DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-023-00581-0
تاريخ النشر: 2024-01-11
في تنازل فيتجنشتاين عن ” = ” في الكتابة المنطقية وخلفيته الفلسفية. دراسة نقدية
© المؤلف(ون) 2024
الملخص
في هذه المقالة، أتناول نقديًا تنازل فيتجنشتاين عن ”
1 المقدمة
2 تنازل فيتجنشتاين عن ” = ” في نص مفهوم صحيح
جميع تركيبات العلامات التي تبدو وكأنها تقول شيئًا لا يمكن إظهاره إلا هي جمل زائفة.
الجمل الزائفة هي تلك التي، إذا تم تحليلها، تظهر مرة أخرى فقط ما كان من المفترض أن تقوله.
يبدو أن فيتجنشتاين اعتقد أن الصيغ في 5.534 كانت مقولات زائفة لأنها انتهكت تمييز القول والعرض، حيث أن أول مسودة معروفة لاقتراحه بإلغاء علامة الهوية (فيتجنشتاين 1961، ص. 34) تسبقها مباشرة الملاحظة التي أصبحت فيكتاتوس 4.1212: “ما يمكن أن يُعرض، لا يمكن أن يُقال.”… الهويات من الشكل، حيث و متميزة، تحاول أن تقول إن المتغيرات و يجب أن تُخصص لنفس الكائن – في انتهاك لما هو موضح، بتدوين صحيح، من خلال استخدام متغيرات مميزة.
(1) إذا كان في حكم فيتجنشتاين أن الطابع الزائف للمعادلات والروابط الوظيفية الحقيقية للمعادلات كان بسبب الحادثة التي هي فقط (أجهزة تمثيلية بسيطة أو معقدة) التي تحكم الاستبدالية المتبادلة للأسماء المتطابقة، فسيكون من الواضح أنه لا يوجد أي من النظائر الخالية من علامة الهوية لتلك الأجهزة التمثيلية هو جملة زائفة بالنسبة له. لأنه لا يعتبر النظائر الخالية من علامة الهوية كأجهزة تمثيلية.
(ii) بأي جملة خالية من علامة الهوية ينوي فيتجنشتاين استبدال التكرار ”
3 المزيد عن الجمل الزائفة في التراكتاتوس: تعليقات نقدية على نقد لامبرت وسابل لحساب ويهمير
الدليل على أن ويتجنشتاين لم يقصد أن تكون الاقتراحات الزائفة في 5.534 ممثلة كتكرارات أو تناقضات قوي جدًا، ومع ذلك. في 5.531، العبارة التي يستخدمها ويتجنشتاين لإعطاء ترجمته هي “Ich schreibe also nicht […], sondern […].” لذا يبدو واضحًا أنه يوجد تباين مقصود، عندما يقول في 5.534، dass “Scheinsätze wie […] sich in einer richtigen Begriffsschrift gar nicht hinschreiben lassen (تأكيدنا)، يعتقد ويهمير أنه يجب علينا تفسير هذه العبارة حرفيًا: نظرًا لأن التدوين الجديد لا يحتوي على علامة الهوية،
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References
Fogelin, R. (1983). Wittgenstein on Identity. Synthese, 56, 141-154.
Frege, G. (1893). Grundgesetze der Arithmetik. Begriffsschriftlich abgeleitet, vol. I, H. Pohle, Jena.
Frege, G. (1967). Kleine Schriften, ed. I. Angelelli, G. Olms, Hildesheim.
Hintikka, J. (1956). Identity, Variables, and Impredicative Definitions. The Journal of Symbolic Logic, 21, 225-245.
Lampert, T., & Säbel, M. (2021). Wittgenstein’s Elimination of Identity in Quantifier-Free Logic. The Review of Symbolic Logic, 14, 1-21.
Landini, G. (2007). Wittgenstein’s Apprenticeship with Russell. Cambridge University Press.
Rogers, B., & Wehmeier, K. F. (2012). ‘Tractarian First-order Logic. Identity and the N-Operator’, the Review of Symbolic Logic, 5, 538-573.
Russell, B. (1961). ‘Introduction’ (to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus), in Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus, translated and edited by D. F. Pears ad B. F. McGuinness Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, ix-xxii.
Wittgenstein, L. (1961). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, The German text of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung, with a new edition of the translation by D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1961. For simplicity. I refer to the Tractatus by means of the abbreviation “T”.
Wittgenstein, L. (1964). Philosophische Bemerkungen, Wittgenstein Schriften 2, ed. R. Rhees, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M.
Wittgenstein, L. (1967). Ludwig Wittgenstein und der Wiener Kreis. Gespräche aufgezeichnet von Friedrich Waismann, Wittgenstein Schriften 3, ed. B. F. McGuinness, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M.
- Matthias Schirn
matthias.schirn@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, University of Munich, Ludwigstr. 31, 80539 Munich, Germany According to Wittgenstein’s remarks in T 4.2211 and T 5.535, the first-order domain might be taken to be infinite; see in this respect Rogers and Wehmeier 2012, p. 539 f.
I translate “Satz” throughout this essay as “sentence” to avoid ambiguity to which the use of the word “proposition” might give rise in certain contexts. - 3 “The concept-script of Frege and Russell is such a language, although it still fails to exclude all mistakes” (T 3.325).
In his Introduction to the Tractatus, Russell (1961, p. xvii) misinterprets Wittgenstein’s remarks on ” ” and identity. It is clear that in his envisioned concept-script Wittgenstein dispenses only with ” ” but not at the same time with identity. What he does reject, are standard conceptions of identity.
In a letter to Russell of 15 December 1913 (Wittgenstein 1969, p. 273), Wittgenstein writes: “The question concerning the nature of identity cannot be answered before the nature of tautologies is explained. The question concerning the nature of the latter is, however, the fundamental question of all logic.”
Wittgenstein does not claim that ” ” does not denote a relation but rather that identity is not a relation. This claim suggests that a novel, non-relational conception of identity is required, if identity is not to be abandoned in logic. Wittgenstein gives here examples of nonsensical pseudo-sentences. Yet this does not mean that he regards all pseudo-sentences as nonsensical. He obviously does not. The = -sentences which he lists in T.531, T 5.532. T 5.5321 and T 5.534 are not considered to be nonsensical. However, the tautologies among his examples of -sentences are considered to be senseless. I shall argue below that Wittgenstein probably regards all sentences as senseless, not only the tautologies (and contradictions) among them.
Wittgenstein hastens to add that this also disposes of all the problems that were connected with such pseudo-sentences. This can be doubted. He mentions in particular all the problems to which Russell’s axiom of infinity gives rise and claims that they can be solved at this point. In his diary note of 6 October 1914 (Wittgenstein 1969, p. 97), Wittgenstein mentions ” ‘ is true” and in his diary note of 29 November 1914 (Wittgenstein 1969, p. 123) ” ” as a pseudo-sentence. He claims that in view of his proposed identity-sign free notation ” ” and similar sentences would lose all appearance of justifiability. Finally, in his diary note of 10 June 1915 (Wittgenstein 1969, p. 149), his examples of pseudo-sentences are ” ” and ” “. He even goes so far as to say that these are not sentences at all.
It is not clear what Wittgenstein means here precisely by “analyzing”. - 11 ”
” or ” ” is just the definiens in Leibniz’s definition of ” “.
Cf. Wittgenstein 1967, p. 190. In a conversation with Waismann on the topic equation and substitution rule, Wittgenstein says that even the statement ” cannot be substituted for ” can be understood if one is aware that one is faced with a new calculus and knows the rules of its grammar. Independently of Wittgenstein’s position regarding ” ” in the Tractatus, we can say, quite in the spirit of Frege, that the epistemically relevant use of ” ” qua sign of a binary object-relation presupposes the availability of coreferential, but non-synonymous singular terms in a quantifier-free language . Otherwise, from an epistemological point of view, ” ” would be a non-rolling vehicle in .
In fairness to Rogers and Wehmeier, I should mention that in another place (see p. 549) they also draw attention to Wittgenstein’s statement in T 6.2 that the pseudo status of pseudo-sentences is due to their containing ” “. In future work, I plan to comment on their meticulous analysis, based on work by Hintikka 1956, especially of identity-sign free counterparts of quantified=-sentences which Wittgenstein lists in the Tractatus. Following Hintikka, Rogers and Wehmeier distinguish between a weakly exclusive and a strongly exclusive interpretation of Wittgenstein’s identity-sign free counterparts. They argue, inter alia, that a variant of the strongly exclusive interpretation is compatible with Wittgenstein’s programmatic view in the Tractatus. Appealing to work by Ramsey, Rogers and Wehmeier further argue in support of Hintikka’s identification of the weakly exclusive interpretation with Wittgenstein’s intended identity convention. They end their discussion of Wittgenstein’s new conception of identity and difference by noting (p. 555) that
one cannot expect all valid schemas of classical first-order logic to hold in Wittgenstein’s alternative logic. We can however legitimately insist that if Wittgenstein’s notation is to be considered an adequate alternative to standard first-order logic, the translation of every valid sentence in the Russellian notation must be valid in the Wittgensteinian notation.
It is obvious that a sentence which is recognized as expressing a determinate thought cannot be the translation of a senseless sentence and that the latter cannot be the translation of the former.
17 Stating only that instead of “–” I write “…” does not reveal anything specific about the semantic relation between sentences of the first kind and those of the second.As far as I can see, it is only in a diary note of 27 October 1914 (Wittgenstein 1969, p. 108) that Wittgenstein makes a remark on the semantic relation between sentence and the identity-sign free counterpart: “For it is clear that ‘aRa’ would have the same meaning as ‘ ‘. Thus, one can let disappear the pseudo-sentence ‘ ‘ by means of a completely analyzed notation.” It seems clear that Wittgenstein would have to argue for each individual case of sentence and its identity-sign free counterpart that the two sentences have the same meaning. Any generalization in this respect would seem to be ungrounded. Furthermore, we cannot safely infer from the remark in the diary that in the Tractatus Wittgenstein thought that sentences and their identity-sign free counterparts have the same meaning, quite apart from the fact that in the Tractatus he would likewise have to argue for sameness of meaning on a case by case basis. It is conceivable that in the Tractatus he tacitly holds that in some cases of pairing sentences with identity-sign free sentences he can justifiably assume sameness of meaning in the sense of synonymy while in other such cases the semantic relation must be set weaker and could be more appropriately characterized, say, in terms of equivalence. And in some such cases he might have realized that it is hard to argue for the (requisite) equivalence of the sentence and its assumed identity-sign free correlatum. Whatever Wittgenstein thought about the semantic relation at issue, it is noticeable that he does not analyze a single example, let alone justify the supposed equivalence (or even sameness of meaning) of the sentences and the identity-sign free counterparts that he lists in T 5.531, T 5.532 and T 5.5321. - 19 In a diary note of 11 November 1914, Wittgenstein claims: “Since ‘
is not a sentence, ‘ ‘ is not a function, a ‘class ‘ ‘ is an absurdity and likewise the so-called null class” (Wittgenstein 1969, p. 117).
Rogers and Wehmeier (2012, p. 547) point out that their translation procedures only pertain to scenarios in which neither language contains distinct but coreferring names so that this example is said to have no bearing on their translatability results. Yet this is clearly not the scenario that Wittgenstein is imagining in the Tracatus. Suppose that for some reason he had confined himself to replacing in his projected correct concept-script only -sentences of the quantifier-free fragment of a standard first-order language with their identity-sign free counterparts. In my view, this would have made sense by his own lights only if the names flanking ” ” are considered to corefer and thus to be intersubstitutable. The tautology ” ” is just one telling example.
In T 4.1211, he says though that two sentences “fa” and “ga” show that the same object is talked about in both. I think that Frege would basically agree with that. In my view, Wittgenstein’s argument in T 5.5301 that identity is not a relation between objects (a relation in which an object stands to itself) is not conclusive; see AMONYMOUS.
In the notes dictated to G. E. Moore in Norway in April 1914, Wittgenstein claims that the sign of identity expresses the internal relation between a function and its argument: . He characterizes here internal relations “as relations between types, which cannot be expressed in sentences, but are all shown in the symbols themselves, and can be exhibited systematically in tautologies” (Wittgenstein 1969, p. 248; cf. p. 184 and T 5.441, T 5.47). Thus, “one can see that the sentence ( ). is a tautology, if one expresses the truth-conditions of ( ). successively” (Wittgenstein 1969, p. 248). In T 3.343, Wittgenstein writes: “Definitions are rules for translating from one language into another.” “A name cannot be dissected any further by means of a definition: it is a primitive sign” (T 3.26). “The meanings of primitive signs can be explained by means of elucidations” (T 3.263). The last statement tallies with Frege’s view in Grundgesetze der Arithmetik. I assume that for Wittgenstein the representential device character of equations follows from the nature and status of ” “.
Yet much indicates that Wittgenstein does not regard a concept-script which contains senseless sentences as incorrect. I have no illuminating explanation for that. So construed, the sentence ” ” is, in my view, not senseless: it states an eminently learnable and forgettable fact.
Wittgenstein contends in T 5.32 that all truth-functions are results of successive applications to elementary sentences of truth-operations. (T 5.41).
Long before I read Lampert and Säbel 2021, I had the suspicion that ” ” and ” ” may be two examples of sentences that defy adequate “translatability” into identity-sign free counterparts. It is striking that in T 5.331, T 5.532 and T 5.5321 Wittgenstein provides an identity-sign free transcription neither of ” ” nor of ” ” nor of ” “. If he had worked out a concept-script in accordance with his novel conception of identity and his dispensation with ” ” and had extended the concept-script to include second-order logic, he could not have formulated a secondorder abstraction principle like Hume’s Principle ” ” or an instance of it. An identity-sign free formulation such as ” ” or ” ” along the lines of Wittgenstein’s replacement of ” ” with ” ” or ” ” could never take the place of Hume’s Principle. Yet from his viewpoint in his middle period, Wittgenstein may have denied that this would be a severe handicap. In the early 1930s, he regarded the significance and utility of abstraction principles like Hume’s Principle in a foundation of arithmetic with increasing suspicion. And Frege’s Basic Law V had been thoroughly discredited by Russell three decades prior to that. In his critical discussion of Ramsey’s theory of identity, Wittgenstein (1964 p. 141 ff., 1967, p. 189 ff., 1969, p. 315 ff.) argues that equations play a dual role in the arithmetical calculus. They are concrete, individual configurations and at the same time supposed to function as substitution rules. In their Section 5.1, Lampert and Säbel frame the following definition: “Two classical formulas and have equivalent exclusive translations iff either (1) both are classified as pseudo-propositions from the exclusive standpoint, or (2) neither nor are classified as pseudo-propositions and their translations are equivalent.” The definition presupposes that the meaning of the term “pseudo-proposition” has been explained prior to the definition. However, it is not quite clear what Lampert and Säbel understand by a pseudo-sentence in Wittgenstein’s sense of this term. - 32 “So one cannot say, for example, ‘There are objects’, as one might say, ‘There are books’…And it is nonsense to speak of the total number of objects… ‘1 is a number’, ‘There is only one zero’, and all similar expressions are nonsensical. (It is just as nonsensical to say, ‘There is only 1’, as it would be to say, ‘
at 3 o’clock equals 4 ‘.)” Wittgenstein does not expressly say that these sentences are pseudosentences but I assume that he does regard them as nonsensical pseudo-sentences.
Recall Wittgenstein’s remark in T 4.243: “Expressions like ” “, and those derived from them, are neither elementary sentences nor is there any other way in which they have sense.” In Wittgenstein’s view, all tautologies are senseless on the ground that they are tautologies. According to T 4.243 , nontautologous sentences that he considers to be derivable from ” ” such as ” ” and others as well, fall likewise under the verdict of senselessness although for a different reason. - 34 ”
” is trivial no matter how it is interpreted, objectually or metalinguistically.
Note that in Grundgesetze I, §50 Frege proves ” “, objectually construed, as a theorem: IIIe. He says that although ” ” is by his elucidation of the equality-sign (in Frege 1893, §7) obvious [selbstverständlich], it is worth seeing how it can be developed from Basic Law III (in modern notation): |- , in Frege’s words: the truth-value falls under every concept under which the truth-value falls.
I do not quite understand why Lampert and Säbel claim (in 5.2) that ” ” “by itself should similarly be considered ill-formed and therefore denied translation.” I assume that they mean: translation in an equivalent identity-sign free sentence. According to Wittgenstein, tautological -sentences are not pseudo-sentences on the grounds that they are senseless. Otherwise he would have to characterize all tautologies as pseudo-sentences which he does not.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-023-00581-0
Publication Date: 2024-01-11
On Wittgenstein’s Dispensation with ” = ” in the Tractatus and its Philosophical Background. A Critical Study
© The Author(s) 2024
Abstract
In this essay, I critically analyze Wittgenstein’s dispensation with ”
1 Introduction
2 Wittgenstein’s Dispensation with ” = ” in a Correct Concept-script
All combinations of signs which apparently say something that can only be shown are pseudo-sentences.
Pseudo-sentences are those which, if analyzed, only show again that which they were supposed to say.
Wittgenstein evidently thought that the formulas in 5.534 were pseudo-propositions because they violated the say-show distinction, for the earliest known draft of his proposal to eliminate the identity sign (Wittgenstein 1961, p. 34) is immediately preceded by the remark that became Tractatus 4.1212: “What can be shown, cannot be said.”…Identities of the form, where and are distinct, attempt to say that the variables and are to be assigned the same object – in violation of what is shown, in a correct notation, by the use of distinct variables.
(1) If in Wittgenstein’s judgement the pseudo-character of equations and truth-functional connections of equations were exclusively due to the circumstance that they are only (simple or complex) representational devices which govern the mutual substitutivity of coreferential names, then it would be clear that none of the identity-sign free counterparts of those representational devices is a pseudo-sentence for him. For he does not construe the identity-sign free counterparts as representational devices.
(ii) By which identity-sign free sentence does Wittgenstein intend to replace the tautology ”
3 More on Pseudo-sentences in the Tractatus: Critical Comments on Lampert and Säbel’s Critique of Wehmeier’s Account
The evidence that Wittgenstein didn’t intend the pseudo-propositions of 5.534 to be represented as tautologies or contradictions is very strong, however. In 5.531, the phrase Wittgenstein uses to give his translation is “Ich schreibe also nicht […], sondern […].” So it seems obvious that there is an intended contrast, when in 5.534 he says, dass “Scheinsätze wie […] sich in einer richtigen Begriffsschrift gar nicht hinschreiben lassen (our emphasis), Wehmeier thinks we should interpret this phrase literally: Since the new notation doesn’t contain the identity sign,
Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
Data Availability Not applicable.
Declarations
Competing Interests No competing interests.
References
Fogelin, R. (1983). Wittgenstein on Identity. Synthese, 56, 141-154.
Frege, G. (1893). Grundgesetze der Arithmetik. Begriffsschriftlich abgeleitet, vol. I, H. Pohle, Jena.
Frege, G. (1967). Kleine Schriften, ed. I. Angelelli, G. Olms, Hildesheim.
Hintikka, J. (1956). Identity, Variables, and Impredicative Definitions. The Journal of Symbolic Logic, 21, 225-245.
Lampert, T., & Säbel, M. (2021). Wittgenstein’s Elimination of Identity in Quantifier-Free Logic. The Review of Symbolic Logic, 14, 1-21.
Landini, G. (2007). Wittgenstein’s Apprenticeship with Russell. Cambridge University Press.
Rogers, B., & Wehmeier, K. F. (2012). ‘Tractarian First-order Logic. Identity and the N-Operator’, the Review of Symbolic Logic, 5, 538-573.
Russell, B. (1961). ‘Introduction’ (to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus), in Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus, translated and edited by D. F. Pears ad B. F. McGuinness Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, ix-xxii.
Wittgenstein, L. (1961). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, The German text of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung, with a new edition of the translation by D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1961. For simplicity. I refer to the Tractatus by means of the abbreviation “T”.
Wittgenstein, L. (1964). Philosophische Bemerkungen, Wittgenstein Schriften 2, ed. R. Rhees, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M.
Wittgenstein, L. (1967). Ludwig Wittgenstein und der Wiener Kreis. Gespräche aufgezeichnet von Friedrich Waismann, Wittgenstein Schriften 3, ed. B. F. McGuinness, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M.
- Matthias Schirn
matthias.schirn@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, University of Munich, Ludwigstr. 31, 80539 Munich, Germany According to Wittgenstein’s remarks in T 4.2211 and T 5.535, the first-order domain might be taken to be infinite; see in this respect Rogers and Wehmeier 2012, p. 539 f.
I translate “Satz” throughout this essay as “sentence” to avoid ambiguity to which the use of the word “proposition” might give rise in certain contexts. - 3 “The concept-script of Frege and Russell is such a language, although it still fails to exclude all mistakes” (T 3.325).
In his Introduction to the Tractatus, Russell (1961, p. xvii) misinterprets Wittgenstein’s remarks on ” ” and identity. It is clear that in his envisioned concept-script Wittgenstein dispenses only with ” ” but not at the same time with identity. What he does reject, are standard conceptions of identity.
In a letter to Russell of 15 December 1913 (Wittgenstein 1969, p. 273), Wittgenstein writes: “The question concerning the nature of identity cannot be answered before the nature of tautologies is explained. The question concerning the nature of the latter is, however, the fundamental question of all logic.”
Wittgenstein does not claim that ” ” does not denote a relation but rather that identity is not a relation. This claim suggests that a novel, non-relational conception of identity is required, if identity is not to be abandoned in logic. Wittgenstein gives here examples of nonsensical pseudo-sentences. Yet this does not mean that he regards all pseudo-sentences as nonsensical. He obviously does not. The = -sentences which he lists in T.531, T 5.532. T 5.5321 and T 5.534 are not considered to be nonsensical. However, the tautologies among his examples of -sentences are considered to be senseless. I shall argue below that Wittgenstein probably regards all sentences as senseless, not only the tautologies (and contradictions) among them.
Wittgenstein hastens to add that this also disposes of all the problems that were connected with such pseudo-sentences. This can be doubted. He mentions in particular all the problems to which Russell’s axiom of infinity gives rise and claims that they can be solved at this point. In his diary note of 6 October 1914 (Wittgenstein 1969, p. 97), Wittgenstein mentions ” ‘ is true” and in his diary note of 29 November 1914 (Wittgenstein 1969, p. 123) ” ” as a pseudo-sentence. He claims that in view of his proposed identity-sign free notation ” ” and similar sentences would lose all appearance of justifiability. Finally, in his diary note of 10 June 1915 (Wittgenstein 1969, p. 149), his examples of pseudo-sentences are ” ” and ” “. He even goes so far as to say that these are not sentences at all.
It is not clear what Wittgenstein means here precisely by “analyzing”. - 11 ”
” or ” ” is just the definiens in Leibniz’s definition of ” “.
Cf. Wittgenstein 1967, p. 190. In a conversation with Waismann on the topic equation and substitution rule, Wittgenstein says that even the statement ” cannot be substituted for ” can be understood if one is aware that one is faced with a new calculus and knows the rules of its grammar. Independently of Wittgenstein’s position regarding ” ” in the Tractatus, we can say, quite in the spirit of Frege, that the epistemically relevant use of ” ” qua sign of a binary object-relation presupposes the availability of coreferential, but non-synonymous singular terms in a quantifier-free language . Otherwise, from an epistemological point of view, ” ” would be a non-rolling vehicle in .
In fairness to Rogers and Wehmeier, I should mention that in another place (see p. 549) they also draw attention to Wittgenstein’s statement in T 6.2 that the pseudo status of pseudo-sentences is due to their containing ” “. In future work, I plan to comment on their meticulous analysis, based on work by Hintikka 1956, especially of identity-sign free counterparts of quantified=-sentences which Wittgenstein lists in the Tractatus. Following Hintikka, Rogers and Wehmeier distinguish between a weakly exclusive and a strongly exclusive interpretation of Wittgenstein’s identity-sign free counterparts. They argue, inter alia, that a variant of the strongly exclusive interpretation is compatible with Wittgenstein’s programmatic view in the Tractatus. Appealing to work by Ramsey, Rogers and Wehmeier further argue in support of Hintikka’s identification of the weakly exclusive interpretation with Wittgenstein’s intended identity convention. They end their discussion of Wittgenstein’s new conception of identity and difference by noting (p. 555) that
one cannot expect all valid schemas of classical first-order logic to hold in Wittgenstein’s alternative logic. We can however legitimately insist that if Wittgenstein’s notation is to be considered an adequate alternative to standard first-order logic, the translation of every valid sentence in the Russellian notation must be valid in the Wittgensteinian notation.
It is obvious that a sentence which is recognized as expressing a determinate thought cannot be the translation of a senseless sentence and that the latter cannot be the translation of the former.
17 Stating only that instead of “–” I write “…” does not reveal anything specific about the semantic relation between sentences of the first kind and those of the second.As far as I can see, it is only in a diary note of 27 October 1914 (Wittgenstein 1969, p. 108) that Wittgenstein makes a remark on the semantic relation between sentence and the identity-sign free counterpart: “For it is clear that ‘aRa’ would have the same meaning as ‘ ‘. Thus, one can let disappear the pseudo-sentence ‘ ‘ by means of a completely analyzed notation.” It seems clear that Wittgenstein would have to argue for each individual case of sentence and its identity-sign free counterpart that the two sentences have the same meaning. Any generalization in this respect would seem to be ungrounded. Furthermore, we cannot safely infer from the remark in the diary that in the Tractatus Wittgenstein thought that sentences and their identity-sign free counterparts have the same meaning, quite apart from the fact that in the Tractatus he would likewise have to argue for sameness of meaning on a case by case basis. It is conceivable that in the Tractatus he tacitly holds that in some cases of pairing sentences with identity-sign free sentences he can justifiably assume sameness of meaning in the sense of synonymy while in other such cases the semantic relation must be set weaker and could be more appropriately characterized, say, in terms of equivalence. And in some such cases he might have realized that it is hard to argue for the (requisite) equivalence of the sentence and its assumed identity-sign free correlatum. Whatever Wittgenstein thought about the semantic relation at issue, it is noticeable that he does not analyze a single example, let alone justify the supposed equivalence (or even sameness of meaning) of the sentences and the identity-sign free counterparts that he lists in T 5.531, T 5.532 and T 5.5321. - 19 In a diary note of 11 November 1914, Wittgenstein claims: “Since ‘
is not a sentence, ‘ ‘ is not a function, a ‘class ‘ ‘ is an absurdity and likewise the so-called null class” (Wittgenstein 1969, p. 117).
Rogers and Wehmeier (2012, p. 547) point out that their translation procedures only pertain to scenarios in which neither language contains distinct but coreferring names so that this example is said to have no bearing on their translatability results. Yet this is clearly not the scenario that Wittgenstein is imagining in the Tracatus. Suppose that for some reason he had confined himself to replacing in his projected correct concept-script only -sentences of the quantifier-free fragment of a standard first-order language with their identity-sign free counterparts. In my view, this would have made sense by his own lights only if the names flanking ” ” are considered to corefer and thus to be intersubstitutable. The tautology ” ” is just one telling example.
In T 4.1211, he says though that two sentences “fa” and “ga” show that the same object is talked about in both. I think that Frege would basically agree with that. In my view, Wittgenstein’s argument in T 5.5301 that identity is not a relation between objects (a relation in which an object stands to itself) is not conclusive; see AMONYMOUS.
In the notes dictated to G. E. Moore in Norway in April 1914, Wittgenstein claims that the sign of identity expresses the internal relation between a function and its argument: . He characterizes here internal relations “as relations between types, which cannot be expressed in sentences, but are all shown in the symbols themselves, and can be exhibited systematically in tautologies” (Wittgenstein 1969, p. 248; cf. p. 184 and T 5.441, T 5.47). Thus, “one can see that the sentence ( ). is a tautology, if one expresses the truth-conditions of ( ). successively” (Wittgenstein 1969, p. 248). In T 3.343, Wittgenstein writes: “Definitions are rules for translating from one language into another.” “A name cannot be dissected any further by means of a definition: it is a primitive sign” (T 3.26). “The meanings of primitive signs can be explained by means of elucidations” (T 3.263). The last statement tallies with Frege’s view in Grundgesetze der Arithmetik. I assume that for Wittgenstein the representential device character of equations follows from the nature and status of ” “.
Yet much indicates that Wittgenstein does not regard a concept-script which contains senseless sentences as incorrect. I have no illuminating explanation for that. So construed, the sentence ” ” is, in my view, not senseless: it states an eminently learnable and forgettable fact.
Wittgenstein contends in T 5.32 that all truth-functions are results of successive applications to elementary sentences of truth-operations. (T 5.41).
Long before I read Lampert and Säbel 2021, I had the suspicion that ” ” and ” ” may be two examples of sentences that defy adequate “translatability” into identity-sign free counterparts. It is striking that in T 5.331, T 5.532 and T 5.5321 Wittgenstein provides an identity-sign free transcription neither of ” ” nor of ” ” nor of ” “. If he had worked out a concept-script in accordance with his novel conception of identity and his dispensation with ” ” and had extended the concept-script to include second-order logic, he could not have formulated a secondorder abstraction principle like Hume’s Principle ” ” or an instance of it. An identity-sign free formulation such as ” ” or ” ” along the lines of Wittgenstein’s replacement of ” ” with ” ” or ” ” could never take the place of Hume’s Principle. Yet from his viewpoint in his middle period, Wittgenstein may have denied that this would be a severe handicap. In the early 1930s, he regarded the significance and utility of abstraction principles like Hume’s Principle in a foundation of arithmetic with increasing suspicion. And Frege’s Basic Law V had been thoroughly discredited by Russell three decades prior to that. In his critical discussion of Ramsey’s theory of identity, Wittgenstein (1964 p. 141 ff., 1967, p. 189 ff., 1969, p. 315 ff.) argues that equations play a dual role in the arithmetical calculus. They are concrete, individual configurations and at the same time supposed to function as substitution rules. In their Section 5.1, Lampert and Säbel frame the following definition: “Two classical formulas and have equivalent exclusive translations iff either (1) both are classified as pseudo-propositions from the exclusive standpoint, or (2) neither nor are classified as pseudo-propositions and their translations are equivalent.” The definition presupposes that the meaning of the term “pseudo-proposition” has been explained prior to the definition. However, it is not quite clear what Lampert and Säbel understand by a pseudo-sentence in Wittgenstein’s sense of this term. - 32 “So one cannot say, for example, ‘There are objects’, as one might say, ‘There are books’…And it is nonsense to speak of the total number of objects… ‘1 is a number’, ‘There is only one zero’, and all similar expressions are nonsensical. (It is just as nonsensical to say, ‘There is only 1’, as it would be to say, ‘
at 3 o’clock equals 4 ‘.)” Wittgenstein does not expressly say that these sentences are pseudosentences but I assume that he does regard them as nonsensical pseudo-sentences.
Recall Wittgenstein’s remark in T 4.243: “Expressions like ” “, and those derived from them, are neither elementary sentences nor is there any other way in which they have sense.” In Wittgenstein’s view, all tautologies are senseless on the ground that they are tautologies. According to T 4.243 , nontautologous sentences that he considers to be derivable from ” ” such as ” ” and others as well, fall likewise under the verdict of senselessness although for a different reason. - 34 ”
” is trivial no matter how it is interpreted, objectually or metalinguistically.
Note that in Grundgesetze I, §50 Frege proves ” “, objectually construed, as a theorem: IIIe. He says that although ” ” is by his elucidation of the equality-sign (in Frege 1893, §7) obvious [selbstverständlich], it is worth seeing how it can be developed from Basic Law III (in modern notation): |- , in Frege’s words: the truth-value falls under every concept under which the truth-value falls.
I do not quite understand why Lampert and Säbel claim (in 5.2) that ” ” “by itself should similarly be considered ill-formed and therefore denied translation.” I assume that they mean: translation in an equivalent identity-sign free sentence. According to Wittgenstein, tautological -sentences are not pseudo-sentences on the grounds that they are senseless. Otherwise he would have to characterize all tautologies as pseudo-sentences which he does not.
