Blackwell Reference Online

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In ordinary speech an absurdity is often called an “error.” But Hobbes thinks that a distinction should be made between the two. An error that involves a misapplication of a name to an object will result in some sentence being false, but an absurdity involves a contradiction or an incoherence in the way that words are used, such that it yields a sequence of words that does not even deserve to be categorized as false (L 5.22).As part of his contrast between error and absurdity, Hobbes distinguishes two kinds of error: linguistic and nonlinguistic. A nonlinguistic error is some deception such as thinking that some event happened in the past when it did not, or thinking that some event will occur in the future when it will not. Hobbes does not think that there is any philosophical significance to this sort of error. A linguistic error occurs when a name is mistakenly used to refer to something that does not have that name. Hobbes's example is of a person who sees the sun in the sky and its reflection in the water and says that there are two suns (DCo 5.1). That is, the person in error is using “sun” as a name for a reflection. Another example would be that of a person who mistakenly says of some object, say, a chair, that it is a table. Since “table” is not a name for chairs, a linguistic error has occurred. Linguistic error, like nonlinguistic error, is not philosophically important ... log in or subscribe to read full text