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Abstract

In this section I first develop Wittgenstein’s early Metametaphysics and address the realism-idealism problematic revolving around it, after which I examine the debate about the resolute reading (the so-called New Wittgenstein) as a case study in light of the realism-idealism problematic in Sect. 4. In establishing Wittgenstein’s early Metametaphysics I elaborate on Wittgenstein’s conception of logic (Sect. 3.1), clarify some controversial Tractarian concepts, and address central exegetical questions and philosophical problems involving them (Sect. 3.2). Finally, I give an account of the famous picture theory at the center of the realism-idealism debate and sketch how this debate may be overcome (Sect. 3.3).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Cf. also TLP (4.111): “Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences. (The word ‘philosophy’ must mean something whose place is above or below the natural sciences, not beside them.)”

  2. 2.

    McGuinness (2002: 104). All forms of propositions such as “the general notion of predicate, the general notion of dual relation, triple relation, and any other forms there might be of whatever complexity and level had been supposed to be logical objects, and Wittgenstein was denying them that status” (ibid.).

  3. 3.

    As Frege put it in his essay “Logic”: “[T]he task we assign logic is only that of saying what holds with the utmost generality for all thinking, whatever its subject-matter. We must assume that the rules for our thinking and for our holding something to be true are prescribed by the laws of truth. The former are given along with the latter. Consequently we can also say: logic is the science of the most general laws of truth” (LC: 128). However, Frege’s views on this matter are less clear. Cf. Putnam (2000). But we need not explore these exegetical questions here since Wittgenstein’s attack is, as we’ll see, directed against a conception of logic in terms of generality, and thus it’s only of secondary importance whether Frege propounds it or not. At any rate, Russell’s case seems clear enough.

  4. 4.

    Ricketts (1996: 59). Cf. also Goldfarb (1997: 62).

  5. 5.

    Cf. McGuinness (2002: 109) and Hutto (2003: 30).

  6. 6.

    Cf. Potter (2008: 57): “Russell’s assumption of the existence of a logical realm existing somehow alongside the physical one rendered it inexplicable why the laws obeyed by the former should be applicable to the latter.”

  7. 7.

    Sheffer (1926: 228).

  8. 8.

    Ricketts (1985: 3).

  9. 9.

    Hyman (2001: 1).

  10. 10.

    Cf. Sect. 2.3. I’ll come back to this topic in Sect. 3.3.

  11. 11.

    Cf. Tejedor (2015: 22). Cf. also WVC (260; transl. am.): “The totality of these obtaining and non-obtaining states of affairs is called logical space . Logical space is the possibility for the obtaining and non-obtaining of states of affairs.” As is well known, Wittgenstein makes a conjunction of three statements in the Tractatus that seem to be incompatible with one another: “The totality of obtaining states of affairs is the world” (TLP: 2.04; transl. am.), “The obtaining and non-obtaining of states of affairs is reality” (TLP: 2.06; transl. am.), and “The sum-total of reality is the world” (TLP: 2.063). This conjunction leaves one wondering whether the world is the totality of obtaining states of affairs alone or whether the world also includes non-obtaining states of affairs. Though Wittgenstein’s wording is indeed somewhat ambiguous, I think it’s clear that he intended the latter, if only for the simple reason that between the first two statements Wittgenstein claims: “The totality of obtaining states of affairs also determines which states of affairs do not obtain” (TLP: 2.05; transl. am.). Obtaining and non-obtaining states of affairs come essentially as a package deal and cannot possibly be separated from one another (like meaning and logical form). Wittgenstein’s idea here is, as Potter (2008: 143) nicely put it, “that reality might be characterizable as much by the absence of something as by its presence.” What is not the case shapes reality inasmuch as does what is the case.

  12. 12.

    Cf. TLP (5.61 and 6.124). Cf. also Tang (2011: 601): “[L]ogic is always already the logic of the world.

  13. 13.

    Cf. TLP (4.461).

  14. 14.

    This and the following remarks apply, of course, to contradictions as well.

  15. 15.

    Cf. TLP (4.462): “Tautologies and contradictions are not pictures of reality. They do not represent any possible situations.”

  16. 16.

    In the Notebooks Wittgenstein writes somewhat confusingly: “One cannot say of a tautology that it is true, for it is made so as to be true” (NB: 55). But in the Tractatus Wittgenstein clearly states that tautologies are “unconditionally true” (TLP: 4.461). For discussion cf. Kenny (2006: 54–55), who denies and A.W. Moore (2012: 229), who defends the thesis that tautologies (contradictions) are really true (false). For further discussion of the various categories of sentences in the Tractatus cf. A.W. Moore (2020).

  17. 17.

    Cf. TLP (6.112): “The correct explanation of the propositions of logic must assign to them a unique status among all propositions.”

  18. 18.

    Cf. TLP (6.113): “It is the peculiar mark of logical propositions that one can recognize that they are true from the symbol alone, and this fact contains in itself the whole philosophy of logic. And so too it is a very important fact that the truth or falsity of non-logical propositions cannot be recognized from the propositions alone.”

  19. 19.

    Cf. NB (66): “There doesn’t after all seem to be any setting up of a kind of logical inventory as I formerly imagined it.”

  20. 20.

    Brandom (1994: 648).

  21. 21.

    Carroll (1895).

  22. 22.

    Cf. also TLP (6.1264): “Every proposition of logic is a modus ponens represented in signs. (And one cannot express the modus ponens by means of a proposition.)”

  23. 23.

    Cf. Glock (1996: 203) and Künne (2003: 124).

  24. 24.

    Cf. TLP (6.123): “Clearly the laws of logic cannot in their turn be subject to laws of logic.”

  25. 25.

    Cf. Tejedor (2015: 35).

  26. 26.

    Cf. Baker and Hacker (2009: 90): “In short, a rule of inference does not engineer a fit between independently given propositions. Rather, it makes perspicuous the fact that a pair of propositions belong to one another, that they are internally related.” The idea that rules in general are not assertions (i.e. that they are neither true nor false) is also the fundamental thought underlying (the solution of) Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations and will be dealt with at length in Sect. 5 and 6.

  27. 27.

    Cf. Hacker (1986: 48).

  28. 28.

    Cf. Ostrow (2004: 22).

  29. 29.

    Cf. Glock (1992: 19).

  30. 30.

    Cf. Glock (1992: 20).

  31. 31.

    Cf. Hacker (2017: 215).

  32. 32.

    Cf. Ryle (2009: 245): “But ‘Today is Monday, so tomorrow is Tuesday’ is not a statement. It is an argument, of which we can ask whether it is valid or fallacious; it is not an assertion or doctrine or announcement of which we can ask whether it is true or false. We can, indeed, ask whether its premiss is true, and whether its conclusion is true; but there is no third question ‘Is it true that today is Monday so tomorrow is Tuesday?’ An argument is not the expression of a proposition, though it embodies the expressions of two propositions.”

  33. 33.

    Cf. Hutto (2003: 45).

  34. 34.

    Cf. Maslow (1961: 4), Black (1964: 3), and Mounce (1981: 18).

  35. 35.

    Cf. J. Griffin (1964: 30), Künne (2003: 120, n. 98), and Sullivan (2005: 59). The view that there are both objects and their combinations (complexes or facts) is essentially Russell’s own: “[T]he only other sort of object you come across in the world is what we call facts” (PLA: 111). Cf. against this Wittgenstein’s clarification: “[t]he world does not consist of a catalogue of things and facts about them […]” (WL: 119).

  36. 36.

    Cf. also Stenius (1960: 28), Stern (1995: 53), McGuinness (2002: 77), M. McGinn (2006: 138), and Priest (2014: 199), who consider things components of facts.

  37. 37.

    Ostrow (2004: 24).

  38. 38.

    Pears (1987: 8–9).

  39. 39.

    Commentators composing the first group are legion. For the latter group cf. Stenius (1960: 31), who thinks states of affairs are simply possible (but non-actual) facts, and Black (1964: 45).

  40. 40.

    Among the commentators recognizing the distinction between existing and holding/obtaining are McGuinness (2002: 84) and Palmer (1998: 172–173). Wittgenstein makes the same point about relations when commenting on Ogden’s translation of TLP (4.122): “That a relation exists cannot be asserted at all. What we can assert is that it holds between certain objects” (LO, 28).

  41. 41.

    Wittgenstein speaks here of propositions, but it’s clear that what he says applies to facts as well because propositions are facts, a claim Wittgenstein makes repeatedly. Cf. TLP (3.14–3.143).

  42. 42.

    Cf. Lampert (1998: 281).

  43. 43.

    Cf. Kenny (2006: 51) and Johnston (2011: 72) who have observed this important point. This is also why Wittgenstein distinguishes between positive and negative facts but not between positive and negative states of affairs. A positive fact is the obtaining of a state of affairs, a negative fact is the non-obtaining of a state of affairs (cf. TLP: 2.06). For example, to say that the watch doesn’t lie on the table expresses a negative fact (if true), that is, that a certain connection between certain objects doesn’t hold; but this doesn’t say anything about the existence or non-existence of (a set of) objects. States of affairs are connections of objects, and if certain objects are not connected in a particular way, then there simply is no such state of affairs.

  44. 44.

    Cf. PG (200): “It is just as misleading to say the fact that this circle is red (that I am tired) is a complex whose component parts are a circle and redness (myself and tiredness).” This passage is taken from a small manuscript entitled “Complex and Fact” Wittgenstein wrote years after the Tractatus. Some commentators believe this manuscript to be a critique of his conception in the Tractatus, whereas I’ll argue in Sect. 3.3 that his passage is merely a clarification of his former views and hence that the distinction between complex and fact is already operative in the Tractatus.

  45. 45.

    Cf. Lampert (1998: 282).

  46. 46.

    Johnston (2007: 245).

  47. 47.

    Cf. Skyrms (1981: 199) and Zalabardo (2015: 116).

  48. 48.

    Cf. Genova (1995: 66).

  49. 49.

    Ostrow (2004: 50).

  50. 50.

    Cf. WL (119): “What the world is is given by description and not by a list of objects.”

  51. 51.

    Cf. TLP (5.4711): “To give the essence of a proposition means to give the essence of all description, and thus the essence of the world.”

  52. 52.

    Cf. WL (119): “‘The world is everything that is the case’. This is intended to recall and correct the statement ‘The world is everything that there is’; the world does not consist of a catalogue of things and facts about them (like the catalogue of a show).”

  53. 53.

    R. Bradley (1992: 67) lists over a dozen uses.

  54. 54.

    Cf. Hintikka and Hintikka (1986: ch. 3) and Cook (1994: 31).

  55. 55.

    Cf. R. Bradley (1992: 74) and Lampert (1998: 241).

  56. 56.

    Sellars (1962), Anscombe (1963), J. Griffin (1964), Copi (1966), and Carruthers (1989).

  57. 57.

    Ishiguro (1969: 21).

  58. 58.

    Ishiguro (1969: 47).

  59. 59.

    Campbell (2011: 140).

  60. 60.

    Cf. Winch (1987), McCarty (1991), Blank (2000), McGuinness (2002), Cerezo (2005), Johnston (2009), Campbell (2011), and Zalabardo (2015).

  61. 61.

    Campbell (2011: 139).

  62. 62.

    Cook (1994: 31).

  63. 63.

    Cf. White (2006: 20).

  64. 64.

    For a thorough analysis regarding Wittgenstein’s views on this matter in the Notebooks cf. Sluga (2012). He convincingly argues against the substantial conception and concludes: “Wittgenstein’s notebooks already contained everything necessary for the destruction of the theory of simple objects and of the whole edifice to which it belongs” (Sluga 2012: 114).

  65. 65.

    Cf. TLP (4.032), where Wittgenstein expressly calls “ambulo” a proposition.

  66. 66.

    Here’s Wittgenstein’s own example: “[…] how is it possible for ‘kilo’ in a code to mean: ‘I’m all right’? Here surely a simple sign does assert something and is used to give information to others.—For can’t the word ‘kilo’, with that meaning, be true or false?” (NB: 8).

  67. 67.

    Cf. TLP (2.024).

  68. 68.

    J. Griffin (1964: 49).

  69. 69.

    Cf. TLP (3.144 and 3.221; transl. am.): “Situations can be described but not named. […] Objects can only be named. […] I cannot express them.” Cf. Winch (1987: 8–10) and Johnston (2009: 151). I’ll come back to this in Sect. 3.3.

  70. 70.

    Cf. Palmer (1998: 179).

  71. 71.

    Cf. TLP (3.323), where Wittgenstein makes the same point with the proposition “Green is green.” The first and third words are the same sign yet express “different symbols” because they have different logical roles, the first one being a proper name (referring to an object) and the third one being an adjective (expressing a property). The fact that both symbols share the same sign is logically irrelevant.

  72. 72.

    Cf. NB (69): “But logic as it stands, e.g., in Principia Mathematica can quite well be applied to our ordinary propositions, e.g., from ‘All men are mortal’ and ‘Socrates is a man’ there follows according to this logic ‘Socrates is mortal’ which is obviously correct although I equally obviously do not know what structure is possessed by the thing Socrates or the property of mortality. Here they just function as simple objects.” And a page later Wittgenstein writes: “And it is clear that the object must be of a particular logical kind, it may be as complex or as simple as it is” (NB: 70).

  73. 73.

    Cf. NB (69): “The simple sign is essentially simple. It functions as a simple object. […] Its composition becomes completely indifferent.

  74. 74.

    Cf. WVC (252): “Elements are simple. For that reason they cannot be described. What can be described? Whatever is complex.”

  75. 75.

    Carruthers (1989: 108).

  76. 76.

    Proponents of the narrow interpretation include Sellars (1962), Anscombe (1963), J. Griffin (1964), Copi (1966), Carruthers (1989, 1990), and Mácha (2015). Since Carruthers has developed the most elaborate account of the narrow interpretation, I’ll focus primarily on his writings.

  77. 77.

    Stenius (1960), Mounce (1981), Maury (1983), Hintikka and Hintikka (1986), Hacker (1986), and Potter (2008) are the main advocates of the wide reading.

  78. 78.

    Cf. Copi (1966: 180).

  79. 79.

    Carruthers (1989: 109).

  80. 80.

    Cf. Carruthers (1989: 110), according to whom “a state of affairs will consist of individuals standing in some material relation to one another.” I share the diagnosis that the terms of the debate between the narrow and the wide interpretation are misguided with Lampert (1998: 241), Cerezo (2005: 92), and Johnston (2009: 149).

  81. 81.

    Cf. Johnston (2007: 240) and Candlish and Damnjanovic (2012: 87). One of the commentators who had understood all this right from the beginning was Ramsey (2013: 133): “As regards the tie, I cannot understand what sort of a thing it could be, and prefer Wittgenstein’s view that in the atomic fact the objects are connected together without the help of any mediator. This does not mean that the fact is simply the collection of its constituents but that it consists in their union without any mediating tie.”

  82. 82.

    Cf. NL (101): “Logical indefinables cannot be predicates or relations, because propositions, owing to sense, cannot have predicates or relations.” The same point is made in the Cambridge Lectures, in which Wittgenstein explains TLP (2.01) to Desmond Lee: “[A] proposition is not two things connected by a relation. […] The objects hang as it were in a chain” (WL, 120). Consider also the following passage, in which Wittgenstein comments on Frege’s famous distinction between concepts and objects after having identified it as that which is, for Frege, responsible for the unity of the proposition: “Frege held that what connected the words within a proposition—that which made a proposition a proposition, so to speak—was its predicate. He called possible predicates concepts and distinguished accordingly between concept and object. It might then be thought that in describing the phenomena we encountered an analogous difference, i.e. that there was something in a state of affairs which constituted its form, which connected the other elements, as well as something thing-like which was to be connected. The predicate would then signify the form-like part of the state of affairs and the other elements of a proposition its thing-like part. Thus this whole distinction arises when we ask, What connects the elements of a situation [Sachlage] together? But have we any right to ask this question? The elements are not connected with one another by anything. They simply are connected, and that concatenation [Verkettung] just is the state of affairs in question. After all, does the other conception explain anything? If cement [Kitt] is needed to hold the elements together—what is it that connects the cement and the elements?” (WVC: 251–252; transl. am.). The thesis that in a state of affairs there are objects and objects only is also perfectly consistent with Wittgenstein’s remarks on propositions later in the Tractatus, where he even makes use of the chain metaphor again: “An elementary proposition consists of names. It is a nexus, a concatenation [Verkettung], of names” (TLP: 4.22). In the same way that states of affairs are made up of objects only, so propositions are made up of names only. How this analysis works will be discussed in Sect. 3.3.

  83. 83.

    Cf. Palmer (1998: 170, 179).

  84. 84.

    This term is inspired by TLP (2.013): “Each thing is, as it were, in a space of possible states of affairs. This space I can imagine empty, but I cannot imagine the thing without the space.”

  85. 85.

    Cf. Mácha (2015: 57): “The internal properties which make up the form of an object are always relational properties, because they involve the possibility of being combined with other objects.”

  86. 86.

    For Frege’s influence on Wittgenstein, particularly with respect to the context principle , cf. Reck (1997).

  87. 87.

    Johnston (2007: 242).

  88. 88.

    Cf. McGuinness (2002: 68) and Tejedor (2015: 31–32).

  89. 89.

    Cf. Hochberg (2000: 18) and Cerezo (2005: 103).

  90. 90.

    Cf. Friedlander (2001: 35).

  91. 91.

    I borrow this apt metaphor from Anscombe (1963: 38), who uses it to explain Wittgenstein’s notion of linguistic expressions in terms of incompleteness. Anscombe , in turn, may have gotten this metaphor from Wittgenstein (she doesn’t make any references in the cited passage) because it appears prominently in the Philosophical Investigations: “Imagine a picture representing a boxer in a particular stance. Now, this picture can be used to tell someone how he should stand, should hold himself; or how he should not hold himself; or how a particular man did stand in such-and-such a place; and so on. One might (using the language of chemistry) call this picture a proposition-radical” (PI: p. 12). While I agree with Anscombe about Wittgenstein’s notion of (Tractarian) expressions (I’ll go into that in Sect. 3.3), I disagree with her about Wittgenstein’s notion of (Tractarian) objects, which she takes to belong to a determinate ontological category, to wit particulars.

  92. 92.

    Cf. Johnston (2017: 148).

  93. 93.

    Dummett (1973: 246).

  94. 94.

    Cf. Hanks (2012: 42).

  95. 95.

    Russell came to see this point much later and credited Wittgenstein with this insight (PLA: 12–13): “It is very important to realize such things, for instance, as that propositions are not names for facts. It is quite obvious as soon as it is pointed out to you, but as a matter of fact I never had realized it until it was pointed out to me by a former pupil of mine, Wittgenstein.”

  96. 96.

    Davidson (2005: 103) succinctly captures what is wrong with Russell’s theory in particular and with its ilk in general: “The trouble is that propositions are entities, and Russell has maintained that any entity can be a logical subject. But if we say that some proposition is true or false, we are saying that an entity is true or false, which makes no sense. […] The problem apparently arises if we take a sentence to express a thing, whether that thing is a proposition, a meaning, or anything else.”

  97. 97.

    Unlike Geach (1976: 67), Simons (1992: 335), and Künne (2003: 142, n. 162), I don’t think Wittgenstein was confused about the distinction between complexes and facts in the Tractatus. The following passage in the Notebooks shows that Wittgenstein was aware of this crucial distinction quite early on: “The old problem of complex and fact. The theory of the complex is expressed in such propositions as: ‘If a proposition is true then Something exists’; there seems to be a difference between the fact expressed by the proposition: a stands in the relation R to b, and the complex: a in the relation R to b, which is just that which ‘exists’ if that proposition is true. It seems as if we could designate this Something, and with a ‘complex sign’ at that” (NB: 48; transl. am.).

  98. 98.

    Potter (2008: 102).

  99. 99.

    This raises the question whether complexes and states of affairs are the same. Lampert (1998: 290) argues that they are not: while both complexes and states of affairs are determinate connections of things, the constituents of the former are homogeneous, whereas the constituents of the latter are heterogeneous. Be that as it may, for our purposes we can disregard this subtlety here.

  100. 100.

    Cf. Potter (2008: 135) and Hanks (2012: 38).

  101. 101.

    Cf. Child (2011: 27).

  102. 102.

    Cf. Gaskin (2008: 122).

  103. 103.

    Cf. TLP (3.144 and 3.221; transl. am.): “Situations can be described but not named. […] Objects can only be named. […] I cannot express them.” Cf. also WVC (252). Anscombe (1963: 17) has seen this clearly when she writes that Wittgenstein “held that names had no sense but only reference, and propositions no reference but only sense.” Cf. also Ishiguro (2001: 31) and Glock (2004: 225) for a similar point.

  104. 104.

    Cf. Ostrow (2004: 28).

  105. 105.

    Cf. TLP (3.141–3.142): “A proposition is not a blend of words. […] A proposition is articulate. Only facts can express a sense, a set of names cannot.”

  106. 106.

    Cf. Textor (2009: 61–62). Once again, no one has seen this more clearly than Ramsey (2013: 121): “There is a sense in which any object is incomplete; namely that it can only occur in a fact by connection with an object or objects of suitable type: just as any name is incomplete, because to form a proposition we have to join to it certain other names of suitable type.”

  107. 107.

    Cf. Anscombe (1963: 93).

  108. 108.

    Cf. Diamond (2010: 551).

  109. 109.

    The crucial issue of Tractarian nonsense will be addressed in Sect. 4.

  110. 110.

    Bronzo (2011: 104–105) also emphasizes the interdependence of objects and states of affairs on the one hand as well as expressions and propositions on the other.

  111. 111.

    The most prominent expression of Wittgenstein’s semantic contextualism is, of course, TLP (3.3): “Only propositions have sense; only in the nexus of a proposition does a name have meaning.”

  112. 112.

    Cf. WVC (251–252).

  113. 113.

    Cf. White (2006: 64) and Zalabardo (2015: 127).

  114. 114.

    Cf. TLP (3.314). With this claim I follow Ramsey (2013: 121), Anscombe (1963: 98), and Lampert (1998: 258).

  115. 115.

    Cf. TLP (3.323): “In everyday language it very frequently happens that the same word has different modes of signification—and so belongs to different symbols—or that two words that have different modes of signification are employed in propositions in what is superficially the same way. Thus the word ‘is’ figures as the copula, as a sign for identity, and as an expression for existence; ‘exist’ figures as an intransitive verb like ‘go’, and ‘identical’ as an adjective; we speak of something, but also of something’s happening. (In the proposition, ‘Green is green’—where the first word is the proper name of a person and the last an adjective—these words do not merely have different meanings: they are different symbols.)”

  116. 116.

    Cf. McGuinness (2002: 114).

  117. 117.

    Cf. the anecdote told by Malcolm (2001: 70): “I asked Wittgenstein whether, when he wrote the Tractatus, he had ever decided upon anything as an example of a ‘simple object’. His reply was that at that time his thought had been that he was a logician; and that it was not his business, as a logician, to try to decide whether this thing or that was a simple thing or a complex thing, that being a purely empirical matter!”

  118. 118.

    Cf. Marion (1998: 114).

  119. 119.

    Ramsey (2013: 145).

  120. 120.

    Cf. TLP (2.22): “What a picture represents it represents independently of its truth and falsity, by means of its pictorial form.” Cf. also TLP (2.224–2.225): “It is impossible to tell from the picture alone whether it is true or false. There are no pictures that are true a priori.” The same point is made about propositions because they are pictures: “A proposition can be true or false only in virtue of being a picture of reality” (TLP: 4.06). And again, the same point is made about thoughts: “If a thought were correct a priori, it would be a thought whose possibility ensured its truth” (TLP: 3.04).

  121. 121.

    Cf. Cerezo (2005: 261) and Hanks (2012: 51).

  122. 122.

    This passage can also be found virtually verbatim in the Notes on Logic (cf. NL: 105).

  123. 123.

    In the same passage Wittgenstein expresses his idea more formally in the following way: “What symbolizes in φξ is that φ stands to the left of a proper name […].”

  124. 124.

    Cf. Frascolla (2007: 46).

  125. 125.

    Cf. NB (7): “In the proposition a world is as it were put together experimentally. (As when in the law-court in Paris a motor-car accident is represented by means of dolls etc.)” Cf. also TLP (4.031–4.0311): “In a proposition a situation is, as it were, constructed by way of experiment. Instead of, ‘This proposition has such and such a sense’, we can simply say, ‘This proposition represents such and such a situation’. One name stands for one thing, another for another thing, and they are combined with one another. In this way the whole group—like a tableau vivant—presents a state of affairs.”

  126. 126.

    Highly influential representatives of the realist position are Malcolm (1986) and Pears (1987). Leading proponents of the anti-realist or idealist position are Ishiguro (1969) and McGuinness (2002). I’ll discuss the Malcolm-Pears position as well as the Ishiguro -McGuinness counter-position below.

  127. 127.

    Cf. TLP (2.14–2.141).

  128. 128.

    Cf. TLP (4.04): “In a proposition there must be exactly as many distinguishable parts as in the situation that it represents. The two must possess the same logical (mathematical) multiplicity.”

  129. 129.

    Cf. Cerezo (2005: 98) and Hacker (2013: 174–175).

  130. 130.

    Cf. also TLP (2.18).

  131. 131.

    Cf. Morris (2008: 120): “The possibilities of arrangement of the movable bits of the model are exactly the same as the possibilities of arrangement of the movable things—the real cars and people—in reality. This makes it possible for us to use the model to construct, experimentally, a way in which the real things might have been arranged.” For similar points cf. Ricketts (1996: 78), Hutto (2003: 59), and Frascolla (2007: 43).

  132. 132.

    Morris (2008: 121).

  133. 133.

    Cf. Hacker (1986: 59) and Frascolla (2007: 24).

  134. 134.

    Cf. Candlish (1998: 128), Cerezo (2005: 261), and Hacker (2013: 174).

  135. 135.

    Cf. TLP (3.24): “A proposition that mentions a complex will not be nonsensical, if the complex does not exist, but simply false.”

  136. 136.

    Compare TLP (2.1513): “So a picture, conceived in this way, also includes the pictorial relationship, which makes it into a picture” with TLP (2.16): “If a fact is to be a picture it must have something in common with what it depicts,” which common “ingredient” is identified immediately afterward (TLP: 2.17) as pictorial form.

  137. 137.

    Cf. Dilman (2002: 206) and McManus (2006: 22).

  138. 138.

    Of course, both parties have had both predecessors and successors, but Ishiguro -McGuinness and Pears-Malcolm have developed the most elaborate accounts for the respective positions. That is why I’ll focus mainly on their views. Notable predecessors of the Ishiguro -McGuinness position are Rhees (1966, 1969) and Winch (1969), and important predecessors of the Pears-Malcolm position are Black (1964) and Kenny (2006). A more recent defense of (a modified version of) the Ishiguro -McGuinness position can be found in Diamond (2006), whereas Hacker (2001) advocates the opposite view.

  139. 139.

    Ishiguro (1969: 20–21). Cf. McGuinness (2002: 96) for a similar statement.

  140. 140.

    Pears (1987: 114).

  141. 141.

    Pears (1987: 110).

  142. 142.

    Pears (1987: 102–103). Cf. also Pears (1987: 110). The same concession can be found in Malcolm (1986: 29).

  143. 143.

    Tejedor (2015: 30) has aptly categorized this debate as belonging to a series of very similar debates about the Tractatus she groups together under the umbrella term “Determination Question.” Other such debates include the debate whether “meaning determines sense (or vice versa)” and whether “content determines form (or vice versa)” (Tejedor 2015: 31). These debates are not only very similar in structure but also characterized by the divide between realists and idealists.

  144. 144.

    Cf. Ishiguro (1969: 40): “[T]he simple objects, whose existence was posited were not so much a kind of metaphysical entity conjured up to support a logical theory as something whose existence adds no extra content to the logical theory.” Cf. also McGuinness (2002: 87) and McGuinness (2002: 98).

  145. 145.

    Cf. Pears (1987: 88): “Once a name has been attached to an object, the nature of the object takes over and controls the logical behaviour of the name, causing it to make sense in some sentential contexts but not in others.”

  146. 146.

    Pears (1987: 111): “This interpretation still distances Wittgenstein from Russell, but not so far. […] It understands Wittgenstein’s words, ‘Only in the context of a proposition does a name have meaning’, in the same general way as Ishiguro and McGuinness , but reverses the direction of fit, so that the Tractatus comes out as basically realistic.”

  147. 147.

    The notion “isomorphism ” has been introduced by Stenius (1960: 91). His highly influential commentary concludes with attributing to the Tractatus a strong version of Kantianism : “Wittgenstein’s philosophical system could be called ‘Critical Lingualism’ or ‘Transcendental Lingualism’ or even ‘Lingualistic Idealism’. […] The limits of the world of the metaphysical subject, or rather, the limits of the metaphysical subject’s ‘logical space ’ of possible worlds, is determined by the limits of language” (Stenius 1960: 220–221).

  148. 148.

    Cf. Morris (2008: 131).

  149. 149.

    Cf. TLP (5.61): “Logic pervades [erfüllt] the world: the limits of the world are also its limits.”

  150. 150.

    Cf. Tejedor (2015: 86).

  151. 151.

    Cf. Wilke (2006: 106) and Travis (2011: 169), who also put emphasis on the identity of structure.

  152. 152.

    Kenny (2006: 56).

  153. 153.

    Kenny (2006: 56).

  154. 154.

    Cf. Tejedor (2015: 85).

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Bartmann, M. (2021). Wittgenstein’s Early Metametaphysics. In: Wittgenstein’s Metametaphysics and the Realism-Idealism Debate. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73335-3_3

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