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Wittgenstein/Logic Final Exam Topics/Instructions
Write an 11-12 page paper answering all aspects of ONE of the following essay questions. You MUST use the corresponding attached sources marked as articles to be used, and may use any of the other attached sources as well. Also, you may use any additional sources. All sources must be cited in mla format. :
? It seems strange to say that the simple English sentence “Plato fights Socrates” is a picture, if we’re thinking of things like this:
[From Wittgenstein’s Notebooks 1914-1916, entry for 29.9.14, p. 7] (a) How does Wittgenstein think of pictures and how would he defend the idea that the sentence “Plato fights Socrates” is “a picture of reality” [4.01]? (b) One commentator writes:
…although the apparently unrestricted claim that sentences are pictures or models might seem to apply to every sentence, really Wittgenstein does not need it to hold for every kind of sentence, and I think it is clear that he does not hold it. He really needs it to hold — and means it to hold — just for a very limited class of sentences, those which he calls elementary sentences. For most purposes, we can treat the ‘picture theory’ — the theory of sentences as models — strictly speaking, as a theory only of elementary sentences. [Morris, Guidebook to Wittgenstein and the Tractatus, 177f]
Another commentator says:
…it is sometimes claimed that Wittgenstein’s ‘picture theory of propositions’ is only
meant to apply to the case of the simplest propositions of all, the ‘elementary propositions’…It is, however, quite clear that Wittgenstein’s argument for the claim that propositions are pictures is completely general, and will apply to propositions of arbitrary logical complexity. To restrict his account to the elementary propositions would miss an essential, if difficult, element in his thought that begins with what he calls his ‘fundamental thought’. [White, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, p. 72]
Which—if either—of these interpretations is correct? (c) And never mind what Wittgenstein thinks, can logically complex sentences built up with truth functional connectives like “not”, “and”, “or”, “if…then…” be considered pictures in his sense?
2. In elementary symbolic logic courses, we are taught (i) to write down all combinations of Ts and Fs when we construct truth tables exhibiting the how the truth value of a complex sentence
depends on the truth values of its simpler constituents. E.g., when we construct a truth table for a conditional sentence with P and Q as antecedent and consequent, respectively, we write:
P Q | P?Q
T T | T
T F | F
F T | T
F F | T
(ii) We are also taught—it is at least implied—that we can translate or symbolize any “simple” sentence of English by a sentence l

etter in the symbolic language of logic. (Cf. Parsons, Introduction to Symbolic Logic: “We abbreviate simple sentences by capital letters.” [Introduction, pp. 6f. See also Ch. 1, s. 3, p. 7.]) (a) Translate “If Arturo is married, then Arturo is a bachelor” in accord with (i) Does the sentence express a logical falsehood, according to what we are taught in elementary logic? Is that a problem with what we are taught? (b) Do the things we are taught—e.g., the methods for identifying logical truths and falsehoods (tautologies and contradictions) or for classifying arguments as valid or invalid—depend upon Tractarian assumptions—e.g., that elementary propositions represent independent states of affairs? Is that a problem?
3. TLP 5.6 is the heady claim: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” [Italics in the original] It might come as a surprise that the remarks leading up to 5.6 concern broadly speaking logical issues:
5.3 All propositions are results of truth operations on elementary propositions…
5.4 At this point it becomes manifest that there are no ‘logical objects’ or ‘logical constants’…
5.5 Every truth-function is a result of successive applications to elementary propositions of the
operation ‘(- – – – T) (?, . . . . .)’…
(a) What light does Diamond’s discussion of Russell’s idea that Bismarck can think and speak about his own sensations in a way that you and I cannot shed on the remark in 5.6? (b) What logical assumptions does Diamond’s Wittgensteinian argument against Russell make? (c) Should those assumptions be accepted?
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