Abstract

This is a critique of the principal claims made within Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. It traces the development of his thought from the time he dictated the pre-Tractarian "Notes on Logic" to Russell up until about 1932 when he began work on the Philosophical Grammar. The influence exercised upon him by Frege, Russell and Moore are considered at length. ;It is maintained that the central thesis of the Tractatus is correct, viz., that no purely truth-functional semantic theory for ordinary language is possible. This does not mean that ordinary language is logically degenerate, as Tarski and others have maintained. Rather, it means that any truth-functional semantics must acknowledge a distinction between what can be said and what can only be shown. Because a doctrine of showing is unavoidable, even a truth-functional semantics must be committed to the thesis that linguistic tokens are the locus of meaning and sense. This fact undermines semantic Platonism. ;It is argued that the Tractatus incorporates an inadequate account of necessity and necessary truth, and that this is that work's central most flaw. This flaw undermines, among other things, the Tractarian account of the semantics of propositional attitude ascriptions