4. Picture Theory of Language

4. Picture theory of language

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

• one of the most important thinkers of 20th c.

• a philosopher, logician and mathematician; also an aviation engineer and architect

• born 1889 in Vienna, his family was really rich (the same year was Hilter born, the attended the same grammar school, Wittgenstein bullied Hilter)

• studied technical university in Berlin and Manchester

• got interested in mathematics and philosophy

• studied in Jena under Gottlob Frege and in Cambridge under Bertrand Russell

• fought in World War 1, in 1916 trained in Olomouc, then was sent to Russia and Italy

• as a prisoner of war started writing Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, that got published in 1921

• after it he stopped doing philosophy, and taught at a village elementary school in Lower Austria, resigned because he used corporal punishment (he was harsh to boys and also girls)

• came back to the Cambridge University where he stayed until his death

• Philosophical Investigations were published posthumously in 1953 (he changed his ideas in philosophy and published this, very successful)

• two very different philosophical approaches:

• Wittgenstein I – ideal language philosophy

• Wittgenstein II – ordinary language philosophy

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

• a set of hierarchically numbered statements that are self-evident (he doesn’t have to give argument to prove them)

• seven main propositions about logic, language and world

• “The truth of the thoughts that are here communicated seems to me unassailable and definitive. I therefore believe myself to have found, on all essential points, the final solution of the problems.” (TLP, Preface)

• Have definite answers that philosophers have

Picture theory of language

• The main theory of tractatus

• Idea behind it is quite simple

• Thoughts are pictures of facts, propositions are pictures of thoughts

• “The world is the totality of facts, not of things.” (§1.1)

WORLD facts

• “A logical picture of facts is a thought.” (§3)

• “The totality of true thoughts is a picture of the world.” (§3.01)

MIND thoughts

• “A proposition is a picture of reality.” (§4.01)

• “The totality of propositions is language.” (§4.001)

Status of philosophy

• “Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences.” (§4.111)

• “Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. Philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. Philosophy does not result in ‘philosophical propositions’, but rather in the clarification of propositions. Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries.” (§4.112)

• Philosophers are like police men, they make sure that other people and thinkers communicate in a clear way, if someone doesn’t make sense, philosophers should say something, it should be clear

Demarcation

• Demarcate = to find a border, in this case between meaning and nonsense

• “Philosophy sets limits to the much disputed sphere of natural science.” (§4.113)

• “(philosophy) It must set limits to what can be thought; and, in doing so, to what cannot be thought. It must set limits to what cannot be thought by working outwards through what can be thought.” (§4.114)

• Picture of the world is shown by natural sciences