In this blog post, we look at how Wittgenstein’s Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung redefined the relationship between language and the world. We explore his ‘picture theory of language’ and its philosophical implications.
Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung, written in 1918, had a major influence on modern philosophy in the 20th century, including the logical realism of the Vienna School. He saw many philosophical controversies as arising from the ambiguous use of language, so he made it the task of philosophy to analyze, criticize, and clarify language. This book redefined the major problems of philosophy, contributed to a new understanding of the nature of philosophy, and led to major changes in the methodology of philosophical inquiry.
In this book, he argues for a “picture theory of language” in which language is a picture of the world. This theory is not just a philosophical claim, but has since had a profound impact on the study of logic, linguistics, and even artificial intelligence. What inspired him to formulate this theory was an article about a court case involving a traffic accident, in which the court used models of toy cars and dolls to explain the case. But why is it possible to explain the case with models? It is because the models correspond to real cars and people. He saw language in the same way. Language has meaning because it corresponds to the world. In other words, language points to things that exist in the world. Language is composed of propositions, and the world is composed of events. And propositions and events correspond to each other. In this way, language is more than just a tool for communication; it is at the core of how we understand and interpret the world. The logical structure of language and the world is the same, and language makes sense by describing the world like a picture.
In the picture theory of language, the events corresponding to propositions are not facts, but logical possibilities that could be true. Thus, the propositions that make up a language are not factual pictures, but logical pictures. If an event actually happens and becomes true, the proposition describing it is true, but if the event does not happen, the proposition is false. This logic emphasizes the fact that the truth value of a proposition is determined by the state of the world, and it seeks to clarify the relationship between language and reality. For a proposition to be a meaningful proposition, it must refer to an object or event that exists, and can be determined to be true or false. If a proposition refers to something that is not a real object or event, then it is a meaningless proposition, and we cannot determine whether it is true or false. Therefore, only propositions that refer to the empirical world are meaningful.
From this point of view, Ludwig Wittgenstein saw discussions of God, the soul, metaphysical subjects, ethical values, and so on, as meaningless, because the objects to which they refer are not in the world, that is, they are not empirical objects. This view shocked the philosophical community at the time, and for many philosophers, it set a new standard for philosophical discussion. The propositions and questions related to these metaphysical problems are meaningless. They are mysteries that are constantly revealed in our lives, but they cannot be answered or explained in words. That’s why Ludwig Wittgenstein said, “One should be silent about the unspeakable.” This famous phrase is a classic example of philosophical thought. This famous phrase acknowledges the limits of philosophical thought and forces us to reconsider the role of language in the realm of human experience.
