The students in my university course also completed nonsense exercises as part of their practice, which awakened unknown cognitive and creative powers of their minds. The exercises I designed for my courses are reprinted throughout Chapter 2 in this book for your own practice. By completing them, you will find that you are able to think logically and creatively about questions that previously eluded reason, and you will attain a revolutionary new understanding of the mysteries of the next life.
Let’s begin.
[contents]
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1. Hume, Essays and Treatises on Various Subjects, 226, 229.
Chapter 1
The Nature of Nonsense
[Nonsense] is not a vacuity of sense; it is a parody of sense, and that is the sense of it.
T. S. Eliot
Nonsense is spoken, written, or signed language that is unintelligible because it is meaningless. That is the primary meaning of the term as it appears in standard dictionaries. Nonsense, to be nonsense, must be language, it must be unintelligible, and it must be meaningless. All three are necessary to fit the definition.
Nonsense is, first, language. We should not be misled by the common expression “Stop your nonsense!” Saying “Stop your nonsense!” signals the speaker’s strong disapproval of another person’s nonverbal, extralinguistic behavior. Nonverbal behavior, since it is not language, is not nonsense in the dictionary meaning of the term. For example, admonishing subordinates for their nonverbal actions and extralinguistic misbehavior is only a secondary, extended use of the word nonsense.
Nonsense is, secondly, unintelligible. Saying that something is unintelligible means that it cannot be comprehended by the intellect; in other words, something that is unintelligible is beyond the reach of the intellectual or rational mind. We cannot wrap our minds around something that is unintelligible. For language to be nonsense, then, it must be unintelligible.
Sometimes people say that something is unintelligible because they personally cannot comprehend it. People who cannot speak Chinese, for example, might sometimes say that Chinese is unintelligible. By saying that, though, they are acknowledging a personal limitation: specifically, an inability to speak Chinese. Generally they know full well that Chinese is a meaningful language that is intelligible to the people who speak it.
People may sometimes talk loosely and say, for example, that the writing in an old, faded letter is unintelligible. By saying that, they would mean only that time obliterated so much of the original writing that the message cannot be recovered. Or they might mean that the writer’s penmanship is so terrible that the writing is illegible and the message unreadable. Generally, though, they would assume that there was a meaningful message in the letter when the writer originally wrote it.
Nonsense, however, is language that is unintelligible because it is, thirdly, meaningless. In other words, nonsense is language that does not make sense because the words or sentences do not fit together to convey a coherent meaning. In sum, then, nonsense is meaningless, unintelligible language.
Now, I want to make something crystal clear from the very beginning about that word meaningless. Specifically, nonsense is meaningless only in the context of its linguistic meaning, for nonsense is deeply meaningful to people in a multitude of ways. Nonsense plays important roles in children’s literature, music, psychology, religion, and the spiritual life. This book is full of instances of the rich meanings nonsense has for us in those dimensions of our lives.
Nonsense lacks linguistic meaning, to be sure, but a linguistic meaning is something we can look up in a dictionary. The other rich meanings nonsense has for us are found in our hearts and minds and souls.
Therefore, whenever I say that nonsense is meaningless, I am referring only to its lack of a linguistic dictionary meaning. Throughout this book, we will celebrate how meaningful nonsense is in our lives, while fully understanding it is devoid of linguistic meaning.
Nonsense can be deliberate or involuntary. People sometimes write or talk nonsense on purpose. They include, for example, nonsense poets or other writers who create nonsense as an art form. Those writers work deliberately and diligently to produce entertaining or aesthetically pleasing works that are meaningless and unintelligible.
People also sometimes deliberately talk nonsense for fraud or imposture. In 2014 a fake sign language interpreter stood beside President Obama on the speakers’ platform at the memorial for Nelson Mandela. As the president and other dignitaries spoke, the impostor flapped his arms and gesticulated wildly in what was supposedly sign language for the deaf, yet deaf people who watched could not make sense of what the sign language interpreter was saying. The impostor’s entire “interpretation” was meaningless nonsense.
An expert on sign language said that the impostor’s hand positions were meaningless. The expert also pointed out that the impostor did not “use facial expressions, head movements, shoulder-raising or other body language considered integral elements of signing.” Authorities were unable to determine how the fake interpreter got through security to talk nonsense next to the president of the United States.
Other times people talk nonsense involuntarily. That is, they talk nonsense without intending to; in other words, they sometimes lapse unknowingly into saying something that is meaningless and unintelligible. For example, people sometimes talk nonsense involuntarily because of a certain medical or psychological condition. Specifically, people who are psychotic, delirious, intoxicated, asleep, or having a stroke or a migraine sometimes talk unintelligible nonsense involuntarily.
People sometimes talk nonsense without intending to simply because of a conceptual confusion. That is, they unwittingly get concepts mixed up, and hence, they say something that is meaningless and unintelligible. Nonsense that comes from conceptual confusion occurs in people from all walks of life. For example, a highly successful coach once said to his team, “You guys line up alphabetically by height.”
Nonsense that results from inadvertent conceptual confusion is of particular interest to analytic philosophers. Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Gilbert Ryle were among early analytic philosophers who argued that many traditional philosophical problems are meaningless, unintelligible nonsense. That was the central tenet of analytic philosophy.
Now, people who talk nonsense because of a physical or mental illness are often in a clouded state of consciousness. People who talk nonsense when they are half asleep, delirious, or crazy, for example, are not fully alert or may be only semiconscious. They may talk nonsense from within a strange dreamlike state in which they are unable to draw distinctions; in that state they cannot think logically or coherently.
In contrast, people who are working on philosophical problems are typically fully alert and in a lucid state of consciousness. Philosophical questions are difficult and tricky to begin with, though, and it is easy for even careful, logical thinkers to get confused. When their conceptual confusions are pointed out to them, they usually realize that they were talking nonsense and adjust their thinking. In contrast, delirious, intoxicated, or psychotic patients cannot comprehend that they are talking nonsense, nor can they adjust their thinking.