Copyright (C) 2019 Dennis Joe Darland
One common explanation of Wittgenstein’s objection to Russell’s multiple relation theory of belief was that Russell’s theory did not prevent the belief of nonsense. However, I believe belief of nonsense to be possible. There are examples, such as Steven Stich gives in From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science, that illustrate this. He gives an example (he says true example) of a Mrs. T (pp. 54-56). Mrs. T had been interested in history. But she is deteriorating. She still asserts firmly, when asked, that President William McKinley was assassinated. However, she does not remember if he is dead or alive, or what ‘dead’ or ‘assassination’ mean. It seems (using my analysis – P), relation of the words involved to her ideas of the words still hold. And a relation holds between her ideas of the words. However the (upon my analysis – S) relation does not hold between her ideas and their objects.
Note: I am denying we need to be acquainted with the objects of belief.
Looking at a previous example:
… it may be that believes(Quine, iPlanet, iJupiter)
Quine would express this as says(Quine, “Planet”, “Jupiter”)
Quine would be expressing his belief if
[for Quine]
“Planet” P i”Is_a_Planet”
“Jupiter” P i”Jupiter”
i”Is_a_Planet” R iPlanet
i”Jupiter” R iJupiter
The belief would be true if, in addition.
iPlanet S Planet
iJupiter S Jupiter
and
Planet(Jupiter)
In this example, Quines belief would not be nonsense (but would be false), if the S relation “iJupiter S Jupiter” did not hold.
But would it make sense if the S relation “iPlanet S Planet” did not hold?
Well, it seems we can only require “(E x) (iPlanet S x)” – i.e he means something by his idea.
It would seem if this were not true, the belief would be not just false, but be nonsense!
In the case of Mrs. T, it seems she has no meaning to her ideas or words.
So for Mrs. T, “~ (E x) (iAssassination S x)
Now, it seems not so severe a problem that:
“~ (E x) (iMcKinley S McKinley)”
It seems we can contemplate the non-existence of referents of nouns easier than non-meaning of verbs.
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Another possible case is Bertrand Russell’s struggle with paradoxes. What were the thoughts he had while struggling with he paradoxes. Did he have non-sense beliefs as he contemplated solutions (that did not work out)? Also, I have heard that several editions of Copi’s Symbolic Logic were inconsistent. What was he thinking?
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If we could not believe nonsense, would it not be easy to recognize nonsense?
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