In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Wittgenstein appeals to clarity when he characterises the aim, task and results of philosophy. In this essay I suggest that his ‘picture theory’ of language implies that clarity has aesthetic significance in philosophical work. Wittgenstein claims that the task of philosophy is to make thoughts clear. In the ‘picture theory’ of thought and language, a thought expressed in language is a proposition with a sense and a proposition is a picture of (...) reality. The question I pose is: how should we construe clarity, if making a thought clear is making clear a picture of reality? Following a close analysis of the picture theory, paying particular attention to the notions of depicting, presenting and mirroring, I conclude that the result of philosophical work – the clarification of propositions – will be pleasurable, inexpressible and intrinsically valuable. For these reasons I suggest that the attainment of a clear thought is an aesthetic experience. (shrink)

I rely on Frascolla's interpretation of the Tractatus ontology to develop an account of depiction in which a picture is conceived of as a visual structure constituted by pixels that are conceived of, in their turn, as elementary propositions. Then I argue that such an account is complementary to the considerations about «noticing aspects» in the Philosophical Investigations, to the extent that the visual structure constituted by pixels provides a design allowing the picture’s viewer to notice aspects. Finally (...) I argue that a joint reading of the considerations about pictures in the Tractatus and in the Philosophical Investigations allows us to address some important issues in the contemporary philosophical debate about depiction. (shrink)

The proposition 'seattle is west of spokane' has three parts: two\nproper names and the predicate 'is west of.' the fact pictured has\ntwo: seattle and spokane. but the picture theory holds that there\nmust be a one-to-one correspondence between fact and proposition.\nhow does wittgenstein solve this problem in the 'tractatus'? on one\ninterpretation the fact contains a third part, a relation, corresponding\nto the predicate (evans and stenius). on another the proposition\nis transformed by analysis into a two-dimensional diagram, the predicate\ndisappearing in the (...) process (copi and anscombe). both are rejected.\ntwo new suggestions are offered: (1) the number of possible configurations\nof 'simple' objects is not greater than the number concatenations\nof names, so no predicate is needed in 'elementary' propositions;\n(2) or the predicate can be taken as the analogue of the direction\narrow on a map and not counted as a part of the proposition. (shrink)

In a paper published in this journal, Vol. 5, No. 1, 1962, pp. 46?64, Mr. H. R. G. Schwyzer has argued that ?the current view (as held by, eg., Wamock, Anscombe and Stemus) of Wittgenstein's theory of language in the Tractatus is mistaken?. The editor of the journal has asked me for a reply. My reply concerns only my own book, and it amounts to the statement that Mr. Schwyzer's attack on the book has very little to do (...) with what is said in it. (shrink)

The author presents a rejoinder to mister schwyzer, arguing against\nschwyzer's claim that the author's view of wittgenstein's theory\nof language in the 'tractatus' is mistaken. (staff).

In this paper, I draw attention to the often-overlooked Tractarian distinction between representing and depicting, provide a clear account of it and examine how it affects our understanding of the notions of ‘being a picture’, meaningfulness, truth, and falsity in the Tractatus. I also look at the recent debate in the literature on the notion of truth and show that Glock’s claim that the official theory of the Tractatus is to be accounted in terms of obtainment only and (...) deflationary accounts such as Hacker’s derive from a failure to notice the distinction between representing and depicting or a misconception of depicting. Finally, I argue against the idea that either representing or depicting should be dispensed with. Both are necessary for Wittgenstein to account for every case of a proposition being a picture of reality. (shrink)

I argue that the current view (as held by, eg., Warnock, Anscombe and Stenius) of Wittgenstein's theory of language in the Tractates is mistaken. This view maintains that Wittgenstein's theory is one of 'isomorphism'; that, roughly, a sentence has meaning in virtue of its being a facsimile of a fact or possible fact. But a detailed study of significant passages in the Tractattis shows that Wittgenstein held no such view. His use of important terms, such as (...) Salz, Bild, Sachverhalt, Tatsache , etc., has been crucially misunderstood. There is no isomorphism. The theory is not about sentences at all, but about talking sense. (shrink)

When in May 1930, the Council of Trinity College, Cambridge, had to decide whether to renew Wittgenstein's research grant, it turned to Bertrand Russell for an assessment of the work Wittgenstein had been doing over the past year. His verdict: "The theories contained in this new work . . . are novel, very original and indubitably important. Whether they are true, I do not know. As a logician who likes simplicity, I should like to think that they are not, (...) but from what I have read of them I am quite sure that he ought to have an opportunity to work them out, since, when completed, they may easily prove to constitute a whole new philosophy." "[ Philosophical Remarks ] contains the seeds of Wittgenstein's later philosophy of mind and of mathematics. Principally, he here discusses the role of indispensable in language, criticizing Russell's The Analysis of Mind . He modifies the Tractatus 's picture theory of meaning by stressing that the connection between the proposition and reality is not found in the picture itself. He analyzes generality in and out of mathematics, and the notions of proof and experiment. He formulates a pain/private-language argument and discusses both behaviorism and the verifiability principle. The work is difficult but important, and it belongs in every philosophy collection."--Robert Hoffman, Philosophy "Any serious student of Wittgenstein's work will want to study his Philosophical Remarks as a transitional book between his two great masterpieces. The Remarks is thus indispensible for anyone who seeks a complete understanding of Wittgenstein's philosophy."--Leonard Linsky, American Philosophical Association. (shrink)

A milestone in Wittgenstein scholarship, this collection of essays ranges over a wide area of the philosopher's thought, presenting divergent interpretations of his fundamental ideas. Different chapters raise many of the central controversies that surround current understanding of the Tractatus, providing an interplay that will be particularly useful to students. Taken together, the essays present a broader and more comprehensive view of Wittgenstein's intellectual interests and his impact on philosophy than may be found elsewhere.The thirteen chapters treat topics from (...) both periods of Wittgenstein's work: More than half are devoted to his early thought, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus of 1921, reflecting a growing interest today among philosophers in reexamining this seminal book, while three chapters treat the Philosophical Investigations, published posthumously in 1953. The remaining chapters discuss such "nonstandard" topics as philosophy of religion, aesthetics, and anthropology.Contents: The Early Wittgenstein and the Middle Russell, Kenneth Blackwell; Frege and Wittgenstein, Michael Dummett; Wittgenstein and the Theory of Types, Hide Ishiguro; The So-called Realism of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, Brian McGuinness; The Logical Independence of Elementary Propositions, David Pears; The Rise and Fall of the Picture Theory, Peter Hacker; The Picture Theory and Wittgenstein's Later Attitude to It, Erik Stenius; Wittgenstein's Early Philosophy of Mind, Anthony Kenny; A Theory of Language?, G. E. M. Anscombe; Im Anfang war die Tat, Peter Winch; Wittgenstein's Full Stop, D. Z. Phillips; Quote: Judgments from Our Brain, Paul Ziff; Wittgenstein and the Fire Festivals, Frank Cioffi, Index.Irving Block is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at The University of Western Ontario. (shrink)

I develop one account of propositions as pictures sharing logical form with what they depict. Two concepts of simplicity in the "tractatus" are then isolated. Since characterization of sachverhalten as configurations of referential simples does not entail their inferential simplicity, By rejecting the tractarian theory of inference, I retain the picture theory without commitment to atomistic ontology. Interpretation of inference as performance then gives rise to a second sense of picturing.

Recently, commentators such as Kenny and Hacker have disagreed about whether Wittgenstein's early picture theory of meaning is at all compatible with his later theory of “meaning‐as‐use”. Arguing in favor of their compatibility, Kenny finds that meaning‐as‐use supplements, rather than rivals the earlier conception of meaning.

Some philosophers have argued that Wittgenstein’s hinges, the centrepiece of his book On Certainty, are the “ungrounded ground” on which knowledge rests. It is usually understood by this that hinges provide a foundation for knowledge without being themselves epistemically warranted. In fact, Wittgenstein articulates that hinges lack any truth-value and are neither justified nor unjustified. This inevitably places them wholly outside the categorial framework of JTB epistemology. What I call the “groundlessness interpretation”, inspired by OC 166, understands the fundamental pieces (...) of our cognitive scaffolding this way. The view has been largely successful. I argue that this interpretation is incomplete for two basic reasons: first, it is not based on undisputed evidence; second, by assuming that hinges are committed to reality by epistemic fiat, it looks as if Wittgenstein is asking us to blindly trust them regardless of their actual content. Contrary to this, I argue that Wittgenstein describes hinges as illuminating world-pictures that reflect reality and are answerable to facts in a derivate way. As the book shows, hinges originate in our engagement with reality and, while considered unquestionable, could be challenged, reassessed, and replaced by new ones. This indicates that hinges are both the result of knowledge-acquisition and somewhat continuous with one’s set of beliefs. It follows that hinges are ultimately rational, and so, apt instruments to confront scepticism. (shrink)

Scott Soames’s two volume work Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century1 won the American 2003 Award for Best Professional/Scholarly Book in Philosophy. It has been said to be ‘a marvellous introduction to analytic philosophy’, to deliver much ‘solid information on this dense and difficult subject’, and it has been predicted to become the standard history of twentieth-century analytic philosophy.2 Professor Soames writes clearly and candidly. At the beginning of each volume he delineates his objectives and leitmotivs. He is concerned with (...) the development of analytic philosophy from 1900 to 1975. He aims ‘to explain what the most important analytic philosophers thought and why they thought it’ (I, xi). His method is ‘to provide clear, focused and intense critical examinations of some of the most important and representative works of each major philosopher discussed. ... to provide enough detail to allow one to understand and properly evaluate the main philosophical developments of the period’ (I, xvii). A book with such laudable objectives, which holds out such high promises, and which is predicted to become the standard history of modern analytic philosophy merits careful study and considered judgement. The questions that I shall pose are dictated by the author’s aims and methods. (i) Does Soames provide an illuminating overview of analytic philosophy from 1900 to 1975? (ii) Does he correctly explain what the most important analytic philosophers thought and why they thought it? (iii) Does he select ‘some of the most important and representative works of each major philosopher discussed’? (iv) Does he properly evaluate the main developments of the period? II The broad picture Soames paints is as follows. Analytic philosophy commenced with Moore’s defence of common sense, and was continued by Russell, whose theory of descriptions, conception of analysis, logicism and logical atomism are recounted. He was followed by Wittgenstein, who argued in the Tractatus that philosophical problems arise solely from misunderstandings of language and defended the view that all necessary truths are a priori, analytic, and hence true in virtue of the meanings of words.. (shrink)

From one perspective, this book is a restatement and defense of the central claim from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus that language gives us a logical picture of states of affairs, developed in terms of a realistic theory of eternal possibilities. From another perspective, it is an ambitious and provocative attempt to reconcile metaphysics with language theory.

Some philosophers have argued that Wittgenstein’s hinges, the centrepiece of his book On Certainty, are the “ungrounded ground” on which knowledge rests. It is usually understood by this that hinges provide a foundation for knowledge without being themselves epistemically warranted. In fact, Wittgenstein articulates that hinges lack any truth-value and are neither justified nor unjustified. This inevitably places them wholly outside the categorial framework of JTB epistemology. What I call the “groundlessness interpretation”, inspired by OC 166, understands the fundamental pieces (...) of our cognitive scaffolding this way. The view has been largely successful. I argue that this interpretation is incomplete for two basic reasons: first, it is not based on undisputed evidence; second, by assuming that hinges are committed to reality by epistemic fiat, it looks as if Wittgenstein is asking us to blindly trust them regardless of their actual content. Contrary to this, I argue that Wittgenstein describes hinges as illuminating world-pictures that reflect reality and are answerable to facts in a derivate way. As the book shows, hinges originate in our engagement with reality and, while considered unquestionable, could be challenged, reassessed, and replaced by new ones. This indicates that hinges are both the result of knowledge-acquisition and somewhat continuous with one’s set of beliefs. It follows that hinges are ultimately rational, and so, apt instruments to confront scepticism. (shrink)

It is suggested that wittgenstein's picture theory of meaning is, In part a synthesis and resolution of the early metaphysics of moore and the theory of judgment held by russell about 1910. Moore's theory of the objective existence of concepts and their propositional role is considered. Russell's unsuccessful attempt at the problem of the false proposition is discussed. The ptm offers a more successful solution, Through the concept of logical form, Akin to the russellian concept (...) of order. But this solution still fails because it does not hold for ordinary language. (shrink)

In his classic work on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Erik Stenius described Wittgenstein’s study as a critique of pure language, thus pointing to a connection between Wittgenstein’s philosophy and Kant’s critique of pure reason. Besides similarities, there also seems be important differences between the two philosophers. In Kant’s critique, one discerns a subject who does something, namely, constructs the world of experience, while Wittgenstein draws a picture in which neither an agent nor an act is visible. Like Kant and Wittgenstein, contemporary (...) normative theories of assertion are also interested in limits, although in limits set to assertions. They appear to pay special attention to the one who asserts and to the act of asserting. This paper is an effort to search for the traces of normative theories of assertion in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus by focusing on the one who uses language and on the limits of that use. It is shown that both in Wittgenstein and in normative theories of assertion, there is an important ethical dimension, which, however, plays different roles in the two approaches. It is argued that despite the differences in the ways of construing the limits of language, Tractatus and normative theories of assertion share similar ethical concerns. (shrink)

This paper explains the absence of the problem of other minds in ancient philosophy and links its rise in early modern philosophy with the distinction between primary and secondary qualities and the consequent veil of ideas. The futile struggles of early modern philosophers with the problems is delineated. So too are the incoherent theories of modern neuroscientists and psychologists. The sources of the manifold confusions are pinned down to use and misuse of the concept of mind, to misunderstandings about the (...) nature of the human ability to say how things are subjectively with oneself, to misconstruals of the nature of introspection and self-knowledge, and to the misguided picture of the “inner” and the “outer”. Philosophical misunderstandings about knowledge of other minds has masked the genuine limitations on our knowledge and understanding of our fellow human beings. Some of these rest on ignorance, others on the constitutional indeterminacy of the mental. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Toward a Non-Cartesian Psychotherapeutic Framework: Radical Pragmatism as an AlternativeLouis S. Berger (bio)AbstractPostmodern criticism has identified important impoverishments that necessarily follow from the use of Cartesian frameworks. This criticism is reviewed and its implications for psychotherapy are explored in a psychoanalytic context. The ubiquitous presence of Cartesianism (equivalently, representationism) in psychoanalytic frameworks—even in some that are considered postmodern—is demonstrated and criticized. The postmodern convergence on praxis as a desirable (...) alternative to Cartesianism is reported, and its relevance for psychoanalysis is considered. The severe conceptual difficulties entailed in formulating such an alternative are discussed, as are those difficulties that would be encountered were psychoanalysis to attempt the shift from explanatory mental science to praxis. The principal psychoanalytic problematics explored are: the paradoxical relationships between theory and therapeutic technique; the therapeutic action; and validation of clinical practices. Initial, nontraditional suggestions for addressing these problems are offered.Keywordspsychoanalysis, therapeutic action, representation, state space, praxis, hermeneutics, Descartes, Heidegger, Wittgenstein“But the inability to bring one’s subject under conceptual control, fixing it propositionally, is not the end of thinking; on the contrary, it were better to say that the breakdown of concepts and the failure of words is an opening that takes us out of the realm where representation and calculation are all that matter to thinking.... [T]his is what happens in the Socratic dialogue where the negativity in which one ends up at a loss for words is at the same time that which sets thinking free.”Bruns 1989, 9“To evolve theory as though our methods and processes of study were essentially the same, or could be the same, as those of other sciences, or could be disregarded when it comes to theory, implies a view of reality that is no longer tenable, least of all in that ambiguous area which we call psychic reality. Nevertheless, all of us are still more or less captives of an erroneous understanding of objectivity and objective reality....”Loewald 1970, 45 [End Page 169]CartesianismCartesianism still underlies and dominates much of today’s thought. It is the label for a network of interrelated ideas and themes:the ontological duality of mind and body; the subjective individualism implicit in the ultimate appeal to direct personal verification; the method of universal doubt which was supposed to lead us to indubitable truths; the doctrine that language and signs are an external disguise for thought; the doctrine that vagueness is unreal and that the philosophic endeavor is one of knowing clearly and distinctly a completely determinate reality; and most fundamentally, the doctrine that we can break out of the miasma of our language or system of signs and have direct intuitive knowledge of objects. (Bernstein 1971, 5–6)[The Cartesian assumptions] constitute a picture of science and the world somewhat as follows: there is an external world which can in principle be exhaustively described in scientific language. The scientist, as both observer and language-user, can capture the external facts of the world in propositions that are true if they correspond to the facts and false if they do not. Science is ideally a linguistic system in which true propositions are in one-to-one relation to facts, including facts that are not directly observed because they involve hidden entities or properties, or past events or far distant events. These hidden events are described in theories, and theories can be inferred from observation, that is, the hidden explanatory mechanism of the world can be discovered from what is open to observation. Man as scientist is regarded as standing apart from the world and able to experiment and theorize about it objectively and dispassionately.(Hesse 1980, vii)Hesse goes on to say that “almost every assumption underlying this account has been subjected to damaging criticism,” a view echoed by others: “Most contemporary philosophers have been in revolt against the Cartesian framework” (Bernstein 1971, 5); “A rejection of the Cartesian view is a central theme for both of the giants of twentieth-century philosophy, Heidegger and Wittgenstein” (Sass 1992, 444n 77); and “The notion of alternative conceptual frameworks has been a commonplace of our culture since Hegel” (Rorty 1982, 3).These criticisms arise... (shrink)

I shall start by considering the apparently paradoxical doctrines that Wittgenstein put forward about knowledge: they show how the concept of knowledge is, as he says, specialized. This is not, as I shall show, a very important issue in itself, but it leads on to other points, of more interest: how it comes about, for example, that not all corrections of our beliefs are on the same level. I shall then discuss the idea that we inherit a certain picture (...) of the world that forms the background of our experiments and researches. This idea, which is not of course unique to Wittgenstein, is, however, developed with many fresh insights. I end with some discussion of Wittgenstein's reported views on religious belief, which should not, in my opinion, be regarded as part of his contribution to philosophy, the interest of them being, perhaps, more biographical than philosophical. (shrink)

The Picture Theory based on a realist ontology is central to the argument of the Tractatus. Wittgenstein, however, makes idealist claims while discussing the notion of the metaphysical subject. In this paper, I develop an interpretation of this text in which realism and idealism are reconciled. The task is accomplished by focusing on the later remarks of the Tractatus in general and the remarks on death in particular.

I shall start by considering the apparently paradoxical doctrines that Wittgenstein put forward about knowledge: they show how the concept of knowledge is, as he says, ‘specialized’. This is not, as I shall show, a very important issue in itself, but it leads on to other points, of more interest: how it comes about, for example, that ‘not all corrections of our beliefs are on the same level’. I shall then discuss the idea that we inherit a certain picture (...) of the world that forms the background of our experiments and researches. This idea, which is not of course unique to Wittgenstein, is, however, developed with many fresh insights. I end with some discussion of Wittgenstein's reported views on religious belief, which should not, in my opinion, be regarded as part of his contribution to philosophy, the interest of them being, perhaps, more biographical than philosophical. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on picture theory, which is sometimes spoken of as a theory of the proposition. By a proposition, Wittgenstein like Frege means something that determines its sense by means of a correlation between the mode of combination of its constituent symbols and the structure of its sense. It has been an orthodoxy amongst Tractatus interpreters, and continues to be such in the wider philosophical community, that Wittgenstein follows the Russell in offering a correspondence theory (...) of truth. The expression of a Tractarian fact provides that fact's mode of combination, and from here there can be no further question as to the ontological types of its constituents. Tractarian facts, it is however added, are not truth conditions but items whose existence explains the obtaining of truth conditions: a Tractarian atomic fact is not a truth condition but a truthmaker. (shrink)

Understanding Wittgenstein's Tractatus provides an accessible and yet novel discussion of all the major themes of the Tractatus. The book starts by setting out the history and structure of the Tractatus. It then investigates the two main dimensions of the early Wittgenstein's thought, corresponding to the division between what language can say by means of its propositions and what language can only show. It goes on to discuss picture theory, logical atomism, extensionality, truth-functions and truth-operations, semantics, (...) metalogic and mathematics, solipsism and value, metaphysics, and finally, Wittgenstein's idea of the duty of maintaining silence. Frascolla also proposes a new interpretation of the ontology of the Tractatus. Based on the identification of objects with qualia, the argument put forward in the book challenges the currently prevalent ideas of the ‘New Wittgenstein'. The paradoxical nature of the Tractatus itself, and the theme of "throwing away the ladder", are thus revisited in a new key. _Understanding Wittgenstein's Tractatus_ is essential reading for anyone wishing to further their insight into one of the most influential works of twentieth-century philosophy. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics has long been notorious. Part of the problem is that it has not been recognized that Wittgenstein, in fact, had two chief post-Tractatus conceptions of mathematics. I have labelled these the calculus conception and the language-game conception. The calculus conception forms a distinct middle period. The goal of my article is to provide a new framework for examining Wittgenstein's philosophies of mathematics and the evolution of his career as a whole. I posit the Hardyian (...) Picture, modelled on the Augustinian Picture, to provide a structure for Wittgenstein's work on the philosophy of mathematics. Wittgenstein's calculus period has not been properly recognized, so I give a detailed account of the tenets of that stage in Wittgenstein's career. Wittgenstein's notorious remarks on contradiction are the test case for my theory of his transition. I show that the bizarreness of those remarks is largely due to the calculus conception, but that Wittgenstein's later language-game account of mathematics keeps the rejection of the Hardyian Picture while correcting the calculus conception's mistakes. (shrink)

The dissertation analyzes the theory of "logical space" developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, I show how this idea represents a development of arguments first put forward by Hermann von Helmholtz, the physicist and physiologist. Helmholtz--instead of honouring Kant's distinction between on the one hand time and space, and, on the other, empirical qualia --stretched the Kantian spatial manifold to cover the other qualia as well: the qualia are also organized in manifolds; and this new, extended manifold (...) is the "space" of all possible human experience. He explained this a priori mesh as being a consequence of the physiological constitution of our bodies, and the physical constitution of the world in which they are situated. The subject is enclosed in an inner world whose structure is the network of possible sensation; outside of her is a world of unknown complexity; and separating the two is what Heinrich Hertz called the "no-man's-land" of sense-physiology, a border zone regulating all traffic between the two realms, common to both, yet proper to neither. ;Wittgenstein, in his Tractatus, adapted the picture-theories of Helmholtz and Hertz to his analysis of logic. He too was confronted with the problem of defining a field of possible experience, of possible facts: his analysis of Russell's and Frege's logical theories had led him to the conclusion that the fundamental properties of logic could not be accounted for without assuming such an a priori space. Thus he assimilated Russell's types to the dimensions of a manifold, the elements of which were his Sachverhalte, or elementary facts. The truth-functions of our logic are defined on top of this space: it is the basis on which all symbolic systems, including those of the natural sciences, are erected. (shrink)

This book is intended to challenge Frege's Begriffsschrift as the foundation of philosophical work which either uses formal methods or is inspired by them s it attempts the synthesis of the antithetical ideas associated with Wittgenstein, the Picture-Theory, and the language-game conceived as the untimate level of explanation.

Perhaps the most important work of philosophy written in the twentieth century, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus first appeared in 1921 and was the only philosophical work that Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) published during his lifetime. Written in short, carefully numbered paragraphs of extreme compression and brilliance, it immediately convinced many of its readers and captivated the imagination of all. Its chief influence, at first, was on the Logical Positivists of the 1920s and 30s, but many other philosophers were stimulated by its philosophy (...) of language, finding attractive, if ultimately unsatisfactory, its view that propositions were pictures of reality. Perhaps most of all, Wittgenstein himself, after his return to philosophy in the late 1920s, was fascinated by its vision of an inexpressible, crystalline world of logical relationships. The posthumous publication of other writings has, therefore, only served to reawaken interest in the Tractatus and to illuminate its more neglected aspects. David Pears and Brian McGuinness revised their translation in the light of Wittgenstein's own suggestions and comments in his correspondence with C.K. Ogden about the first translation. In addition, this edition contains the introduction by Bertrand Russell which appeared in the original English translation. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's middle period work has been brought into the current debate on rule following and representation by Kripke and the Hintikkas. In my dissertation, I argue that approaches which aim at a consistent reconstruction of Wittgenstein's argument, while valuable in their own right, fail to do justice to his focus on the conflicting intuitions that lie behind philosophical theory building. For this hidden and ambiguous side to his thought is the turning point in his philosophical development. ;One (...) can summarise my findings as follows: In 1929, Wittgenstein recognised that the analysis of colour propositions forced him to give up the Tractarian doctrine that analysis must end in logically independent elementary propositions. From this point, his work branched out in two main directions. On the one hand, he worked on 'philosophical grammar': analyses of the rules we follow in talking about such matters as colour, visual experience, intention, time, memory and the philosophical subject. Here, the picture theory provided the basis for an account of how the mind represents the world. On the other hand, he also thought of language as a 'secondary' system, to be contrasted with direct apprehension of the 'primary' phenomena. This view, which is set out most fully in several chapters of an unpublished typescript , led to a seemingly inexpressible solipsism on which 'all is in flux.' The attempt to reconcile the two conceptions of the pictorial analogy--language as a system of representational conventions and experience as a direct presentation of the phenomena--ultimately led him to see the dangers in that analogy and thus to his later notion of a 'philosophical picture.'. (shrink)

This book provides a novel interpretation of the ideas about language in Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. Travis places the "private language argument" in the context of wider themes in the Investigations, and thereby develops a picture of what it is for words to bear the meaning they do. He elaborates two versions of a private language argument, and shows the consequences of these for current trends in the philosophical theory of meaning.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:April 3, 2010 (11:17 am) C:\Users\Milt\Desktop\backup copy of Ken's G\WPData\TYPE2902\russell 29,2 050 red.wpd Reviews 173 WITTGENSTEIN’S PRIMORDIAL WORK James Connelly Philosophy / Trent U. Peterborough, on, Canada k9j 7b8 [email protected] Michael Potter. Wittgenstein’s Notes on Logic. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 2009. Pp. [xii], 310. isbn 978-0-19-921583-6. £37.00; us$70.00. April 3, 2010 (11:17 am) C:\Users\Milt\Desktop\backup copy of Ken's G\WPData\TYPE2902\russell 29,2 050 red.wpd 174 Reviews Michael Potter’s Wittgenstein’s (...) Notes on Logic is a painstakingly detailed scholarly study which blends philosophical insight with biographical and historical context to yield a deeper appreciation of the key themes informing Wittgenstein’s philosophical development over his initial period of residence at Cambridge in 1911–13. Notingasurprising gap in the literature on Wittgenstein’s philosophy (p. 3), Potter sets out to treat Wittgenstein’s 1913 “Notes on Logic” (which consists of a succinct summary of the conclusions reached over this initial period) as an independent and primordial philosophical work. While it has been common for serious scholars of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus to “mine” (p. 1) his pre-Tractarian writings in search of “remarks to support their interpretations ” (p. 1) of that text, what sets Potter’s study of the “Notes” apart from previous attempts at exegesis is a methodological determination to approach the “Notes” as “if not quite … a terminus in Wittgenstein’s work then at least as worthy of study in their own right” (p. 1). An important advantage of this approach, according to Potter, is that it facilitates a clearer appreciation of Wittgenstein’s lasting insights “into the central themes of philosophical logic” (p. 262), many of which Wittgenstein himself had already grasped by 1913 and which survive subsequent rejection of some of the less plausible aspects of the Tractatus (such as logical atomism and the picture theory of propositions). By presenting these key insights as consequences of central, but only subsequently adopted, Tractarian doctrines such as the picture theory, however, traditional Wittgenstein scholarship has missed an opportunity, uniquely important in the case of his philosophy (p. 1), to elucidate them against the background of the actual historical landscape of problems, strategies, motivations, and inXuences, within the context in which they were originally formulated. According to Potter, then, looking at the “Notes” as a Wnished work in its own right, as opposed to a mere collection of preparatory notes, will help us to understand better both the more thorough reasoning Wittgenstein worked through in developing these various insights (subsequently either suppressed or highly compressed in the Wnal draft of the Tractatus itselfy), and just what further logical work that subsequently added elements, such as the picture theory, were supposed to contribute. Likewise, such an approach will help us to understand better the relevant inXuences upon Wittgenstein’s philosophical development, such as those, obviously and respectively, of Frege and Russell. Integral to distilling these various insights and inXuences from the “Notes”, according to Potter, is the process of “disentangling” (p. 3) various extant versions of the text from one another, the distinct versions themselves arising from the “rather complicated circumstances” (p. 3) in which the “Notesz” were composed. Following upon a lengthy explication of both the content and philosophical context of the “Notes”, Potter therefore attempts to “reconstruct the circumstances of composition of Wittgenstein’s Wrst surviving philosophical work” (p. 263). This is achieved by engaging in some “historical detective work” April 3, 2010 (11:17 am) C:\Users\Milt\Desktop\backup copy of Ken's G\WPData\TYPE2902\russell 29,2 050 red.wpd Reviews 175 1 Reprinted in Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914–1916, ed. G.yH. von Wright and G.yE.yM. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1961) pp. 93–107. The second edition (1979) has the so-called “Russell” version of the “Notes on Logic”, which Potter prints in a diTerent arrangement. (p. 3), aimed at identifying and clarifying various crucial aspects of the “Notes”z’ historical and biographical context. Along with an Appendix B containing two diTerent versions of the “Notes” themselves (the “Cambridge” and “Birmingham... (shrink)

The present paper aims to bring to light the relevance of Wittgenstein‘s thought for philosophical hermeneutics. In this sense it offers a thorough discussion of the Austrian philosopher‘s understanding of the concept of translation through a detailed examination of its development from its first formulation in the context of the picture theory of meaning in the Tractatus to its reformulation as "language game" and "form of life" within the use theory put forth in Philosophical Investigations. The paper (...) argues that the skepticism towards the history of everyday language implied by Wittgenstein‘s understanding of translation could be taken as an important step forward in the development of a critical dimension of philosophical hermeneutics. (shrink)

The present work attempts to explicate the philosophical method of Wittgenstein, which he formulated in the Tractatus in order to determine the meanings of our linguistic expressions by analyzing the basic structure of the language. Wittgenstein attempts to show that traditional philosophical problems can be avoided entirely by application of an appropriate methodology. The analysis of language is one important tool of solving problems. The role of language as a central concerned of Analytic philosophers is the dimension most involved in (...) disputes about the methodology employed. My understanding about Wittgenstein’sconcept of language in his two philosophies is founded on the methods that he adopts. There are two different methods in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. On these methods, Wittgenstein developed his theories of meaning, i.e., picture and use theories and consequently resulted two philosophies. I intend here to study about the theory of meaning that Wittgenstein developed in his Tractatus. (shrink)

Starting from an analysis of Wittgenstein's reasons for placing all true-seeming sentences about the relation between language and the world in the class of utterances that lack a truth-value and can only communicate in the privileged way, the doctrine of showing is investigated in Wittgenstein's later writings. In contrast to the view that the concept of showing simply disappeared with the abandonment of the picture theory of the sentence it is argued that much of his erarly (...) doctrine of showing survives in Wittgenstein's later philosophy. (shrink)

Starting from an analysis of Wittgenstein's reasons for placing all true-seeming sentences about the relation between language and the world in the class of utterances that lack a truth-value and can only communicate in the privileged way, the doctrine of showing is investigated in Wittgenstein's later writings. In contrast to the view that the concept of showing simply disappeared with the abandonment of the picture theory of the sentence it is argued that much of his erarly (...) doctrine of showing survives in Wittgenstein's later philosophy. (shrink)

This article proposes an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s so-called picture theory of propositions that forgoes the attribution of unsayable truths or theses to the Tractatus. Consequently, the interpretation avoids describing the Tractatus as entangled in a paradox of nonsensical theses. Rather, I argue, the proper expression for Wittgenstein’s logical insights is a logical symbolism into whose structure they are encoded. This also applies to his account of propositions as pictures. Its purpose is to clarify the principles governing a correct (...) logical language that makes perspicuous how symbols symbolize, and is expressive of what Wittgenstein calls ‘the correct logical conception’. (shrink)

The thesis of my article, 'Wittgenstein and the Naming Relation' ( Inquiry, Vol. 7 [1964], No. 4), was that Wittgenstein solved some early problems with a picture theory of language. The solution assumed that the units of language are words which are names of simple objects. Its undesirable consequences are exposed in my 'Wittgenstein's Notebooks 1914-1916' ( Inquiry, Vol. 12 [1969], No. 3). Because of these consequences Wittgenstein was led to analyze the idea of a name. This (...) analysis, together with a new philosophic method, was developed in The Blue and Brown Books and the Investigations. The present article concerns this development and supports a theme of the first article that there was a central tendency in all Wittgenstein's work: radical empiricism. (shrink)

The thesis of my article, ?Wittgenstein and the Naming Relation? (Inquiry, Vol. 7 [1964], No. 4), was that Wittgenstein solved some early problems with a picture theory of language. The solution assumed that the units of language are words which are names of simple objects. Its undesirable consequences are exposed in my ?Wittgenstein's Notebooks 1914?1916? (Inquiry, Vol. 12 [1969], No. 3). Because of these consequences Wittgenstein was led to analyze the idea of a name. This analysis, together (...) with a new philosophic method, was developed in The Blue and Brown Books and the Investigations. The present article concerns this development and supports a theme of the first article that there was a central tendency in all Wittgenstein's work: radical empiricism. (shrink)