Anscombe guides us through the Tractatus and, thereby, Wittgenstein's early philosophy as a whole. She shows in particular how his arguments developed out of the discussions of Russell and Frege. This reprint is of the fourth, corrected edition.

In these discussions, Rush Rhees, who was a student and close friend of Wittgenstein, works out what he has learned from Wittgenstein's personal teaching and from study of his published and (at the time) unpublished writings. Some are review articles of books on Wittgenstein, and these are devoted to exposition of Wittgenstein's views. Others are independent discussions of special points in Wittgenstein's philosophy. The longest article, here published for the first time, is an account or record of what Wittgenstein said (...) about continuity in private discussion in 1938. (shrink)

This paper aims to explain how the Tractatus attempts to unify logic by deriving the truth-functionality of logical necessity from the thesis that a proposition shows its sense. I first interpret the Tractarian notion of showing as the displaying of what is intrinsic to an expression (or a symbol). Then I argue that, according to the Tractatus, the thesis that a proposition shows its sense implies the determinacy of sense, the possibility of the complete elimination of non-primitive symbols, the analyticity (...) thesis and the strong analyticity thesis. The picture theory emerges as what provides the only acceptable account of an elementary proposition, subject to the constraint that a proposition must show its sense. The picture theory and the analyticity thesis then entail the contingency thesis (that an elementary proposition is contingent) and the independence thesis (that elementary propositions are mutually logically independent) which, together with the strong analyticity thesis, imply that all logical propositions are tautologies. (shrink)

Laurence Goldstein gives a straightforward and lively account of some of the central themes of Wittgenstein's writings on meaning, mind, and mathematics.

Four years after the publication of Wittgenstein's Investigations, Rush Rhees began writing critical reflections on the masterpiece he had helped to edit. In this edited collection of his previously unpublished writings, Rhees argues, contra Wittgenstein, that although language lacks the unity of a calculus it is not simply a family of language games. The unity of language is found in its dialogical character. It is in this context that we say something, and grow in understanding: notions not captured in Wittgenstein's (...) emphasis on language games, following rules, and using language. Rhees develops Wittgenstein's notion that to imagine a language is to image a form of life, without suggesting that we are all engaged in an all-inclusive conversation. The result is not only a major contribution to Wittgenstein scholarship, but an original discussion of central philosophical questions concerning the possibility of discourse. (shrink)

Approaches to Wittgenstein brings together for the first time the many varied aspects of Wittgenstein's life, philosophy and aesthetic attitudes. It draws from many of his unpublished manuscripts to illuminate his work.

Studies the central topics of Wittgenstein's philosophy prior to and within the first parts of the Tractatus, covering such subjects as objects, substance, states of affairs, elementary propositions, pictures, and thoughts. He concludes that analysis is reduction to what is basic not in experience but in reference, and argues that the Tractatus is concerned not with problems of knowledge but with problems of sense.

The Tractatus contains twodifferent proofs of the Grundgedanke, or thenonreferentiality of logical constants. In thispaper, I explicate the first proof in TLP 5.4s andreconstruct the less explicitly stated second proof. My explication of the first proof shows it to beelegant but based on an invalid inference. In myreconstruction of the second proof, the main argumentis that the sign of a logical constant does not denotebecause it possesses the punctuation-mark-nature. Andit possesses the punctuation-mark-nature because,given the analyticity thesis in TLP 5, one (...) canestablish for everyday language an adequate symbolismwith N as the sole fundamental operation such that itssign is a bar indicating merely the order and scope ofits application. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna in 1889 and died in Cambridge in 1951. He studied engineering, first in Berlin and then in Manchester, and he soon began to ask himself philosophical questions about the foundations of mathematics. What are numbers? What sort of truth does a mathematical equation possess? What is the force of proof in pure mathematics? In order to find the answers to such questions, he went to Cambridge in 1911 to work with Russell, who had just (...) produced in collaboration with Whitehead (1861-1947) Principia Mathematica (1910-1913), a monumental treatise which bases mathematics on logic. But on what is logic based? Wittgenstein's attempt to answer this question convinced Russell that he was a genius. During the 1914-8 war he served in the Austrian army and in spare moments continued the work on the foundations of logic which he had begun in 1912. His war-time journal, Notebook s 1914-16 (1961), reveals the development of his ideas more clearly that the final version, Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus, which he published in the early 1920s. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, I visit the Fogelin–Geach-dispute, criticizeMiller''s interpretation of the Geachian notationN(x:N(fx)) and conclude that Fogelin''s argumentagainst the expressive completeness of the Tractariansystem of logic is unacceptable and that the adoptionof the Geachian notation N(x:fx) would not violate TLP5.32. Second, I prove that a system of quantificationtheory with finite domains and with N as the solefundamental operation is expressively complete. Lastly, I argue that the Tractarian system is apredicate-eliminated many-sorted theory (withoutidentity) with finite domains (...) and with N as the solefundamental operation, and thus is expressivelycomplete. (shrink)