Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the picture theory of meaning

Abstract

1. Wittgenstein, in his discussion of the relation between the positive and the negative propositions, makes the meaningfulness of the latter depend on that of the former, but not vice versa. In his discussion of denial and assertion, admitting or realising that neither is possible without the other makes the meaningfulness of the negative a condition of that of the positive and vice versa. His account is thus inconsistent.

2. There is no reason for every language system (a) to have positive propositions correlated with ' positive ' facts (b) to have complex sentences (c) to use names.

3. The account given of a type of language, atomic language, to which all language must be reducible, is wrong because it is far too simple. The semantic, syntactic and act categories of ordinary language are not reducible to compounds of the categories of his atomic language.

4. Since we can make statements by using words for relations and by using names for complexes, there is nothing logically wrong with this. There is thus no need to believe in an atomic language of the sort described.

5. Wittgenstein's Picture Theory does not explain language, and is in fact at odds with it. The theory is the rigo,4rous working out of theories held by Moore and Russell. It succeeds in solving the problem of the similarity of language and reality, but only at the expense of distorting both language and reality.