The Moon is Made of Cheese
Dialogs, Wittgenstein June 11th, 2007What, the moon is not made of cheese?! 
On a serious note though, this is Wittgenstein’s deeper point beyond simple linguistics. There are (in a narrow definition) two types of language, sense and nonsense.
Sense language corresponds with sense-data, including specifically empirical forms of knowledge (I guess that covers your genre).
Sense language is that which we also know as rational and logical language. In other words it observes and follows extremely strict rules of verification and falsifiability and logical objectivity. Just think about the analytic/synthetic truth split.
All bachelors are unmarried (always true)/all bachelors are happy (could be but not necessarily true).
Non-Sense language (to give it it’s correct hyphenation) is types of language that do not necessarily conform to the strict rules of sense-language.
But although it denies the possibility that non-sense can be analytically true (as far as we know by sense-language rules) it does not exclude the possibility that non-sense can be synthetically true. As an example (Pascals simple formula) God may or may not exist (is true as stated). However I am not suggesting that non-sense is nonsensical language, or that it is simply conceptual risk-taking. For as the later Wittgenstein states: words are tools and their ‘full’ meaning (which goes beyond naming picture-ideas) is found within the context (language game) that it is used.
As a simple example: “NO”
Can be a command, a situationally emotive response, a simple inference of a negative, and so on.
A complex example, “God is love” is (in certain language games) not a description (as in ‘the entity that we call God is an embodiment/expression/synonym et al of loving forms of behaviour’) but is a rule for how the word “God” is to be used. (Specific here of course to the Christian language game as opposed to the Taliban Islamic language game). God (as is understood by the Christian theistic tradition is synonymous with the ideal of agape the type of sacrificial love characterised in the maxim ‘turn the other cheek’).
Incidentally a psycholinguistic game that probably brings us closer together is Wittgensteins later ideal that words do not always have a meaning of themselves, but it is the context in which they are spoken that applies a reason to them. Words are tools. Words are subject to the rules of the language games that are being played.
As a cheese-obsessed mouse with a precocious talent for analytical philosophy and for expressing my observations of the world around me, is it not conceivably possible that in my mousey language games the picture-idea represented by the word “cheese” is factually synonymous with the material structure of the moon (that you human non-cheese-obsessed creatures have given an alternative word-symbol for the picture-idea of the moon)?
June 11th, 2007 at 8:39 am
I don’t see how “The Moon is Made of Cheese” has any connection to Non-Sense language… It has a particular “truth value” in early Wittgenstein. In later Wittgenstein, the fact we agree in a particular langauge game does not necessarily reflect the real nature of the moon. Can you elaborate?
AC1
June 11th, 2007 at 11:58 am
Well first of all the mouse philosopher has a number of terminologocial differences, the material that constitutes the moon is called ‘cheese’. The celestial sky in which the ‘cheese’ hangs is known as the ‘fridge’…and so on.
Yes there is a particular ‘truth-value’ in that the same un-named or pre-named entities exist and function in their natural way irrespective of what we call the moon.
The problem occurs when the analytical mouse tries to talk to Marilyn Monroe (who having had her discussion with Einstein is quite satisfied now on her knowledge of the moon). Mouse says “look at that big ball of cheese up there in the fridge.”
Clearly this is non-sense language to someone who does not know that there is a ‘truth-value’ in the terminology that is being used. Only through a system of verification and translation can this terminological difference be overcome and the non-sense be rendered sensible.
This is the difference between ‘non-sense’ (with the hyphenation as I used it) and ‘nonsense’ or as Wittgenstein also called it ‘unsense’ or ‘not-sense’.
Non-Sense can be rendered intelligible with reference to its relevant language game. Unsense is unintelligible.
“Pigs gorban toves” is unintelligible because the ‘words’ have no meaning and the sentence is rendered unsensical.
If the non-sense words could be translated into sensical ones then a certain sense could be found. But the more non-sensical words there are in a sentence, the less likely it is that sentence can be found to have any sense.
The analytic critique of religion for example is not interested in defining God, but about understanding the sentences in which that word is used. For example an analytic philosopher will argue that a sentence such as ‘God exists’ is nonsense. This does not mean God does not exists, it means the framing of the statement is wrong. Equally ‘God does not exist’ is nonsensical as is ‘I do not know if God exists’.
Wittgenstein states that theists/atheists/agnostics do not know what they are talking about, their statements are meaningless sounds or marks.
Another example “God is Father” is nonsense. It is not a matter of genitals, it is not just a social role. The question the analytic philosopher asks is ‘what makes God male or female’. The self contained response is, this is not a question it is a nonsense. It is like asking is Lake Huron female?
The sounds all sound like words but the structure in which they are found is meaningless. It is “language on a holiday”.
June 11th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
The ‘Real Nature’ of the moon is of no importance to analytical philosophers.
Analytical philosophy does not talk about the world direclty anymore, but about statements concerning the world. The immediate subject matter therefore of analytical philosophy is not ‘reality’ but language.
The explicit exploration of the facts of the world is deliberately left to disciplines which specialize in the collection of empirical data, the natural and social sciences, or to any other field where scientists base theories on empirical observation. Philosophy, by contrast, confines itself to the painstaking clarification of concepts, and it does so through the logical and semantic analysis of the linguistic signs and structures through which we communicate about reality and facts.
This is what he meant by “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”.
Metaphysics is non-sense and cannot be evaluated by the rules of the logic game. Non-sense is meant to mean that it is not a part of the sense game (natural sciences).