Isomorphic Quotes

“Before we turn to the Tractarian treatment of logical propositions, it is worth pausing to consider what becomes in that book of the philo- sophical idea that what makes some set of statements true (be they log- ical or empirical) is that they “reflect” a structure intrinsic to a domain of things. If one misunderstands the Tractarian comparison of a picture with a proposition, then one may think its very point is to encourage such an idea. Some commentators tell us that the crucial idea here is that there are two isomorphic “structures”—there is a structure in the world and a structure in language (or thought)—and in order to say (or think) what is true, one of the two structures must “reflect” the other.
This is hopeless both as a reading of the Tractatus and as a conception of truth. As a reading of the book, it is hopeless, since the Tractatus says that it is the proposition that is a logical picture—where, on the conception of the proposition here at issue, it is essential that it be true or that it be false; hence, being true cannot itself be a matter of mere depiction. As soon as we focus on the question of what it is that I am right “about” if I affirm a true negative statement (e.g., “There are no elephants in this room”), it should become clear that the proposed conception is equally hopeless as an account of truth. For if the difference between true and false propositions were simply a matter of “reflecting” or “mirroring” what is the case, then the idea of speaking truth by affirming a negative statement would seem to require something very mysterious: a peculiar “negative” region of reality to which the truth of a negative statement may correspond. It is no small part of the point of the Tractarian deployment of the elucidatory comparison of a proposition with a picture to bring out the hopelessness of any such conception of truth—any one, that is, that tries to explicate the difference between true and false thoughts by appealing to the idea that the true ones “reflect” what is the case and the false ones do not.”
― James Conant, The Logical Alien: Conant and His Critics