Sessão 11 | Seminários de Investigação MLAG 2022/2023
From: 2023-04-26 To:2023-04-26
Thematic Line
Modern & Contemporary Philosophy
Research Group
Mind, Language & Action
Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto
Sessão 11
The Pretense Theory of Understanding Nonsense
| Krystian Bogucki (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences - Warsaw, Poland)
Abstract: 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 talk, I propose a pretence theory of understanding nonsense to explain this riddle. Moreover, I discuss alternative frameworks that are insufficient to solve the riddle of understanding nonsense. Firstly, I point out the shortcomings of Manish Oza’s (2022) account of nonsense. Secondly, I show that L. J. Keller and J. A. Keller’s (2021) and Recanati’s (1997) positions, which attempt to solve the riddle of understanding nonsense by means the language of thought hypothesis, are not satisfactory.
Seminários de Investigação MLAG 2022/2023: https://ifilosofia.up.pt/activities/seminarios-de-investigacao-mlag-2022-2023
Organização:
André Silva
Avelino Costa
Daniel Pires Nunes
João Faria e Silva
José Xarez
Marcondes Rocha Carvalho
Maria Maia
Rafael Padilha
Raul Vasques
Ricardo Serrado
Sâmara Costa
(Estudantes de mestrado e doutoramento de Filosofia da FLUP)
Mind, Language and Action Group (MLAG)
Instituto de Filosofia da Universidade do Porto – FIL/00502
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)