Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Philosophy of language is the branch of philosophy that studies language. Its primary focus includes the nature of linguistic meaning, reference, language use, language learning, language understanding, truth, thought and experience, communication, interpretation and translation. Ð'ЁÐ'ЁThe discipline is concerned with five key issues:

1. How are sentences composed into a meaningful whole and what are the meanings of the parts of sentences?

2. What is a meaning?

3. How do we use language socially and what is its purpose?

4. How does language relate to the mind of the speaker and the interpreter?

5. How does language relate to the world?Ð'Ё(Wikipedia 1)

Though philosophers have always discussed language, it took on a central role in philosophy beginning in the late nineteenth century, particularly in the English speaking world and parts of Europe. Ð'ЁThe philosophy of language was so pervasive that for a time, in analytic philosophy circles, philosophy as a whole was understood to be a matter of mere philosophy of language.Ð'Ё(Wikipedia 3)

One philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, played a central role in 20th century analytic philosophy. Considered by some to be Ð'Ёthe greatest of the 20th century, he continues to influence current philosophical thought in topics such as logic and language, perception and intention, ethics and religion, aesthetics and culture.Ð'Ё (Stanford Encyclopedia 13)

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in 1889 in Vienna, Austria to a wealthy and well connected family. He studied engineering in Berlin and in 1908 went to England to research aeronautics. His interest in mathematics got him thinking about the foundations of mathematics. It was at this point that it was recommended that he study with Bertrand Russell in Cambridge. At Cambridge, Wittgenstein was Ð'Ёgreatly impressed with Russell and he began to work on logic.Ð'Ё (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2)

In 1914, Wittgenstein volunteered for the Austrian army. He continued his philosophical work and won several medals for bravery during the war. The results of his thoughts on language were published in English in 1922 with the help of Bertrand Russell. The title of the book Ð'- Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was the only book published during WittgensteinÐ'Ò's lifetime. After the book was published, Wittgenstein felt that he had solved all the problems of philosophy and he became an elementary school teacher in rural Austria.

In the introduction of Tractatus by Bertrand Russell, he claimed that Tractatus Ð'Ёcertainly deservesÐ'....to be considered an important event in the philosophical world.Ð'Ё (Pears 2) In Tractatus, Wittgenstein developed a theory of language that was Ð'Ёdesigned to explain something that Russell left unexplained in Principia Mathematica, the nature of logical necessity.Ð'Ё(Pears 2) Wittgenstein tried to spell out what a logically constructed sentence can and cannot be used to say. Tractatus is based on seven basic propositions.

1. The world is everything, that is the case.

2. What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.

3. The logical picture of the facts is the thought.

4. The thought is the significant proposition.

5. Propositions are truth functions of elementary propositions.

6. The general forms of the truth function is [Ð"Ñ›, έ, Ν].

7. Where of one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

The book addresses the central problems of philosophy which deal with the world, thought and language and presents a solution to these problems which is grounded in logic. In between the introduction and the last proposition, makes for difficult reading. Wittgenstein felt that Tractatus took Principia Mathematica to the next level by Ð'Ёbringing philosophy to an end, its key problems definitely solved once and for all.Ð'Ё (Dennett 1). Some philosophical propositions could be readily expressed and evaluated within his system and those that couldn't were nonsense.

Ð'ЁThe most famous theories in Tractatus is the picture theory of meaning. Wittgenstein thought that thoughts and propositions are pictures. Pictures are made up of elements that together constitute the picture.Ð'Ё (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy 5) In addition, Wittgenstein thought that only the proposition has sense and only the context of a proposition has a name meaning.

In Tractatus, he provided the reader with the two conditions of sensical language. First, the structure of the proposition must conform with the constraints of logical form. Second, the elements of proposition must have reference. These conditions had far reaching implications. Ð'ЁThe analysis must culminate with a name being a primitive symbol and this manifested by the very abstract character of both the names and simple objects. Moreover, logic itself gives