PHIL 2060 Wittgenstein

Lecture 2: The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

1. If the aim of the Tractatus is to elucidate the nature of the Satz (statement) then it makes sense to begin an account of the book not at its beginning but at where the account of the Satz is developed. The first major occurrence is at 3.1, after which the index gives up listing occurrences and simply says `& passim thereafter'. 3.1 states: `In a Satz, a thought finds an expression that can be perceived by the senses'. This tells us succinctly that a Satz has both semantical and physical characteristics. Semantical, because it is the expression of a thought, and a thought is a picture (a logical picture (3)) of a fact, i.e. of something in the world (1.1, 1.2). Physical, because Sätze are used to communicate, and so they must be perceptible. The perceptible aspect of a Satz is the Satzzeichen (the `propositional sign' in the Pears/McGuinness translation). `And a Satz is a propositional sign in its projective relation to the world' (3.12). A propositional sign is a particular arrangement of words (3.14, 3.141). Now (3.14) is supposed to echo (2.14) where, instead of talking about propositional signs, Wittgenstein is talking about pictures. (It is rather annoying that the last sentence of (3.14) is not labelled (3.141) so as to echo (2.141).) His idea is that we can understand how Sätze communicate their senses by comparison with how pictures relate to depicted situations. Apparently, what gave Wittgenstein this idea was the way that road accidents were reconstructed in French law courts. Wittgenstein conceives of pictures as models of reality (2.12). So unlike ordinary pictures which are objects that we might hang on a wall, Wittgenstein's pictures are facts (2.141). (Nobody, to my knowledge has done so, but it might be interesting to compare this theory of Wittgenstein's with the `mental model' theory of Craik, Johnson-Laird and McGinn – see Colin McGinn’s book, Mental Content, and n.b. (4.04), reference to Hertz's Mechanics on dynamical models.) At (4.01), the view is stated concisely: `A proposition is a picture of reality. A proposition is a model of reality as we mentally construe it (so wie wir sie uns denken)'. Note the connection here to (2.1) `We construct pictures of facts for ourselves' and (3.11): The method of using a propositional sign to project a possible situation is to think the sense of the Satz. Pictures are not passive objects in the mind -- mental representations. No, pictures actively present situations. (Note, therefore, mistranslation of `darstellen' at (2.202), (4.031) etc..) See Hidé Ishiguro in European Journal of Philosophy, 1994 for Arnauld v. Malebranche on the same issue.

2. The elementary Sätze of the Tractatus picture elementary (atomic) facts in virtue of the similarity of structure between the propositional sign and the depicted atomic fact. On the nature of facts, see 1. – 2.063. A Satz communicates a situation to us, and so it must be essentially connected with the situation. And the connexion is precisely that it is its logical picture. A proposition states something only in so far as it is a picture' (4.03). This takes us to the heart of the picture theory [K.T. Fann diagram].

3. Objection: a sentence is not just a group of names. Reply: not a group, but a configuration (3.21) A sentence pictures objects in relation (not objects and a relation). (3.14 - 3.1432) on the role of relational expressions -- see Max Black's A Companion to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, p.105f.. Crucial to all of this is the notion of analysis - the idea that the world and our sentences about the world can be broken down into their ultimate parts (3.25) and the requirement (3.23) that sense be determinate - there's no scope for vagueness.

4. Propositions as expressions of thoughts (3.1). Thoughts contain not words but `psychical constituents' that have the same sort of relation to reality as words (letter in 1919 to Russell; see Notebooks, p.131). Having a thought is a matter of picturing a state of affairs to oneself (3.001, 3.11, 3.5). This conception of meaning something by one's words - uttering them while focusing the mind on a (possible) situation - is heavily criticized in Wittgenstein's later writings.

5. The separation of genuine propositions (those that picture the world) from various kinds of nonsense. One particularly important species of nonsense (strictly `senseless' - sinnlos, but not unsinnig) is the non-contingent, viz., tautologies and contradictions, the necessary `propositions' of logic. (For philosophical importance of necessity, see Leibniz, Monadology ##29, 30). Hacker, Insight and Illusion, p.viii says that the main achievment of the Tractatus was `the first remarkable steps toward clarification of the nature of logic and logical necessity'; see also Pears, The False Prison, Vol. 1, pp.21-22). Also Carnap in K.T. Fann (ed.), Ludwig Wittgenstein: the Man and his Philosophy, p.33: `The most important insight I gained from [Wittgenstein's] work was the conception that the truth of logical statements is based only on their logical structure and on the meaning of the terms'. One way of putting this is to say that logical truths are not at all like scientific truths, for how the world actually is makes no difference to logic. Logic is autonomous or, as Wittgenstein says at the beginning of his Notebooks 1914-1916, `Logic must take care of itself'.

6. Wittgenstein begins his discussion of necessity at 4.46, and he picks the theme up again at 6.1. One of the striking claims for which he argues is that tautologies and contradictions are neither true nor false. (Here I depart from Fogelin, Wittgenstein); see my `The Development of Wittgenstein's Views on Contradiction', History and Philosophy of Logic 7 (1986), pp.43-56.).

7. Doctrine of showing in the Tractatus. Frege says that singular terms (noun phrases) stand for objects, whereas predicates stand for concepts. This leads to a difficulty. For consider `The concept horse is a concept.'. That seems to be true. Yet on Frege's theory, the singular term stands for an object, so the sentence would be false. According to Wittgenstein, a singular term such as a name shows that it stands for an object, a numeral shows that it signifies a number etc.. But we cannot say, or express such things on pain of getting into Frege's difficulty. Remarks on what can be shown but not said occur frequently in the Tractatus (see index). It is argued, by Hacker and by Glock, that Wittgenstein’s doctrine of showing emerged not from reflection on Frege’s problem about the concept horse, but from reflection on Bertrand Russell’s Theory of Types.

10. The doctrine of showing is original to Wittgenstein. But many of the doctrines of the Tractatus are derived from other authors. In the preface, Wittgenstein acknowledges that he makes no claim to novelty on individual matters. See Laurence Goldstein, `How Original a Work is the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus?’, Philosophy 77 (July, 2002), pp.421-46. One of the reasons why we need to spend time in this course on the Tractatus is that it embodies a lot of presuppositions shared by other philosophers, all of which Wittgenstein seeks to repudiate in his later work.