By Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophy of language and logic
Subject
Themes
The world consists entirely of facts, not things. Facts are states of affairs, combinations of objects that can either obtain or not obtain. Objects themselves are simple, unchanging elements that form the substance of reality. They can only be named, never defined, and their meaning lies entirely in their possible combinations with other objects.
The world consists entirely of facts, not things. Facts are states of affairs, combinations of objects that can either obtain or not obtain. Objects themselves are simple, unchanging elements that form the substance of reality. They can only be named, never defined, and their meaning lies entirely…
The Tractatus emerged from a specific moment in the history of philosophy and logic. In the early twentieth century, philosophers and mathematicians were attempting to place logic and mathematics on secure foundations. Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell had developed new logical systems that…
Language functions by creating pictures of reality. Every meaningful proposition is a logical picture of a possible state of affairs. Just as a painting represents objects arranged in space by placing pigments in corresponding spatial relations, propositions represent possible facts by arranging…
Logic says nothing about the world. The propositions of logic are tautologies, true under all possible circumstances. They place no constraints on reality because they are compatible with any possible state of affairs. A tautology like "either it rains or it does not rain" tells us nothing about the…
The most fundamental distinction in philosophy separates what can be said from what can only be shown. What can be said is expressed in propositions that picture possible states of affairs. What can only be shown manifests itself in the structure of language but cannot itself be captured in…
All propositions are built from elementary propositions through truth-functional operations. An elementary proposition is a logical picture of an atomic fact, a possible combination of simple objects. These propositions are logically independent of one another. From the existence or non-existence of…
The limits of language are the limits of the world. This is not because language is a tool that might be improved or extended. Rather, language and world share a common logical structure. What can be thought corresponds exactly to what can be said, and both are bounded by the same necessity. There…
The world consists of facts, not things. This foundational claim establishes that reality is the totality of what is the case, not the totality of objects that exist. A fact is a state of affairs, a configuration of objects in a particular arrangement. Objects themselves are simple and unchanging,…
We make pictures of facts. A picture is a model of reality that represents a possible state of affairs. The picture and what it pictures share something essential: logical form. This shared structure is what makes representation possible. Without it, there would be no connection between symbols and…
A thought is a logical picture of facts. It is a proposition with sense, expressing a possible state of affairs. Thoughts are not mental images or psychological processes but logical structures that represent reality. To think is to construct these logical pictures, and what can be thought…
All propositions are truth functions of elementary propositions. A truth function is one whose truth value depends solely on the truth values of its component propositions. From elementary propositions, which depict atomic facts, all complex propositions can be constructed through repeated…
Natural science consists of propositions with sense. These propositions picture possible states of affairs and can be verified or falsified by experience. The totality of true propositions constitutes the natural sciences. Science describes how things are in the world, but it cannot go beyond the…
Ethics and aesthetics are one. Both concern value, and value cannot be found among facts. A fact is simply what is the case; it has no intrinsic goodness or badness, beauty or ugliness. If value exists, it must lie outside the entire sphere of what happens and what is. Value belongs not to the world…
Proposition seven stands alone: what we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. This is not one proposition among others but the culmination of everything that precedes it. It does not add to what has been said; it points beyond saying altogether. The entire work leads to this recognition.…
By Ludwig Wittgenstein
Subject
Themes
The world consists entirely of facts, not things. Facts are states of affairs, combinations of objects that can either obtain or not obtain. Objects themselves are simple, unchanging elements that form the substance of reality. They can only be named, never defined, and their meaning lies entirely in their possible combinations with other objects.