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In practice, language is always more or less vague, so that what we assert is never quite precise. Thus, logic has two problems to deal with in regard to Symbolism: (1) the conditions for sense rather than nonsense in combinations of symbols; (2) the conditions for uniqueness of meaning or reference in symbols or combinations of symbols.
but that the whole function of language is to have meaning, and it only fulfils this function in proportion as it approaches to the ideal language which we postulate.
This is perhaps the most fundamental thesis of Mr Wittgenstein’s theory. That which has to be in common between the sentence and the fact cannot, so he contends, be itself in turn said in language. It can, in his phraseology, only be shown, not said, for whatever we may say will still need to have the same structure.
“Most propositions and questions that have been written about philosophical matters are not false but senseless.
Mr Wittgenstein maintains that everything properly philosophical belongs to what can only be shown, to what is in common between a fact and its logical picture.
Every philosophical proposition is bad grammar, and the best that we can hope to achieve by philosophical discussion is to lead people to see that philosophical discussion is a mistake.
The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.
The world is fully described if all atomic facts are known, together with the fact that these are all of them. The world is not described by merely naming all the objects in it; it is necessary also to know the atomic facts of which these objects are constituents. Given this total of atomic facts, every true proposition, however complex, can theoretically be inferred.
Wittgenstein’s theory of molecular propositions turns upon his theory of the construction of truth-functions.
“The events of the future,” he says, “cannot be inferred from those of the present. Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus.”
We here touch one instance of Wittgenstein’s fundamental thesis, that it is impossible to say anything about the world as a whole, and that whatever can be said has to be about bounded portions of the world.
Logic, he says, fills the world.
In all these cases it seems natural to express the phenomenon in the form “A doubts p,” “A desires p,” etc., which makes it appear as though we were dealing with a relation between a person and a proposition.
a relation in "hard" wy o thinking about relations
The totality of existent atomic facts is the world.
What is thinkable is also possible.
the thought; so that from the external form of the clothes one cannot infer the form of the thought they clothe, because the external form of the clothes is constructed with quite another object than to let the form of the body be recognized.
The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts.
Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly.
Contradiction is the external limit of the propositions, tautology their substanceless centre.
A function cannot be its own argument, but the result of an operation can be its own basis.
Roughly speaking: to say of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and to say of one thing that it is identical with itself is to say nothing.
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
What we cannot think, that we cannot think: we cannot therefore say what we cannot think.
Scepticism is not irrefutable, but palpably senseless, if it would doubt where a question cannot be asked.
