Organon F

Volume 30, November 2023, Issue 4, Pages 372–411

ISSN 2585-7150 (online) ISSN 1335-0668 (print)

Typically, if I understand a sentence, then it expresses a proposition that I entertain. Nonsensical sentences don’t express propositions, but there are contexts in which we talk about understanding nonsensical sentences. For example, we accept various kinds of semantically defective sentences in fiction, philosophy, and everyday life. Furthermore, it is a standard assumption that if a sentence is nonsensical, then it makes no sense to say that it implies anything or is implied by other sentences. Semantically uninterpreted sentences don’t have logical characteristics. Hence, the riddle of understanding nonsense arises. We seem to use nonsensical sentences in reasoning, thinking, judging, and drawing conclusions, but they convey no propositions, which are the vehicles of their semantic properties. In this article, I propose the pretence theory of understanding nonsense to explain the riddle of understanding nonsense, and discuss alternative frameworks that are insufficient to solve it.

Nonsense; pretence; understanding, fiction, category mistakes.

Author

Krystian Bogucki

Affiliation

Polish Academy of Sciences

Address

Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Nowy Świat 72, 00-330 Warsaw, Poland

E-mail

krystian.bogucki@ifispan.edu.pl 

Received

4 May 2023

Revised

13 December 2023

Accepted

16 December 2023

Publishers

Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences

Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences

APA

Bogucki, K. (2023). The Riddle of Understanding Nonsense. Organon F, 30(4), 372–411. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2023.30405

Chicago

Bogucki, Krystian . 2023. "The Riddle of Understanding Nonsense." Organon F 30 (4): 372–411. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2023.30405

Harvard

Bogucki, K. (2023). The Riddle of Understanding Nonsense. Organon F, 30(4), pp. 372–411. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2023.30405

© Krystian Bogucki

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