From Tractatus to Later Writings and Back – New Implications from Wittgenstein’s Nachlass

SATS 24 (2):167-203 (2023)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

As a celebration of theTractatus100th anniversary it might be worth revisiting its relation to the later writings. From the former to the latter, David Pears recalls that “everyone is aware of the holistic character of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, but it is not so well known that it was already beginning to establish itself in theTractatus” (The False Prison, 1987). From the latter to the former, Stephen Hilmy’s (The Later Wittgenstein, 1987) extensive study of theNachlasshas helped removing classical misconceptions such as Hintikka’s claim that “Wittgenstein in thePhilosophical Investigationsalmost completely gave up the calculus analogy.” Hilmy points out that even in theInvestigationsone finds the use of the calculus/game paradigm to the understanding of language, such as “in operating with the word” (Part I, §559) and “it plays a different part in the calculus”. Hilmy also quotes from a late (1946) unpublished manuscript (MS 130) “this sentence has use in the calculus of language”, which seems to be compatible with “asking whether and how a proposition can be verified is only a particular way of asking ‘How do you mean?’” Central in this back and forth there is an aspect which seems to deserve attention in the discussion of a semantics for the language of mathematics which might be based on (normalisation of) proofs and/or Hintikka/Lorenzen game-dialogue: the explication of consequences. Such a discussion is substantially supported by the use of the open and searchableThe Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen. These findings are framed within the discussion of the meaning of logical constants in the context of natural deduction style rules of inference.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 99,576

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Analytics

Added to PP
2023-05-03

Downloads
21 (#884,463)

6 months
8 (#425,113)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Elements of Intuitionism.Michael Dummett - 1980 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 31 (3):299-301.
Untersuchungen über das logische Schließen. I.Gerhard Gentzen - 1935 - Mathematische Zeitschrift 35:176–210.
Some remarks on infinitely long formulas.L. Henkin - 1961 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 30 (1):167--183.

View all 45 references / Add more references