Abstract

Wittgenstein's earlier treatment of causation and induction remains thought‐provoking and relevant to contemporary debates in the philosophy of science. Wittgenstein's approach to causation and induction in the Tractatus emerges in the context of two separate, but related discussions. A negative discussion that aims to expose a particular understanding of natural necessity as nonsensical, and a more positive discussion concerning the role played by laws in the natural sciences. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein suggests that internal relations hold between propositions by virtue of the latter's truth‐functional structures. Causal laws are instructions that circumscribe what counts as a senseful proposition of the causal form within an optional system. The natural necessity view (NNV) criticized by Wittgenstein in the Tractatus suggests that some relations of necessary entailment arise between possible states, not by virtue of any internal relations between them, but by virtue of the obtaining of certain laws of nature.