This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
It is useful to note, along with McGinn (2006), that “interpreters acknowledge that Wittgenstein is obliged to deduce the necessary features of the world indirectly, via an interpretation of what is essential to any symbolism in which the world is represented. However, it is argued that the metaphysical picture that he thereby arrives at is intended to show the grounds of the logic of our language lies in the essential structure of an independent reality. Thus, the essence of language is held to be a reflection of the essence that reality has prior to, and independently of, the construction of language that describes it” (p. 135).
In defending a non-metaphysical reading of the opening lines of the Tractatus, according to which it only ever seeks to trace out the logic of depiction rather than to make substantial claims about underlying reality, McGinn (2006) observes, “it belongs to the essence of the objects that are the constituents of states of affairs that they exist in combination with other objects in possible states of affairs. Nothing is required to link the objects that are the constituents of possible states of affairs; these objects do not exist outside of possible states of affairs” (p. 156, emphasis added, see also p. 143, 151).
Of course, understood through the lens of a ‘thought first’ approach the fundamental mistake here is “confusedly endowing words with a life of their own: we enchant, and are enchanted by, words, colluding in a confusion that transposes on to them, and on to the world which we then see them as ‘fitting’, burdens that are actually ours to bear. Such words promise to spare us the trouble, not only of thinking, but of living” (McManus 2006, p. 1). The very same point could be made with reference to imagined items in the mental lexicon instead of words in the public arena.
Thus Millikan asks: “What objective criterion determines that one is using a dog thought only in response to a dog or that one’s dog thoughts always correspond even to the same kind of thing? I adopt Sellars’s suggestion that adequate intentional representing is a kind of picturing or mapping” (See Millikan 2005, p. 87).
See McManus (2006, pp. 237–240) for a detailed cartography of the many places in his earlier writings that Wittgenstein objects to the idea that language, and even a sub-set of language that uses propositions, must take a singular form.
As he notes, the truth is that “Representation … is used so multifariously, in such a confused profusion of senses and nonsenses, and in the service of such a variety of theoretical designs, that no current use can claim exclusive rights to it” (Walton 1990, p. 3). This explains why Walton disavows a “commitment to either a picture theory of language (or ‘symbols’) or correspondence theory of truth” (Walton 1990, p. 3).
References
Burge T (2010) Origins of objectivity. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Fodor JA, Pylyshyn ZW (2015) Minds without meanings. MIT Press, Cambridge
Haugeland J (1998) Having thought: essays in the metaphysics of mind. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Horwich P (2012) Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophy. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Lowe J (2014) Metaphysical knowledge. In: Haug MC (ed) Philosophical methodology: The armchair or the laboratory?. Routledge, London, pp 126–144
McGinn M (2006) Elucidating the Tractatus. Oxford University Press, Oxford
McGinn M (2014) Liberal naturalism: Wittgenstein and McDowell. In: Haug MC (ed) Philosophical methodology: The armchair or the laboratory?. Routledge, London, pp 62–85
McGuinness B (ed) (2008) Wittgenstein in Cambridge: letters and documents 1911–1951. Blackwell, Oxford
McManus D (2006) The enchantment of words. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Millikan RG (2005) Language: a biological model. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Papineau D (2014) “The poverty of conceptual analysis” “Metaphysical knowledge”. In: Haug MC (ed) Philosophical methodology: The armchair or the laboratory?. Routledge, London, pp 166–194
Price H (2013) Expressivism, pragmatism and representationalism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Putnam H (1992) Renewing philosophy. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Rescorla M (2013) Millikan on honeybee navigation and communication. In: Kingsbury J, Ryder D, Williford K (eds) Millikan and her critics. Wiley Blackwell, Oxford, pp 87–102
Walton KL (1990) Mimesis as make-believe: on the foundations of the representational arts. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Wittgenstein L (1922) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP) (trans: Pears DF, McGuinness B). Routledge, London
Wittgenstein L (1953) Philosophical investigations (PI) (trans: Anscombe GEM). Basil Blackwell, Oxford
Wittgenstein L (1956) Remarks on the foundations of mathematics (RFM) (trans: Anscombe GEM). von Wright GH, Rhees R (eds). Basil Blackwell, Oxford
Wittgenstein L (1958) The blue and brown books: preliminary studies for the philosophical investigations. Blackwell, Oxford
Wittgenstein L (1974) On certainty (trans: Denis P, Anscombe GEM). Anscombe GEM, Von Wright GH (eds). Basil Blackwell, Oxford
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hutto, D.D. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus . Topoi 35, 617–626 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-014-9291-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-014-9291-2