaesthetic experience.

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    4. Sorry I'm so late to this discussion. Thanks, Lars, for the reference to Tilghman's chapter. I'll have to read it.

      If I may make a joke, I should like to say that until someone has actually uttered the words, the question doesn’t arise, and once she has, it has already been settled.

      I like this, cryptic or not (I hope I haven't misunderstood it). If I think of human interaction as something like a game or a dance, a kind of flow, then nonsense would seem to be something that interrupts the flow, or at least contributes nothing to it, does not move anything forward. Rather it is a point from which we must track back and try again. And then sense would be whatever goes with the flow, keeps the ball moving, is picked up, etc. But there are also games like chess where the flow is punctuated, and some conversations (perhaps especially intellectual ones) can be like this. So I don't want to overemphasize the metaphor of flowing. And part of our language is pointing out, or claiming, that something makes no sense, and even that what was taken for sense, perhaps by a large number of people, was in fact nonsense. Sometimes these claims are accepted, and then we do go back and start again. This is perhaps too metaphorical to be at all clear (I'm thinking of Wittgenstein's raising the possibility that in some games we make the rules up as we go along, and this seems right to me, so that even a seeming violation of the rules is not one if others react to it in the right way, going along with it, and so on.) I'm tempted to say that sense is whatever is accepted as sense, but this is too close to saying that truth is warranted assertability. Grammatically that isn't what it is. The very conventionalism that attracts me insists that I make room for nonsense, for the criticism that some uses of language look like sense but are in fact nonsense. Still, I think that what we call nonsense has to do with what people want, not just the words they use. Intention and context matter.

      On synaesthesia: my understanding is that people who have it reject the suggestion that they are merely associating, say, colors with sounds. They insist that they see sounds. The way they speak about their experiences appears to be a perfect example of the use of words in a secondary sense. And the fact that it is regarded or treated as a psychological condition seems to me to be neither here nor there.

      Does it get anybody anywhere? Apparently not, but it seems that it might. Isn't it possible that a composer might use such experience to compose music "in color"? Might not critics say things like, "The music sounds OK but the colors are terrible"? Might not this kind of experience be regarded as having religious significance? Couldn't it be used in interior design? Or perhaps it might drive someone insane. It isn't going to feed anyone, but otherwise it seems merely contingent that it doesn't play a bigger role in our lives (just as shapes in clouds might play a big role in a soothsaying culture).

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    5. I'm not very satisfied with this. Let me try something else. Imagine you are exploring and find a tribe speaking an unknown language, or seeming to do so. There is in such cases a presumption that they are speaking a language, and that what they say makes sense. There might be a word or two that you cannot make sense of ('taboo', perhaps) but otherwise I think there is a kind of requirement that you regard their behavior as (in principle) intelligible. If it looks like sense it should be regarded as sense. (I'm not sure about the nature of the norms here, but never mind.)

      On the other hand, when someone like Anscombe or MacIntyre says that a great many people are talking nonsense when they speak of "moral obligation," etc. we don't all say, "You can't say that!" Some people say that, but there is philosophical debate over whether they are right or not. The possibility that Anscombe might be right is just as given as the presumption that what looks like sense is sense. It does make sense to question whether appearance is reality in cases like this. The thing to do then, it seems to me, is to look carefully at the case in question. What are people saying? What do they want to say? Why do they choose those words? What is the allegation against them? In what way, for what reason, are their words said to be nonsense? What is the alleged contradiction or incoherence? And so on.

      I don't want to say that whatever appears superficially to make sense must therefore make sense. But it is not as if there is really anything deeper than appearances to go by. We can look carefully or sloppily, widely or narrowly, etc., but in the end questions of sense are going to be about how things show up in people's lives. It isn't a purely objective matter.

      (I'm not happy with this either, but I'll leave it. If I've gone wrong perhaps stuff like this, stuff that even I am not happy with, will help make it clear to others how or where I have gone wrong. If it is obscure or otherwise unhelpful just ignore it.)

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    6. it is not as if there is really anything deeper than appearances to go by

      This seems too strong. It seems to imply (a) that there is no difference between surface and depth grammar, and (b) that the Anscombe/McIntyre arguments you mentioned (the kind of argument that are also the bread and butter of resolute readers of Wittgenstein) have no place.

      ---

      On synaesthesia: my understanding is that people who have it reject the suggestion that they are merely associating, say, colors with sounds. They insist that they see sounds.

      So they insist. But this doesn’t mean we understand them. And it doesn’t mean that the insistence here has the same source as the insistence in the secondary uses cases. It is similar in appearance (appearances again), but the similarity may be superficial.

      I don’t have this condition, but I do sometimes use words in secondary senses, and when I do so use words, the use does not seem to depend on any psychological condition I have. Since I do not have that condition, I’m not in the best position to say what these people mean exactly when they say this. But since their use does depend on that psychological condition, it seems to be in this way relevantly different from the cases when I and others who don’t have a condition use terms in secondary senses.

      That still leaves open the question what those who have synaesthesia experience, and how to describe it. Would synaesthetics accept the following kind of description: “The color-sound experience has a kind of unity to it similar to the unity of taste and smell.” That might give us non-synaesthetics the beginning of a way to approach the synaesthetic experience.

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    7. So they insist. But this doesn’t mean we understand them.

      I agree.

      And it doesn’t mean that the insistence here has the same source as the insistence in the secondary uses cases.

      What is the source in those cases? Wittgenstein doesn't say, does he? Do you take there to be an implicit answer in what he says?

      when I do so use words, the use does not seem to depend on any psychological condition I have

      No, but why do we say that the use of words made by synaesthetics depends on a psychological condition? Experts say so, but is this for any reason except that the condition (i.e. talking this way) is unusual and they assume it must have a physiological basis? That's not a purely rhetorical question. I really don't know the answer. But I wouldn't insist that there must be a real difference in kind between two cases just because one is regarded as a condition by psychologists and the other is not.

      It seems to imply (a) that there is no difference between surface and depth grammar, and (b) that the Anscombe/McIntyre arguments you mentioned (the kind of argument that are also the bread and butter of resolute readers of Wittgenstein) have no place.

      I didn't mean to imply that. Thanks for pointing this out. I meant something more like this: the difference between surface grammar and depth grammar is one of location rather than kind. We see the depth grammar, discover it, by looking more, and more carefully. But it is still something we find by looking, still something that appears. That might still be too strong, but it's closer to what I meant. And I do think that there is a place for Anscombe-type arguments, but it's a problematic place. It's a particularly difficult kind of argument to make, it seems to me.

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    8. What is the source in those cases? Wittgenstein doesn't say, does he? Do you take there to be an implicit answer in what he says?

      My point here is only that the source of the insistence in the two cases is different—the case where the synaesthetic says that e is yellow, and the case where someone who is not synaesthetic says this. Only in the former case, but not in the latter it depends on a special, uncommon, psychological condition—the meaning of what is said should be explained by reference to that psychological condition. I don’t think Wittgenstein says anything about the synaesthetic; at least I don’t remember anything he says about this. Moving to the other sort of case, I think there is an implicit answer in Wittgenstein about the source, or at least I think I have some answer to that. I think it can be connected to a kind of reflective interest in conceptualizing things, which involves a special mode of reflection. I write about that here.

      but why do we say that the use of words made by synaesthetics depends on a psychological condition? Experts say so

      I don’t think we say that because experts say that. We say this, it seems to me, because this is the most natural thing to say here: Apparently, these synaesthetics have this special kind of experiences (they say so), and evidently this is how it is natural for them to give expression to these experiences. I did not say anything about any physiological basis, and as in other cases, the physiological explanation is beside the point. All we need here, I think, is the fact that they have this special kind of experiences—a susceptibility to a psychological condition that I am not susceptible to. The situation is really very similar to the situation with blind people, except that in the present case, the people without the experience are the vast majority.

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    9. I was thinking that the psychological condition just is the tendency to use those words, so that there would not be a difference between a synaesthetic who says that e is yellow and someone else who said it. Anyone who said it would count as having the condition. And then reference to a psychological condition seems irrelevant. But I think you're right that there is a difference. I'll have to read your paper. Thanks for the link.

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    10. Isn't it possible that a composer might use such experience to compose music "in color"?

      It's been done . . .

      Kenneth Peacock, "Synesthetic Perception: Alexander Scriabin's Color Hearing."

      Wikipedia, "Alexander Scriabin: Influence of Color." Extract:

      "Though these works are often considered to be influenced by synesthesia, a condition wherein one experiences sensation in one sense in response to stimulus in another, it is doubted that Scriabin actually experienced this.[23][24] His colour system, unlike most synesthetic experience, accords with the circle of fifths: it was a thought-out system based on Sir Isaac Newton's Opticks.[clarification needed] Note that Scriabin did not, for his theory, recognize a difference between a major and a minor tonality of the same name (for example: c-minor and C-Major).[clarification needed] Indeed, influenced also by the doctrines of theosophy, he developed his system of synesthesia toward what would have been a pioneering multimedia performance: his unrealized magnum opus Mysterium was to have been a grand week-long performance including music, scent, dance, and light in the foothills of the Himalayas Mountains that was somehow to bring about the dissolution of the world in bliss."

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    11. his unrealized magnum opus Mysterium was to have been a grand week-long performance including music, scent, dance, and light in the foothills of the Himalayas Mountains that was somehow to bring about the dissolution of the world in bliss.

      This is my goal too.

      Thanks!

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  2. Now, can you give a reason for this inclination, one that is not a hypothesis about your inclination's cause? Presumably, a priori, not.

    Normally, the "hypothesis about my inclination's cause" is so much in the forefront of my mind that it crowds out everything else. As with the much discussed "Caesar is a prime number", it's easy to come up with an interpretation that is not at all nonsensical – in fact the chain of associations is hard to stop until one already has come up with one.

    The fat Wednesday example has always been ruined for me by the fact that in Finland, pea soup (with suet) is commonly served on Thursdays: Wednesday is obviously fatter than Tuesday, because it's closer in the calendar to Thursday, in anticipation of the fatty food as it were. Similarly, Jupiter is obviously a whale planet, because it's a whale of a planet, certainly compared to Mars.

    It's also remarkable how the finding of a cause for half of the inclination seems sufficient. I don't feel the need to find a cause for calling Tuesday lean or Mars a cucumber planet, because the other two poles are already assigned and hence unavailable for consideration.

    But what is truly remarkable about Wittgenstein's examples in the lecture on ethics is that with them, the usual chain of associations does not even get started, or if it does, it always runs out before any non-nonsensical interpretation is found. It's hard to find other examples to illustrate this phenomenon by analogy, because the same thing is not true of most of them: they're rather examples of the "Caesar is a prime number" type. (Wittgenstein's teacup metaphor in the lecture itself is probably more illuminating.)

    So many unsuccessful analogies have been offered over the years to illuminate Wittgenstein's examples that this has perhaps obscured the extent to which they have a kind of rarity value – which is demonstrated precisely by the impossibility of finding analogies that work.

    Perhaps someone else will say that they get it, that for them e is yellow too. Or they might strongly disagree, and insist that e is purple. Would such a conversation make sense? I don't know.

    I was going to write the same thing as Lars about synaesthesia. It's a bit unfortunate as a philosophical example, because synaesthesia is a medical condition that has an empirical basis in neuropsychology, albeit one that is not fully documented yet. The letter-colour pairs vary from one synaesthete to another (and similarly e.g. with musicians who associate notes or chords with colours). If we're talking of synaesthesia, the imagined conversation would not make sense, but only because of the participants' empirical ignorance of the variation in the letter-colour pairs.

    Or if the comparison was not an argumentative one about the "correct" pairs, it would then have a self-consciously autobiographical character ("Yellow 'e'? How interesting!") and no longer be about the pairs themselves.

    Then again, this perhaps goes to show that whether a question is an empirical or a conceptual one is sometimes itself an empirical question, because certain pieces of empirical knowledge or lack thereof are relevant to it.

    And how do I know that another has felt what I have? Because he uses the same words as I find appropriate. (Wittgenstein)

    When we had yon discussion about the deaf-mute Mr. Ballard, I contrasted Wittgenstein's suspicious attitude to Ballard's reports of pre-linguistic cosmological speculation with his reluctance to condemn as incomprehensible the statement that "we might see one another after death". I vaguely remembered that there was something in Wittgenstein which was an even more relevant than this passage in the lectures on religious belief. And it was this one. So this is my short Wittgensteinian reply to Wittgenstein's misgivings about Ballard: "He uses the same words as I find appropriate."

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    1. Thanks, Tommi.

      So many unsuccessful analogies have been offered over the years to illuminate Wittgenstein's examples that this has perhaps obscured the extent to which they have a kind of rarity value

      This may be true. Although if all talk of ethics, religion, and doing things in one's head are cases of secondary use then there ought to be lots of examples. There are certainly lots of non-simile metaphors, i.e. ones that (supposedly) cannot be paraphrased. And they are a similar case. Wittgenstein's teacup might be one,and his seeing in a flash that nothing that makes sense will do to express what he has in mind when he talks ethics.

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  3. Duncan,

    Perhaps I’m just asking you to repeat or emphasize some things you already said. I am also not sure what is the best way to put my question, so I’ll put it in multiple ways. It is really meant to be a single question. So you need only answer it once. And if these all don’t seem to you the same question, then I’ll give it another shot. So here is my question:

    You seem to be taking it for granted that ‘e is yellow’ and ‘I calculated that 12 times 4 is 48 in my head’ are secondary uses of expressions. What I’m not sure I understand is why. Is it because Wittgenstein says so? – That doesn’t seem like a good enough reason (at least to me). Is it just because they have something offish about them? – that’s kind of vague.

    What I guess I’m asking is why you think we even need the category of secondary sense in the first place. I mean, if people get it, and there is a practice (like with mental calculation) then why not just say it is sense? And if there is no practice, but only some people who think they get it but cannot really explain it to those who don’t (like with the colored vowels), then why not just say it is nonsense, however similar it may be to sense, and however strong the sense of some may be that they have to say things like this?

    Or maybe this way is better: There are cases when we talk of some feeling of unreality, for example, where we have a kind of need to bend language. But two things I still don’t get:

    (a) It doesn’t seem that you see this in all the examples you mention—not all of them are even expressions of a special experience, and not in all of them there is for you even language-bending. And if so then why put all these cases together? Don’t the similarities between them seem superficial? Are there any deep affinities?

    (b) I still feel I don’t understand what you think is the nature of the language-bending here—to the extent it exits. I mean, I do get how language is being bent—figurative explanations and all that. But I don’t see why you think this happens. Is there something special here about the semantic intention with which people utter those forms of words? Why can’t we just come up with new words here? Why do we “need these terms here”? Why won’t new words do the trick? What is the trick?

    And one last way of putting my question: What is there to be gained by putting those cases alongside one another? I mean, you mention all sorts of real differences between them. But it seems to me plausible that we can use those cases as objects of comparison, and perhaps see better what is going on. What I’m not sure I see is what you think becomes visible when we do that.

    Again, this is all multiple attempts to put only a single question. Sorry for the confusion.

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  4. Thanks, Reshef. Ideally I would wait until I had had time to think more about all this before replying to anyone, but I suspect that would be a very long time. So here are some quick responses that I hope might have some value.

    You seem to be taking it for granted that ‘e is yellow’ and ‘I calculated that 12 times 4 is 48 in my head’ are secondary uses of expressions. What I’m not sure I understand is why. Is it because Wittgenstein says so?

    Yes. I'm treating 'secondary sense' as his term, one that he gets to define as he likes. Although his use does seem consistent, so if I wanted to challenge it I'm not sure how that might go.

    if people get it, and there is a practice (like with mental calculation) then why not just say it is sense?

    Well, I do think this is sense. But it seems worth noticing that it is secondary because it brings up the question of what we mean by 'mind', 'mental,' 'in the head', etc. This question arises anyway, but it might be useful or interesting or revealing if we approach it from this different angle. At least it makes questions of mind and body seem more interesting to me than they usually do. Not that I have investigated in this direction yet, of course.

    Don’t the similarities between them seem superficial?

    The cases certainly seem very different. But it seems interesting to me that they have as much in common as they do. It doesn't strike me as either deep or shallow, although after I've thought about it long enough (if I do) I might come to see it as one or the other.

    Why can’t we just come up with new words here? Why do we “need these terms here”?

    In some of the cases (e.g. is Wednesday fat or lean?) there is no question of coming up with new words. In others there might be. People do come up with new words sometimes. Then there are uncanny experiences that might lose their sense of uncanniness if they were given a label. In these cases we might feel that only a weird use of language could express the weirdness of the experience. But that doesn't sound quite right to me. It sounds too much like the idea of painting a stage-set in odd colors in order to create a suitable backdrop for the witches in Macbeth. It sounds too contrived, that is. But it might be roughly right (I think it is).

    What I’m not sure I see is what you think becomes visible when we do that.

    I'm not sure either. Something like how thin the line is between sense and nonsense (I don't like that way of putting it though), and how unlike a calculus language is. But that doesn't sound like much. I think of everything I've said here about this as preliminary, not as findings of some finished inquiry. Preliminary to what I suppose remains to be seen.

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  5. I'm treating 'secondary sense' as his term, one that he gets to define as he likes. Although his use does seem consistent

    This is interesting. Perhaps this is the source of the misunderstanding between us. I think there is a difference in how we investigate there: in what we take our task to be, in what we take ourselves to be in position to do, and in what we have to learn from Wittgenstein.

    I’m assuming that part of my task in this discussion is to tap into the reasons, motivations, Wittgenstein had in putting those cases together. I assume that they must share a certain form of soul, as it were—that the semantic intention in all such uses is of the same general kind—and it is my task to figure out what this form is. In other words, it is my task to get at a description of the relevant kind of uses of language. This is something I don’t take myself to be already in a position to do. This is what I hope to learn from Wittgenstein. I’m hoping that he has to teach me ways in which words can come alive. The idea is that once I have a good idea what this form of soul is—this use—I’ll be in a position to judge for myself in each case. And to the extent that I can trust Wittgenstein (and based on past experience I find him pretty reliable), I will be able to see for myself why he puts all those examples together.

    You seem to be working differently. Here is my impression of your method here, and tell me if I am mischaracterizing it: You begin with Wittgenstein’s examples, and you don’t assume that there has to be a reason why Wittgenstein puts all these examples together, although you allow for the possibility that there might, and you also allow that he thought there were. You next describe the examples, and here is perhaps the biggest difference from me: you do take yourself to already be in a perfectly good position to describe the uses. Since you already have the descriptions, you are also in a position to judge whether they do or don’t belong together, and that’s why you can say that Wittgenstein seems consistent. – Does this sound right?

    For me, Wittgenstein uses are consistent because that’s what I’m blindly assuming. For you, they are consistent because they seem to be consistent: it is your best judgment.

    If this is right, I want to ask about this consistency of Wittgenstein’s uses. Taking your angle: since the uses only seem consistent, and since how they are is not completely clear, we can react in two ways: (a) we can say: he is not really consistent, but only apparently so. Or (b) we can say: this means I don’t have a good enough sense yet of what he is talking.

    Now, if I got your method right, your whole argument depends on the assumption that you are already in a position to describe the uses and judge whether Wittgenstein is consistent. And if this is so, then going for the second option cannot be something you can really allow as an alternative. What I don’t see is why, and how you escape the first alternative.

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  6. Does this sound right?

    For me, Wittgenstein uses are consistent because that’s what I’m blindly assuming. For you, they are consistent because they seem to be consistent: it is your best judgment.


    I wouldn't put it like this, so I think I've misled you with what I said before. I assume that his uses are consistent but I am open to the possibility that he has made some kind of mistake. However, in this case I find no reason to think that he has made a mistake.

    I didn't mean that his uses only seem consistent. I mean that, despite their diversity, they really do seem to be consistent. Perhaps if I understood his ideas better I would find something to criticize in one of his examples, or perhaps if I found something to criticize I would conclude that I must not really understand after all. Or perhaps I would be stuck, unable to know what to make of it all.

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  7. I didn't mean that his uses only seem consistent.

    So you are saying he is consistent?

    I find no reason to think that he has made a mistake.

    Does that mean that you take yourself to know what Wittgenstein is doing and to be able to judge that he is doing it correctly, or that you don’t find such a reason because you don’t know what he is doing? (I can find no reason to think that Einstein made a mistake because I simply don’t understand the math.)

    I’m still trying to understand your method, and now I’m not sure I understand anymore. On the one hand you seem to be taking yourself to be in a position to judge Wittgenstein’s examples for consistency. For you don’t want to say that his example only seem consistent. (You happen to judge that they are consistent, but that’s not the important part for what I don’t understand. The important part is that you take it that you are in a position to judge). In general, your posts seem to share this kind of confidence: you say things about those examples. You, for instance, object to calling some of them nonsense. You seem pretty confident about that. However, on the other hand, you now seem to have doubts about whether you understand what he is saying, which implies you don’t take yourself to be in a position to judge what he says for consistency.

    Or, if you really are not confident, then are you, for the sake of the investigation, pretending that you know what he is talking about and see where this leads you? – The problem in saying “I’m confident about some things but not about others” is that in the kinds of cases we deal with here, the stuff that we don’t understand casts a shadow over what we feel confident about in such a way that should make us not confident. Metaphorically, it feels to me as if you are compartmentalizing issues here in a way that prevents them from touching each other, and this just prevents us from getting an overview. But it is the overview that we need.

    I’m sorry. I’m not being helpful.

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  8. Does that mean that you take yourself to know what Wittgenstein is doing and to be able to judge that he is doing it correctly, or that you don’t find such a reason because you don’t know what he is doing?

    If I say that I know what he is doing before I have read what he says then this sounds arrogant, but if I say that I don't know what he is doing then I sound stupid. So I don't know how to answer this question. I'm just reading what he says and doing my best to make sense of it. If it seems to make sense then I take myself to have understood unless I reach a point where I find that I have to reconsider. And of course I know that I might reach such a point. I don't think that I take myself to be in a position to judge Wittgenstein except in the sense that readers always judge, i.e. try to understand, those they read. Instead of saying that he seems to be consistent perhaps I should have said: he does not seem to be inconsistent. That's what I meant.

    Metaphorically, it feels to me as if you are compartmentalizing issues here in a way that prevents them from touching each other, and this just prevents us from getting an overview. But it is the overview that we need.

    This could be true. I'm not deliberately compartmentalizing issues, but that's not to say I'm not doing it. I'm not consciously trying to get an overview either. Perhaps I should be.

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  9. Again you say: he does not seem to be inconsistent

    But my difficulty understanding you comes from the fact that you say this kind of things in conjunction with saying that you are not sure you are in a position to judge. If you are not really in a position to judge, then you cannot really say this kind of thing. And this will NOT make you stupid! If anything, it will make what you say much deeper. It would be like letting yourself really worry about the meaningfulness—not the truth—of what you are saying.

    You describe a certain process of investigation: you read the text, try to make the best out of it, you reconsider when you have to etc. etc. This all sounds very reasonable and level-headed. But suppose you discover at some point that you have been dealing with structures of air the whole time. If this turns out to be the case, then the level-headedness and the reasonableness would now seem comical. And again, discovering that this is the case would not make you stupid; it would rather be something that is very valuable to discover. Only you don’t seem to allow for the possibility. Certainly, you don’t welcome it.

    Wittgenstein says somewhere that one should not be afraid to talk nonsense; one only needs to pay attention to the fact that they are. I strongly sense that this is relevant here.

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  10. suppose you discover at some point that you have been dealing with structures of air the whole time. If this turns out to be the case, then the level-headedness and the reasonableness would now seem comical. And again, discovering that this is the case would not make you stupid; it would rather be something that is very valuable to discover. Only you don’t seem to allow for the possibility. Certainly, you don’t welcome it.

    I don't welcome it, that's true. I would welcome it in the case of reading the Tractatus, because I would then feel that perhaps I had understood the book. But that's the only case I can think of. If someone means to talk sense but ends up saying nothing, the discovery that this is the case is not welcome. But it still might happen. And of course they might secretly have meant to talk nonsense all along.

    I don't know why you think I don't allow for the possibility. It is one of the things I had in mind when I wrote this: "If it seems to make sense then I take myself to have understood unless I reach a point where I find that I have to reconsider. And of course I know that I might reach such a point."

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  11. I shouldn’t have said that you don’t allow for the possibility. I took it for granted, when I said that, that the welcomeness of this possibility is internal to it. I should have been more cautious.

    But let me ask you about the Tractatus case: You say that this is the only case you can think of where nonsense may be welcome. But this sounds strange. It seems to make the speech act of Tractatus (the one Wittgenstein describes in §6.54) too unique. It makes it almost into a one-time and never again speech act (like a rule that is only followed once). Do you think that if someone is using nonsense in such a way, their goal has to be the solution of all the problems of philosophy? Might such uses of language have other purposes? Might it be possible, for example, in a non-philosophical context, to use nonsense in order to make patent that other uses that are latently nonsense are indeed nonsense? And if this cannot happen outside philosophy, does that mean that philosophy has its own ways of using words? Is philosophy a secluded language game?

    If someone means to talk sense

    What counts as “meaning to talk sense”? – Is this determined by asking the person if they mean to talk sense? What determines the intention of a speaker? – Their saying so? (I emphasized the word ‘determines’ because I’m not asking about indications, or symptoms. I’m asking about criteria.) Might it happen to someone that they can only achieve something by saying something nonsensical, and while it does not occur to them that what they are saying is nonsensical (perhaps they are not philosophers, and don’t much care about such things), and would say if asked that they are taking sense, what really matters to them is that they achieve whatever it is they are trying to achieve, and in that sense that what they really mean (since it’s the only way to achieve what they want) is to say something nonsensical?

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  12. I singled out the Tractatus because its author tells us that its propositions are nonsense. So if they come to seem like nonsense then that's a good sign as far as understanding him goes. Usually this is not the case. But of course it could happen in other cases too.

    Might it be possible, for example, in a non-philosophical context, to use nonsense in order to make patent that other uses that are latently nonsense are indeed nonsense?

    Yes.

    Might it happen to someone that they can only achieve something by saying something nonsensical, and while it does not occur to them that what they are saying is nonsensical (perhaps they are not philosophers, and don’t much care about such things), and would say if asked that they are taking sense, what really matters to them is that they achieve whatever it is they are trying to achieve, and in that sense that what they really mean (since it’s the only way to achieve what they want) is to say something nonsensical?

    Yes, although I'm not sure what to say about what they would say if asked and about what really matters to them. I can imagine someone saying that they meant to talk sense, that they were talking sense, if they answered unreflectively when they might give a different answer if they thought about it more or talked about it with a philosopher first. What really matters to them is important, and of course what they say matters to them might not be what really matters most, but the only way to tell what really matters to them is to go by what they do, including what they say. So what they say is not irrelevant. It is part of what determines the intention of a speaker. If I judge that what they really mean is to say something nonsensical but they insist that this is not correct even after I have carefully explained my reasons for making this judgment then that casts doubt on my judgment. It doesn't prove it false, but their insistence that I am wrong is relevant.

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  13. It seems to me that you are turning it into an epistemological problem, where it doesn’t need to be: how to figure out what someone intends. All the examples I gave can be given in the first person—we might be that someone. We might ourselves want to achieve something that can only be achieved by saying something nonsensical, and then there would be no epistemological problem for us discovering what we meant. There might still be a problem for us seeing that what we said was nonsense, but that’s not an epistemological issue. If, when we philosophically reflect on our own intentions in this case, we keep insisting that we talk sense, that seems to me to be a way of avoiding the question. Am I being too weird?

    Anyway, do you allow for that possibility—that you may in some situation want to achieve something that can only be achieved by saying something nonsensical, even while you are not aware that what you are saying is nonsensical? Might this happen to you? And if so, is it more of a problem to allow for it in others than to allow it in oneself? Might others not have such complicated intentions?

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  14. I don't mean to turn it into an epistemological problem, but I can see how it sounds that way given the way I've put the point.

    do you allow for that possibility—that you may in some situation want to achieve something that can only be achieved by saying something nonsensical, even while you are not aware that what you are saying is nonsensical?

    Yes.

    And if so, is it more of a problem to allow for it in others than to allow it in oneself?

    Allowing for the possibility in others is no problem. Diagnosing an actual case is another matter.

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  15. It feels as if you treat this possibility in the same way that one may treat a cat's vomit on the carpet (or a toothache or taxes): one would like to ignore or repress it as much as possible. As a result, I feel as if i were encouraging the cat to vomit (or as someone spoiling a perfectly decent and civilized party by starting an argument about religion or politics). Perhaps that’s the kind of thing that I’m in fact doing.

    Anyway, if you ever get around to that, I’d be interested to hear what you think the problems are in diagnosing this. In particular:
    (a) What would it take for you to diagnose it, and what would be your criteria?
    (b) Is the diagnosis different when it is in oneself and in others?
    (c) Is it really something that you would only consider as a last resort (even in your own case), and if so why?

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  16. I need to think about all of this more, but here's a first attempt.

    The easiest cases of nonsense to diagnose are those where one person seems to talk nonsense, another points this out to him, and he acknowledges that he did indeed talk nonsense. Another easy case is with oneself. I say something empty, you point this out, and I acknowledge that you are right. I don't think I have criteria though, exactly, or at least I can't say what they are. Calling a combination of words nonsense is a bit like calling someone a bastard (in the insulting, non-literal sense). It's a tough charge to prove. I don't mean that no one is a bastard, or that everyone who ever levels this accusation against anyone else must be wrong, but it's not an objective, neutral term that can simply be demonstrated to apply in this case or that.

    We might try to use the words "not really meaning what one says" instead of "talking nonsense" to get around this difficulty, but I don't think this would work. It's still an insult to tell someone that they don't really mean what they say (unless they agree with you). And my point is not simply that I want to avoid insulting people in the way I want to avoid cat vomit. Deciding whether someone has spoken the truth or not is an objective matter. Deciding whether some combination of words makes sense or not is deciding whether it belongs in the language or not. It requires one to take a stand. I'll try to say more about this below.

    Would I call a use of words nonsense only as a last resort? Probably, but it depends. If I am reading a book called "Nonsense Verse" then it would probably be my first resort. On the other hand if, as usual, someone appears to be speaking or writing normally (and perhaps, if asked, insists that this is indeed exactly what they are doing) then I will try to make sense of their words before concluding that there is no sense there to be found.

    What if the case is an odd one, like the following? I say that I want to kill NN. You start to call the police, but I react with amazement--of course I don't mean it literally! You conclude that I'm just using the expression figuratively--I hate or am angry at NN. But I insist that this is not all I mean. I really want to kill NN, even though I have no intention of doing so and would not do it even if guaranteed that no bad consequences would result. I really want to kill NN, but I don't really want to kill NN. Something like that.

    I think that you and I could agree on all the facts about this case and still disagree about whether to call it nonsense. I certainly appear to be contradicting myself, and I might acknowledge this. But to call it nonsense is to do the following things: i) be rude to me (this might be a better way to put it than to talk about insulting, since friends can be rude to each other without insult), ii) to imply that I should not have said it (taking a stand on language-use), iii) to imply that what I said cannot be understood. But there seems to be a sense in which such talk can be understood, namely in the sense that I might at times speak in exactly the same way. I might also feel that I understand what you mean, that your words 'speak to me.' This is one of the things meant by 'understanding'.

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  17. (continued)

    Is this all there is to it? No. Someone once asked me whether I thought that I had understood a piece of music we had just heard. I said Yes. But did I really understand it? I doubt it. I could not have talked about it for any length of time, even if someone had taught me the relevant musical vocabulary. Even if I felt that I understood it, I did not understand it in the sense of being able to explain it. So did I not really understand after all? I am strongly inclined to say that I did not. But this is partly because I'm sure I didn't even feel strongly that I understood it. If I had felt strongly that I understood it, then in one sense I would say I understood it and in another that I didn't. There is no question (it seems to me) of which of these senses is the real one. We could debate that, but it would be a moral debate, a debate about how the word 'understanding' ought to be used.

    Once the point about the inability to explain of the person who feels that they understand has been made, then one certainly might respond by thinking that they don't really understand after all. But one might equally decide simply that there are two uses of 'understand' (and perhaps others too) that we ought to distinguish. The same kind of thing, I think, goes for the "I want to kill NN" case. It is like nonsense in some ways, unlike it in others. It seems self-contradictory, unmeant. And yet it has other characteristics of intelligible language-use: the speaker is not kidding, insists he is sincere, appears otherwise sane, is saying the kind of thing that other people also say, is saying something that other people (in a fairly common sense of 'understand') understand. As long as one sees all this (and any other relevant facts that I might have left out) I don't see that it matters very much whether we call it (a kind of) sense or (a kind of) nonsense.

    More later, I hope.

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  18. I didn’t ask my questions at all clearly. I was under the impression that we agreed that it was possible to want to achieve something that can only be achieved by saying something nonsensical, even while not being aware that what we are saying is nonsensical. (Is it something we indeed agree about?) My questions were all about this possibility. (1) I asked what would or should make us think that this is indeed what is happening in a particular case—the criteria for identifying this and not nonsense in general. (2) I also asked if the criteria for identifying that this is happening to oneself (that one wants to achieve something that can only be achieved by saying something nonsensical) are different from those for identifying that this is happening to another. (3) And lastly, I asked if identifying that this is what is happening in a particular case—to oneself or to another—would be your last resort, and if so why. I think your answers were about identifying nonsense in general.

    Just a note about insulting and being rude: I keep wanting to say that the issue of whether it does or doesn’t hurt anyone’s feeling if we judge that what they say is nonsense is irrelevant—irrelevant from a logical point of view. Is this something you disagree with? I keep sensing that saying of some use that it is nonsensical may in some cases not be rude or insulting, which doesn’t mean that in other cases it is. Do you disagree with this? – If you agree, is there a reason not to separate this issue from the logical issue, and put it to one side?

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  19. I was under the impression that we agreed that it was possible to want to achieve something that can only be achieved by saying something nonsensical, even while not being aware that what we are saying is nonsensical. (Is it something we indeed agree about?)

    Well, I agree, but let me qualify that. It seems to me, here and elsewhere, as if you are using the word 'nonsensical' as if it is a fairly straightforward matter of fact whether something is nonsense or not. In this sense it means something like: untranslatable string of words. Wittgenstein uses the term in this kind of way in the lecture on ethics. And if someone wants to use the word this way then I have no objection. But I don't think this is the ordinary, familiar meaning of the word. I have said above what I take the ordinary meaning to be. If you mean 'nonsensical' in the lecture on ethics sense (as I'll call it) then I agree. If you mean it in what I'm calling the ordinary sense then I think I agree, too, but it sounds weird (fishy). I'll say more about this below.

    The idea of wanting to achieve something that can only be achieved by saying something nonsensical sounds odd too, actually. What could this something be? I can understand the idea of wanting to say something that is in fact nonsense. But what could be achieved by talking nonsense, other than satisfying that urge or taking part in some game that requires the speaking of nonsense? And I don't think you mean either of those trivial cases. If I say "she has five" I don't achieve anything, do I? It seems to me that the fact that I don't, or at least that it would be odd to count what I do as an achievement, is one of the things that make this kind of use of language like nonsense. Although I'm imagining someone saying this to himself. If it's one parent saying it to the other, and she responds "I know!" then something probably has been achieved. The same feeling has been shared.

    Let's say that this is what the person wants to achieve. Now let me try to answer your three questions. 1) The criteria would be that the person rejected both all suggested translations of his words and the suggestion that he was talking nonsense. 2) I see no difference between the first person and the third person case, except that the part about not being aware of talking nonsense doesn't work when diagnosing one's own case--the important point (if I have understood) is that one sees that no translation would do. 3) I don't know whether this would be my last resort. Not necessarily. And certainly not in my own case. I might understand clearly that no translation would do.

    I think your answers were about identifying nonsense in general.

    They were. Sorry, I misunderstood.

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  20. (continued)

    I keep wanting to say that the issue of whether it does or doesn’t hurt anyone’s feeling if we judge that what they say is nonsense is irrelevant—irrelevant from a logical point of view. Is this something you disagree with?

    Whether it actually hurts anyone's feelings is irrelevant from a logical point of view, I agree. But, it seems to me, to call something nonsense is to label it a failure, like calling something ugly or stupid. Some things are ugly, but it isn't a straightforward fact which these are. The logic of 'ugly' is not the same as the logic of 'false.' So when you say that it is "possible to want to achieve something that can only be achieved by saying something nonsensical, even while not being aware that what we are saying is nonsensical" I read this as parallel to "possible to want to achieve something that can only be achieved by saying something stupid, even while not being aware that what we are saying is stupid," or "possible to want to achieve something that can only be achieved by doing something ugly, even while not being aware that what we are doing is ugly." And what is wrong with these sentences is that they sound as though something's being stupid or ugly is meant to be a simple matter of fact and not something that calls for subjective judgment. Apart from that I agree that it is possible to want such things.

    I also agree, by the way, with everything you write here. Except for the fact that, as I've said, it seems to me that you are using 'nonsense' in a narrow, somewhat technical sense. At least I think I agree apart from that. It all sounds right to me and I see no incompatibility with what I've said. But I have missed things before, and might be doing so again. I'm also not sure whether agreeing with what you say will allow me to agree with Lars Hertzberg as much as I want to (i.e. as much as I think I do). That's something I hope to get to soon.

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  21. About nonsense

    I’m not sure what you are referring to when you talk about the ordinary meaning of nonsense. – Is there just one ordinary meaning? Anyway, I’m using the term to indicate that no meaning has been given to an expression. A criterion for that is that the expression cannot be clarified: we cannot say what meaning we have given to the expression. (Translation, or paraphrase, is only one method of clarification, but there are many others, like showing how the expression is used in different situation, and explaining how the expression can be learnt, and how it logically connects to other expressions, and so on.) It is a technical sense, to some extent, although I think it is also one of the ordinary ways of using the word. It is certainly not how the word is used always. Usually it is loaded with many other things, and when you say things like “it is nonsense in one sense, and not nonsense in another,” I think that this is what you also have in mind. I’m not interested, however, at the moment, in those other meaning the word may have. Do you find this problematic? That is, would there be something misleading about a discussion that tried to isolate that issue of giving a meaning to an expression?

    This, of course, connects to the question about the derogatory aspect of calling something nonsensical. I am not denying that the word is used in such a way. But is it a necessary part of the use? Can saying of a use of language that it is nonsense be something that is not an insult or rude, or even some other form of criticism? Is this a possibility you allow for? Are you worried that if we allowed for that possibility, then that would mean we have committed ourselves to thinking that the word can never be a form of criticism?

    Having said all this, I’m grateful that you are stressing that there is a rude use of the term. I really do tend to get caught in thoughts that abstract from that, and to forget that if I want to make myself understood, I need to remember that others don’t.

    cont.

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    1. Is there just one ordinary meaning?

      I'm inclined to say Yes. If there are more, I'd like to see examples. What we've been talking about does not seem to be an example of nonsense to me, at least not in any clear way.

      would there be something misleading about a discussion that tried to isolate that issue of giving a meaning to an expression?

      Not if what this means were explained in the way you have done above, no.

      Can saying of a use of language that it is nonsense be something that is not an insult or rude, or even some other form of criticism?

      The short answer is No. The only exception I can think of is when something is presented as nonsense, as in nonsense verse. Then calling it nonsense is not a criticism. But even then I think someone who puts forward their own work as nonsense verse is being somewhat self-deprecating, albeit in a way that is both jokey and conventional. (Nonsense verse can be silly without being literally meaningless. And sound poetry has no semantic meaning, but I doubt many of its fans would accept that it is nonsense.) For others to then call it nonsense is to follow the convention but also to join in the joke. Then there are technical and perhaps semi-technical uses of the word 'nonsense,' which need not involve any criticism.

      Are you worried that if we allowed for that possibility, then that would mean we have committed ourselves to thinking that the word can never be a form of criticism?

      No, words can have multiple uses. I just don't think that's the case with 'nonsense.' I wonder whether the non-critical sense of 'nonsense' that you want is something that used to exist and that has faded from use. I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case, but I just don't know.

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  22. About achieving something with nonsense

    The idea of wanting to achieve something that can only be achieved by saying something nonsensical sounds odd too, actually. What could this something be?

    This is a strange question to ask after you have agreed that there is such a thing. Or did you only mean, when you agreed, that you leave open the possibility that something might turn out that might make you want to use the term? If so, then we do not really agree—at least not yet. We started talking about this in connection to what the Tractatus is doing, and the way it uses nonsense. I was suggesting implicitly that it is possible for Wittgenstein to do it there, because there is already such a thing—such a use of language, which aims to achieve something by means of nonsense. I suggested that Wittgenstein was taking advantage of that in the Tractatus, but that there is no reason why non-philosophers may not take advantage of that too. I also think that it really happens sometimes, and is in fact not such a rare thing.

    If I say "she has five" I don't achieve anything, do I?

    I’m not sure I am clear what you mean here by ‘achieve,’ or take me to mean by that word. What I mean by this word here is something like “one is doing something, instead of just idling.” It is something like making a speech act. When you said that one doesn’t achieve anything by saying this, I hesitate to say that you meant that one is idling, so there might be some misunderstanding here between us. But perhaps you do mean that. But in this case, would you not say, for instance, that by saying those words you are (making a speech act of) wondering? If so, and if it is right to say that, then you are achieving something after all by those words. It is, however, important that there is still an open question about whether this is a true case of wondering. Because if the words are nonsense, then that means that no meaning has been given to them, no use has been made of them, and that includes using them to wonder. – or do you think that we can wonder with words that idle? You also mention the achievement of sharing a feeling. This is not a speech act, I think (as opposed to expressing that one feels the same, e.g. by “I know!”), even if we sometimes do it be speaking. So discussing that complicates the issue. I think it would be easier if we first deal with achievement in the sense of doing something in speaking—with speech acts. – Do you agree?

    If you agree, then it seems to me that now we have the task of describing the speech act—if there is indeed one. That is, say what is achieved by the words, if anything, the speech act. If it is wondering, for instance, then what kind of wondering is it? And does it really employ nonsense (idling words)? And if so, why does it employ nonsense? And how on earth can nonsense be employed? And here the dilemma is that on the one hand we want to say that the words idle, and therefore that there was no speech act, and on the other we want to say that something is achieved by them after all. I feel it would be misleading to say here, “Well, by one criterion it is a speech act, and by another it is not.” Because we don’t really have two different criteria here: words not idling and words achieving something is the same thing. So it seems to me there is a dilemma. I think this is Lars’ dilemma too, but I can’t say I understand how he solves it. I’m not sure how calling something ‘#nonsense#’ is supposed to help. It appears to be a kind of nod at nonsense. Most other things Lars says, however, make me think that he think that these uses make perfect good sense, and that the words really don’t idle. But I’m not sure.

    agreement in philosophy

    I'm also not sure whether agreeing with what you say will allow me to agree with Lars Hertzberg as much as I want to

    One thing I most fear in philosophy in general is a false sense of agreement. I tend sometimes to accentuate the disagreements as a kind of extra protection.

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    1. This is a strange question to ask after you have agreed that there is such a thing.

      You're right. Sorry, I forgot some of the examples that we had talked about, and it struck me as a strange idea. I still think it is a strange idea, a curious phenomenon, but I agree that it's possible.

      do you think that we can wonder with words that idle?

      I would think that we can wonder while uttering words that idle. I am in the middle of saying something when I see a huge spaceship. As I see it my words trail off. I'm not using those words to express wonder, and I might not finish the sentence, so I haven't really said anything. But my wonder might be evident in my tone of voice, my not finishing my sentence, and so on. Does this count as wondering with words that idle? I should probably read up on speech acts rather than asking you questions like this. I don't have a clear sense of what counts as one and what does not.

      On agreement: I tend to agree too readily, and to want everyone to agree. So you are a useful antidote to that. Having said that, I don't want to agree with Lars just so that we all get along. In this case I find what he says very compelling. But I need to work through how what he says relates to what you say, and then where I stand on that.

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    2. PI § 132: “The confusions which occupy us arise when language is, as it were, idling, not when it is doing work.”

      What does it mean for language to be idling? We do many idle things with words. Make puns, for instance. Repeat some funny-sounding phrase over and over. Play with somebody’s name in an affectionate or teasing manner. Discuss the shape of a cloud (as Hamlet does with Polonius). Etc. (Are these speech acts? I don't know.)

      I don’t think Wittgenstein was admonishing us to abstain from such idle talk, nor suggesting that in doing so we were in violation of the rules of language. His point, rather, was that when it comes to getting clear about philosophical confusions, we should *primarily* concentrate on other cases, those in which words are used to make a point, make a difference. What we need to realize is that idle talk is derivative from the other kind. If we don’t distinguish between these kinds of use, we end up with the idea of meaning as an atmosphere surrounding the word.

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    3. This all sounds right to me. But I read it having just re-read part of a paper by Reshef in which he writes about aspect-experience as "experiencing the meaning of a word" and about bodies of meaning. As he says, this "very idea smells like a category mistake," but he makes a good case for it. I need to finish re-reading the paper and then give the matter some thought before I can reply properly. He does not say that meaning is an atmosphere surrounding a word, but in cases of the secondary use of words it might be helpful to speak in something like these terms. Certainly, though, I would not say in general that the meaning of a word is the atmosphere surrounding it.

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  23. Once upon a time, when I was still working on Tractarian interpretation, I was wondering about the relevance to the interpretation of "nonsense" of synonyms for it that clearly seem derogatory. Jim Conant in particular was emphasising the "ordinary" nature of nonsense in the so-called resolute reading, as opposed to the "important nonsense" of traditional readings. So I did a bit of ordinary language philosophy myself, and asked him if the fact that dictionaries give various derogatory synonyms for nonsense – e.g. poppycock, buncombe, balderdash, or (Wittgenstein's favourite) bosh – means that the Tractatus is simultaneously these things when it is nonsense. I remember that he very emphatically said no, but sadly I don't remember what he said as to why.

    Anyway, I still consider it relevant for controversies about the evaluative nature of terms that they have synonyms which are clearly evaluative.

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    1. It reminds me of Brian Clack's points about the word 'superstition.' I just don't think you can call something nonsensical or superstitious without being derogatory. Not, that is, without using the word in a non-ordinary, technical sense. Perhaps these words used to have that sense. Someone at a conference once insisted to me that 'superstitious' used to mean something very specific and non-pejorative. Perhaps it did. But it doesn't any more. This need not matter very much--we can always introduce new terms or provide technical definitions for old ones that we want to use with a particular meaning--but it does seem to be true.

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    2. Suppose someone says: “It’s my fault he’s so unhappy” / “... our kids went bad” / “... the company failed” and her friend says: “Nonsense! You’re not to blame!” Well, the response is dismissive of what the person says, but not of *her*.

      Would it be helpful to distinguish between the questions: (1) how do we use the word “nonsense”? and: (2) is it a meaningful philosophical enterprise to discuss, apart from a context, whether one could ever meaningfully utter this or that string of words?

      To take an example (I owe this thought to Yrsa Neuman): following Moore, philosophers have discussed whether it can make sense (and if not, why not) to say “It’s raining but I don’t believe it”. Here one is tempted to respond: well, show me someone who says this, and we’ll see what we can make of it. To ask: “If someone did say it (which nobody has), what sense would it make?” is a bit like asking, “If the car hadn’t started this morning (which it did), why wouldn’t it have?” Or, “if you were to find her obnoxious (which you don’t), why would you?” Those are odd questions, but I guess we could imagine peculiar circumstances in which they might be asked.

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    3. I agree, calling something nonsense is not necessarily dismissive of the person who has spoken the nonsense, but it is dismissive (either as meaningless or as utterly false) of what she has said. That is how we use the word 'nonsense,' or so it seems to me. Discussing whether one could ever meaningfully utter a certain string of words, apart from a context, seems pointless. So yes, questions 1 and 2 are worth distinguishing from one another.

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  24. One thing general, which I keep worrying that your account is missing (but I’m not sure it does) is a kind of use that attempts to give expression to the higher, while realizing the impossibility of doing so. It seems to be the kind of use Wittgenstein is struggling to get in focus all through the Ethics Lecture, a talk he says he would never ridicule. And Fania Pascal describes him reacting to what, I think, he took to be a kind of nonsense (in Grimm’s Rumpelstiltskin) with a kind of awe; that is, very far from thinking there is something to criticize there. It is possible that the non-critical use of ‘nonsense’ is old fashioned. I think it used to be more common. But I don’t think that what the term ‘nonsense’ thus used was referring to has faded.

    Anyway, I sense that these people (Wittgenstein among them, but he wasn’t the first or the only) were onto something important, calling such talk nonsense. And my inclination is to say that such self-conscious nonsense is not something to criticize. If anything it should be praised. – Do we disagree? And if we do, I need your help finding exactly where we disagree. Sometimes you say you agree with things I say, when I take what I have said to contradict something in what you said. So I need your help.

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    1. Yes, sometimes I think I agree with you but find that you disagree with me. It could be simply that I'm expressing myself badly. Or that I don't understand matters well enough to agree or disagree, even if I think I agree. I'm inclined to think that the only disagreement we have at the moment on all this concerns the use of the word 'nonsense,' but perhaps that's wishful thinking.

      It is possible that the non-critical use of ‘nonsense’ is old fashioned. I think it used to be more common. But I don’t think that what the term ‘nonsense’ thus used was referring to has faded.

      I agree.

      And my inclination is to say that such self-conscious nonsense is not something to criticize.

      I agree with this too.

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  25. What would Wittgenstein have said about woody and tinny words?

    Mansfield: Gorn!

    Mrs. Vermin-Jones: What's gone, dear?

    Mansfield: Nothing, nothing—just like the word; it gives me confidence. Gorn. Gorn—it's got a sort of woody quality about it. Gorn. Go-o-orn. Much better than newspaper or litterbin.

    Rebecca: Ugh! Frightful words!

    Mrs. Vermin-Jones: Perfectly dreadful!

    Mansfield: Ugh! Newspaper! Litterbin! Litterbin—dreadful, tinny sort of word. Tin, tin, tin!

    (Rebecca shrieks.)

    Mrs. Vermin-Jones: Oh, don't say tin to Rebecca; you know how it upsets her!

    Mansfield: Oh, sorry, old horse.

    Mrs. Vermin-Jones: Sausage!

    Mansfield: Sausage! There's a good woody sort of word, sausage. . . . Gorn. . . .

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    1. This is wonderful! Thanks Miles.

      Don't say tin to Rebecca; you know how it upsets her!

      Just wonderful.

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    2. Very nice!

      'Antelope' is tinny, too. Like 'litterbin.'

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