Post on 28-Jan-2023
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Have Philosophical Accusations of Talking Nonsense been Treated with Unmerited
Respect?
Abstract.
Pigden argues that those philosophers who dismiss their opponents’ utterances as
meaningless are, instead of dispassionately inquiring why we consider meaningful the
utterances we do, imposing their own narrower conceptions of meaningfulness. They
are therefore open to the rebuttal: ‘I do mean something by “p”; so I am a counter-
example to your theory of meaning’. But this makes philosophical accusations of
talking nonsense look so patently misguided that one wonders how anyone ever got
away with them. Suggestions are made as to why what Pigden calls ‘coercive
theories of meaning’ have seemed plausible.
But the main question is whether our ordinary conception of meaning – not some
philosopher’s invention – allows for the possibility of one’s being wrong to think one
means anything. If it does, the rejection of other philosophers’ utterances as
meaningless might sometimes be justified. Wittgenstein’s later work should be
carefully considered before this possibility is dismissed.
*
Philosophers frequently accuse each other of talking nonsense. Recently, this whole
practice, rather than just particular instances of it, has come under attack. I shall
discuss one such attack, that by Charles R. Pigden in ‘Coercive Theories of Meaning,
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or Why Language Shouldn’t Matter (So Much) to Philosophy’.1 I believe that it is
largely sound but leaves a residual problem: Why is it not obvious that coercive
theories are misguided? I also suggest that Pigden’s case would be stronger if he
were less dismissive of the later Wittgenstein.
Coercive Theories of Meaning.
A coercive theory of meaning is ‘a theory whose principal purpose is to dismiss the
views of a large class of ideological opponents as inherently meaningless’2, ‘to prove
that the people you don’t like are talking nonsense’3, ‘to contract the realm of the
meaningful; to show that many of the things we considered meaningful are
meaningless’.4 Pigden traces such theories back to Hobbes. They are to be found in
the classical empiricists, Kant (on some interpretations), the pragmatists, the logical
positivists, Wittgenstein (both early and late) and analytical philosophers such as
Dummett. Pigden, perhaps surprisingly, excludes Frege and Russell from the list.
He suggests that the main reason why philosophers are so concerned with language
and formulate theories of meaning is the desire to use them coercively:
The philosopher whose theory of meaning is, so to speak,
disinterested – not designed to do someone down is a rare
bird (though thankfully such philosophers are rather more
common now then they were fifty or sixty years ago).5
In what follows I shall assume that we are concerned with theories (accounts, views)
of meaning that are used by their proponents to condemn the utterances of other
philosophers as nonsense. I shall not assume that they are deliberately constructed for
this purpose, though I am sure Pigden is right that they often are. There is a
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terminological point of importance here concerning the use of the word ‘coercive’, to
which I shall return at the end of the article. Until then I shall content myself with
reminding the reader occasionally that I am making no assumptions about ulterior
motives.
Hobbes’s theory of meaning illustrates how coercive theories work and may surprise
anyone who does not realise how far back they go6:
Hobbes tried to do down his opponents by imposing … a restricted
language in which dissident thoughts cannot be expressed … an
impoverished fragment of natural language which contains no words
which cannot be defined in terms of experience. He then proclaims
that anything that cannot be expressed in this dialect … simply does
not make sense. The theory is coercive since it does not simply set
out to investigate why we consider some strings of words meaningful
and others not, but tries to alter our conception of the meaningful with
a view to excluding his ideological foes.7
What could possibly justify this coercive employment of theories of meaning?
Broadly speaking, Pigden’s answer is, ‘Nothing’, but a crucial factor in its defence
came much later with Russell’s theory of types:
Russell on the whole is one of the heroes of my story. Though he
invented theories of meaning that could have been used coercively
he did not often use them that way himself.8
But his theory of types:
… gave philosophers a respectable non-self-serving reason to suppose
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that what seemed to make sense was in fact nonsensical. If anyone
were to insist that they understood some bit of metaphysics and that
therefore it must be meaningful, whatever Wittgenstein and the
positivists might say, post-Russellian philosophers had a ready reply.
‘It seems to make sense, we agree. But Russell has shown that many
apparently meaningful statements in Mathematics and elsewhere are
in fact ill-formed … Intuitions of meaningfulness therefore can be
mistaken and in your case this possibility is realized.’9
As Pigden goes on to say, Russell’s way of handling the set-theoretical paradoxes was
not necessarily the only or even the best way, yet at the time it must have given
coercive theories a boost. But this raises a question that Pigden doesn’t ask: What
right did Hobbes and the rest think they had to accuse others of talking nonsense long
before anyone had given them ‘a respectable non-self-serving reason’?
In his review of coercive theories Pigden is particularly dismissive of Wittgenstein. I
believe we need to take Wittgenstein more seriously than Pigden does, if only for the
de facto reason of his immense influence. Was it not the early Wittgenstein, directly
and by influencing the positivists, who got Twentieth Century coercive theories of
meaning going after Russell had provided the initial stimulus? And was it not the
later Wittgenstein who more than anyone else kept them going after the demise of
logical positivism? There were other factors – Oxford ordinary language
philosophy10, Dummett’s revival of verificationist arguments11, pragmatism in
America. But the posthumous publication of the Philosophical Investigations surely
signalled that coercive theories had come to stay. And I shall suggest that
5
Wittgenstein is of more than historical importance. His later work contains ideas that
just might help redeem coercive theories.
Pigden’s Arguments.
Pigden’s article is long and provides much historical background. Here I can only
focus on what I take to be the core of his case. He writes:
I need to show that [coercive] theories of meaning … are all of them
false … Some of them are false, no doubt, since they contradict each
other … This suggests that at some time in the history of philosophy
meaningful propositions have been consigned to the meaningless
basket. But the possibility remains that a coercive theory of meaning
could be based on truth. Some aspiring philosophical censor might be
doing away with what is really meaningless … I need to show that this
cannot be or, at least, that it is highly unlikely.12
He provides a moral and several intellectual arguments. The former can be dealt with
briefly since, as he admits, it could not be conclusive.13 It is that using coercive
theories ‘degrades one’s opponents below the status of rational beings and
undermines the chief liberal arguments for tolerance and liberty’.14 Mill’s celebrated
arguments for toleration only work on the assumption that the beliefs of our
opponents might be partly or wholly true or at least by their very existence contrast
with ours, thereby preventing these latter from degenerating into unexamined dogmas.
But pure nonsense could not be even partly true or exercise this contrastive function.
So there is no reason for tolerating it – except perhaps sheer kind-heartedness.15
Now for the intellectual arguments.
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a) When discussing Mill’s arguments Pigden allows that coercive theorists might be
fallibilists about their own theories. They could debate with those they suspected of
talking nonsense in the hope of demonstrating that they were, but bearing in mind that
they might prove not to be. But there is an obvious danger of pragmatic self-
contradiction: they would be treating something as meaningful in the hope of proving
that it wasn’t.16 The importance of this difficulty is, I believe, greater than Pigden
implies, since it doesn’t tell only against those who are openly fallibilist. One
criticism of verificationism was that you have to understand – attribute meaning to – a
claim even to discuss the question of its verifiability. A dogmatic verificationist is
caught in this trap as surely as a fallibilist one. Indeed it is none too obvious how
anyone employing a coercive theory of meaning could avoid it.17
b) Coercive theories tend
to have the wrong extension. Either the target discourse (i.e. the
class of utterances the theorist wants to reduce to incoherence)
winds up making sense or the theorist’s own preferred brand of
chat gets condemned as nonsense.18
Thus the positivists encountered endless difficulties formulating a version of the
verification principle that would condemn metaphysics while allowing the
meaningfulness of the universal generalisations of science. And similar difficulties
confronted empiricist theories of meaning as they developed from Hobbes to Hume.19
c) Coercive theories often implicitly condemn themselves. Thus it is sometimes
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argued that, since the verification principle is neither analytic nor verifiable, it is by its
own lights meaningless. But Pigden himself suggests that this criticism is not quite
on target20:
Theories of meaning are – or perhaps ought to be – empirical. If so,
verificationist theories of meaning are not nonsensical by their own
standards. They are, however, false.21
Pigden finds another instance of self-condemnation, this time overt, at the end of the
Tractatus.22 Here he is implicitly accepting the traditional interpretation. He does not
mention that it has been claimed that the Tractatus does not advance a theory of
meaning, but apart from a few ‘framing’ remarks, is a piece of deliberately
constructed nonsense.23
Since it is difficult to find an utterly indisputable example of a coercive theory of
meaning that condemns itself, this is perhaps the weakest of the intellectual arguments
Pigden considers.
d) His main and last argument, one that brings out the underlying problem with all
coercive theories, he traces back to Richard Price, who uses it against Hume. Hume
in effect argues, ‘If my theory of meaning is correct, we have no idea/concept of X;
my theory is correct; therefore we have no idea/concept of X’. Price responds with,
‘If your theory of meaning is correct, we have no idea/concept of X; we do have an
idea /concept of X; therefore your theory is wrong’. Hume rejects such notions as
those of the self, power, substance, and causation conceived as necessitation, and
Price argues that he is committed to rejecting others, inertia for instance.24 Now, since
some of these are essential to Newtonian science and others to our commonsense
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picture of the world, Hume is asking us, on the strength of his theory, to reject many
of our beliefs as involving mere pseudo-concepts.
Price’s argument is an exercise in Johnsonian stone-kicking.25 Hume
says that certain words can’t be understood. Price insists that he does
understand them so Hume must be wrong … [Moreover] many of the
words in question are essential to Newtonian science. Since Newton’s
epistemic prestige considerably exceeds that of Hume, it is Price who
is more likely to be believed. It is much more likely that Hume is
mistaken than that Newton’s theory is nonsense.26
Pigden calls Price’s style of argument ‘the Watts response’ after a member of the
Nixon administration who, on resigning, was told, ‘You can’t resign’ and replied, ‘I
just did’.27
It is the general form of Price’s argument that really matters. Quite apart from the
relative prestige of Newton and Hume, why cannot Price reply, ‘I do understand the
notion of X. Therefore your theory, which implies that I could not, is wrong’?
Pigden asks:
Why should the linguistic intuitions of the respondent yield to
the pretensions of the theorist? … Where does the theory get the
authority to overcome these appearances?28
He suggests that the purpose of a theory of meaning should be to account for the
phenomena of meaning and understanding as they actually are, not to revise our
conception of the meaningful.
… the facts which a theory of meaning is supposed to explain are our
intuitions about what does and does not make sense. Some strings
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of symbols are meaningful and others are not … The task of a
theory of meaning is to explain these data; to tell us what it is about
the meaningful strings that makes them meaningful and what it is
about the meaningless strings that makes them meaningless.29
But coercive theories cannot achieve this. Whether or not they are invented with this
purpose in mind, they are employed to overrule some of our intuitions about what
makes sense.
We can now see why the intuitions of the Watts respondent
should prevail against the coercive theory. Generally speaking
the explanandum has epistemic priority over the explanans. We
don’t discard the facts because they fail to fit the theory. We
discard the theory because it fails to fit the facts. And in this
case our linguistic intuitions constitute the facts.30
Pigden does not completely exclude the possibility that a theory of meaning might
legitimately be used coercively. If
we develop a really fruitful conception of meaning – one that
helps us to solve pressing problems in psychology or the
social sciences for instance – then we might have to give up
the folk-category of the meaningful and go with the new
theory-generated taxonomy. But such a revisionist theory
would have to be very good – much better … than anything
that Dummett, Hume, Wittgenstein or anyone else has
managed to come up with.31
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Some might feel that this would not be the triumph of a coercive theory of meaning so
much as the replacement of our concept of meaning by a different (though no doubt
related) concept that had proved more useful. But perhaps that is a bridge to be
crossed when it is reached. I am in almost complete agreement with Pigden’s critique
of coercive theories. But he does not really explain how anyone ever managed to get
away with using them. Why doesn’t everyone accused of producing philosophical
nonsense immediately hit back with the Price-Watts response?
The Ordinary Conception of Meaning.
If coercive theorists had been generally suspected of trying to impose their own
restrictive conceptions of meaning on the rest of us, they would hardly have been
taken seriously. Yet they have been taken very seriously indeed – not least by those
they accuse of talking nonsense. It is those who make the Price-Watts response who
are unusual. This calls for explanation.
At times Pigden seems to impute a certain dishonesty to coercive theorists,
particularly in his discussion of Wittgenstein and in his final judgment on the use of
coercive theories – ‘Let’s chuck it and try something more honest’. He probably has
in mind self-deception rather than other-deception.32 It would require some bizarre
conspiracy theory to explain how so many philosophers, who disagree about so much
else, have colluded in maintaining the same false façade. Either that or a repeated
reinventing of the same old deception. But even the imputation of self-deception
might seem offensive. I shall be alluding to the bad manners of coercive theorists and
it might not be a good idea to reply, however excusably, in a way that might itself
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give offence. Those wanting a sober investigation of meaning and meaningfulness
should do what they can to take the heat out of the debate.
In any case neither self- nor other-deception explains what is really puzzling about the
production and reception of coercive theories of meaning, namely the ease with which
those accused of talking nonsense have been overawed. Take the positivists’ attack
on theology. Sometimes those attacked argued that theological claims were
verifiable; more usually that unverifiability does not entail meaninglessness. They did
not in general respond by demanding to know on what grounds anyone could presume
to tell others that they did not mean anything. Why was this? Anyone acquainted
with the hostile tone of much theological debate – the odium theologicum – could
suggest one reason: many religious believers would be delighted to be able to dismiss
the doctrines of other religions or sects as nonsense.33 But this still leaves a problem.
One might have thought that being on the receiving end of accusations of talking
nonsense would bring home their fishiness, even to those who make them themselves.
I think we can assume that the accusers have almost always thought of themselves as
employing the ordinary concept of meaning and that the accused have taken the
accusations as being intended in this way. The only case I know where coercive
theorists have admitted that they were not talking about the everyday concept is that
of the positivists. They certainly began by claiming that metaphysicians, because
their claims were unverifiable, meant nothing by them in any sense. But in the face of
criticism they soon retreated: they were talking about ‘cognitive’, ‘empirical’,
‘factual’ meaning. Finally the verification principle came to be seen as a
methodological recommendation. No doubt these developments had much to do with
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their – in some ways admirable34 – willingness to commit themselves to and to
formulate clearly a criterion of meaningfulness.
I know of no other coercive theorists who make such admissions. They all seem to
write as though they have in mind the ordinary notion of meaning. Not that they
actually say, ‘We are talking about what everyone means by “meaning”, not some
narrower notion of our own’. (I cannot think of any examples of that either.) But that
is surely what is implied. Wittgenstein and his followers in particular never seem to
drop their guard. They do not even seem to consider the possibility that they might be
suspected of introducing their own restrictive conception of meaning.
Yet it is hard to disagree with Pigden that few theorists of meaning have been
‘disinterested’ – engaged in a straightforward attempt to give an account of the
notions of meaning and meaningfulness as they actually exist. Rather, coercive
(stipulative, legislative, tendentious, prescriptive) theories have been offered and
discussed as if they were supposed to be disinterested (reportive, neutral,
dispassionate, descriptive). Why? It smacks of cynicism to ask how the trick has
been worked, but we must surely recognise and investigate this crypto-coerciveness.
One unfortunate consequence of the situation as it now is is that coercive theorists,
since they do not assert that they are talking about the ordinary notion of meaning, do
not argue that they are either.35 It is possible that some coercive theory – one that is
actually used coercively to condemn the utterances of others as nonsense – is
somehow also a correct account of the ordinary notion of meaning. But we need to be
told how and why.
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The obvious question is whether the ordinary notion of meaning allows for the
possibility that someone might think she means something when she means nothing.36
Let us first ask: does the ordinary person allow for it? Oswald Hanfling writes:
The idea of a statement, or other expression, which appears to be
meaningful but is not really so is familiar enough. Anyone who reads
the newspapers or, let us say, certain writings of social scientists will
find himself asking, from time to time, what, if anything , a given
statement means; and he may conclude that it means nothing – though
he may be hard put to prove this …37
Maybe; but Hanfling does not clearly raise our question: Do people allow for the
possibility that the author of the statement thinks she means something when she
doesn’t? (Might she not just have expressed herself badly?)
Elsewhere37 I discuss it but reach no definite conclusion. I suggest that perhaps they
allow for this kind of error in the case of the bizarre utterances of schizophrenics or
the takers of certain drugs. But many people, I also suggest, might be content to leave
the question to the psychologist. In any case the off-the-cuff responses of the
ordinary person do not settle the question of what possibilities a concept really allows
for. If they did, philosophers, especially analytical ones, would be in danger of going
out of business.
A good way of putting our question is suggested by a remark of Wittgenstein’s in the
Blue Book.39 With certain kinds of claim ‘[t]he possibility of error has been provided
for’; with others not. So let us ask, ‘If someone sincerely claims to mean something
by what she says, has the possibility of an error been provided for by our ordinary
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concept of meaning (in the language-game with the word “mean”, as Wittgenstein
might have put it)? There is a complication – not to say an irony – here. Wittgenstein
would probably say that someone who talks as if the possibility of an error has been
provided for when it has not is talking nonsense. Thus, if someone were to say
‘Oh, I know what “pain” means; what I don’t know is whether this,
that I have now, is pain’ – we should merely shake our heads and
be forced to regard his words as a queer reaction which we have
no idea what to do with.40
Nevertheless, the question about meaning needs to be asked, whatever the status of a
wrong answer might turn out to be.
It is far from obvious what the right answer is. Many philosophers have assumed that
one can be wrong about whether one means anything. My own suspicions go the
other way, but I would not ask anyone to put much weight on them. We need
something better than assumptions and suspicions.
Why Then Have Coercive Theories Been Taken So Seriously?
What I have just said suggests one answer: if coercive theories are not obviously right,
they are not obviously wrong either. But it seems to have been widely assumed that
some coercive theory must be right. Geach has even claimed that the sheer variety of
philosophical doctrines guarantees that some of them must ‘[mix] up categories in a
nonsensical way’.41 They cannot all be true, I grant, but Geach provides no argument
that they cannot all be meaningful. He is, I suspect, influenced by the bizarreness of
many philosophical doctrines, but I see no obvious way of arguing from bizarreness to
meaninglessness. Is it not more plausible to say that bizarre philosophical utterances
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are bizarre because of what they mean? Geach’s conviction that there must be such a
thing as philosophical nonsense does not seem uncommon though. I have in fact
often had difficulty persuading other philosophers that there is any general problem
with philosophical accusations of talking nonsense. It seems easier to persuade
someone relatively new to the subject than someone familiar with such accusations,
who has perhaps made them himself.
What other reasons might there be for this bias? Concerning Hobbes, Pigden writes:
Why isn’t it enough to convict his opponents of error? Why
accuse them of nonsense as well? Partly, no doubt, because it
is more satisfying as a polemical device. If you can show that
your opponent is not only wrong, but an out-and-out blatherer,
you have really got him on the ropes.42
This is surely true (especially if you think it will mainly be you who convicts others of
talking nonsense, rather than the reverse). I would also suggest that, whatever may
have been the case in Hobbes’s day, in modern academia accusing others of talking
nonsense, spouting meaningless verbiage, is about the limit of permissible rudeness.43
So there is the satisfaction of letting off steam and pushing the limits of the
acceptable.
Consider too the colloquial use of the word ‘nonsense’ to refer to the patently false
(and thus meaningful). This is often pointed out and distinguished from the strict
philosophical use. But might it not have unconsciously influenced philosophers,
making them fail to see how innovative philosophical accusations of nonsense really
are? It is rarely mentioned that the word ‘meaningless’ is also used rather loosely
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outside philosophy. Consider this: ‘The names “Labour” and “Conservative” are now
as meaningless as “Democrat” and “Republican” have long been in the States’. What
is surely meant is that the names are no longer very informative about what the parties
stand for; perhaps even that they are misleading. Again, descriptions, explanations
and instructions that are too vague to be helpful are often called ‘meaningless’. On
cans of soup one reads: ‘Do not boil or overheat’. ‘Do not boil’ is fine, but what
counts as overheating? One hears the word ‘meaningless’ used to characterise just
such instructions, but of course the ‘… or overheat’ is not devoid of meaning: in its
context it conveys that even temperatures below boiling-point can be too high. I
suspect that, if there are languages in which the words for ‘nonsense’ and
‘meaningless’ are always used strictly, as philosophers normally use them, the radical
character of philosophical accusations of talking nonsense will be manifest to their
speakers.44
I can imagine some readers feeling that the explanations offered so far verge on the
patronising, that they insult the intelligence of philosophers.45 So, before leaving the
armchair-psychological, let me make another suggestion, one that I think is a little
more subtle. Consider some of the utterances Wittgenstein says or implies are
nonsensical:
a) ‘A thing is identical with itself’. This, according to Baker and Hacker, is only
disguised nonsense. ‘A thing is very similar to itself’ is patent nonsense (Analytical
Commentary on the “Philosophical Investigations”, Vol. II, Oxford, Blackwell, 1985,
p. 208).
b) ‘Has this room a length?’ (BB, p. 30); ‘Every rod has a length’ (PI, I, 251).
c) ‘ I know I am in pain’, except in very restricted circumstances (PI, I, 246).
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d) ‘This is here’, except in very restricted circumstances (PI, I, 117).
e) ‘Down with him!’ called out with ‘the most convincing mimicry’ but with no
obvious relevance to the circumstances (OC, 350).
f) ‘I knew all along you were so-and-so’ or ‘Good morning’, said in the middle of a
normal conversation with a friend (OC, 464).
The ordinary person would probably not find the word ‘nonsense’ inappropriate in
any of these cases. So she seems to be in agreement with Wittgenstein. But would she
say that the utterances in (a) and (b) are simply meaningless and that in (c), (d) and (e)
the utterer means nothing by his utterances? This is far from obvious. I have
deliberately chosen examples where one would not speak of falsity (indeed one of
them has the form of a question, another of an exclamation and another of a greeting).
So the colloquial use of ‘nonsense’ to refer to the patently false is not what is in
question. But might not the colloquial use extend much further than this? My
suggestion is that some philosophers have accepted Wittgenstein’s view that certain
utterances are nonsense because they are definitely nonsense in some sense but have
not paused to ask themselves whether what is wrong with them is that they lack
meaning.
The Failure of Traditional Philosophy.
But these explanations only take us so far. It is hard to believe that they fully explain
why philosophers have so easily assumed that the error in question is a possible one.
It is simply not obvious whether it is. Yet the assumption that it is has prevailed, even
among those accused of it. Price certainly made an astute point against Hume, but it
was hardly a stroke of genius. Why aren’t we all asking if there is such a thing as
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philosophical nonsense?46 Here I must confess that I myself had been in philosophy
for twelve years or more before I began to ask.
I can think of one reason for the bias, which fits Twentieth Century philosophy quite
well, namely that a need was felt for the notion of philosophical nonsense because of
the perceived failure of traditional methods to produce agreed solutions to
philosophy’s problems. There arose a feeling that there was something wrong with
the problems themselves and the form this took was a suspicion that they were
nonsensical. (Whether it might have taken some other form is a question I cannot
address here, except to say that I make a suggestion at n. 51.) No doubt the extreme
obscurity of some philosophers’ answers to the problems would have fuelled this
suspicion. We are in the same position today: there are no agreed solutions to
philosophy’s problems. Indeed it has been suggested that they are a residue of
questions with which the human intellect is ill- or unfitted to deal.47 So it remains
possible for some philosophers, notably Wittgensteinians, to claim that there is
something wrong with them. One thing has of course changed: such philosophers
have been active for about a century, yet have conspicuously failed to produce
generally agreed (or, for my money, particularly plausible) dissolutions of any
philosophical problems.
Scepticism will illustrate my suggestion. Anyone who has taught introductory
courses in philosophy will know how easily students of even modest ability grasp the
issues here. The better students will often anticipate one’s argument – making
Descartes’ point that anything one could experience in waking life could also be
dreamed, say, or realising at an early stage that attempts to justify induction are likely
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to prove circular. I myself have sometimes been told, ‘The way you have set the
problem up there is obviously no solution’. So the only way out seems to be not to
raise sceptical doubt in the first place. And if this is not to seem arbitrary or purblind,
one must produce some reason for rejecting the sceptic’s questions. And the only
possibility that philosophers seem to have thought of is that they are nonsensical.
Thus we find them labouring to demonstrate that ‘obviously intelligible possibilities –
such as being a deluded brain in a vat – are really unintelligible’.48
Perhaps I am only saying what is largely obvious and familiar. It is clear, for
example, that verificationism is built round the idea that no genuine problems are
insoluble, no genuine disputes irresolvable. But not everyone may realise that the
same thought occurs overtly in Wittgenstein. Baker and Hacker cite a passage from
the Nachlass where he suggests that philosophical problems would have been solved
long ago, had they not been illusory.49 And does not the famous condemnation of
scepticism in the Tractatus50 embody this way of thinking, though the exact form of
the argument is obscure?
So Pigden’s claim that the main purpose of coercive theories has been to eliminate
one’s opponents’ claims needs to be supplemented by an acknowledgment that in the
Twentieth Century at least they were turned against philosophical problems
themselves and thus against all participants in certain disputes. This makes it a little
clearer why philosophers were so ready to accept that much philosophy is nonsense,
even when this meant having to admit that they themselves had talked nonsense.
20
I doubt whether this sheds much light on the coercive theories of the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries. Philosophers were much more hopeful then about finding
straightforward answers to their problems.51 And there was as yet no sharp distinction
between philosophy and science, so that the rapid inexorable progress of science
would not have been contrasted with the lack of progress in philosophy. There is
perhaps some analogy between the attitude of recent positivistically inclined
philosophers to much previous philosophy and that of progressive thinkers in those
days to scholasticism.52 But on the whole I think some other explanation is needed
why coercive theories met with so little resistance when they first appeared.53
Someone might impatiently suggest that the main reason coercive theories have been
given such an easy ride is that there is more to be said for them than Pigden allows.
Perhaps; but I know of no serious attempt to defend them, to describe what a clear,
indisputable case of someone’s thinking she meant something when she meant
nothing would be like, for example, or to explain how to get to work on someone’s
utterance with a view to criticising it without implicitly assigning it a meaning.
Nevertheless, I believe the later Wittgenstein deserves more attention than Pigden
gives him. Am I suggesting that his work contains answers to the immense problems
confronting anyone using the notion of nonsense polemically? Well, perhaps there
are hints.
The Importance of the Later Wittgenstein.
I believe that Wittgenstein has exerted a mesmeric influence over many philosophers,
which has done more harm than good. I can however suggest several reasons why his
writings require careful consideration before one can reject the coercive use of
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theories54 of meaning with confidence. I would say that most of what can be said in
its defence can be found in the later Wittgenstein and some of his followers – often
nowhere else. I hope that focusing on this (surely fundamental) aspect of his work
will stimulate a more critical, less adulatory, style of exegesis than has been usual
hitherto.
a) I hardly know whether the first reason is substantial enough to be worth giving, but
here it is. I have mentioned the supreme confidence that Wittgensteinians seem to
have that they are talking about the ordinary concept of meaning and not something
narrower. This might strike someone as an argument of sorts that they are right. If
they were simply misusing the word ‘meaning’, it might be suggested, would they not
occasionally have a dim awareness of this?
b) The later Wittgenstein clearly acknowledges that the problematic locutions are
produced by people: they do not just occur. Gone is the resolute anti-psychologism of
the Tractatus. The psychology of philosophical error is given centre stage.
Wittgenstein deserves credit for this, whatever might be said of his particular
diagnoses. After all, the positivists were almost as unhelpful as the early Wittgenstein
in this respect. Pigden doubts the wisdom of Frege’s attempt to expel psychologism
from the theory of meaning.55 Whether or not he is right, surely no one would
maintain that psychological considerations should or could be expelled from the
theory of error about meaning – or about anything else!
c) Most of the suggestions about how someone could be mistaken in thinking he
meant anything56 do in fact come from the later Wittgenstein. The positivists made
22
one or two57, but what is surprising – especially if coercive theories go back to
Hobbes – is how late in the day it was that anyone attempted to explain how the error
is possible. However belatedly, the author of the Tractatus realised the need to
explain how someone could be unaware ‘that he had failed to give a meaning to
certain signs in his propositions’.58 Pigden hasn’t much to say about this question.
But he has a reasonable excuse. He is concerned to stress the weakness of the case for
dismissing philosophical utterances as nonsense and could say that only when we
have good grounds for suspecting that something is nonsense need we concern
ourselves with how it could be taken for sense.
d) I myself59 use Wittgenstein’s claims about what meaning is not (an experience, a
process, a state, an activity, indeed any sort of accompaniment to an utterance) to
construct an argument that a person is not necessarily the final authority on whether
he means anything. Very briefly, anything introspectible that accompanies genuinely
meaningful speech could also accompany words uttered without meaning (and vice
versa). I do not find this argument stated explicitly in Wittgenstein60 but, since it is
based on his writings, this gives them an additional importance.
e) Might the piecemeal approach of the later Wittgenstein succeed where the
application of general criteria of meaningfulness, as in verificationism, failed? It
seems at least a possibility that, by closely attending to an utterance of an individual
philosopher, one might be able to show that nothing was meant in that particular case.
I suspect though that, even if one could and should dispense with general criteria and
theories of meaningfulness61, some principles must guide one. Are not such
principles discernible in the later Wittgenstein?
23
f) Pigden is somewhat dismissive of the therapeutic aspirations of the later
Wittgenstein and his followers.62 In one respect this is justified. No one has ever
really tried to carry out the therapeutic programme, though lip-service to it is
common.63 Most Wittgensteinians try to refute those they see as opponents, just as
philosophers have always done. But we surely need to take seriously the possibility
that a cooperative investigation by those perplexed by philosophical difficulties and
Wittgensteinians could show that the difficulties arise from taking nonsense for
sense.64 Certainly the resulting improvement in philosophical manners would be
welcome.
g) Recently some Wittgensteinians65 have made a serious attempt to be rigorous about
nonsense, in particular to avoid treating it as an inferior kind of sense. Their guiding
principle might be said to be: ‘When a sentence is called senseless, it is not as it were
its sense that is senseless’.66 What surprises me is that, so far as I know, this has not
led them to question the existence and detectability of philosophical nonsense. They
still believe there is some way of showing that behind a philosopher’s utterance there
lies no meaning whatsoever. But, after reading them, I still don’t see how they think
this is to be done. Nevertheless, the increased rigour can only be salutary.
Can a Theory of Meaning be Coercive without being Revisionary?
I said at the outset that I would not assume that theories of meaning that are used to
condemn the utterances of philosophers as nonsense were deliberately concocted with
this purpose in mind. But of course the real question is not about motivation but
about whether theories (accounts, views) of meaning that are used in this way could
24
also be correct theories (accounts, views) of our ordinary, unmodified, everyday
concept of meaning. The choice of the word ‘coercive’ to characterise them, though
not blatantly question-begging, does perhaps suggest that they could not. (I can’t
imagine a Wittgensteinian, for example, being happy with it and the reader may have
detected a certain tension in my own employment of the word.) The word ‘polemical’
would not be quite right either, since it would exclude the therapeutic use of the
notion of philosophical nonsense. Perhaps the word ‘critical’ is sufficiently neutral to
be acceptable to all.
But, whatever the best choice of terminology here, it is clear that Pigden has shown
that the onus is on those philosophers who persist in claiming to diagnose the
production of philosophical nonsense to show that the ordinary concept of meaning
really does allow for the possibility that someone might think he means something by
an utterance when he means nothing. If they are able to describe an indisputable case
of such an error – even if it does not involve what would normally be thought of as a
philosophical question or thesis – this will be a significant achievement. Might not
some, even most, philosophers be victims of errors of that kind?
I am far from confident that any attempt to vindicate the notion of philosophical
nonsense in this way would be successful or that following up the various
Wittgensteinian ideas mentioned in the last section would be any more so. If it should
turn out that the attribution of meaning – the ordinary concept of meaning, not some
philosopher’s invention – is a precondition of any intellectual engagement with the
utterances of another, would that be so surprising?
25
Notes.
1. Logique et Analyse, 210 (2010), pp. 151-84.
2. Op. cit., p. 156.
3. Op. cit., p. 157.
4. Op. cit., p. 179.
5. Op. cit., p. 157. He gives as an example of a disinterested theory of meaning that in
M. Devitt and K. Sterelny, 1999, Language and Reality, 2nd edn., Oxford: Blackwell.
6. P. T. Geach finds what looks like an example in Aristotle, though he does not think
it rises much above the level of mere abuse. (Providence and Evil, 1977, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, p. 64.) Intriguingly, he suggests that it is part of
‘traditional Christian doctrine’ that one consequence of Original Sin is our tendency
to produce philosophical nonsense. (Op. cit., p. 65) He does not say how far back
this idea goes. Clearly there is room for further research here.
7. Pigden, op. cit., pp. 159-60.
8. Op. cit., p. 164.
9. Op. cit., p. 165.
10. Ryle is clearly what Pigden would call a coercive theorist. His concept of a
category mistake is of a species of philosophical nonsense. I am less sure about
Austin.
11. Pigden does not consider the relationship between unverifiability,
meaninglessness and being neither true nor false, which is surely important for
assessing Dummett’s verificationism. This does not surprise me. I find most
discussions of the issue opaque, to put it mildly. For a reasonably clear introduction
26
to the problems here see Bede Rundle, Wittgenstein and Contemporary Philosophy of
Language, Blackwell, Oxford, 1990, Chapters XI and XII, pp. 228-231 especially.
12. Op. cit., p. 167.
13. Op. cit., pp. 172-73. This is not to say that Pigden considers it unimportant.
Indeed a large part of the article is concerned with moral and political criticisms of
coercive theories, which he sees as fundamentally illiberal and authoritarian.
14. Op. cit., p. 167.
15. Op. cit., pp. 168-72.
16. Op. cit., pp. 169-70.
17. This is what I (in Do Philosophers Talk Nonsense? – An Inquiry Into The
Possibility Of Illusions Of Meaning, 2005, revised edition 2013, New Romney: Teller
Press, pp. 36-39, 106-20) see as the most serious problem with the coercive use of
notions of meaning and meaninglessness.
18. Pigden, op. cit., p. 173.
19. Op. cit., pp.162, 173-74.
20. The importance of this concession will become clearer when we consider
argument (d). There is in any case a possible defence against the self-condemnation
argument (apart from that of re-inventing the principle as a methodological
recommendation). Might not the positivists, at one period at least, have claimed that
the verification principle was analytic? After all, the earliest versions of the principle
equated the meaning of a proposition with the method of its verification.
21. Pigden, op. cit., p. 175.
22. Op. cit., p. 174; L. Wittgenstein, 1961, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans.
Pears and McGuinness, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 6.54.
27
23. For example, James Conant, ‘Elucidation and Nonsense in Frege and Early
Wittgenstein’ in A. Crary and R. Read, The New Wittgenstein, 2000, London:
Routledge, pp. 174-217. I should say that I am far from convinced by this
‘interpretation’ of the Tractatus, even though its proponents all seem to favour the
rigorous conception of nonsense I mention later, with which I do sympathise.
24. Pigden, op. cit., p. 176.
25. The reference to Samuel Johnson might seem ill-advised, since he is generally
considered to have misunderstood Berkeley. If this sounds pedantic, let me add that
the Johnson who does deserve honourable mention here is W.E. Johnson – ‘If I say a
sentence has meaning for me no one has the right to say it is senseless’ (quoted in
Pigden, op. cit., p. 165). A little dogmatic perhaps, but if he is wrong, we need to
know why.
26. Pigden, op. cit., p. 177.
27. Op. cit., pp. 175-76. I once asked a visiting speaker, a Wittgensteinian, a question
(about the origin of language, I think) and was told, ‘You can’t ask that’. I did not, I
am ashamed to admit, have the presence of mind to respond, ‘I just did’.
28. Op. cit., p. 178.
29. Op. cit., pp. 178-79.
30. Op. cit., p. 179.
31. Op. cit., p. 179.
32. Op. cit., pp. 165-67; 180. In ‘Two Dogmatists’, Inquiry, 30 (1987), he attacks the
coercive use of theories of meaning and specifically says (p. 191, n. 24) that he is not
accusing any individual philosopher of intellectual chicanery; rather he is suggesting
that the whole tradition is morally suspect.
28
1. 33. Think too of ‘Wittgensteinian fideism’ (see the article so titled by Kai
Nielsen, Philosophy, 42 (1967)). This is the view that only participants in
religious ‘language-games’ and ‘forms of life’ can understand religion well
enough to talk sense about it. True, it appeared several decades after logical
positivism, but it is a belligerent attitude of long standing to which I wish to
draw attention. ‘Wittgensteinian fideism’ can of course be seen as an attempt
to turn the tables on positivistic critics of religion.
34. Scott Soames (Analytical Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, Vol. I, The Dawn
of Analysis, 2003, Princeton: Princeton University Press) gives a balanced account.
He sees them as engaged in honest self-criticism, not as the ideologues they are often
portrayed as being.
35. Perhaps some of them would have second thoughts if they did.
36. An interesting question for philosophers, surely, even if they were not in the habit
of accusing each other of talking nonsense.
37. O. Hanfling, Logical Positivism, 1981, Oxford: Blackwell, p. 32.
38. Dearden, op. cit., pp. 71.
39. L. Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books, ed. Rhees, 1958, Oxford: Blackwell,
p. 67.
40. L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. Anscombe, 3rd edition, 2001,
I, 288.
41. Geach, op. cit., p. 64.
42. Pigden, op. cit., p. 160.
43. Incidentally, is Pigden right to say (op. cit., p. 170) that ‘unintelligible’ is more
polite than ‘meaningless’?
29
44. This suggestion will only be relevant to the easy acceptance of coercive theories
in, say, the Eighteenth Century if there were idioms current then that could have
influenced philosophers in the way that I am suggesting certain colloquial usages may
do today.
45. If I do sound patronising, I would plead that I am scarcely more so than some
philosophers who have maintained that ordinary idioms can mislead us into talking
nonsense. For example, Norman Malcolm suggests that the idioms ‘Am I dreaming?’
and ‘I must be dreaming’ can help to mislead us into thinking it makes sense to
wonder whether one is dreaming now and to ask how one can tell that one is not
(Dreaming, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1959, pp. 116-17).
46. Some time ago Thomas Nagel (Mortal Questions, 1979, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, p. x) wondered whether philosophers might be a little too worried
about the danger of talking nonsense, but he did not ask whether they should be a
little more worried about whether the danger existed.
47. C. McGinn, Problems in Philosophy – The Limits of Inquiry, 1993, Oxford:
Blackwell.
48. Pigden, op. cit., p. 157 n. 10.
49. G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning,
Oxford: Blackwell, p. 486.
50. L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.51.
51. Pigden (op. cit., p. 163) seems unsure whether Kant is a coercive theorist of
meaning. If he is, he is probably the earliest philosopher who can plausibly be
regarded as turning a coercive theory of meaning on philosophy’s traditional
problems. If he is not, then his critique of speculative metaphysics suggests that it is
30
possible to reject philosophical questions other than by stigmatising them as
meaningless.
52. Op. cit., pp. 160-62.,
53. It is possible of course that there were other now forgotten, perhaps unrecorded,
instances of the Price-Watts response.
54. Perhaps (in view of PI, I, 109) when discussing the later Wittgenstein one should
really speak of a ‘view’ or ‘account’ of meaning, rather than of a ‘theory’. I doubt
whether much turns on this – at least when assessing the coercive employment of the
notion of meaning(fulness).
55. Op. cit., p. 163.
56. I (op. cit., pp. 78-96) list about ten. I find none of them satisfactory. But see (d).
57. Carnap’s essay ‘The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of
Language’, reprinted in Logical Positivism, ed. A. J. Ayer, Greenwood Press, 1959,
certainly deserves mention in this connexion.
58. L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.53.
59. Dearden, op. cit., pp. 97-105.
60. I also warn against taking the argument as showing too much. It does not show
how anyone else could be in a better position than I am to say whether I mean
anything (op. cit., pp. 106-120).
61. Pigden (op. cit., p. 166) complains that the later Wittgenstein’s observations about
meaning, including his references to use, do not amount to a theory. Some
Wittgensteinians would consider that a merit. See, for example, Stephen Mulhall,
Wittgenstein’s Private Language, 2007, Oxford: O. U. P., pp.1-16.
62. Op. cit., p. 156.
31
63. What of John Wisdom? Well, although he developed Wittgenstein’s idea of
therapeutic philosophy (J. Wisdom, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, 1953, Oxford:
Blackwell), he abandoned the coercive use of the notion of nonsense, finding insight
in virtually every philosophical question and thesis. He must be one of the most
uncoercive philosophers ever.
64. Perhaps the best discussion of the therapeutic tendencies in Wittgenstein is in
Gordon Baker’s Wittgenstein’s Method – Neglected Aspects, ed. Katherine Morris,
2006, Oxford: Blackwell (Chapters 8-10). He makes it clear that there is no ready-
made therapeutic technique that can simply be lifted out of Wittgenstein’s later work.
65. E.g. many of the contributors to Crary and Read, op. cit.
66. L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, I, 500.