Category Mistakes

This paper reconstructs the cave analogy as a rigorous critique of design reasoning. A person who has seen human-dug tunnels might infer that all complex caves are designed. The inference fails because it selects the wrong reference class, ignores known natural mechanisms, and treats a local association between complexity and agency as a universal rule. The same error appears in popular arguments that biological complexity, cosmic order, or functional organization must be products of intelligence because some complex artifacts are designed. The paper distinguishes artifact-recognition from design-inference. We recognize artifacts not by complexity alone, but by background knowledge about agents, tools, production histories, material discontinuities, and contrast classes. Natural caves, crystals, snowflakes, river deltas, immune systems, eyes, and ecosystems can exhibit intricate structure without being artifacts. Complexity is therefore not a reliable marker of design unless linked to a mechanism that discriminates agency from non-agency. I provide a formalization of the analogy. From "all observed caves in sample S are human-made" one may not infer "all caves are human-made" unless S is representative and alternative generative processes are excluded. From "some complex things are designed" one may not infer "all complex things are designed" unless complexity is shown to be a design-exclusive property. The conclusion is methodological: the design argument must compare causal pathways, not merely point at wonder.

The phrase "God is infinite" often functions as an all-purpose theological solvent. It is used to soften contradictions, absorb objections, magnify divine attributes, explain hiddenness, justify infinite punishment, or end inquiry by appeal to transcendence. This paper argues that the phrase is not informative unless it specifies a referent: infinite in what respect, according to which scale, with what domain restrictions, and with what compatibility conditions? Drawing on semantics, logic, philosophy of mathematics, and classical theology, I distinguish mathematical infinity, quantitative unboundedness, qualitative perfection, completeness, maximality, and mystery. These notions are frequently conflated. A set may be infinite in cardinality, a process unbounded in duration, a virtue complete relative to a standard, and a being unsurpassable in excellence. These are not the same predicate. Treating them as interchangeable creates category mistakes and rhetorical fog. The central contribution is a referent test for theological infinity claims. A speaker must identify the attribute, show that the attribute admits degrees or bounds, specify the kind of infinity intended, demonstrate compatibility with other divine predicates, and explain how the infinity answers the problem at hand. Without this discipline, "God is infinite" becomes a placeholder for ignorance rather than a proposition with explanatory force.

Maimonides is one of the most radical defenders of apophaticism, the view according to which no positive attribute can be truthfully applied to God, and that God is consequently ineffable.  His apophatic theology has several important dimensions, and it is in the Guide for the Perplexed that he offers the most elaborate account of his views. The starting point of his theory is a metaphysical one, relating to God's particular form of existence:  Apophatic views have also been defended, amongst others, by Philo of Alexandria (), Gregory of Nyssa (), Pseudo-Dionysius (), Maximus the Confessor (), Ibn al-Arabi (), and Meister Eckhart ().

This paper examines the persistent confusion between artificial intelligence (AI) and human consciousness. Drawing on philosophy of mind, theology, and ethics, it argues that conflating computational artifacts with conscious experience constitutes a category mistake. The paper introduces the Qatrani Epistemic Distinction Model (Q-EDM), which establishes three propositions: (1) ontological non-equivalence between AI and human beings, (2) the epistemic scope constraint that AI simulations lack semantics or qualia, and (3) an ethical-policy imperative to focus on governance, bias, and accountability rather than attributing metaphysical agency to machines. By clarifying these distinctions, the paper provides a conceptual framework to guide researchers and policymakers, ensuring that AI remains a powerful tool but never a substitute for human existence.

The Philosopher Kingdom, modeled on Plato's Republic, accurately reflects much of the ethical philosophy of the Republic but misinterprets its political philosophy. The philosopher interlocutor in Jaqueisse's dialogue explicitly advocates totalitarianism, arguing that people (other than philosophers) must be forced to be virtuous. The present review critically evaluates important questions of ethical and political philosophy raised in this work.

In dialogue, speakers are engaged in various types of speech acts other than just those frequently encountered such as question, command, promise. The speaker often tries to make sure that his interlocutor has received the information that he is conveying, that his intentions are understood, and that his attitudes toward his interlocutor and the general surrounding environment are clear. Especially in spontaneously spoken discourse or dialogue, these various speech acts are not necessarily expressed in full-fledged well-formed sentences; they are often couched in rather fragmentary, truncated semi-sentences or phrases. In an analoguous manner to Parsons' subatomic event structures, we call these speech acts corresponding to non-full-fledged sentences SUBATOMIC SPEECH ACTS. We show in this paper how these subatomic speech acts are used to form mutual beliefs and to coordinate discourse. We use examples from actual Japanese spoken dialogue to demonstrate that our theory accounts for some of the characteristic phenomena in discourse and assigns correct interpretations and explanations to these phenomena.

Mazzola et al. propose a metaphor to describe the process by means of which an open question is solved in a creative way, likening it to the manner by which, due to the Yoneda Lemma of category theory, the internal structure of any object is completely characterised by a diagram of certain selected objects and morphisms. Building upon this metaphor, we explore how the creativity underlying conceptual blending could be characterised by diagrams of image schemas. We further illustrate this by providing a formalisation of the Buddhist Monk riddle and of the blend that solves it, together with a computational realisation that views conceptual blending as an amalgam-based process of generalisation and colimit computation.

Midway through How to Do Things With Words, J.L. Austin's announces a "fresh start" in his efforts to characterize the ways in which speech is action, and introduces a new conceptual framework from the one he has been using up to that point. Against a common reading that portrays this move as simply abandoning the framework so far developed, Marina Sbisà contends that the text takes the argumentative form of a proof by contradiction, such that the initial framework plays an instrumental role as part of a proof in favour of the subsequent one. Despite agreeing with Sbisà's broad instrumentalist approach, we argue that her regimentation of Austin's narrative into a proof by contradiction ultimately fails-both as a proof and as an interpretation of Austin. Instead, we suggest that a better way of interpreting the peculiar structure of How to Do Things With Words is as a pedagogical exercise whose point is to bring a concealed alternative into view in a manner that also explains its initial concealment, and that this approach provides richer resources for supporting Sbisà's own conventionalist understanding of illocution than that afforded by reading the text as a proof by contradiction.

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

Conceptual blending has been employed very successfully to understand the process of concept invention, studied particularly within cognitive psychology and linguistics. However, despite this influential research, within computational cre-ativity little effort has been devoted to fully formalise these ideas and to make them amenable to computational techniques. Unlike other combination techniques, blend-ing aims at creatively generating (new) concepts on the basis of input theories whose domains are thematically distinct but whose specifications share structural similarity based on a relation of analogy, identified in a generic space, the base ontology. We here introduce the basic formalisation of conceptual blending, as sketched by the late Joseph Goguen, and discuss some of its variations. We illustrate the vast array of conceptual blends that may be covered by this approach and discuss the theoret-ical and conceptual challenges that ensue. Moreover, we show how the Distributed On...

Ofra Magidor (2009, 2013, 2017) has presented a number of arguments that purport to show that category mistakes are meaningful. Most recently, in 2017, she presented two arguments (among others) that she claims produce this conclusion. She bases her conclusions, for each of these arguments, on assumptions that posit an intimate relationship between category mistakes and metaphorical utterances. One argument is based on the non-cognitivist approach to metaphor. The second argument is based on the cognitivist approach to metaphor and it comes in three flavours based on the work of: Paul Grice (1989), Josef Stern (2000, 2006), and Francois Recanati (2001, 2004). In this paper, I would like to introduce the first (non-cognitivist) argument. It is fruitful to introduce this argument for the following reason: the argument assumes that some metaphorical utterances constitute category mistakes and it is this assumption that I wish to challenge. Since this assumption also seems to figure in ...

Farklı kategorilerin birbiriyle karıştırılması çağdaş felsefede “kategori hataları” (category mistakes) adıyla bilinir. Söz konusu hatanın bu isimle olmasa da felsefe tarihi boyunca çeşitli bağlamlarda tartışıldığı ve birtakım problemlerin kökeninde yer aldığını biliyoruz. Ancak kategori hatalarının dil, mantık ve matematikle ilişkili olarak daha dikkatlice incelenmesinin 20. yüzyılda başladığını söyleyebiliriz. 20. yüzyıl Batı felsefesindeki iki ana eğilimi oluşturan Kıta felsefesi ve analitik felsefe geleneklerinin kökeninde yer alan iki önemli filozofun da bu hataya dikkat çektiğini görmekteyiz. Bu filozoflar, analitik geleneğin ortaya çıkışında önemli bir rol oynayan Bertrand Russell ve özelde fenomenoloji geleneğinin kurucusu olup Kıta felsefesinin şekillenmesini derinden etkilemiş Edmund Husserl’dir. Adı geçen iki filozofun kategori hatalarını ele aldıkları bağlamlar ve savundukları yaklaşımların muhtemel tarihsel etkileri bu yazının konusunu oluşturuyor.

I intend to try to say something about category mistakes by considering a theory of metaphor. In this I follow precedent (Magidor 2013, 2017). The focus will be on John Searle’s (1979a) paper on metaphor. However, there will be an important section that focuses on Searle’s theory of social reality (Searle 1995). Three major conclusions lie in wait. The first says category mistakes are meaningless. The second says category mistakes are to be identified with the things we do with sentences. The third says metaphorical utterances and category mistakes do not co-occur. The paper has six sections introducing Searle’s ideas and each ends by considering how they impact on category mistakes.

This is a paper to be delivered at Osaka University on October 12th, 2018. The paper asks the question: "Do metaphorical utterances show that category mistakes are literally meaningful?" Ofra Magidor (2017) answers "yes." She rests her answer on two arguments. These arguments are grounded on two approaches to metaphor: non-cognitivist and cognitivist. Both arguments, it is argued, are unsound.

Ofra Magidor (2009, 2013, 2017) has presented a number of arguments that purport to show that category mistakes are meaningful. Most recently, in 2017, she presented two arguments (among others) that she claims produce this conclusion. She bases her conclusions, for each of these arguments, on assumptions that posit an intimate relationship between category mistakes and metaphorical utterances. One argument is based on the non-cognitivist approach to metaphor. The second argument is based on the cognitivist approach to metaphor and it comes in three flavours based on the work of: Paul Grice (1989), Josef Stern (2000, 2006), and Francois Recanati (2001, 2004). In this paper, I would like to introduce the first (non-cognitivist) argument. It is fruitful to introduce this argument for the following reason: the argument assumes that some metaphorical utterances constitute category mistakes and it is this assumption that I wish to challenge. Since this assumption also seems to figure in Magidor’s cognitivist arguments for category mistakes, there should be consequences for those arguments, too. Furthermore, I hope that we can learn more about the nature of the relationship between category mistakes and metaphor through our inquiry. Last, understanding the problems with Magidor’s first argument suggests how it may be strengthened. However, this last project is not my concern here and will merely be mentioned in my concluding remarks.

Many thinkers invoke the idea of a category mistake to point out that some kind of error has been made. Indeed, identifying a sentence that contains a category mistake is invaluable for thinkers. This is because sentences that contain category mistakes seem to distort reasoning and compromise the commonplace laws of logic (as we shall see later). At the same time, many thinkers who benefit from the idea of a category mistake offer little in the way of definition. Indeed, definitions of a category mistake are rare. Gilbert Ryle, for example, who (in)famously used the idea to critique dualist and materialist notions of the mind, offered no systematic definition. Despite this, others have associated a category mistake with a functional analysis. On this account a subject-term denotes an entity and a predicate denotes a function. A sentence that contains a category mistake includes a subject-term that denotes an object that is not in the domain of the function that the predicate denotes.  This tends to the conclusion that such sentences are semantically undefined and that suggests that such sentences are meaningless . I provide a slightly different intuition-based definition below. The definition provides criteria for identifying a sentence that contains a category mistakes. Such criteria call for justifications. Thus, the definition provides a way to identify a sentence that contains a category mistake and an opportunity to justify the claim that the sentence contains the mistake by saying exactly why. This leads to thinking of sentences that contain category mistakes as necessarily false rather than undefined and this suggest that they are meaningful. As I proceed, certain problems with the definition are foreseen and addressed. Last, I consider some recent writing on the topic of category mistakes and meaning. A vocal proponent of the school of thought that holds that sentences containing category mistakes are meaningful is Ofra Magidor (2009, 2014, 2016). However, though I agree with her position, I disagree with most of the arguments she thinks supports it. I end by saying why.

CORCORAN ON NEW MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY

REVIEWING: Wagner, Roi.  MAKING AND BREAKING MATHEMATICAL SENSE. HISTORIES AND PHILOSOPHIES OF MATHEMATICAL PRACTICE. Princeton UP. 2017.
This essay-length review is based on a careful reading of a deliberately careless book: a book not intended for careful readers. The review treats several topic of interest in their own right: mathematical philosophy as opposed to philosophy of mathematics, category mistakes in current philosophy of mathematics, the dominant themes in recent philosophy of mathematics, interpretations of Hilbert’s cryptic “beer-mug” quip, and the nature of incommensurability. Potential readers are warned against its treacherous pitfalls.

Acknowledgements: George Boger, Michael Detlefsen, Nicolas Fillion, Forest Hansen, Idris Samawi Hamid, Calvin Jongsma, Kristo Miettinen, Joaquin Miller, Frango Nabrasa, José Miguel Sagüillo, Michael Scanlan, James Smith, Kevin Tracy, Albert Visser, Alasdair Urquhart, Roi Wagner, Jeffrey Welaish, George Williams, and others.

The term 'category mistake' began to turn up regularly in public discourse in the 1990s as a general term to describe a confusion between different fields of thought with serious practical consequences. But it began its career in philosophy, introduced by Gilbert Ryle in The Concept of Mind in 1949 to attack Cartesian dualism and assert a monistic solution to the so-called mind-body problem. This paper traces the stages by which it came into general usage, arguing that while by the later 1960s it had generally been rejected by philosophers, it was saved from disappearance by its migration into fields such as psychology and theology. From there, it moved into critical theory and then into international relations. Its entry into these latter areas first made plain its potential in political argument. Eventually, multiple meanings of the term came to coexist with one another, with the practical and rhetorical usage supplementing rather than replacing its original philosophical sense.

En la disciplina actual de la Administración no se han discutido a profundidad diversas consideraciones teóricas y prácticas sobre la gestión del conocimiento (GECO); se generan problemas al plantearse modelos de GECO empresarial en organizaciones que son distintas a las empresas, pues se tiende a confundir entre los modos de existencia de estas con los de otros tipos de organizaciones. Este texto parte de la
diferencia de los modos de existencia de cada tipo de organización, trata la naturaleza de la GECO en las organizaciones, y finalmente aborda el marco teórico que sustenta este modelo de gestión.

Currently, some theoretical and practical considerations about Knowledge management (GECO, in Spanish) have not been deeply discussed in the Management discipline. Main Problems are generated when an entrepreneurial GECO is proposed for nonprofit organizations, which are different of firms. Therefore, it is settled a trend that confuses both modes of existence. Present text starts from the difference
of each own type of organization existence way, then it refers to the GECO’s nature in organizations, and finally it deals with the theoretical framework of this management model.

I am planning a history of the notion of philosophical nonsense and naturally difficult historical and exegetical questions have come up.  Charles Pigden has argued that the notion goes back at least as far as Hobbes and that Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant (on some interpretations) and pragmatists such as William James, as well as numerous Twentieth-Century philosophers make use of it.  In this ‘paper’ I put forward for general discussion such questions as whether Hobbes was the first 'nonsensicalist', whether Kant was a 'nonsensicalist' at all, which philosophers if any have considered contradictions to be meaningless and whether Wittgenstein thought that his concept of criterion could legitimately be used verificationistically.  I shall continue to add further questions as they occur to me.

There are passages in Wittgenstein where he compares his method to psychotherapy and one or two where he seems to suggest that the ‘patient’ has the last word on his ‘illness’ and ‘cure’.  This paper tries to take these seriously, especially in connexion with the idea that victims of philosophical confusion talk nonsense.

Philosophical accusations of talking nonsense made in a polemical spirit are bound to fail, since the only way one can effectively criticise another’s utterance is by attaching some meaning to it.  But if the other acknowledges the possibility that his puzzlement arises from his having been taken in by nonsense, then perhaps a co-operative investigation of this suggestion might be fruitful.  Indeed self-diagnosis ought in principle to be possible.  Ought it not to have happened at least once in the history of philosophy if philosophical nonsense has ever been exposed? 

But there are difficulties.  For example:
a) We must ask whether or not philosophical nonsense, when exposed as such, is supposed to lose all appearance of meaningfulness.  Either answer is problematic.
b) The acknowledged similarity of the methodology under investigation to that of psychoanalysis exposes it to many of the familiar objections to the methodology of psychoanalysis, especially those that draw attention to the misleading influence of suggestion by an authority-figure.
c) The proposal that relentless cross-questioning of a suspected nonsense-talker will eventually lead her to ‘dry up’ (if she really is talking nonsense) seems to involve a version of the so-called Socratic Fallacy.

I discuss Charles Pigden’s paper ‘Coercive theories of meaning, or why language shouldn’t matter (so much) to philosophy’ and ask whether theories of meaning whose primary purpose is to discredit rival philosophies as meaningless necessarily employ artificially narrow conceptions of meaningfulness.  In the course of my argument I ask whether the colloquial-rhetorical use of words like ‘nonsense’ and ‘meaningless’ has made it difficulty for philosophers to see just how novel and radical their own accusations of talking nonsense are.

Apophaticism - the view that God is both indescribable and inconceivable - is one of the great medieval traditions of philosophical thought about God, but it is largely overlooked by analytic philosophers of religion. This paper attempts to rehabilitate apophaticism as a serious philosophical option. We provide a clear formulation of the position, examine what could appropriately be said and thought about God if apophaticism is true, and consider ways to address the charge that apophaticism is self-defeating. In so doing we draw on recent work in the philosophy of language, touching on issues such as the nature of negation, category mistakes, fictionalism, and reductionism.

This paper is a bridge between my interest in the notion of philosophical nonsense and my interest in problems concerning ethics and action.  Geach sees an analogy between philosophical error and moral error, more specifically between the problem of understanding the state of mind of someone who is duped by philosophical nonsense and that of someone who ‘sins’.  In neither case does being confused oneself help one understand the confusion of others.  I argue that Geach gives us no good reason to believe that there is such a thing as philosophical nonsense and that, even if there is, there will be no real analogy between the states of mind in question.  For one thing, there is no obvious reason why there could not be ‘clear-headed sin’.  For another, one who ‘sins’ and one who does not often have the same sorts of difficulty understanding each other, whereas, if there is such a thing as philosophical nonsense, it is hard to see how there could be any such symmetry between one who is taken in by it and one who is not.

MATHEMATICAL REVIEWS 3337386: a review of Hodes, Harold T., Why ramify?, Notre Dame J. Form. Log. 56 (2015), no. 2, 379—415.

“Why ramify?”—hereafter WR—revisits investigations in logic and foundations of mathematics spanning three centuries. WR is a massive effort: 36 pages long, 57 references, 77 footnotes. WR is replete with delicate philosophical argumentations buttressed with interesting quotations, intricate mathematics, and contemporary mathematical logic; its stated purpose: “to better understand Russell’s philosophy and his century-old project in the foundations of logic and mathematics” .
WR’s subject is type theory or the theory of types, hereafter TT, initially conceived by Bertrand Russell before 1903 and intended to deal with paradoxes prominent in the 1800s . After some reworking, TT formed the basis of the monumental Principia Mathematica by A. N. Whitehead and B. Russell, which, they asserted, reduced mathematics to logic. Although few accept that assertion today, TT is still of intense interest, mainly to historians of mathematics, of logic, and of philosophy. Understanding early TT is a prerequisite for appreciation of the achievements of modern logic.
Acknowledgements: David Braun, William Demopoulos, Thomas Drucker, Warren Goldfarb, Idris Samawi Hamid, Allen Hazen, Harold Theodore Hodes, David Marans, Hassan Masoud, Christopher Menzel, Joaquin Miller, Frango Nabrasa, Sriram Nambiar, Stephen Read, José Miguel Sagüillo, Michael Scanlan, Kevin Tracy, Jeffrey Welaish, George Williams, and others.
Special thanks to Warren Goldfarb, Idris Samawi Hamid, Allen Hazen, Harold Theodore Hodes, Christopher Menzel, Joaquin Miller, and Kevin Tracy for instructing me in the nuances of this important but Byzantine field.

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How do philosophical accusations of talking nonsense relate to the layperson’s notions of meaning and meaningfulness?  If one were to explain carefully what philosophical nonsense was supposed to be, would one be greeted with incredulity?  How do people react to being accused of talking nonsense themselves?  Is anything analogous to an illusion of meaning recognised in everyday life?  In dream-reports perhaps?  Or in the utterances of schizophrenics or those under the influence of drugs?  Or in certain jokes and hoaxes?  Are contradictions felt to be meaningless?  I argue that, though it is clear that experimental philosophy could shed some light on these questions, their subject matter creates special difficulties.  First, it is more difficult than usual to formulate questions and produce ‘vignettes’ that do not subtly encourage certain responses at the expense of others.  Second, the fact that philosophical nonsense is a metaphilosophical concept ensures that its investigation is going to be more indirect than would be that of knowledge or intention, for example.

I consider the dispute, not with a view to reaching a final verdict, but for the light it sheds on the notion of philosophical nonsense.  How does it look to a sceptic about philosophical nonsense?  It is generally agreed that the 'Tractatus' is an unsatisfactory work, if the traditional reading of, for example, G. E. M. Anscombe or Peter Hacker is correct.  But is it any better on the ‘resolute’ reading of Cora Diamond or James Conant?  I maintain that it is more difficulty to handle the concept of nonsense than nonsensicalists of any stripe realise.  If the ‘ineffable truths’ and ‘important nonsense’ of traditional readings raise problems, so too do the contrast between meaningful frame and nonsensical core, Diamond’s idea that one can imaginatively identify with the nonsense-talker and the mysterious new entity, ‘transitional’ nonsense.  Meaning and communication, I suggest, keep reappearing precisely where they should not.

(The puzzling passage discussed in the addendum is one in which Diamond seems to be denying that there is any such thing as understanding or imaginatively identifying with the nonsense-talker.)

I consider the dispute, not with a view to reaching a final verdict, but for the light it sheds on the notion of philosophical nonsense.  How does it look to a sceptic about philosophical nonsense?  It is generally agreed that the Tractatus is an unsatisfactory work, if the traditional reading of, for example, G. E. M. Anscombe or Peter Hacker is correct.  But is it any better on the ‘resolute’ reading of Cora Diamond or James Conant?  I maintain that it is more difficulty to handle the concept of nonsense than nonsensicalists of any stripe realise.  If the ‘ineffable truths’ and ‘important nonsense’ of traditional readings raise problems, so too do the contrast between meaningful frame and nonsensical core, Diamond’s idea that one can imaginatively identify with the nonsense-talker and the mysterious new entity, ‘transitional’ nonsense.  Meaning and communication, I suggest, keep reappearing precisely where they should not.

ABSTRACT: Wesley Salmon’s version of the ontic conception of explanation is a main historical root of contemporary work on mechanistic explanation. This paper examines and critiques the philosophical merits of Salmon’s version, and argues that his conception’s most fundamental construct is either fundamentally obscure, or else reduces to a non-ontic conception of explanation. Either way, the ontic conception is a misconception.

ABSTRACT: The ontic conception of scientific explanation has been constructed and motivated on the basis of a putative lexical ambiguity in the term explanation. I raise a puzzle for this ambiguity claim, and then give a deflationary solution under which all ontically-rendered talk of explanation is merely elliptical; what it is elliptical for is a view of scientific explanation that altogether avoids the ontic conception. This result has revisionary consequences for New Mechanists and other philosophers of science, many of whom have assimilated their conception of explanation to the ontic conception.

I originally entitled this paper ‘Why are there no uncontroversial examples of philosophical nonsense?’, but since this seemed apt to provoke rather superficial responses, I decided to re-title it.  In it I ponder the fact that, not only are there no uncontroversial examples of philosophical nonsense, there are no uncontroversial examples of what one might call ‘analogue philosophical nonsense’.  These would be non-philosophical cases of someone’s believing he means something when in reality he means nothing.  (Someone’s saying, ‘It’s 5 o’clock on the sun’ is sometimes offered as an example.)  I ask what conditions such cases would need to satisfy.  What would count as a compellingly clear case of an illusion of meaning?  Why has no one described one?

Cook’s paper ‘Wittgenstein on privacy’, though published over fifty years ago, is still one of the most impressive attempts to take seriously what philosophical nonsense would have to be.  Cook argues that someone who says, ‘It is not even logically possible to feel another’s pain’ is experiencing ‘a queer sort of illusion, produced by seeing one pattern of grammar on analogy with another and quite different pattern of grammar’.  I argue that he has identified a genuine philosophical illusion, indeed a grammatical illusion, that is quite close to what nonsensicalists are postulating – but I am not sure that it is IDENTICAL with it.

I suggest that, although the nonsensicalist challenge (obviously) matters, it has, at least in its Wittgensteinian form, been widely ignored.  On the other hand, those who still adhere to nonsensicalism (mainly Wittgensteinians) have been equally remiss in their failure to examine its presuppositions.

This paper goes naturally with my earlier paper 'The importance of Russell's Theory of Types for the emergence of twentieth-century nonsensicalism'.  In it I discuss the method Prior proposes in his paper ‘Entities’ for dealing with Russell’s Paradox without appealing to the concept of nonsense.

The four strands are (a) the ‘austere’ conception of nonsense; (b) the view that a perfectly acceptable sentence of the language can be nonsense if it is uttered in unsuitable circumstances; (c) the view that rules of grammar are nonsense if construed as universal truths about the world; (d) the view that one cannot ‘mean a nonsense’.  (I think that this last has to be ascribed to Wittgenstein, though it is surprisingly difficult to find knock-down textual evidence for it.)  I argue that (c) is the odd man out and is not easily reconciled with the others.

This paper is a bridge between my interest in the notion of philosophical nonsense and my interest in problems concerning ethics and action.  Geach sees an analogy between philosophical error and moral error, more specifically between the problem of understanding the state of mind of someone who is duped by philosophical nonsense and that of someone who ‘sins’.  In neither case does being confused oneself help one understand the confusion of others.  I argue that Geach gives us no good reason to believe that there is such a thing as philosophical nonsense and that, even if there is, there will be no real analogy between the states of mind in question.  For one thing, there is no obvious reason why there could not be ‘clear-headed sin’.  For another, one who ‘sins’ and one who does not often have the same sorts of difficulty understanding each other, whereas, if there is such a thing as philosophical nonsense, it is hard to see how there could be any such symmetry between one who is taken in by it and one who is not.

This book is an introduction in a double sense. It is intended to introduce beginners in philosophy to the idea of philosophical nonsense and the problems it raises. But it is also addressed to professional philosophers, most of whom seem virtually unaware of the issue.

Certain philosophers, here called ‘nonsensicalists’, believe that much philosophy (philosophical questions as well as assertions) is simply nonsense in the strict sense of being meaningless. They proceed as though it were an established fact that there is such a thing as philosophical nonsense and the notion were quite unproblematic. By contrast, many other philosophers proceed as though either they had never heard of it or it were quite obvious that there is no such thing.

There can be little doubt that what the nonsensicalists are saying is of great importance – if they are right. But there are at least eight questions that must be addressed before anyone is in a position to start hunting down philosophical nonsense and they have all been woefully neglected.

The idea of philosophical nonsense goes back to Thomas Hobbes at least and yet its history remains largely unresearched.

In view of the neglect of the problems raised by the notion of philosophical nonsense, even by professional philosophers, it is not unduly optimistic to suggest that it is a topic to which relative newcomers to the subject might make a contribution.

Ludwig Wittgenstein thought that good philosophy unties the knots in our thinking that bad philosophy has put there and must make movements as complicated as the knots it unties. Is the notion of philosophical nonsense an essential aid to this – as Wittgenstein himself thought – or just another knot?

Few would doubt that one often encounters the preposterous in philosophy.  Some would claim that preposterousness in philosophy is often a matter of literal nonsensicality, i.e. meaninglessness.  Is this plausible or is it itself an example of a preposterous philosophical claim?

Sass, like R. D. Laing before him, wants to make sense of schizophrenic discourse.  In 'Paradoxes of delusion – Wittgenstein, Schreber and the schizophrenic mind' he uses Wittgenstein’s later work, particularly the Blue Book, to this end.  Read criticises Sass for not taking Wittgenstein’s nonsensicalism seriously enough and suggests that some schizophrenic utterances cannot be understood at all.  I argue that Sass’s position is more consistent than Read’s, though it is probably true that Sass is the less thoroughgoing Wittgensteinian.  Read’s way of arguing his case exhibits all the difficulties that those who employ the notion of philosophical nonsense are apt to get themselves into.  The denigratory vocabulary he uses to characterise schizophrenic discourse – ‘confused’, ‘inchoate’, ‘incoherent’, ‘empty’, ‘without content’ – is itself confused and confusing, but, more importantly, his talk of ‘transitional remarks’ and his admission that he is himself ‘trafficking in nonsense’ suggest that he is falling into the very error of which he accuses Sass.

Sass, like R. D. Laing before him, wants to make sense of schizophrenic discourse.  In 'Paradoxes of delusion – Wittgenstein, Schreber and the schizophrenic mind' he uses Wittgenstein’s later work, particularly the Blue Book, to this end.  Read criticises Sass for not taking Wittgenstein’s nonsensicalism seriously enough and suggests that some schizophrenic utterances cannot be understood at all.  I argue that Sass’s position is more consistent than Read’s, though it is probably true that Sass is the less thoroughgoing Wittgensteinian.  Read’s way of arguing his case exhibits all the difficulties that those who employ the notion of philosophical nonsense are apt to get themselves into.  The denigratory vocabulary he uses to characterise schizophrenic discourse – ‘confused’, ‘inchoate’, ‘incoherent’, ‘empty’, ‘without content’ – is itself confused and confusing, but, more importantly, his talk of ‘transitional remarks’ and his admission that he is himself ‘trafficking in nonsense’ suggest that he is falling into the very error of which he accuses Sass.

Thomas Nagel in ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ suggests that we don’t yet have much idea of how mental entities could be identical with physical ones (though he wisely stops short of accusing physicalists of not meaning ANYTHING WHATSOEVER by their identity-claims).  Colin McGinn goes further by suggesting that we may forever remain in this state of ignorance and incomprehension because of the inherent limitations of the human intellect.  I argue that the mere possibility that McGinn is right shows that it is over-hasty to conclude from philosophy’s failure to solve its problems that there must be something wrong with the problems themselves.  I also try to relate Nagel’s and McGinn’s view to David Stove’s response to philosophy’s apparent failure to make much progress.  He seems pessimistic about whether we will ever fully understand what is wrong with some philosophical claims.