Wittgenstein and the Nonsense Predicament

Abstract

A single philosophical problem is developed, which will be called the nonsense predicament. The predicament arises because an argument from nonsense—which is an argument that aims to establish that some, or all, philosophical sentences are nonsense—cannot establish its conclusion, because of what will be called the nonsense paradox. This paradox has three parts, which establish that the argument from nonsense leads to (i) a regress, (ii) a contradiction, and (iii) the ineffability of nonsense. Insisting on the argument in the face of this paradox leads to the fallacy that one insists on the sense of nonsense. It is argued that this predicament is solvable only by rejecting the argument in the first place.