Abstract

Lapsing into nonsense is an occupational hazard of philosophy. But, unless they’ve been drinking, the sort of nonsense that philosophers are liable to lapse into is (usually) not pure gibberish—rather, it’s nonsense that often has the illusion of making sense. Such nonsense is sometimes accompanied by what Gareth Evans (1982) called “illusions of thought”: cognitive events that seem to have content, but don’t. In this paper we defend the existence of deceptive nonsense and illusions of thought by (i) providing positive arguments for their existence, (ii) a framework for thinking about them, and (iii) responses to some important arguments against them.