Garbage and “Garbage”

Garbage and “Garbage”

Biden has a ready and plausible answer to criticism of his “garbage” comment, viz. the use-mention distinction. He was quoting someone else’s use of the word not using it himself non-quotationally. He was enclosing it in what philosophers call scare-quotes. We could paraphrase him thus: “The only so called ‘garbage’ here are Trump’s supporters”. He is not the one describing people as “garbage”; he is picking up on someone else’s use of that word. He would prefer to say “misguided people” or “unethical people”, but he wants to refer back to another person’s despicable use of this word. As to the question of whether he was condemning Trump voters en masse, the answer is that he was not: he meant to refer to the people at the rally and elsewhere who defend and enable Trump’s worst tendencies. If he meant voters, he would have said “voters”. Was it a wise thing to say in the circumstances? No, but it didn’t evince the belief that half the population is garbage. In speech, quotation is not clearly marked, but that was his intention. Plus, he is old and a bit doddery, so cut him some slack. Here we see how a bit of philosophy of language can help.