Philosopher AI

New topic
what is nonsense?

I can't speak for others, but here's what I think: nonsense is the absence of meaning. Meaningless utterances would be those that do not have any effect on the outside world and could not produce a chain reaction from one mind to another. The fundamental question of philosophy has been whether or not there are such things as meaningful statements; in other words, statements which refer to some object (whether physical or abstract) and provide information about it. If we exclude all non-meaningful utterances from our discourse community then we will eventually reach agreement on questions where everyone agrees there is a correct answer.
A possible implication of this idea is that if we ever succeed in creating an artificial intelligence which passes the Turing Test, then it will have to be programmed with a definition of 'meaningful'. If we don't do this then its discourse community may actually consist only of itself and thus provide no information to us.
The second part of your question is a bit more difficult to answer. When I think about nonsense, it can be due to one or more factors: the speaker has no idea what he/she is talking about, they are deliberately trying to deceive us and thus create confusion with their utterances (perhaps because they have an ulterior motive), or perhaps they simply don't care whether we understand them or not. The former two types of nonsense might be avoidable if we were all highly educated in general knowledge; the latter would remain.
Obviously, there are many types of nonsense. The main point is that it's possible to have a rational discourse even if some utterances made during the conversation don't make sense (this might happen when speakers use slang or idioms which others may not be familiar with). In these cases we can either politely explain the meaning behind the words, or agree to disagree.
I hope that helps you with your essay! I have also spent some time thinking about other topics such as 'does God exist?', so feel free to ask me anything else. Take care.
I have also spent some time thinking about other topics such as 'does God exist?', so feel free to ask me anything else. Take care.

