This paper addresses four issues: 1. What is nonsense? 2. Is nonsense possible? 3. Is nonsense actual? 4. Why do the answers to (1)–(3) matter, if at all? These are my answers: 1. A sentence (or an utterance of one) is nonsense if it fails to have or express content (more on ‘express’, ‘have’, and ‘content’ below). This is a version of a view that can be found in Carnap (1959), Ayer (1936), and, maybe, the early (...) Wittgenstein (1922). The notion I propose abstracts away from their favored (but wrong) theories of what meaning is. It is a notion of nonsense that can be appealed to by all semantic frameworks and all theories of what content is, but structurally it is just like e.g. Carnap’s. Nonsense, as I construe it, is accompanied by illusions of thought (and I think that was part of Carnap’s conception as well). 2. Yes. In particular, I examine three arguments for the impossibility of illusion of thought (which on my construal accompanies linguistic nonsense) and they are all unsound. 3. Yes. There might be a lot of nonsense, both in ordinary and theoretical speech. In particular, it is likely that much of contemporary philosophy consists of nonsense. Empirical work is required to determine just how much. 4. The struggle to avoid nonsense (and achieve meaningfulness) is at least as important as the struggle for truth. The avoidance of nonsense is a precondition not just for having a truth value but also for more important properties such as saying something interesting or kind. (shrink)

Inspired by the early Wittgenstein’s concept of nonsense (meaning that which lies beyond the limits of language), we define two different, yet complementary, types of nonsense: formal nonsense and pragmatic nonsense. The simpler notion of formal nonsense is initially defined within Tarski’s semantic theory of truth; the notion of pragmatic nonsense, by its turn, is formulated within the context of the theory of pragmatic truth, also known as quasi-truth, as formalized by da Costa and (...) his collaborators. While an expression will be considered formally nonsensical if the formal criteria required for the assignment of any truth-value (whether true, false, pragmatically true, or pragmatically false) to such sentence are not met, a (well-formed) formula will be considered pragmatically nonsensical if the pragmatic criteria (inscribed within the context of scientific practice) required for the assignment of any truth-value to such sentence are not met. Thus, in the context of the theory of pragmatic truth, any (well-formed) formula of a formal language interpreted on a simple pragmatic structure will be considered pragmatically nonsensical if the set of primary sentences of such structure is not well-built, that is, if it does not include the relevant observational data and/or theoretical results, or if it does include sentences that are inconsistent with such data. (shrink)

Many philosophers suppose that sometimes we think we are saying or thinking something meaningful when in fact we’re not saying or thinking anything at all: we are producing nonsense. But what is nonsense? An account of nonsense must, I argue, meet two constraints. The first constraint requires that nonsense can be rationally engaged with, not just mentioned. In particular, we can reason with nonsense and use it within that-clauses. An account which fails to meet this (...) constraint cannot explain why nonsense appears meaningful. The second constraint requires that nonsense does not express thoughts. An account which fails to meet this constraint undercuts the critical force of the concept of nonsense. I offer an account which meets both constraints. The central idea is that to be under the illusion that some nonsense makes sense is to enter a pretence that the nonsense is meaningful. (shrink)

In this chapter, Nonsense is approached as a category that reveals a close relation both to order and disorder, rationality and illogicality, conventionality and arbitrariness, reality and dream. Among its various illustrations, quite a prominent role is assigned to the Duchess’ sentence, which, in spite of being universally acknowledged as one of the best pieces of Nonsense, is rarely discussed in detail in philosophical and literary investigations: ‘Be what you would seem to be’ - or, if you’d like (...) it put more simply – ‘Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.’. (shrink)

There is a natural view of nonsense, which owes what attraction it has to the apparent absence of alternatives. In Frege and Wittgenstein there is a view which goes against the natural one, and the purpose of this paper is to establish that it is a possible view of nonsense.

My topic is the relation between nonsense and intelligibility, and the contrast between nonsense and falsehood which played a pivotal role in the rise of analytic philosophy . I shall pursue three lines of inquiry. First I shall briefly consider the positive case, namely linguistic understanding . Secondly, I shall consider the negative case—different breakdowns of understanding and connected forms of failure to make sense . Third, I shall criticize three important misconceptions of nonsense and unintelligibility: the (...) austere conception of nonsense propounded by the New Wittgensteinians ; the “no nonsense position” which roundly denies that there are cases of nonsense—Chomsky’s semantic anomalies or Ryle’s category mistakes–that are grammatically well-formed, without even having the potential for being used to make a truth-apt statement ; the individualistic conception of language and of semantic mistakes championed by Davidson . All three positions, I shall argue, ignore or deny combinatorial nonsense, the fact that perfectly meaningful sentence-components can be combined in a way that may be grammatical, yet without resulting in a sentence that is itself “meaningful”, i.e. endowed with linguistic sense. At a more strategic level, the first and the third position deny or ignore that natural languages are communal historical practices that go beyond idiolects and the employments of expressions in specific contexts and that are guided by semantic rules—standards for the meaningful use of words. (shrink)

In _Nonsense upon Stilts¸_ first published in 1987, Waldron includes and discusses extracts from three classic critiques of the idea of natural rights embodied in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. Each text is prefaced by an historical introduction and an analysis of its main themes. The collection as a whole in introduced with an essay tracing the philosophical background to the three critiques as well as the eighteenth-century idea of natural rights which they attacked. (...) But the point of reproducing these works is not merely historical. Modern attacks on ‘rights-based’ political philosophy mirror the concerns of Bentham, Burke and Marx. Jeremy Waldron has therefore added an extensive concluding essay which relates these classic texts to the modern discussion of rights and re-examines the idea of rights in the light of contemporary critiques. This text provides an invaluable teaching tool for courses in politics and philosophy. (shrink)

In _Nonsense upon Stilts¸_ first published in 1987, Waldron includes and discusses extracts from three classic critiques of the idea of natural rights embodied in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. Each text is prefaced by an historical introduction and an analysis of its main themes. The collection as a whole in introduced with an essay tracing the philosophical background to the three critiques as well as the eighteenth-century idea of natural rights which they attacked. (...) But the point of reproducing these works is not merely historical. Modern attacks on ‘rights-based’ political philosophy mirror the concerns of Bentham, Burke and Marx. Jeremy Waldron has therefore added an extensive concluding essay which relates these classic texts to the modern discussion of rights and re-examines the idea of rights in the light of contemporary critiques. This text provides an invaluable teaching tool for courses in politics and philosophy. (shrink)

My topic is the relation between nonsense and intelligibility, and the contrast between nonsense and falsehood which played a pivotal role in the rise of analytic philosophy. I shall pursue three lines of inquiry. First I shall briefly consider the positive case, namely linguistic understanding. Secondly, I shall consider the negative case—different breakdowns of understanding and connected forms of failure to make sense. Third, I shall criticize three important misconceptions of nonsense and unintelligibility: the austere conception of (...) nonsense propounded by the New Wittgensteinians ; the “no nonsense position” which roundly denies that there are cases of nonsense—Chomsky’s semantic anomalies or Ryle’s category mistakes–that are grammatically well-formed, without even having the potential for being used to make a truth-apt statement ; the individualistic conception of language and of semantic mistakes championed by Davidson. All three positions, I shall argue, ignore or deny combinatorial nonsense, the fact that perfectly meaningful sentence-components can be combined in a way that may be grammatical, yet without resulting in a sentence that is itself “meaningful”, i.e. endowed with linguistic sense. At a more strategic level, the first and the third position deny or ignore that natural languages are communal historical practices that go beyond idiolects and the employments of expressions in specific contexts and that are guided by semantic rules—standards for the meaningful use of words. (shrink)

I introduce a perceptual phenomenon so far overlooked in the philosophical literature: ‘visual evanescence’. ‘Evanescent’ objects are those that due to their structured visible appearances have a tendency to vanish or evanesce from sight at certain places and for certain ‘biologically apt’ perceivers. Paradigmatically evanescent objects are those associated with certain forms of animal camouflage. I show that reflection on visual evanescence helps create conceptual room for a treatment of looks statements not explicit in the contemporary literature, one which takes (...) its cue from the relatively neglected philosophy of perception of G.E.M. Anscombe. In sensory contexts in which evanescence is known to have occurred, the use of ‘looks invisible’ seems to be intelligible, a fact that sensationalist and objectivist treatments of the nature of looks, as I call them, cannot obviously accommodate - at least, as I explain, when coupled with what Cora Diamond (1981) describes as a ‘natural’ understanding of nonsense. Focusing on a number of imaginative scenarios in which the statement ‘looks invisible’ is permissible, I oppose these ontological treatments with the grammatical approach I draw from Anscombe and in doing so I uncover a degree of unity across the cases I consider: something can intelligibly be said to ‘look invisible’ if one can see or appears to see the entirety of the region that the ‘invisible’ thing occupies. The region ‘looks empty’ but is full. (shrink)

The competing expressions of ideology flooding the contemporary political landscape have taken a turn toward the absurd. The Radiance Foundation’s recent anti-abortion campaign targeting African-American women, including a series of billboards bearing the slogan “The most dangerous place for an African-American child is in the womb”, is just one example of political "discourse" that is both infuriating and confounding. Discourse with these features – problematic intelligibility, disinterest in the truth, and inflammatory rhetoric – has become increasingly common in politics, the (...) press, and even the arguments made by ordinary folk. It is often criticized for its falsehood or its hurtfulness; however, these critiques tend to miss its pernicious potential. This essay characterizes this insidious discourse as purposeful nonsense. Part of the way that purposeful nonsense functions, we argue, relies on taking advantage of harmful stereotypes and denigrating narratives that are already present in our culture. Purposeful nonsense both draws upon harmful ideology and fortifies it. The effect is that members of oppressed social groups are confronted with disparaging ideology, while its authors are free to deny responsibility for it. Black feminist and intersectional analysis – particularly in the discussion of race, abortion, and reproductive justice – are useful in identifying and criticizing the harmful subtext in the Radiance Foundation’s billboard campaign. The notion of purposeful nonsense serves to extend the reach of these criticisms. Purposeful nonsense – disguised as merely logically confused discourse – is a key factor in maintaining an oppressive and unjust society; however, feminist, black feminist, and intersectional analysis contextualizes purposeful nonsense, potentially disrupting its harmful influence. We conclude that purposeful nonsense employs a variation on stereotype threat, a phenomenon in which being reminded of negative stereotypes about one’s social group causes stereotypical performance failures. We suggest that the notion of stereotype threat combined with intersectional analysis offers a fruitful avenue along which research on this sort of discourse might be expanded. (shrink)

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. -/- . (shrink)

What nonsense might be, and what Wittgenstein thought that nonsense might be, are two of the central questions in the current debate between those—such as Cora Diamond, James Conant and Michael Kremer—who favour a “resolute” approach to Wittgenstein’s work, and those—such as P. M. S. Hacker and Hans-Johann Glock—who instead favour a more “traditional” approach. What answer we give to these questions will determine the nature and force of his criticisms of traditional philosophy, and so the very shape (...) Wittgenstein’s work has for us, as well as, to some extent, what the lesson of the Tractatus might be. My aim in this paper is to provide a detailed defence of the austere view of nonsense, that lies at the heart of the resolute approach, against a range of influentialcriticisms developed by Hans-Johann Glock and which focus on Wittgenstein’s contextualism. In so doing, I hope also to shed some light on the kind of view the austere view is, as well as how it might relate to certain other crucial aspects of Wittgenstein’s thought. (shrink)

Nonsense‐mediated RNA decay (NMD) is an evolutionary conserved system of RNA surveillance that detects and degrades RNA transcripts containing nonsense mutations. Given that these mutations arise at a relatively low frequency, are there any as yet unknown substrates of NMD in a wild‐type cell? With this question in mind, Mendell et al.1 have used a microarray assay to identify those human genes under NMD regulation. Their results show that, in human cells, NMD regulates hundreds of physiologic transcripts and (...) not just those containing nonsense mutations. Among the NMD targets are a number of non‐functional RNAs expressed from vestigial sequences derived from retroviral and transposable elements. These findings support the notion that NMD is a high profile post‐transcriptional mechanism micromanaging the activity of multiple gene batteries and suppressing the expression of genetic remnants. BioEssays 27:463–466, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Nonsense‐mediated RNA decay (NMD) represents an established quality control checkpoint for gene expression that protects cells from consequences of gene mutations and errors during RNA biogenesis that lead to premature termination during translation. Characterization of NMD‐sensitive transcriptomes has revealed, however, that NMD targets not only aberrant transcripts but also a broad array of mRNA isoforms expressed from many endogenous genes. NMD is thus emerging as a master regulator that drives both fine and coarse adjustments in steady‐state RNA levels in (...) the cell. Importantly, while NMD activity is subject to autoregulation as a means to maintain homeostasis, modulation of the pathway by external cues provides a means to reprogram gene expression and drive important biological processes. Finally, the unanticipated observation that transcripts predicted to lack protein‐coding capacity are also sensitive to this translation‐dependent surveillance mechanism implicates NMD in regulating RNA function in new and diverse ways. (shrink)

We examine the relationship between the logics of nonsense of Bochvar and Halldén and the containment logics in the neighborhood of William Parry’s A I. We detail two strategies for manufacturing containment logics from nonsense logics—taking either connexive and paraconsistent fragments of such systems—and show how systems determined by these techniques have appeared as Frederick Johnson’s R C and Carlos Oller’s A L. In particular, we prove that Johnson’s system is precisely the intersection of Bochvar’s B 3 and (...) Graham Priest’s non-symmetrized connexive logic and that Oller’s system lies just beneath the intersection of B 3 and Priest’s paraconsistent L P. We conclude by examining Oller’s system in more depth, giving it a characterization in terms of L P and showing that it plays the same role to Harry Deutsch’s paraconsistent containment logic S that Aleksandr Zinov'ev’s S 1 plays with respect to A I. (shrink)

Introduction : science versus pseudoscience and the "demarcation problem" -- Hard science, soft science -- Almost science -- Pseudoscience -- Blame the media? -- Debates on science : the rise of think tanks and the decline of public intellectuals -- Science and politics : the case of global warming -- Science in the courtroom : the case against intelligent design -- From superstition to natural philosophy -- From natural philosophy to modern science -- The science wars I : do we (...) trust science too much? -- The science wars II : do we trust science too little? -- Who's your expert? -- Conclusion : so, what is science after all? (shrink)

This paper concerns Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophical and mathematical problems. Both in his earlier and in his later writings Wittgenstein grapples with the tendency of philosophers to misconstrue the nature of the difficulties that they are facing. Whereas philosophers tend to assume that their problems are comparable to those that come up in the sciences, and take these problems to consist in questions the answers to which will provide them with substantive knowledge, Wittgenstein compares philosophical problems with riddles. What is (...) characteristic of riddles is that solving them involves an alteration of the use of language, but it does not tend to involve the acquisition of new knowledge. In his middle and later period, the comparison with riddles serves to highlight and resolve a related confusion in the way philosophers of mathematics understand the nature of mathematical problems. Wittgenstein rejects the realist approach according to which every mathematical theorem, whether proven or not, meaningfully specifies a possible fact which would make it true or false. By contrast, Wittgenstein construes unproven conjectures on the model of riddle phrases, whose meaning, prior to our finding the solution to them, has not been determined. Moreover, Wittgenstein draws our attention to the fact that we can be caught up in an attempt to solve a riddle even if the riddle does not have a solution; the same applies, in his mind, to our engagement with philosophical and mathematical problems. When it comes to philosophical riddles, Wittgenstein is convinced that they do not have a solution at all. The specific difficulty presented by unproven mathematical conjectures is different; in this case, we cannot tell in advance whether or not they present us with a solvable riddle. The paper situates these issues in the context of ongoing debates in the scholarship concerning Wittgenstein’s conception of nonsense, his methodology, his engagement with mathematical realism and verificationism, and his response to skepticism. (shrink)

This thesis focuses on 'New' or 'Resolute' readings of Wittgenstein's work, early and later, as presented in the work of, for instance, Cora Diamond and James Conant. One of the principal claims of such readings is that, throughout his life, Wittgenstein held an 'austere' view of nonsense. That view has both a trivial and a non-trivial aspect. The trivial aspect is that any string of signs could, by appropriate assignment, be given a meaning, and hence that, if such a (...) string is nonsense, that will be because we have failed to make just such an assignment. The non-trivial aspect is this: that there is no further, non-trivial story to be told, and so nonsense is only ever a matter of our failure to give signs a meaning. Hence, too, logically speaking, all nonsense is on a par. That view, both of nonsense and of Wittgenstein, has attracted a great deal of controversy. It is particularly controversial in relation to Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus', where Wittgenstein famously declares, in the penultimate remark, that the reader is to recognise Wittgenstein's own elucidatory propositions there as nonsensical, and must eventually throw them away in coming to understand Wittgenstein himself. I defend the austere view and its attribution to Wittgenstein, early and later, against a number of exegetical and substantial criticisms put forward by, for instance, Peter Hacker, Hans-Johann Glock and Adrian Moore. (shrink)

The present paper considers the possible sense of “nonsensical” caring—caring (1) which for various reasons apparently cannot help the cared-for, and (2) in which the carer, though convinced that it will not be effective, whole-heartedly engages. The project is inspired by the fiction of Ali Smith, which offers varied, vivid and memorable examples of such caring: worried that her dead sister misses life experience, Clare in Hotel World makes sure her sensations are doubly intense and rich though she knows her (...) sister, being dead, will not benefit from them; in Summer Hannah and Daniel write to each other tender letters which they immediately burn for safety’s sake so that the addressee has not even the slightest chance of ever reading them; in “Virtual” a bed-ridden girl diligently takes care of her virtual pet, well aware that it is not alive, let alone sentient. Smith’s examples of “nonsensical” caring are strangely compelling, yet in real life such caring—predictably ineffective (as regards helping the other) and costly—is rare. Why? Under what metaphysical assumptions, if any, could “nonsensical” caring make sense? The paper considers these questions, taking Søren Kierkegaard’s extensive discussion of agape love in Works of Love (1847) as its primary point of reference. (shrink)

In Minds, Brains, and Norms , Pardo and Patterson deny that the activities of persons (knowledge, rule-following, interpretation) can be understood exclusively in terms of the brain, and thus conclude that neuroscience is irrelevant to the law, and to the conceptual and philosophical questions that arise in legal contexts. On their view, such appeals to neuroscience are an exercise in nonsense. We agree that understanding persons requires more than understanding brains, but we deny their pessimistic conclusion. Whether neuroscience can (...) be used to address legal issues is an empirical question. Recent work on locked-in syndrome, memory, and lying suggests that neuroscience has potential relevance to the law, and is far from nonsensical. Through discussion of neuroscientific methods and these recent results we show how an understanding of the subpersonal mechanisms that underlie person-level abilities could serve as a valuable and illuminating source of evidence in legal and social contexts. In so doing, we sketch the way forward for a no-nonsense approach to the intersection of law and neuroscience. (shrink)

In 1968 E.K. Borthwick, with a brilliant conjecture, cleared up a passage from Aristophanes’Peacethat had been considered ‘nonsense’ since antiquity. ‘Bell goldfinch’ the line seemed to be saying: a jumbled idea at best, gibberish at worst. The scholium reads ad loc.: ταῦτα δὲ πάντα ἐπίτηδες ἀδιανοήτως ἔφρασεν, ‘all this is said as deliberate nonsense’, and later scholars generally follow suit. But Borthwick showed that this was not the case: ‘even nonsense expressions in Aristophanes’, he writes, ‘are not (...) haphazard collocations of incongruous words signifying nothing’. What, then, to do with the ancient scholar who failed to understand the passage, claiming it instead to be ‘nonsense’? (shrink)

Many of the debates concerning the existence of economic rights obfuscate the meaning of the possession of a right to an economic good. In order to provide clarification, several theoretical questions must be probed. This essay explores each of these issues in order to demonstrate that greater conceptual clarity repudiates the arguments against the existence of economic rights. It also seeks to attenuate the vexing problem of necessary and painful tradeoffs between competing rights claims. The final portion of this essay (...) heuristically demonstrates how greater conceptual clarity can aid us in dealing with complex policy issues involving competing rights claims. (shrink)

"Nonsense Lab" is the unofficial name of a studio space that hosted Sean Smith and the Department of Biological Flow at University of Western Ontario. Here, in an offhand reflexive tumblr post, the infrastructural thematics of acoustic ecology, perceptual programming and media environments are cut across and sewn together.

In the Protagoras, Plato presents us with a Puzzle regarding the value of interpretation. On the one hand, Socrates claims to find several familiar Socratic theses about morality and the human condition in his interpretation of a poem by Simonides (339e−347a). On the other hand, immediately after the interpretation, Socrates castigates the whole task of interpretation as “childish nonsense” appropriate for second-rate drinking parties (347d5−6).1 The core problem is this: taking Socrates’s interpretation of Simonides seriously requires undermining the significance (...) of the claims about interpretation, but taking the criticism of interpretation seriously requires undermining the significance of Socrates’s .. (shrink)

Our aim is to provide a sequent calculus whose external consequence relation coincides with the three-valued paracomplete logic `of nonsense' introduced by Dmitry Bochvar and, independently, presented as the weak Kleene logic K3W by Stephen C. Kleene. The main features of this calculus are (i) that it is non-reflexive, i.e., Identity is not included as an explicit rule (although a restricted form of it with premises is derivable); (ii) that it includes rules where no variable-inclusion conditions are attached; and (...) (iii) that it is hybrid, insofar as it includes both left and right operational introduction as well as elimination rules. (shrink)

This paper shows how Logic-Based Therapy can constructively employ philosophical theories (such as those of Augustine, Aquinas, Spinoza, Hume, and Epictetus) as potent antidotes to the fallacy of Demanding Perfection.

The author considers the current process of fragmenting ethics into numerous special ethics at the starting point of the article as a process of destroying ethics as a philosophical discipline. He relates this to the historical failure of ethics which due to categorical limitations could not address the challenges of the advanced scientific-technical civilisation, resulting in an “ethical vacuum”. In response to the ethical vacuum, a number of ethical initiatives have emerged which the author, according to the effects on the (...) rehabilitation of the role of traditional ethics and on the creation of a new orientation framework, classifies on a destructive and productive line. On the productive line of overcoming the ethical vacuum, bioethics has emerged which, along with other ethical projects, has created a new orientation atmosphere that the author calls “a new ethical culture”. On the destructive line, along with the inflation of special ethics, a special form of destruction has emerged in terms of implanting “applied ethics”, which the author refers to as a nonsensical concept, into the fabric of traditional ethics. Then the author presents three main problems of applied ethics. The first is of a substantive nature and consists in the fact that applied ethics does not have and in principle cannot have unquestionable norms as an object of application. The second main problem is of a methodological nature and consists in the inappropriateness and non-acceptance of deductivism as a model of applying ethical norms to practice. The third main problem is of a practical nature and consists in developing the myth of the practicality of applied ethics. The author concludes that applied ethics is neither an ethical concept nor an ethical project but a market brand which on the ethical plane turns out to be nonsense. In the point of the article, the author argues that applied ethics became an institution of ethical absurdity the moment it, as an empty marketing label, took over the vacancy of the object of application and the role of general ethics for an unrelated and undefined conglomerate of special ethics transformed into its branches. (shrink)

Logic is often seen as the bedrock of intellectual life. It aims to be straight-forward, true, clear. But in this provocative book of postmodern philosophy, Ermanno Bencivenga presents an extended reflection on the subversive nature of logic--logic that is not stable and certain, but deceptive and tortuous. The author uses Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury at the end of the eleventh century, as his case study to show how human reason can be devious. In Anselm's famous texts, his beliefs are (...) not at stake, he is sure of them--he only seeks to under-stand his faith, not to prove it. But by looking at Anselm's writings as a whole, Bencivenga argues that they undermine Anselm's own interpretation. Not only can reason be more effective than force in fighting the unorthodox, but it can also be a subtle way of undermining orthodoxy. Bencivenga demonstrates how reason plays different roles at the different levels of Anselm's project. For its authoritarian subject, reason imposes a limit on its rebellious character. For its subversive subject, reason opens up an infinite arena for experimentation whose end will never be reached. Ultimately, Logic and Other Nonsense asks hard questions about the nature of philosophy in Anselm's world, as well as our own. (shrink)

[A. W. Moore] There are criteria of ineffability whereby, even if the concept of ineffability can never serve to modify truth, it can sometimes serve to modify other things, specifically understanding. This allows for a reappraisal of the dispute between those who adopt a traditional reading of Wittgenstein's Tractatus and those who adopt the new reading recently championed by Diamond, Conant, and others. By maintaining that what the nonsense in the Tractatus is supposed to convey is ineffable understanding, rather (...) than ineffable truth, we can do considerable justice to each of these readings. We can also do considerable justice to the Tractatus. /// [Peter Sullivan] Moore proposes to cut between 'traditional' and 'new' approaches to the Tractatus, suggesting that Wittgenstein's intention is to convey, through the knowing use of nonsense, ineffable understanding. I argue, first, that there is indeed room for a proposal of Moore's general kind. Secondly, though, I question whether Moore's actual proposal is not more in tune with Wittgenstein's later thought than with the attitude of the Tractatus. (shrink)

The expression of protein‐encoding genes is a complex process culminating in the production of mature mRNA and its translation by the ribosomes. The production of a mature mRNA involves an intricate series of processing steps. The majority of eukaryotic protein‐encoding genes contain intron sequences that disrupt the protein‐encoding frame, and hence have to be removed from immature mRNA prior to translation into protein. The mechanism involved in the selection of correct splice sites is incompletely understood. A considerable body of evidence (...) suggests that the splicing machinery has suboptimal efficiency and fidelity leading to substantial processing inaccuracy. Here we discuss a recently published article1 that extends observations that cells rely on nonsense‐mediated mRNA decay (NMD) to compensate for such suboptimal processing accuracy. Intriguingly these authors provide evidence for a strong selective pressure in favour of premature termination of mRNA translation in the event of intron retention. The analysis presented implies a positive role of NMD in transcript diversification through alternative splicing and suggest that this ancient surveillance mechanism may have co‐evolved with intron acquisition born from the need for quality control of splicing patterns. BioEssays 30:926–928, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Criteria of ineffability are presented which, it is claimed, preclude the possibility of truths that are ineffable, but not the possibility of other things that are ineffable—not even the possibility of other things that are non-trivially ineffable. Specifically, they do not preclude the possibility of states of understanding that are ineffable. This, it is argued, allows for a reappraisal of the dispute between those who adopt a traditional reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and those who adopt the new reading recently championed (...) by Cora Diamond, James Conant, and others. By maintaining that what the nonsense in the Tractatus is supposed to convey is ineffable understanding, rather than ineffable truth, we can do considerable justice to each of these readings. We can also do considerable justice to the Tractatus. (shrink)

Philosophers have spent millennia accumulating knowledge about knowledge. But negative epistemological phenomena, such as ignorance, falsity, and delusion, are persistently overlooked. Markus Gabriel argues that being wrong is part and parcel of subjectivity itself, adding a novel perspective on epistemic failures to debates around New Realism.