Concept
Nonsense
Overview
Nonsense is a form of communication, via speech, writing, or any other formal logic system, that lacks any coherent meaning. In ordinary usage, nonsense is sometimes synonymous with absurdity or the ridiculous. Many poets, novelists and songwriters have used nonsense in their works, often creating entire works using it for reasons ranging from pure comic amusement or satire, to illustrating a point about language or reasoning. In the philosophy of language and philosophy of science, nonsense is distinguished from sense or meaningfulness, and attempts have been made to come up with a coherent and consistent method of distinguishing sense from nonsense. It is also an important field of study in cryptography regarding separating a signal from noise.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
It is impossible to divine, in such a case, just what sort of feeling of rational relation between the words may have appeared to the author's mind. The border line between objective sense and nonsense is hard to draw; that between subjective sense and nonsense, impossible. Subjectively, any collocation of words may make sense--even the wildest words in a dream--if one only does not doubt their belonging together.
William James, The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1
Names Nonsense several times; states what Nonsense is.
But Herr Duehring is one of the most conspicuous types of those absurd pseudo-scientists, who to-day occupy so conspicuous a place in Germany and drown everything with their noisy nonsense. Noisy nonsense in poetry, in philosophy, in political economy, in writing history: noisy nonsense in the professor's chair and tribune; noisy nonsense too in the claims to superiority and intellectuality above the vulgar noisy…
Friedrich Engels, Landmarks of Scientific Socialism
Names Nonsense several times; states what Nonsense is.
We need not meditate very long. From the discussions of the authors in the Introduction we can guess that sense lurks in such witty nonsense, and that this sense in nonsense transforms nonsense into wit. In our example the sense is easily found. The officer who gives the artilleryman, Ike, the nonsensical advice pretends to be stupid in order to show Ike how stupidly he is acting.
Sigmund Freud, Wit and its relation to the unconscious
Names Nonsense several times.
Philosophers who discussed Nonsense
Related ideas
- Contextualism
- G. E. Moore
- Grammar
- Philosophical realism
- Idealism
- Koan
- Absurdity
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Philosophical skepticism
- Natural language
- Noam Chomsky
- Keith Lehrer
- Poetry
- Sense
- Philosophical Investigations
- Recursion
- Lewis Carroll
- Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
- Writing
- Philosophy of science
- Meaning (philosophy)
- Tautology (logic)
- On Certainty
- Philosophy of language
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Analytic philosophy.