1

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

3

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

10

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.

13

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

14

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).

17

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

18

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

19

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

21

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.

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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.

32