America: A Theory

 

Gotten: Americans say it, the British don’t (nor do Australians and South Africans). One might suppose that Americans started saying it some time after the first British settlers landed in the New World, thus marking themselves as different from their British forebears. But this is wrong: the British were already saying gotten when they got to America (Chaucer, Shakespeare, et al) and the settlers simply continued the tradition, while the British stopped saying it. So subsequent Americans were actually more like the original Brits than later Brits were in this respect. The reason, evidently, is that linguistic forces or fashions operated in England to change the language, which were not operative in the new country. American English was isolated from these forces and so stayed the same. America didn’t add; England subtracted (rightly or wrongly). This kind of phenomenon obviously has wider application: an animal species might spread to a location in which it remains essentially the same while the original population evolves into something different; art forms could persist in a new setting while in the old setting they undergo change; social customs might continue elsewhere while disappearing at home. The original location may be susceptible to influences that don’t apply in the new location, especially if the new location is geographically isolated. Just to have a label let’s call this the Regressive Relocation Effect.[1] Of course, relocation might have the opposite effect: the new place will occasion changes not occurring in the original place, depending on the forces operating there (the Progressive Relocation Effect). But in the right circumstances we could have stasis in the new location combined with revolution in the old location. In an extreme case the new location could find itself hundreds of years behind the old location as the years roll by—still riding horses, wearing top hats, flogging miscreants, etc. Change happens for a reason and the reasons that apply at home may be absent abroad. A geographically new country might thus become a culturally old country as time passes. It might, as we say, become stuck in the past. In such a case citizens of the new country might be more like past citizens of the old country than present citizens of it are. That is what happened with gotten.

            This suggests a theory: America is more like old England than present England is in certain important respects. The America of today is more like the England of 1607 than the England of today is. Not in all respects, obviously, since many events took place in America in the subsequent years that did not take place in England, specifically the waves of immigration from many countries that transformed the culture of the United States—not all of American culture reflects the culture of Great Britain in the seventeenth century. But certain aspects of American life stand out as similar to earlier phases of British life: I am referring to puritanism, racism, tolerance for violence, the penal system (including the death penalty), philistinism, and animal cruelty. These are remnants of conditions that obtained long ago in British society but which have gradually been removed or diminished by a range of influences. Great Britain is itself a complex society full of competing forces, and it is geographically close to other European and Scandinavian nations, as well as having ties to what is called the Commonwealth (ironic name), so it is open to influences that don’t impinge directly on the United States. There are agents of change acting on Britain that haven’t acted on America, or not to the same degree. Accordingly, America has not changed so much in the respects indicated compared to Britain. The persistence of slavery and allied institutions is the obvious example: America supported slavery for longer than Britain, thus exhibiting a similarity to an older Britain that outlived that of Britain itself. Americans were “more British” than the British when it came to slavery (and most of the slave owners were themselves of British descent). The same can be said of the other societal traits I mentioned: puritanism persisted with less opposition in America, as did claims of racial and national superiority, as did penal practices. England became more civilized, less barbaric, as time went by (to put it normatively), while America retained more of the old outmoded ways. Of course, this a matter of degree, and America may be more advanced in other respects, but it seems clear that it contains elements of a culture that has withered away more decisively in the old country. Let me put it bluntly: Americans have the mentality of Englishmen of a century ago (plus or minus a bit). You can see this in prevalent attitudes towards science and learning, in religiosity, in an acceptance of violence as a way of life, in the virulence of white supremacy, and other traits. There is, I’m sorry to say, a fundamental lack of sophistication in the American mind, akin to that which obtained in earlier iterations of the British mind (and which still exists in parts of the latter mind). The reasons for this are no doubt complex, but geographical isolation must surely rank high—nothing proximate is forcing the American mind to change. It is why, to many Europeans, America seems like a savage and barbarous place—technologically modern but spiritually and morally backward. America, it is felt, should really be more civilized than it is (no universal healthcare, for example). My theory is that this fact results from the Regressive Relocation Effect—it is gotten writ large. Americans are actually more British than the British—more like the British of yore. Britain has changed more in the last four hundred years than America has, owing to a variety of internal and external forces. British culture has been more porous than American culture during this period. The American psyche is accordingly more rooted in its historical connections to old England than the contemporary English psyche is. Of course, both are rooted there still, but in America the roots go deeper (notice the strange reverence for the British royal family in the USA). The British in Britain have been more psychologically deracinated than the British in America during the last few centuries.

            If I were to single out the historical event, or series of events, that mainly caused this divergence, I would cite Britain’s gradual loss of empire. This loss wrought huge changes in the mindset of the British, but nothing comparable has ever overtaken the USA. America still has considerable influence in the world (despite some nervousness about China) and so faces little threat to its global power, whereas England has had to accept its vastly diminished status. The result is greater humility in the one and continuing arrogance in the other (nothing compares to American self-righteousness). America today is like England at the height of its colonial power and cultural clout, just so pleased with itself. England has changed tremendously in this respect since the first English settlers arrived on American soil, but America has not suffered such changes, so it has not had to adjust to them. It could therefore continue in the same old way and feel justified in doing so. The American mind is still like the British mind of its colonial heyday, and descends from it, while that type of mind has virtually disappeared from British shores. But I must add that the loss of empire is just one source of historical change and doesn’t explain everything about the divergences between the two countries over the last few centuries. The point I have wanted to urge is that the cultural divisions between the two countries are the result of historical continuity across continents not cultural discontinuity: America didn’t part ways with England; England did. America is England suspended in time. The sources of cultural innovation in America were largely brought by other immigrants (voluntary and involuntary) not by descendants of the original British settlers; the British simply persisted in their old ways (puritanical, punitive, xenophobic). This is why American culture is as fragmented as it is (inter alia). By contrast, the British in Britain were forced to change their ways by a variety of circumstances: geographical location, internal dynamics (class warfare, industrialization, propinquity with other countries, etc.), and loss of empire. America is now more traditionally British than Britain (and not in a good way). The cure for its ills is therefore to stop being so tied to old England. The revolutionary war was never properly completed. This is quite compatible with recognizing that Britain has also had some good effects on American society, but along with these have come various bad legacies, with which we are distressingly familiar. The British may hanker after the past (Brexit etc.) but Americans are the past—what Britain used to be like. Americans are still saying gotten.[2]

 

[1] The effect derives from the Law of Societal Inertia: societies don’t change unless a force is applied to them that makes them change. All societal changes require positive interference; there is no spontaneous change. The interfering factor can be economic, military, moral, scientific, religious, etc. To continue the analogy with physics, America is like a closed system stably preserving its initial state over time.

[2] Compare the metric system: Britain was forced to adopt the metric system in the late 1960s and not without considerable reluctance, but America has never followed suit, feeling no pressure to make the change. It isn’t that Britain always had a metric system and American innovation invented the non-metric system; no, it just clung on to the old system. Similarly with capital punishment: it’s hard to stick with this barbarity when all around you are abandoning it (continental Europe), but in America there is no one around you pushing for a more humane legal system. I could go on: racial segregation, factory farming, lack of universal healthcare, massive income inequality, punitive drug laws, gun proliferation, police brutality, and so on. America is exceptional in these ways, partly because there is no pressure from surrounding countries (Canada and Mexico not having the requisite clout). Nor do we see any rebellion against the past such as we see with countries once ruled for centuries by monarchs. Thus America finds it easy to be complacent about its British heritage (no one in America hates the British, despite that war for independence). America is still dominated by its British inheritance, but that inheritance dates back a long way and has not been subjected to the kind of criticism that has radically altered it in its place of origin.

 

 

Notes on Nonsense

 

We don’t talk about nonsense enough. Let’s show it some respect. Nonsense belongs to language not reality: there are no nonsensical facts or objects or properties; there are only nonsensical words or strings thereof. Reality itself is completely…what? We have no word for the opposite of “nonsensical”—the word “sensical” exists neither in ordinary discourse nor in the OED.[1] I don’t know why this is; it ought to make perfect sense (be sensical). In any case, reality lacks the property of being nonsensical. With respect to language we can distinguish two kinds of nonsense: the grammatical and the ungrammatical. The grammatical kind is exemplified by “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” and “Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe”; the ungrammatical kind is produced by flouting the rules of grammar, as in “It up dog random” and “Rainbow the over”. The first thing to notice is that nonsense exists in close proximity to sense: it’s easy to get from sense to nonsense. The same mechanisms that generate sense can generate nonsense: either rules of grammar or simple word concatenation. The grammatical nonsensical strings obey normal grammatical rules and merely juxtapose clashing semantic units, or else employ nonsense words in a grammatical form. The ungrammatical cases simply join perfectly meaningful words that don’t clash with other words. Nonsense doesn’t arise by going completely outside the normal workings of language; it occurs within language. This is why it is wrong to describe nonsense as simply lack of meaning or sense: random squiggles or sounds are meaningless (like bricks and mortar) but they are not instances of nonsense. Nonsense presupposes functioning language. In fact nonsense is a type of meaning not a lack of meaning—the nonsensical type. There is a lot of meaning in the sentences I gave earlier; they are not semantically lifeless. They have, we might say, meaningless meaning—a second-class, degraded kind of meaning (“para-semantic meaning”). What the sentences express is neither true nor false—it is not “propositional”—but it is imbued with meaning of some sort. This makes them puzzling from a theoretical perspective: how do standard theories of meaning apply to them? How, say, do truth conditions theories of meaning apply to grammatical nonsensical sentences, or Gricean theories, or use theories, or verification theories? Here we seem to have a type of meaning that violates all such theories.

            The question becomes sharper when we ask whether nonsense possesses a logic. In the case of ungrammatical nonsense we can rule this out, since logical relations need at least the semblance of statement making; but it is clear enough that grammatical nonsense exhibits logical properties. Such sentences can be conjoined, disjoined, negated, and put into conditionals; and the normal logical rules will apply. For example, conjunction elimination is still valid, or modus ponens. From “All toves are slithy” and “Socrates is a tove” we can infer “Socrates is slithy”: the form of the sentences allow this inference irrespective of the content. But we can’t say that validity here is a matter of truth-preservation, because nonsensical sentences are never true (or false). The meanings (or quasi-meanings) entail one another, yet there is no truth-value to be preserved. We know that if green ideas sleep furiously then they sleep, but it is neither true nor false that green ideas sleep furiously. So is our usual approach to logic too narrow? Do we need a special logic of nonsense? Some have urged the need for a “para-consistent logic”; do we also need a “para-semantic logic”? We need a logic that can handle category mistakes (“The number 2 is cheerful”) and analytic falsehoods (“Janet is a happily married bachelor”); and it looks like we also need a logic that can handle outright nonsense. It is possible to reason with such sentences, so they ought to fall within the scope of logic. But if nonsense has a logic, it must be meaningful.

            Can nonsensical expressions refer? Or better: can speakers refer using nonsensical terms? Can we contrive a Donnellan case in which a speaker picks out an object for an audience even though the term used is pure nonsense? Sure we can: someone may remark at a party, “The slithy tove in the corner is a famous philosopher”, thereby picking out an individual of slippery but dapper appearance (or just a guy known to like the works of Lewis Carroll). The definite description “the square root of Paris” should receive the same semantic analysis as “the Queen of England”: semantically these are expressions of the same general category. The demonstrative “that colorless green idea” functions as a singular term subject to a Kaplan-style analysis despite its nonsensical status. Couldn’t we introduce a proper name “Zippy” by stipulating that it denotes whatever “the square root of Paris” denotes, viz. nothing? True, there are no nonsensical existing entities for such terms to refer to, but language doesn’t know that; it allows us to generate nonsense expressions of all semantic categories. Some of this nonsense may even have a use—a role in a language game—and may even be used to refer to ordinary things, as with that slippery dapper chap in the corner. Nonsense does not preclude acts of reference and other linguistic practices—whole books may be composed of it (Finnegan’s Wake). And nonsense poems are precisely poems.

            Now that we have a feel for the reality of nonsense (if I may put it so) we can pose some more adventurous questions. Could there be an ideal language that precluded the possibility of nonsense? It is hard to see how there could be: language allows for unlimited grammatical (and ungrammatical) combinations—that is part of its inherent creativity—and this will always permit the possibility of nonsensical combinations. Hence the proximity of sense and nonsense in the mechanisms of language production; the same thing is capable of producing both. Nonsense is as embedded in language (as a formal apparatus) as sense is. We don’t have much use for nonsense most of the time, but it is always latent in the linguistic system: “colorless green ideas” is as much part of language as “bright red flowers”. The notion of a logically perfect language incapable of producing nonsensical monsters is therefore an illusion. Grammar is nonsense-neutral (of course not with respect to ungrammatical nonsense). We could even say that meaning itself is nonsense-neutral, since nonsense sentences have a kind of meaning. Then here is a second (vertiginous) question: Is there room for a brand of skepticism that questions the meaningfulness of our discourse? I don’t mean the familiar positivist-Quine-Kripke-Wittgenstein types of semantic skepticism, but rather a type of skepticism that dangles the possibility that we are talking nonsense all the time, despite our belief that we are making sense. Some of Lewis Carroll’s characters talk nonsense without knowing it—might we be in like case? That is, is the belief that we are talking sense fallible? I say, “Little white lambs sleep peacefully”: have I said something analogous to “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” without knowing it? Don’t I sometimes say things in my dreams that I later realize were nonsensical? Might I be dreaming all the time and hence possibly talking nonsense constantly without knowing it? It sounds impossible to maintain that my simple utterances might actually be nonsense, but the skeptic is a resourceful enemy: can I be certain that “It’s raining” isn’t nonsense? Is this as certain as the Cogito? Maybe my brain is generating nonsensical strings and then disguising them as making sense. The mind can play peculiar tricks. Haven’t some people been totally convinced that their utterances make sense and yet upon examination they turn out to be nonsense (the holy trinity, Newtonian absolute space and time, the unrestricted concept of a set)? Nonsense can be a sneaky thing. So maybe no one has ever said a “sensical” thing ever—all is nonsense. In the beginning was the nonsense word. Maybe “I think, therefore I am” is itself a piece of nonsense! Judgments of what makes sense don’t seem immune to skeptical doubt. The Wittgenstein of the Tractatus was fond of saying that many of our ordinary utterances are strictly nonsense—what about an ultra-Wittgenstein who thinks that all our utterances are really nonsense? It’s all “slithy toves” and “colorless green ideas”.

            It has been maintained that a principle of charity must govern our practice of interpretation: we must find the other largely logical and truth believing. Some have wished to weaken this to a principle of humanity: we must find the other rationally explicable, though not necessarily logical and truthful. But we can picture a further weakening to allow for the possibility of the nonsensical other—the alien who talks a lot of nonsense, perhaps complete and total nonsense. Couldn’t we be forced to conclude that the linguistic behavior of the alien consists mainly, or wholly, of sheer nonsense? Isn’t this what Alice concludes about some of the aliens she encounters through the looking glass? I don’t see why not: perhaps our target tribe has a malfunctioning brain (by our standards) that produces only nonsense; perhaps they utter nonsense all the time just to amuse themselves; perhaps there is a religious taboo prohibiting sensible utterance. In any case they spout nothing but nonsense from dawn till dusk: it’s all jabberwockies and bandersnatches, relieved only by the odd colorless green idea. There need be no assent to any of this nonsense on their part, no “holding true”, and hence no route from such data to an assignment of meaning; still, they do mean something by their utterances, even if we deem it a kind of substandard meaning. Their spoken language has meaning of a sort—it isn’t devoid of all semantic content—but it doesn’t map onto ours in the way envisaged by proponents of the principle of charity. As Wittgenstein would say, they play a particular language game, and within that game language has a use, a purpose. They may think perfectly sensible things, and know that others do too, but their actual speech is knowingly made up of nothing but nonsense; they may wonder at the pedestrian verbal ways of sense-making speakers such as ourselves.[2]

            Nonsense is a kind of robust semantic presence not a mere semantic absence. It isn’t the lack of meaning but a special type of meaning. Philosophers of language have gradually expanded out from what they conceived to be central cases of meaning (usually verifiably true sentences) to other types of meaning (imperative meaning, performative meaning, context-dependent meaning, emotive meaning, etc.); I am suggesting we expand out a stage further to include nonsensical meaning. Even Wittgenstein, with his inclusive notion of the language game, didn’t see fit to include nonsense as a legitimate form of meaning, but there are good reasons to bring nonsense into the semantic fold. Talking nonsense is one form of talking, one way that language manifests itself. And nonsense is as much part of language as sense; indeed it exemplifies the creativity that is the essence of language. Perhaps we should do more of it.

[1] Actually the word “sensical” is not unheard of, but it is not generally accepted as part of the English language.

[2] Could there be a completely nonsensical conceptual scheme? Now that is pushing it: how could the language of thought be composed of nothing but nonsense? Could all thought be inherently nonsensical? In our case there is always a bedrock of sense on which nonsense is parasitic, but in the case of the nonsensical conceptual scheme it is nonsense all the way down. This is hard to make sense of (perhaps it is a species of nonsense). 

Trying: Its Scope and Limits

 

What can we try to do and what can’t we try to do? The OED defines “try” as “to make an attempt or effort to do something”, so our question becomes what can we make an attempt to do. The following come within the scope of trying: bodily and mental actions such as lifting a weight or calculating in the head, remembering facts or experiences, imagining objects or states of affairs, thinking about particular things (but not thinking tout court), conceiving of something as possible, attending to something. On the other hand, the following would be agreed to fall outside the scope of trying: perceiving, believing, knowing, feeling an emotion, having a desire, and trying itself (you can’t try to try to open a letter). I can’t try to see something just like that, though I can try to get a better look at something, because seeing isn’t an action that I do; similarly for believing and knowing. Nor can I try to feel angry at someone, or try to desire what I don’t desire. These things are not “subject to the will”. Of course, we can try to undertake actions that will reliably lead to certain emotions or desires, but it is futile to attempt to feel an emotion or have a desire just by trying to: these things are not actions, so we can’t make an attempt to do them. Trying presupposes action, so where there is no action there can be no trying (same for deciding and intending). I can’t try to do what I know can’t be done.  

            Can every action be attempted? Can I try to jump to the moon, say? It is widely accepted that such actions can’t be intended: you can’t intend to do what you know it is impossible for you to do. The OED defines “intend” as “have as one’s aim or plan”, and one can’t have as one’s aim or plan what one believes it is impossible to do. But can one try to do what one deems to be impossible? I think not: if I believe it is impossible to jump to the moon, I can’t try to do it—I can’t make the attempt. I can try to jump some of the distance to the moon (and succeed in this attempt), as I can try to give the impression that I am trying to jump to the moon, or try to act the part of someone trying to jump to the moon: but I can’t actually try to jump to the moon given that I believe it is impossible—though I can try it if I am convinced that it is possible. Trying is constrained by belief: belief limits what can be tried. The will is limited by cognition. Thus the will acts only with the permission of belief; it isn’t an independent faculty. We should really speak of the conation-cognition complex. You can see what you know is impossible (e.g. an Escher drawing), but you can’t will what you know is impossible—specifically, you can’t try to do what you know can’t be done. Trying is not some primitive upsurge of the conative faculty; it needs the cooperation of the cognitive faculty. Given that we try to do everything we do (conversational implicatures to the contrary), we have the result that all actions presuppose a belief that the action in question is possible—even just walking down the street. If you were to believe that walking is impossible, you could not try to walk, which means that you would not walk: walking implies trying to walk, but trying to walk implies believing it to be possible. If you believe yourself to be paralyzed, truly or falsely, you won’t do any walking (though you might be hooked up to a machine that made you perform walking-like motions). The agent needs a general belief (assumption, presupposition, instinctive conviction) that she can do what she can in fact do. Willing and believing are not conceptually separable. Trying can’t exist in a cognitive vacuum.[1]

            You can’t try to do what you believe you can’t do, but can you try to do what you believe you must do? Can you try to do what you know is unavoidable? Can you try to breathe if you can’t help breathing, for example? Can you try to do what you are already doing reflexively? I don’t think you can: you have to believe that it is possible to do what you are not doing. If I believe that I have no alternative to what I am doing, I can’t try to do it—at most I can try to let it happen. I can’t try to fall through space if I have been ejected into outer space; I can’t try to lift my arm if I see it automatically going up; I can’t try to close my eyelid if I feel it closing reflexively. At most I can try to aid these motions, but I can’t try to initiate them. So trying requires the belief that the action envisaged is not an inevitability. I can only try to do what I believe it is possible for me not to do: that is the cognitive background to my act of trying. Generally this is the situation—it is rare that I am compelled to act as I do—but in conceivable cases my power to try is limited by my beliefs about what I must do. In such cases I don’t have to try, because I have no alternative. So there are possible actions that are not preceded by trying. Nearly all actions are preceded by trying, since it is rare that the agent has no alternative, but such cases are conceivable. Trying is thus sensitive to background modal belief both as to possibility and necessity, so it cannot occur without appropriate such beliefs: you can’t try and simultaneously believe the action is impossible or that it is necessary.

[1] You might wonder whether an absence of belief is sufficient to allow for trying: what if the agent simply has no belief either way about the feasibility of the action? Could a man try to jump to the moon while having no belief that it is possible so to jump (and no belief that it is impossible)? That would imply that if you asked him whether his projected action is possible he would truly reply, “I have no idea either way”. That seems hard to understand: one would be tempted to respond, “How can you try if you don’t even think it’s possible?” He would be committed to holding, given his agnosticism, that he had not ruled out the impossibility option and yet was still prepared to go ahead and try. In normal cases the agent will say, “Of course, I think it’s possible or else I wouldn’t make the attempt”. What we try to do is shaped by what we think we can do—we don’t go around trying to do what we know very well we can’t do.