From the unity of the proposition to linguistic idealism

Richard Gaskin

pp. 1325-1342

in: Synthese 196 (4), 2019.

Abstract

The paper contains a general argument for linguistic idealism, which it approaches by way of some considerations relating to the unity of the proposition and Tractarian metaphysics. Language exhibits a function–argument structure, but does it do so because it is reflecting how things are in the world, or does the relation of dependence run in the other direction (or in neither)? The paper argues that the general structure of the world is asymmetrically dependent on a metaphysically (though not historically) prior fact about language, namely that it exhibits subject–predicate (in general: function–argument) structure.