Wittgenstein on representability and possibility

Colin Johnston

pp. 127-147

in: Sandra Lapointe, Christopher Pincock (eds), Innovations in the history of analytical philosophy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

It is a central commitment of the Tractatus that "it is impossible to judge a nonsense" (§5.5422). This essay seeks to understand the ground of this commitment in Wittgenstein's thought. To this end, various interpretations of the Tractatus on "the relation between language and reality" are considered, with each view assessed for the understanding it provides of the stance against nonsense. Having rejected as inadequate various realist readings, and then also an idealist reading, the essay recommends a view on which language and reality are internally bound together in the notion of truth. Where a fact is precisely a truth condition, and so something to be represented, a proposition (a judgment) is precisely the representation of such a fact, the representation of a truth condition.

Cited authors

Wittgenstein Ludwig