TLP - 2.02 = TMLP

Wittgenstein (1929) took the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to be invalidated by logical atomism. I propose to revalidate TLP by subtracting the thesis 2.02 (“The object is simple”) from it: atomic facts are not made of simple objects but, rather, of bits of information the objects are made of.

Borders of a Game: Analysis of the Practical Phenomenology and Other Trends of Nowadays

This article, through a prism of reduction, focuses on the gaming of practical phenomenology (M. van Manen), logical atomism (L. Wittgenstein), rhizomatic movement (Deleuze) as well as anthropocene moods in the playground of the education science. It also considers the practical manisfestatation of these fashionable philosophical methodologies and possible perspectives in the modern-day education. The text of the article joins the ideas of different methodologies to a critical gaming.

Plato’s Theaetetus and the Hunting of the Proposition

Section 1 contrasts the approaches to Plato of F.M.Cornford and Gilbert Ryle, two of the early twentieth century’s leading Plato interpreters. Then I trace and evaluate attempts to discern in Plato’s Theaetetus a recognition of the role of the proposition. Section 2 focuses on the hunting of the proposition in Socrates’ Dream in the Theaetetus. Ryle, inspired by Logical Atomism, argued that Plato there anticipated an insight about the difference between names and propositions that Russell credited to Wittgenstein. I rehearse difficulties for understanding the logos of the Dream as a proposition, preferring a reading of logos there as something like definition: a reading Wittgenstein also adumbrated. Section 3 examines attempts by writers such as Burnyeat and Kahn to find Plato allocating a starring role to the proposition in the argument at Theaetetus 185–6: perception, since it cannot grasp being, cannot grasp truth and hence cannot be knowledge. On their reading a grasp of being is understood as a grasp of something propositional. Problems for the propositional reading include Socrates’ talk of grasping ‘the truth of something’ (alētheia tinos), and the way the dialogue develops after 186.

Collingwood and Russell on Philosophical Method

Collingwood’s An Essay on Philosophical Method provides an insightful critique of Russell’s analysis and metaphysics of logical atomism, proposing an unduly neglected neo-idealist alternative to Russell’s philosophical method. I summarize Collingwood’s critique of analysis and sympathetically outline the philosophical methodology of Collingwood’s post-Hegelian dialectical method: his scale of forms methodology, grounded on the overlap of philosophical classes. I then delineate Collingwood’s critique of the metaphysics of logical atomism, demonstrating how the scale of forms methodology is opposed to Russell’s logical atomism. Finally, I reflect on the reasons Collingwood’s Essay aroused little interest upon publication and the importance of continually rethinking the history of philosophy.

The Meaning of Meaning

This chapter outlines the semiotic theory presented in Ogden and Richards’ 1923 book The Meaning of Meaning and examines the historical context in which it was written. The motivating concern that runs through the entire book is the establishment of an adequate theory to fight the dangers of ‘word-magic’, the confusions engendered through ignorance of the workings of language. The chief influences on Ogden and Richards are shown to be the logical atomism of Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein and the significs of Victoria Lady Welby. The broader intellectual background of contemporary philosophy, psychology and linguistics against which these ideas were developed is also discussed, along with the influence of the social and political climate of the time.

Logical atomism

The name ‘logical atomism’ refers to a network of theses about the parts and structure of the world and the means by which language represents the world. Wittgenstein, in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, expounds a version of logical atomism developed by him around the time of the First World War, as does Russell in works published contemporaneously. It is no accident that their work on logical atomism shares a common surface description since it resulted from their mutual influence at Cambridge. The common theme is that the meaning of our sentences is rooted in a primitive relation between simple expressions and their simple worldly bearers, the logical atoms. In a logically perfect language, atomic sentences describe configurations of these atoms, and complex sentences are combinations of the atomic sentences. But sentences of ordinary language may have a misleading surface form which is revealed as such by analysis. The common theme masks considerable differences of doctrine. In particular, there are differences in the nature of logical atoms and in the arguments for the existence of these atoms.

Truth in British Idealism and its Analytic Critics

Arguments about truth were central to the debates between British idealists such as Bradley and their analytic critics such as Russell. Bradley’s thesis of the “unreality” of relations led him to the holistic monism of the Absolute, within which truth is no relation between judgment and fact but the expansion of judgment until it becomes reality. Russell argued that this idealist monism rests on the mistaken assumption that all relations are internal, and should be replaced by a realist pluralism of facts. Initially Russell followed Moore in holding that truth is a simple property of judgments which are facts. But that position cannot deal sensibly with falsehood, so Russell then moved to his multiple-relation theory of judgment. But having been persuaded by Wittgenstein that this was not a tenable position, he adopted the semantic correspondence theory of logical atomism.