Wittgenstein: A Very Short Introduction
A. C. Grayling
Language: English
Pages: 160
ISBN: 0192854119
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was an extraordinarily original thinker, whose influence on twentieth-century thinking far outside the bounds of philosophy alone. In this engaging Introduction, A.C. Grayling makes Wittgenstein's thought accessible to the general reader by explaining the nature and impact of Wittgenstein's views. He describes both his early and later philosophy, the differences and connections between them, and gives a fresh assessment of Wittgenstein's continuing influence on contemporary thought.
is true. What this asserts is that both p and q are true. So we add a column under the heading p&q to show that the only case in which p&q is true is when each of p and q is independently true: This table, cal ed a truth table, is in ef ect a picture of how & works. The same can be done for the other connectives. For example, understanding pvq to mean either p or q or both , we write the truth table as fol ows: 30 This shows that pvq is true if at least one of p or q is true, and
throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he wil see the world aright. Logic is in a dif erent case. It wil be remembered that the truth-values of ordinary propositions depend upon those of their constituent elementary propositions, in just the way described by means of truth tables in the preceding section. Accordingly, ordinary propositions wil sometimes be true and sometimes false depending upon how things stand in the world.
and mar ied the daughter of a Viennese banker. Soon afterwards he transfer ed his business headquarters to Vienna, where he and his wife established themselves as patrons of the arts. They gave their son Karl, Ludwig Wit genstein's father, an expensive classical education, but Karl rebel ed and at the age of 17 ran away to America, where for two years he lived by working as a waiter and giving violin and German lessons. On his return to Vienna he studied engineering. Within decades he had
sincerely hold views which are quite opposite to those held with equal passion and sincerity by others. 64 There are other more detailed criticisms one might urge against the Tractatus were there space to pursue them. A point which should be stressed, however, is that although Wit genstein was unsparing of his earlier self in rejecting or amending that self's commitments, this does not mean that his later outlook is entirely opposed to his earlier one; there are continuities as wel as
and the like are cases in point. Use therefore can by no means be the whole story about meaning; it may be part of that story, but it does not exhaust whatever it is meaning consists in. Moreover, to say that use is part of the story is not by itself much help at best it is only a beginning; for what it is one knows, or is able to do, which constitutes one's capacity to use expressions is not 113 suggested by the concept of use itself; one has to look further afield (or deeper). The