Nonsense and Absurdity

[Jarhyn]

... Depends on which "earth", and how it is "flat".

Exactly. William James "Pragmatism" "Lecture II What Pragmatism Means".

... Nonsense only discusses validity of construction and compile-time errors of speech.

Perfect analogy! Love it.

Absurdity only discusses implausibility of results, and is at best a runtime check or a runtime assertion on active natural language.

I think you said this better in the original post. I didn't get the point until you said,

When you wish to describe something as "nonsense" and instead use the phrase "absurdity" you are explicitly stating that the thing CAN exist but you are incredulous about that existence. This is, in fact, argument from incredulity, and so an argument from ignorance.

Claims of absurdity may be answered with examples and evidence.
Claims of nonsense can only be answered through proof of sensibility and of noncontradiction under non-trivializing axiom.
People who make this fundamental error weaken their own arguments.

If "absurdity" is used to express incredulity, then you are spot on, in that it offers no argument.

I suspect that most of us use "absurd" and "nonsense" as synonyms. The OED supports this in some ways but has this interesting footnote to its definition of nonsense:

"nonsense A. n. I. Senses relating to absence of rationality or meaning. 1. a. That which is not sense; absurd or meaningless words or ideas.
Esp. in recent linguistic use often spelt non-sense to avoid connotations of absurdity."

And you apparently have a better understanding of that footnote than I do.

(An interesting aside is that in the etymology of "absurd" they list that it was originally used in Latin for music that is out of tune and that the "surd" originally meant "deaf". But both morphed into uses that indicated irrational. And "nonsense" moved in the same direction from its original meaning of not sensed by the 5 senses or by feeling.)

So, I haven't read those things. I don't even generally consult dictionaries.

Mostly, my understanding comes from a strong reading of Albert Camus in understanding absurdity, and literally mashing a NON up against SENSE as in "to make sense" for shake an idea out of the intersection of those two concepts.

I rediscover a lot of words that way, and perhaps invent the occasional new word, though I'm not exactly sure you could call constructive linguistics of adding newer modifiers to old words "inventing new words".

At any rate, I try to understand and differentiate on apparent synonyms more than most, since synonymousness? synonymity? Is usually a subtle lie, and usually the existence of such two words to say the same thing say that same thing but of different contexts, or which are actually divisible entirely, like "nonsense" and "absurdity".

Occasionally, I find synonymity hiding between words that might perhaps not be thought of as such. Like between synonymity and cohomology, I think? I'll have to look at those two more. Or between "will" and "Algorighm". That one actually surprised me.

 

[steve_bank]

'A pragmatic approach to pragmatism'.

Would that be absurd or nonsense.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

'A pragmatic approach to pragmatism'.

Would that be absurd or nonsense.

Neither. It would be practical advice.

 

[Jarhyn]

'A pragmatic approach to pragmatism'.

Would that be absurd or nonsense.

Neither. It would be practical advice.

"Would that be absurd or nonsense." Is nonsense though, clearly, though is very close to being able to make sense. It is so close that we just assume the closest sensible thing to the nonsense.

But in reality this contains a syntax error wherein the would confuses the period and the period confuses the would.

 

[steve_bank]

'It is nonsense but close to making sense'. Is this nonsense or absurd.

Biblical literalists make sense out nonsense all the time. So do followers of Nostradamus and Edgar Cayce.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

'A pragmatic approach to pragmatism'.

Would that be absurd or nonsense.

Neither. It would be practical advice.

"Would that be absurd or nonsense." Is nonsense though, clearly, though is very close to being able to make sense. It is so close that we just assume the closest sensible thing to the nonsense.

But in reality this contains a syntax error wherein the would confuses the period and the period confuses the would.

It is perfectly sensible. One would want to use pragmatism, and any other philosophical method, in a practical fashion. Like any other concept, it can theoretically be misused.

 

[Jarhyn]

'It is nonsense but close to making sense'. Is this nonsense or absurd.

Biblical literalists make sense out nonsense all the time. So do followers of Nostradamus and Edgar Cayce.

Well, there are a lot of different kinds of errors that exist in speech.

if (a=b);
{
  Do_stuff();
}

Is a silly absurdity assuming a language such as C, but it is not nonsense.

if a=b;
  do_stuff;

Is nonsense assuming C: "if" requires a provision of a thing evaluable as a boolean for the argument of the structure to be located in a closed paranthesis.

'A pragmatic approach to pragmatism'.

Would that be absurd or nonsense.

Neither. It would be practical advice.

"Would that be absurd or nonsense." Is nonsense though, clearly, though is very close to being able to make sense. It is so close that we just assume the closest sensible thing to the nonsense.

But in reality this contains a syntax error wherein the would confuses the period and the period confuses the would.

It is perfectly sensible. One would want to use pragmatism, and any other philosophical method, in a practical fashion. Like any other concept, it can theoretically be misused.

Well, the idea of pragmatism is that there are sensible statements that are structured with very similar token arrangements.

It no more makes the original construction not nonsense; it does mean we can make sense out of nonsense things, and that "close to being able to make sense" is a sensible idea.

I will grant that it's absurd, though, only insofar as I am, generally speaking, an absurdist.

 

[steve_bank]

if (a = b) then ( a != b) || do not pass go

& y! ?