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Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

By Ludwig Wittgenstein

Perhaps this book will be understood only by someone who has himself
already had the thoughts that are expressed in it—or at least similar
thoughts.—So it is not a textbook.—Its purpose would be achieved if it
gave pleasure to one person who read and understood it.

The book deals with the problems of philosophy, and shows, I believe, that
the reason why these problems are posed is that the logic of our language
is misunderstood. The whole sense of the book might be summed up the
following words: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we
cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.

Thus the aim of the book is to draw a limit to thought, or rather—not to
thought, but to the expression of thoughts: for in order to be able to draw
a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit
thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought).

It will therefore only be in language that the limit can be drawn, and what
lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense.

I do not wish to judge how far my efforts coincide with those of other
philosophers. Indeed, what I have written here makes no claim to novelty in
detail, and the reason why I give no sources is that it is a matter of
indifference to me whether the thoughts that I have had have been
anticipated by someone else.

I will only mention that I am indebted to Frege’s great works and of the
writings of my friend Mr Bertrand Russell for much of the stimulation of my
thoughts.

If this work has any value, it consists in two things: the first is that
thoughts are expressed in it, and on this score the better the thoughts are
expressed—the more the nail has been hit on the head—the greater will be
its value.—Here I am conscious of having fallen a long way short of what
is possible. Simply because my powers are too slight for the accomplishment
of the task.—May others come and do it better.

On the other hand the truth of the thoughts that are here communicated
seems to me unassailable and definitive. I therefore believe myself to have
found, on all essential points, the final solution of the problems. And if
I am not mistaken in this belief, then the second thing in which the of
this work consists is that it shows how little is achieved when these
problems are solved.

L.W. Vienna, 1918

1. The world is all that is the case.


1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.


1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the
facts.

1.12 For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also
whatever is not the case.

1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.


1.2 The world divides into facts.


1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else
remains the same.

2. What is the case—a fact—is the existence of states of affairs.


2.01 A state of affairs (a state of things) is a combination of objects
(things).

2.011 It is essential to things that they should be possible constituents
of states of affairs.

2.012 In logic nothing is accidental: if a thing can occur in a state of
affairs, the possibility of the state of affairs must be written into the
thing itself.

2.0121 It would seem to be a sort of accident, if it turned out that a
situation would fit a thing that could already exist entirely on its own.
If things can occur in states of affairs, this possibility must be in them
from the beginning. (Nothing in the province of logic can be merely
possible. Logic deals with every possibility and all possibilities are its
facts.) Just as we are quite unable to imagine spatial objects outside
space or temporal objects outside time, so too there is no object that we
can imagine excluded from the possibility of combining with others. If I
can imagine objects combined in states of affairs, I cannot imagine them
excluded from the possibility of such combinations.

2.0122 Things are independent in so far as they can occur in all possible
situations, but this form of independence is a form of connexion with
states of affairs, a form of dependence. (It is impossible for words to
appear in two different roles: by themselves, and in propositions.)

2.0123 If I know an object I also know all its possible occurrences in
states of affairs. (Every one of these possibilities must be part of the
nature of the object.) A new possibility cannot be discovered later.

2.01231 If I am to know an object, thought I need not know its external
properties, I must know all its internal properties.

2.0124 If all objects are given, then at the same time all possible states
of affairs are also given.

2.013 Each thing is, as it were, in a space of possible states of affairs.
This space I can imagine empty, but I cannot imagine the thing without the
space.

2.0131 A spatial object must be situated in infinite space. (A spatial
point is an argument-place.) A speck in the visual field, thought it
need not be red, must have some colour: it is, so to speak, surrounded
by colour-space. Notes must have some pitch, objects of the sense of
touch some degree of hardness, and so on.

2.014 Objects contain the possibility of all situations.


2.0141 The possibility of its occurring in states of affairs is the form of
an object.

2.02 Objects are simple.


2.0201 Every statement about complexes can be resolved into a statement
about their constituents and into the propositions that describe the
complexes completely.

2.021 Objects make up the substance of the world. That is why they cannot
be composite.

2.0211 If they world had no substance, then whether a proposition had sense
would depend on whether another proposition was true.

2.0212 In that case we could not sketch any picture of the world (true or
false).

2.022 It is obvious that an imagined world, however difference it may be
from the real one, must have something—a form—in common with it.

2.023 Objects are just what constitute this unalterable form.


2.0231 The substance of the world can only determine a form, and not any
material properties. For it is only by means of propositions that material
properties are represented—only by the configuration of objects that they
are produced.

2.0232 In a manner of speaking, objects are colourless.


2.0233 If two objects have the same logical form, the only distinction
between them, apart from their external properties, is that they are
different.

2.02331 Either a thing has properties that nothing else has, in which case
we can immediately use a description to distinguish it from the others and
refer to it; or, on the other hand, there are several things that have the
whole set of their properties in common, in which case it is quite
impossible to indicate one of them. For it there is nothing to distinguish
a thing, I cannot distinguish it, since otherwise it would be distinguished
after all.

2.024 The substance is what subsists independently of what is the case.


2.025 It is form and content.


2.0251 Space, time, colour (being coloured) are forms of objects.

2.026 There must be objects, if the world is to have unalterable form.


2.027 Objects, the unalterable, and the subsistent are one and the same.


2.0271 Objects are what is unalterable and subsistent; their configuration
is what is changing and unstable.

2.0272 The configuration of objects produces states of affairs.


2.03 In a state of affairs objects fit into one another like the links of a
chain.

2.031 In a state of affairs objects stand in a determinate relation to one
another.

2.032 The determinate way in which objects are connected in a state of
affairs is the structure of the state of affairs.

2.033 Form is the possibility of structure.


2.034 The structure of a fact consists of the structures of states of
affairs.

2.04 The totality of existing states of affairs is the world.


2.05 The totality of existing states of affairs also determines which
states of affairs do not exist.

2.06 The existence and non-existence of states of affairs is reality.
(We call the existence of states of affairs a positive fact, and their
non-existence a negative fact.)

2.061 States of affairs are independent of one another.


2.062 From the existence or non-existence of one state of affairs it is
impossible to infer the existence or non-existence of another.

2.063 The sum-total of reality is the world.


2.1 We picture facts to ourselves.


2.11 A picture presents a situation in logical space, the existence and
non-existence of states of affairs.

2.12 A picture is a model of reality.


2.13 In a picture objects have the elements of the picture corresponding to
them.

2.131 In a picture the elements of the picture are the representatives of
objects.

2.14 What constitutes a picture is that its elements are related to one
another in a determinate way.

2.141 A picture is a fact.

2.15 The fact that the elements of a picture are related to one another in
a determinate way represents that things are related to one another in the
same way. Let us call this connexion of its elements the structure of the
picture, and let us call the possibility of this structure the pictorial
form of the picture.

2.151 Pictorial form is the possibility that things are related to one
another in the same way as the elements of the picture.

2.1511 That is how a picture is attached to reality; it reaches right out
to it.

2.1512 It is laid against reality like a measure.


2.15121 Only the end-points of the graduating lines actually touch the
object that is to be measured.

2.1514 So a picture, conceived in this way, also includes the pictorial
relationship, which makes it into a picture.

2.1515 These correlations are, as it were, the feelers of the picture’s
elements, with which the picture touches reality.

2.16 If a fact is to be a picture, it must have something in common with
what it depicts.

2.161 There must be something identical in a picture and what it depicts,
to enable the one to be a picture of the other at all.

2.17 What a picture must have in common with reality, in order to be able
to depict it—correctly or incorrectly—in the way that it does, is its
pictorial form.

2.171 A picture can depict any reality whose form it has. A spatial picture
can depict anything spatial, a coloured one anything coloured, etc.

2.172 A picture cannot, however, depict its pictorial form: it displays it.


2.173 A picture represents its subject from a position outside it. (Its
standpoint is its representational form.) That is why a picture represents
its subject correctly or incorrectly.

2.174 A picture cannot, however, place itself outside its representational
form.

2.18 What any picture, of whatever form, must have in common with reality,
in order to be able to depict it—correctly or incorrectly—in any way at
all, is logical form, i.e. the form of reality.

2.181 A picture whose pictorial form is logical form is called a logical
picture.

2.182 Every picture is at the same time a logical one. (On the other hand,
not every picture is, for example, a spatial one.)

2.19 Logical pictures can depict the world.


2.2 A picture has logico-pictorial form in common with what it depicts.


2.201 A picture depicts reality by representing a possibility of existence
and non-existence of states of affairs.

2.202 A picture contains the possibility of the situation that it
represents.

2.203 A picture agrees with reality or fails to agree; it is correct or
incorrect, true or false.

2.22 What a picture represents it represents independently of its truth or
falsity, by means of its pictorial form.

2.221 What a picture represents is its sense.


2.222 The agreement or disagreement or its sense with reality constitutes
its truth or falsity.

2.223 In order to tell whether a picture is true or false we must compare
it with reality.

2.224 It is impossible to tell from the picture alone whether it is true or
false.

2.225 There are no pictures that are true a priori.


3. A logical picture of facts is a thought.


3.001 ‘A state of affairs is thinkable’: what this means is that we can
picture it to ourselves.

3.01 The totality of true thoughts is a picture of the world.


3.02 A thought contains the possibility of the situation of which it is the
thought. What is thinkable is possible too.

3.03 Thought can never be of anything illogical, since, if it were, we
should have to think illogically.

3.031 It used to be said that God could create anything except what would
be contrary to the laws of logic. The truth is that we could not say what an
‘illogical’ world would look like.

3.032 It is as impossible to represent in language anything that
‘contradicts logic’ as it is in geometry to represent by its coordinates a
figure that contradicts the laws of space, or to give the coordinates of a
point that does not exist.

3.0321 Though a state of affairs that would contravene the laws of physics
can be represented by us spatially, one that would contravene the laws of
geometry cannot.

3.04 It a thought were correct a priori, it would be a thought whose
possibility ensured its truth.

3.05 A priori knowledge that a thought was true would be possible only it
its truth were recognizable from the thought itself (without anything a to
compare it with).

3.1 In a proposition a thought finds an expression that can be perceived by
the senses.

3.11 We use the perceptible sign of a proposition (spoken or written, etc.)
as a projection of a possible situation. The method of projection is to
think of the sense of the proposition.

3.12 I call the sign with which we express a thought a propositional
sign. And a proposition is a propositional sign in its projective relation
to the world.

3.13 A proposition, therefore, does not actually contain its sense, but
does contain the possibility of expressing it. (‘The content of a
proposition’ means the content of a proposition that has sense.) A
proposition contains the form, but not the content, of its sense.

3.14 What constitutes a propositional sign is that in its elements (the
words) stand in a determinate relation to one another. A propositional sign
is a fact.

3.141 A proposition is not a blend of words.(Just as a theme in music is
not a blend of notes.) A proposition is articulate.

3.142 Only facts can express a sense, a set of names cannot.


3.143 Although a propositional sign is a fact, this is obscured by the
usual form of expression in writing or print. For in a printed proposition,
for example, no essential difference is apparent between a propositional
sign and a word. (That is what made it possible for Frege to call a
proposition a composite name.)

3.1431 The essence of a propositional sign is very clearly seen if we
imagine one composed of spatial objects (such as tables, chairs, and books)
instead of written signs.

3.1432 Instead of, ‘The complex sign “aRb” says that a stands to b in the
relation R’ we ought to put, ‘That “a” stands to “b” in a certain relation
says that aRb.’

3.144 Situations can be described but not given names.


3.2 In a proposition a thought can be expressed in such a way that elements
of the propositional sign correspond to the objects of the thought.

3.201 I call such elements ‘simple signs’, and such a proposition ‘complete
analysed’.

3.202 The simple signs employed in propositions are called names.


3.203 A name means an object. The object is its meaning. (‘A’ is the same
sign as ‘A’.)

3.21 The configuration of objects in a situation corresponds to the
configuration of simple signs in the propositional sign.

3.221 Objects can only be named. Signs are their representatives. I can
only speak about them: I cannot put them into words. Propositions can only
say how things are, not what they are.

3.23 The requirement that simple signs be possible is the requirement that
sense be determinate.

3.24 A proposition about a complex stands in an internal relation to a
proposition about a constituent of the complex. A complex can be given only
by its description, which will be right or wrong. A proposition that
mentions a complex will not be nonsensical, if the complex does not exits,
but simply false. When a propositional element signifies a complex, this
can be seen from an indeterminateness in the propositions in which it
occurs. In such cases we know that the proposition leaves something
undetermined. (In fact the notation for generality contains a prototype.)
The contraction of a symbol for a complex into a simple symbol can be
expressed in a definition.

3.25 A proposition cannot be dissected any further by means of a
definition: it is a primitive sign.

3.261 Every sign that has a definition signifies via the signs that serve
to define it; and the definitions point the way. Two signs cannot signify
in the same manner if one is primitive and the other is defined by means of
primitive signs. Names cannot be anatomized by means of definitions. (Nor
can any sign that has a meaning independently and on its own.)

3.262 What signs fail to express, their application shows. What signs slur
over, their application says clearly.

3.263 The meanings of primitive signs can be explained by means of
elucidations. Elucidations are propositions that stood if the meanings of
those signs are already known.

3.3 Only propositions have sense; only in the nexus of a proposition does a
name have meaning.

3.31 I call any part of a proposition that characterizes its sense an
expression (or a symbol). (A proposition is itself an expression.)
Everything essential to their sense that propositions can have in common
with one another is an expression. An expression is the mark of a form and
a content.

3.311 An expression presupposes the forms of all the propositions in which
it can occur. It is the common characteristic mark of a class of
propositions.

3.312 It is therefore presented by means of the general form of the
propositions that it characterizes. In fact, in this form the expression
will be constant and everything else variable.

3.313 Thus an expression is presented by means of a variable whose values
are the propositions that contain the expression. (In the limiting case the
variable becomes a constant, the expression becomes a proposition.) I call
such a variable a ‘propositional variable’.

3.314 An expression has meaning only in a proposition. All variables can be
construed as propositional variables. (Even variable names.)

3.315 If we turn a constituent of a proposition into a variable, there is a
class of propositions all of which are values of the resulting variable
proposition. In general, this class too will be dependent on the meaning
that our arbitrary conventions have given to parts of the original
proposition. But if all the signs in it that have arbitrarily determined
meanings are turned into variables, we shall still get a class of this
kind. This one, however, is not dependent on any convention, but solely on
the nature of the pro position. It corresponds to a logical form—a logical
prototype.

3.316 What values a propositional variable may take is something that is
stipulated. The stipulation of values is the variable.

3.317 To stipulate values for a propositional variable is to give the
propositions whose common characteristic the variable is. The stipulation
is a description of those propositions. The stipulation will therefore be
concerned only with symbols, not with their meaning. And the only thing
essential to the stipulation is that it is merely a description of symbols
and states nothing about what is signified. How the description of the
propositions is produced is not essential.

3.318 Like Frege and Russell I construe a proposition as a function of the
expressions contained in it.

3.32 A sign is what can be perceived of a symbol.

3.321 So one and the same sign (written or spoken, etc.) can be common to
two different symbols—in which case they will signify in different ways.

3.322 Our use of the same sign to signify two different objects can never
indicate a common characteristic of the two, if we use it with two
different modes of signification. For the sign, of course, is arbitrary. So
we could choose two different signs instead, and then what would be left in
common on the signifying side?

3.323 In everyday language it very frequently happens that the same word
has different modes of signification—and so belongs to different symbols—
or that two words that have different modes of signification are employed
in propositions in what is superficially the same way. Thus the word ‘is’
figures as the copula, as a sign for identity, and as an expression for
existence; ‘exist’ figures as an intransitive verb like ‘go’, and
‘identical’ as an adjective; we speak of something, but also of something’s
happening. (In the proposition, ‘Green is green’—where the first word is
the proper name of a person and the last an adjective—these words do not
merely have different meanings: they are different symbols.)

3.324 In this way the most fundamental confusions are easily produced (the
whole of philosophy is full of them).

3.325 In order to avoid such errors we must make use of a sign-language
that excludes them by not using the same sign for different symbols and by
not using in a superficially similar way signs that have different modes of
signification: that is to say, a sign-language that is governed by logical
grammar—by logical syntax. (The conceptual notation of Frege and Russell
is such a language, though, it is true, it fails to exclude all mistakes.)

3.326 In order to recognize a symbol by its sign we must observe how it is
used with a sense.

3.327 A sign does not determine a logical form unless it is taken together
with its logico-syntactical employment.

3.328 If a sign is useless, it is meaningless. That is the point of Occam’s
maxim. (If everything behaves as if a sign had meaning, then it does have
meaning.)

3.33 In logical syntax the meaning of a sign should never play a role. It
must be possible to establish logical syntax without mentioning the meaning
of a sign: only the description of expressions may be presupposed.

3.331 From this observation we turn to Russell’s ‘theory of types’. It can
be seen that Russell must be wrong, because he had to mention the meaning
of signs when establishing the rules for them.

3.332 No proposition can make a statement about itself, because a
propositional sign cannot be contained in itself (that is the whole of the
‘theory of types’).

3.333 The reason why a function cannot be its own argument is that the sign
for a function already contains the prototype of its argument, and it
cannot contain itself. For let us suppose that the function F(fx) could be
its own argument: in that case there would be a proposition ‘F(F(fx))’, in
which the outer function F and the inner function F must have different
meanings, since the inner one has the form O(f(x)) and the outer one has
the form Y(O(fx)). Only the letter ‘F’ is common to the two functions, but
the letter by itself signifies nothing. This immediately becomes clear if
instead of ‘F(Fu)’ we write ‘(do) : F(Ou) . Ou = Fu’. That disposes of
Russell’s paradox.

3.334 The rules of logical syntax must go without saying, once we know how
each individual sign signifies.

3.34 A proposition possesses essential and accidental features. Accidental
features are those that result from the particular way in which the
propositional sign is produced. Essential features are those without which
the proposition could not express its sense.

3.341 So what is essential in a proposition is what all propositions that
can express the same sense have in common. And similarly, in general, what
is essential in a symbol is what all symbols that can serve the same
purpose have in common.

3.3411 So one could say that the real name of an object was what all
symbols that signified it had in common. Thus, one by one, all kinds of
composition would prove to be unessential to a name.

3.342 Although there is something arbitrary in our notations, this much is
not arbitrary—that when we have determined one thing arbitrarily,
something else is necessarily the case. (This derives from the essence of
notation.)

3.3421 A particular mode of signifying may be unimportant but it is always
important that it is a possible mode of signifying. And that is generally
so in philosophy: again and again the individual case turns out to be
unimportant, but the possibility of each individual case discloses
something about the essence of the world.

3.343 Definitions are rules for translating from one language into another.
Any correct sign-language must be translatable into any other in accordance
with such rules: it is this that they all have in common.

3.344 What signifies in a symbol is what is common to all the symbols that
the rules of logical syntax allow us to substitute for it.

3.3441 For instance, we can express what is common to all notations for
truth-functions in the following way: they have in common that, for
example, the notation that uses ‘Pp’ (‘not p’) and ‘p C g’ (‘p or g’) can
be substituted for any of them. (This serves to characterize the way in
which something general can be disclosed by the possibility of a specific
notation.)

3.3442 Nor does analysis resolve the sign for a complex in an arbitrary
way, so that it would have a different resolution every time that it was
incorporated in a different proposition.

3.4 A proposition determines a place in logical space. The existence
of this logical place is guaranteed by the mere existence of the
constituents—by the existence of the proposition with a sense.

3.41 The propositional sign with logical coordinates—that is the logical
place.

3.411 In geometry and logic alike a place is a possibility: something can
exist in it.

3.42 A proposition can determine only one place in logical space:
nevertheless the whole of logical space must already be given by it.
(Otherwise negation, logical sum, logical product, etc., would introduce
more and more new elements in co-ordination.) (The logical scaffolding
surrounding a picture determines logical space. The force of a proposition
reaches through the whole of logical space.)

3.5 A propositional sign, applied and thought out, is a thought.


4. A thought is a proposition with a sense.


4.001 The totality of propositions is language.


4.022 Man possesses the ability to construct languages capable of
expressing every sense, without having any idea how each word has meaning
or what its meaning is—just as people speak without knowing how the
individual sounds are produced. Everyday language is a part of the human
organism and is no less complicated than it. It is not humanly possible to
gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language
disguises thought. So much so, that from the outward form of the clothing
it is impossible to infer the form of the thought beneath it, because the
outward form of the clothing is not designed to reveal the form of the
body, but for entirely different purposes. The tacit conventions on which
the understanding of everyday language depends are enormously complicated.

4.003 Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical
works are not false but nonsensical. Consequently we cannot give any answer
to questions of this kind, but can only point out that they are
nonsensical. Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise
from our failure to understand the logic of our language. (They belong to
the same class as the question whether the good is more or less identical
than the beautiful.) And it is not surprising that the deepest problems are
in fact not problems at all.

4.0031 All philosophy is a ‘critique of language’ (though not in Mauthner’s
sense). It was Russell who performed the service of showing that the
apparent logical form of a proposition need not be its real one.

4.01 A proposition is a picture of reality. A proposition is a model of
reality as we imagine it.

4.011 At first sight a proposition—one set out on the printed page, for
example—does not seem to be a picture of the reality with which it is
concerned. But neither do written notes seem at first sight to be a picture
of a piece of music, nor our phonetic notation (the alphabet) to be a
picture of our speech. And yet these sign-languages prove to be pictures,
even in the ordinary sense, of what they represent.

4.012 It is obvious that a proposition of the form ‘aRb’ strikes us as a
picture. In this case the sign is obviously a likeness of what is
signified.

4.013 And if we penetrate to the essence of this pictorial character, we
see that it is not impaired by apparent irregularities (such as the use
[sharp] of and [flat] in musical notation). For even these irregularities
depict what they are intended to express; only they do it in a different
way.

4.014 A gramophone record, the musical idea, the written notes, and the
sound-waves, all stand to one another in the same internal relation of
depicting that holds between language and the world. They are all
constructed according to a common logical pattern. (Like the two youths in
the fairy-tale, their two horses, and their lilies. They are all in a
certain sense one.)

4.0141 There is a general rule by means of which the musician can obtain
the symphony from the score, and which makes it possible to derive the
symphony from the groove on the gramophone record, and, using the first
rule, to derive the score again. That is what constitutes the inner
similarity between these things which seem to be constructed in such
entirely different ways. And that rule is the law of projection which
projects the symphony into the language of musical notation. It is the rule
for translating this language into the language of gramophone records.

4.015 The possibility of all imagery, of all our pictorial modes of
expression, is contained in the logic of depiction.

4.016 In order to understand the essential nature of a proposition, we
should consider hieroglyphic script, which depicts the facts that it
describes. And alphabetic script developed out of it without losing what
was essential to depiction.

4.02 We can see this from the fact that we understand the sense of a
propositional sign without its having been explained to us.

4.021 A proposition is a picture of reality: for if I understand a
proposition, I know the situation that it represents. And I understand the
proposition without having had its sense explained to me.

4.022 A proposition shows its sense. A proposition shows how things stand
if it is true. And it says that they do so stand.

4.023 A proposition must restrict reality to two alternatives: yes or no.
In order to do that, it must describe reality completely. A proposition is
a description of a state of affairs. Just as a description of an object
describes it by giving its external properties, so a proposition describes
reality by its internal properties. A proposition constructs a world with
the help of a logical scaffolding, so that one can actually see from the
proposition how everything stands logically if it is true. One can draw
inferences from a false proposition.

4.024 To understand a proposition means to know what is the case if it is
true. (One can understand it, therefore, without knowing whether it is
true.) It is understood by anyone who understands its constituents.

4.025 When translating one language into another, we do not proceed by
translating each proposition of the one into a proposition of the other,
but merely by translating the constituents of propositions. (And the
dictionary translates not only substantives, but also verbs, adjectives,
and conjunctions, etc.; and it treats them all in the same way.)

4.026 The meanings of simple signs (words) must be explained to us if we
are to understand them. With propositions, however, we make ourselves
understood.

4.027 It belongs to the essence of a proposition that it should be able to
communicate a new sense to us.

4.03 A proposition must use old expressions to communicate a new sense. A
proposition communicates a situation to us, and so it must be essentially
connected with the situation. And the connexion is precisely that it is its
logical picture. A proposition states something only in so far as it is a
picture.

4.031 In a proposition a situation is, as it were, constructed by way of
experiment. Instead of, ‘This proposition has such and such a sense, we can
simply say, ‘This proposition represents such and such a situation’.

4.0311 One name stands for one thing, another for another thing, and they
are combined with one another. In this way the whole group—like a tableau
vivant—presents a state of affairs.

4.0312 The possibility of propositions is based on the principle that
objects have signs as their representatives. My fundamental idea is that
the ‘logical constants’ are not representatives; that there can be no
representatives of the logic of facts.

4.032 It is only in so far as a proposition is logically articulated that
it is a picture of a situation. (Even the proposition, ‘Ambulo’, is
composite: for its stem with a different ending yields a different sense,
and so does its ending with a different stem.)

4.04 In a proposition there must be exactly as many distinguishable parts
as in the situation that it represents. The two must possess the same
logical (mathematical) multiplicity. (Compare Hertz’s Mechanics on
dynamical models.)

4.041 This mathematical multiplicity, of course, cannot itself be the
subject of depiction. One cannot get away from it when depicting.

4.0411. If, for example, we wanted to express what we now write as ‘(x) .
fx’ by putting an affix in front of ‘fx’—for instance by writing
‘Gen. fx’—it would not be adequate: we should not know what was being
generalized. If we wanted to signalize it with an affix ‘g’—for
instance by writing ‘f(xg)’—that would not be adequate either: we
should not know the scope of the generality-sign. If we were to try to
do it by introducing a mark into the argument-places—for instance by
writing ‘(G,G) . F(G,G)’—it would not be adequate: we should not be
able to establish the identity of the variables. And so on. All these
modes of signifying are inadequate because they lack the necessary
mathematical multiplicity.

4.0412 For the same reason the idealist’s appeal to ‘spatial spectacles’ is
inadequate to explain the seeing of spatial relations, because it cannot
explain the multiplicity of these relations.

4.05 Reality is compared with propositions.


4.06 A proposition can be true or false only in virtue of being a picture
of reality.

4.061 It must not be overlooked that a proposition has a sense that is
independent of the facts: otherwise one can easily suppose that true and
false are relations of equal status between signs and what they signify. In
that case one could say, for example, that ‘p’ signified in the true way
what ‘Pp’ signified in the false way, etc.

4.062 Can we not make ourselves understood with false propositions just as
we have done up till now with true ones?--So long as it is known that they
are meant to be false.—No! For a proposition is true if we use it to say
that things stand in a certain way, and they do; and if by ‘p’ we mean Pp
and things stand as we mean that they do, then, construed in the new way,
‘p’ is true and not false.

4.0621 But it is important that the signs ‘p’ and ‘Pp’ can say the same
thing. For it shows that nothing in reality corresponds to the sign ‘P’.
The occurrence of negation in a proposition is not enough to characterize
its sense (PPp = p). The propositions ‘p’ and ‘Pp’ have opposite sense, but
there corresponds to them one and the same reality.

4.063 An analogy to illustrate the concept of truth: imagine a black
spot on white paper: you can describe the shape of the spot by saying,
for each point on the sheet, whether it is black or white. To the fact
that a point is black there corresponds a positive fact, and to the
fact that a point is white (not black), a negative fact. If I
designate a point on the sheet (a truth-value according to Frege),
then this corresponds to the supposition that is put forward for
judgement, etc. etc. But in order to be able to say that a point is
black or white, I must first know when a point is called black, and
when white: in order to be able to say,’”p” is true (or false)’, I
must have determined in what circumstances I call ‘p’ true, and in so
doing I determine the sense of the proposition. Now the point where
the simile breaks down is this: we can indicate a point on the paper
even if we do not know what black and white are, but if a proposition
has no sense, nothing corresponds to it, since it does not designate a
thing (a truth-value) which might have properties called ‘false’ or
‘true’. The verb of a proposition is not ‘is true’ or ‘is false’, as
Frege thought: rather, that which ‘is true’ must already contain the
verb.

4.064 Every proposition must already have a sense: it cannot be given a
sense by affirmation. Indeed its sense is just what is affirmed. And the
same applies to negation, etc.

4.0641 One could say that negation must be related to the logical place
determined by the negated proposition. The negating proposition determines
a logical place different from that of the negated proposition. The
negating proposition determines a logical place with the help of the
logical place of the negated proposition. For it describes it as lying
outside the latter’s logical place. The negated proposition can be negated
again, and this in itself shows that what is negated is already a
proposition, and not merely something that is preliminary to a proposition.

4.1 Propositions represent the existence and non-existence of states of
affairs.

4.11 The totality of true propositions is the whole of natural science (or
the whole corpus of the natural sciences).

4.111 Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences. (The word ‘philosophy’
must mean something whose place is above or below the natural sciences, not
beside them.)

4.112 Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy
is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists
essentially of elucidations. Philosophy does not result in ‘philosophical
propositions’, but rather in the clarification of propositions. Without
philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to
make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries.

4.1121 Psychology is no more closely related to philosophy than any other
natural science. Theory of knowledge is the philosophy of psychology. Does
not my study of sign-language correspond to the study of thought-processes,
which philosophers used to consider so essential to the philosophy of
logic? Only in most cases they got entangled in unessential psychological
investigations, and with my method too there is an analogous risk.

4.1122 Darwin’s theory has no more to do with philosophy than any other
hypothesis in natural science.

4.113 Philosophy sets limits to the much disputed sphere of natural
science.

4.114 It must set limits to what can be thought; and, in doing so, to what
cannot be thought. It must set limits to what cannot be thought by working
outwards through what can be thought.

4.115 It will signify what cannot be said, by presenting clearly what can
be said.

4.116 Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly.
Everything that can be put into words can be put clearly. 4.12 Propositions
can represent the whole of reality, but they cannot represent what they
must have in common with reality in order to be able to represent it—
logical form. In order to be able to represent logical form, we should have
to be able to station ourselves with propositions somewhere outside logic,
that is to say outside the world.

4.121 Propositions cannot represent logical form: it is mirrored in them.
What finds its reflection in language, language cannot represent. What
expresses itself in language, we cannot express by means of language.
Propositions show the logical form of reality. They display it.

4.1211 Thus one proposition ‘fa’ shows that the object a occurs in its
sense, two propositions ‘fa’ and ‘ga’ show that the same object is
mentioned in both of them. If two propositions contradict one another, then
their structure shows it; the same is true if one of them follows from the
other. And so on.

4.1212 What can be shown, cannot be said.


4.1213 Now, too, we understand our feeling that once we have a
sign-language in which everything is all right, we already have a
correct logical point of view.

4.122 In a certain sense we can talk about formal properties of objects and
states of affairs, or, in the case of facts, about structural properties:
and in the same sense about formal relations and structural relations.
(Instead of ‘structural property’ I also say ‘internal property’; instead
of ‘structural relation’, ‘internal relation’. I introduce these
expressions in order to indicate the source of the confusion between
internal relations and relations proper (external relations), which is very
widespread among philosophers.) It is impossible, however, to assert by
means of propositions that such internal properties and relations obtain:
rather, this makes itself manifest in the propositions that represent the
relevant states of affairs and are concerned with the relevant objects.

4.1221 An internal property of a fact can also be bed a feature of that
fact (in the sense in which we speak of facial features, for example).

4.123 A property is internal if it is unthinkable that its object should
not possess it. (This shade of blue and that one stand, eo ipso, in the
internal relation of lighter to darker. It is unthinkable that these two
objects should not stand in this relation.) (Here the shifting use of the
word ‘object’ corresponds to the shifting use of the words ‘property’ and
‘relation’.)

4.124 The existence of an internal property of a possible situation is not
expressed by means of a proposition: rather, it expresses itself in the
proposition representing the situation, by means of an internal property of
that proposition. It would be just as nonsensical to assert that a
proposition had a formal property as to deny it.

4.1241 It is impossible to distinguish forms from one another by saying
that one has this property and another that property: for this presupposes
that it makes sense to ascribe either property to either form.

4.125 The existence of an internal relation between possible situations
expresses itself in language by means of an internal relation between the
propositions representing them.

4.1251 Here we have the answer to the vexed question ‘whether all relations
are internal or external’.

4.1252 I call a series that is ordered by an internal relation a series of
forms. The order of the number-series is not governed by an external
relation but by an internal relation. The same is true of the series of
propositions ‘aRb’, ‘(d : c) : aRx . xRb’, ‘(d x,y) : aRx . xRy . yRb’, and
so forth. (If b stands in one of these relations to a, I call b a successor
of a.)

4.126 We can now talk about formal concepts, in the same sense that we
speak of formal properties. (I introduce this expression in order to
exhibit the source of the confusion between formal concepts and concepts
proper, which pervades the whole of traditional logic.) When something
falls under a formal concept as one of its objects, this cannot be
expressed by means of a proposition. Instead it is shown in the very sign
for this object. (A name shows that it signifies an object, a sign for a
number that it signifies a number, etc.) Formal concepts cannot, in fact,
be represented by means of a function, as concepts proper can. For their
characteristics, formal properties, are not expressed by means of
functions. The expression for a formal property is a feature of certain
symbols. So the sign for the characteristics of a formal concept is a
distinctive feature of all symbols whose meanings fall under the concept.
So the expression for a formal concept is a propositional variable in which
this distinctive feature alone is constant.

4.127 The propositional variable signifies the formal concept, and its
values signify the objects that fall under the concept.

4.1271 Every variable is the sign for a formal concept. For every variable
represents a constant form that all its values possess, and this can be
regarded as a formal property of those values.

4.1272 Thus the variable name ‘x’ is the proper sign for the
pseudo-concept object. Wherever the word ‘object’ (‘thing’, etc.) is
correctly used, it is expressed in conceptual notation by a variable
name. For example, in the proposition, ‘There are 2 objects which. .
.’, it is expressed by ‘ (dx,y) ... ‘. Wherever it is used in a
different way, that is as a proper concept-word, nonsensical
pseudo-propositions are the result. So one cannot say, for example,
‘There are objects’, as one might say, ‘There are books’. And it is
just as impossible to say, ‘There are 100 objects’, or, ‘There are !0
objects’. And it is nonsensical to speak of the total number of
objects. The same applies to the words ‘complex’, ‘fact’, ‘function’,
‘number’, etc. They all signify formal concepts, and are represented
in conceptual notation by variables, not by functions or classes (as
Frege and Russell believed). ‘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 one 1’, as it would be to say, ‘2 +
2 at 3 o’clock equals 4’.)

4.12721 A formal concept is given immediately any object falling under it
is given. It is not possible, therefore, to introduce as primitive ideas
objects belonging to a formal concept and the formal concept itself. So it

18 pages...

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

By Ludwig Wittgenstein

Perhaps this book will be understood only by someone who has himself
already had the thoughts that are expressed in it—or at least similar
thoughts.—So it is not a textbook.—Its purpose would be achieved if it
gave pleasure to one person who read and understood it.

The book deals with the problems of philosophy, and shows, I believe, that
the reason why these problems are posed is that the logic of our language
is misunderstood. The whole sense of the book might be summed up the
following words: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we
cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.

Thus the aim of the book is to draw a limit to thought, or rather—not to
thought, but to the expression of thoughts: for in order to be able to draw
a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit
thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought).

It will therefore only be in language that the limit can be drawn, and what
lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense.

I do not wish to judge how far my efforts coincide with those of other
philosophers. Indeed, what I have written here makes no claim to novelty in
detail, and the reason why I give no sources is that it is a matter of
indifference to me whether the thoughts that I have had have been
anticipated by someone else.

I will only mention that I am indebted to Frege’s great works and of the
writings of my friend Mr Bertrand Russell for much of the stimulation of my
thoughts.

If this work has any value, it consists in two things: the first is that
thoughts are expressed in it, and on this score the better the thoughts are
expressed—the more the nail has been hit on the head—the greater will be
its value.—Here I am conscious of having fallen a long way short of what
is possible. Simply because my powers are too slight for the accomplishment
of the task.—May others come and do it better.

On the other hand the truth of the thoughts that are here communicated
seems to me unassailable and definitive. I therefore believe myself to have
found, on all essential points, the final solution of the problems. And if
I am not mistaken in this belief, then the second thing in which the of
this work consists is that it shows how little is achieved when these
problems are solved.

L.W. Vienna, 1918

1. The world is all that is the case.


1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.


1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the
facts.

1.12 For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also
whatever is not the case.

1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.


1.2 The world divides into facts.


1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else
remains the same.

2. What is the case—a fact—is the existence of states of affairs.


2.01 A state of affairs (a state of things) is a combination of objects
(things).

2.011 It is essential to things that they should be possible constituents
of states of affairs.

2.012 In logic nothing is accidental: if a thing can occur in a state of
affairs, the possibility of the state of affairs must be written into the
thing itself.

2.0121 It would seem to be a sort of accident, if it turned out that a
situation would fit a thing that could already exist entirely on its own.
If things can occur in states of affairs, this possibility must be in them
from the beginning. (Nothing in the province of logic can be merely
possible. Logic deals with every possibility and all possibilities are its
facts.) Just as we are quite unable to imagine spatial objects outside
space or temporal objects outside time, so too there is no object that we
can imagine excluded from the possibility of combining with others. If I
can imagine objects combined in states of affairs, I cannot imagine them
excluded from the possibility of such combinations.

2.0122 Things are independent in so far as they can occur in all possible
situations, but this form of independence is a form of connexion with
states of affairs, a form of dependence. (It is impossible for words to
appear in two different roles: by themselves, and in propositions.)

2.0123 If I know an object I also know all its possible occurrences in
states of affairs. (Every one of these possibilities must be part of the
nature of the object.) A new possibility cannot be discovered later.

2.01231 If I am to know an object, thought I need not know its external
properties, I must know all its internal properties.

2.0124 If all objects are given, then at the same time all possible states
of affairs are also given.

2.013 Each thing is, as it were, in a space of possible states of affairs.
This space I can imagine empty, but I cannot imagine the thing without the
space.

2.0131 A spatial object must be situated in infinite space. (A spatial
point is an argument-place.) A speck in the visual field, thought it
need not be red, must have some colour: it is, so to speak, surrounded
by colour-space. Notes must have some pitch, objects of the sense of
touch some degree of hardness, and so on.

2.014 Objects contain the possibility of all situations.


2.0141 The possibility of its occurring in states of affairs is the form of
an object.

2.02 Objects are simple.


2.0201 Every statement about complexes can be resolved into a statement
about their constituents and into the propositions that describe the
complexes completely.

2.021 Objects make up the substance of the world. That is why they cannot
be composite.

2.0211 If they world had no substance, then whether a proposition had sense
would depend on whether another proposition was true.

2.0212 In that case we could not sketch any picture of the world (true or
false).

2.022 It is obvious that an imagined world, however difference it may be
from the real one, must have something—a form—in common with it.

2.023 Objects are just what constitute this unalterable form.


2.0231 The substance of the world can only determine a form, and not any
material properties. For it is only by means of propositions that material
properties are represented—only by the configuration of objects that they
are produced.

2.0232 In a manner of speaking, objects are colourless.


2.0233 If two objects have the same logical form, the only distinction
between them, apart from their external properties, is that they are
different.

2.02331 Either a thing has properties that nothing else has, in which case
we can immediately use a description to distinguish it from the others and
refer to it; or, on the other hand, there are several things that have the
whole set of their properties in common, in which case it is quite
impossible to indicate one of them. For it there is nothing to distinguish
a thing, I cannot distinguish it, since otherwise it would be distinguished
after all.

2.024 The substance is what subsists independently of what is the case.


2.025 It is form and content.


2.0251 Space, time, colour (being coloured) are forms of objects.

2.026 There must be objects, if the world is to have unalterable form.


2.027 Objects, the unalterable, and the subsistent are one and the same.


2.0271 Objects are what is unalterable and subsistent; their configuration
is what is changing and unstable.

2.0272 The configuration of objects produces states of affairs.


2.03 In a state of affairs objects fit into one another like the links of a
chain.

2.031 In a state of affairs objects stand in a determinate relation to one
another.

2.032 The determinate way in which objects are connected in a state of
affairs is the structure of the state of affairs.

2.033 Form is the possibility of structure.


2.034 The structure of a fact consists of the structures of states of
affairs.

2.04 The totality of existing states of affairs is the world.


2.05 The totality of existing states of affairs also determines which
states of affairs do not exist.

2.06 The existence and non-existence of states of affairs is reality.
(We call the existence of states of affairs a positive fact, and their
non-existence a negative fact.)

2.061 States of affairs are independent of one another.


2.062 From the existence or non-existence of one state of affairs it is
impossible to infer the existence or non-existence of another.

2.063 The sum-total of reality is the world.


2.1 We picture facts to ourselves.


2.11 A picture presents a situation in logical space, the existence and
non-existence of states of affairs.

2.12 A picture is a model of reality.


2.13 In a picture objects have the elements of the picture corresponding to
them.

2.131 In a picture the elements of the picture are the representatives of
objects.

2.14 What constitutes a picture is that its elements are related to one
another in a determinate way.

2.141 A picture is a fact.

2.15 The fact that the elements of a picture are related to one another in
a determinate way represents that things are related to one another in the
same way. Let us call this connexion of its elements the structure of the
picture, and let us call the possibility of this structure the pictorial
form of the picture.

2.151 Pictorial form is the possibility that things are related to one
another in the same way as the elements of the picture.

2.1511 That is how a picture is attached to reality; it reaches right out
to it.

2.1512 It is laid against reality like a measure.


2.15121 Only the end-points of the graduating lines actually touch the
object that is to be measured.

2.1514 So a picture, conceived in this way, also includes the pictorial
relationship, which makes it into a picture.

2.1515 These correlations are, as it were, the feelers of the picture’s
elements, with which the picture touches reality.

2.16 If a fact is to be a picture, it must have something in common with
what it depicts.

2.161 There must be something identical in a picture and what it depicts,
to enable the one to be a picture of the other at all.

2.17 What a picture must have in common with reality, in order to be able
to depict it—correctly or incorrectly—in the way that it does, is its
pictorial form.

2.171 A picture can depict any reality whose form it has. A spatial picture
can depict anything spatial, a coloured one anything coloured, etc.

2.172 A picture cannot, however, depict its pictorial form: it displays it.


2.173 A picture represents its subject from a position outside it. (Its
standpoint is its representational form.) That is why a picture represents
its subject correctly or incorrectly.

2.174 A picture cannot, however, place itself outside its representational
form.

2.18 What any picture, of whatever form, must have in common with reality,
in order to be able to depict it—correctly or incorrectly—in any way at
all, is logical form, i.e. the form of reality.

2.181 A picture whose pictorial form is logical form is called a logical
picture.

2.182 Every picture is at the same time a logical one. (On the other hand,
not every picture is, for example, a spatial one.)

2.19 Logical pictures can depict the world.


2.2 A picture has logico-pictorial form in common with what it depicts.


2.201 A picture depicts reality by representing a possibility of existence
and non-existence of states of affairs.

2.202 A picture contains the possibility of the situation that it
represents.

2.203 A picture agrees with reality or fails to agree; it is correct or
incorrect, true or false.

2.22 What a picture represents it represents independently of its truth or
falsity, by means of its pictorial form.

2.221 What a picture represents is its sense.


2.222 The agreement or disagreement or its sense with reality constitutes
its truth or falsity.

2.223 In order to tell whether a picture is true or false we must compare
it with reality.

2.224 It is impossible to tell from the picture alone whether it is true or
false.

2.225 There are no pictures that are true a priori.


3. A logical picture of facts is a thought.


3.001 ‘A state of affairs is thinkable’: what this means is that we can
picture it to ourselves.

3.01 The totality of true thoughts is a picture of the world.


3.02 A thought contains the possibility of the situation of which it is the
thought. What is thinkable is possible too.

3.03 Thought can never be of anything illogical, since, if it were, we
should have to think illogically.

3.031 It used to be said that God could create anything except what would
be contrary to the laws of logic. The truth is that we could not say what an
‘illogical’ world would look like.

3.032 It is as impossible to represent in language anything that
‘contradicts logic’ as it is in geometry to represent by its coordinates a
figure that contradicts the laws of space, or to give the coordinates of a
point that does not exist.

3.0321 Though a state of affairs that would contravene the laws of physics
can be represented by us spatially, one that would contravene the laws of
geometry cannot.

3.04 It a thought were correct a priori, it would be a thought whose
possibility ensured its truth.

3.05 A priori knowledge that a thought was true would be possible only it
its truth were recognizable from the thought itself (without anything a to
compare it with).

3.1 In a proposition a thought finds an expression that can be perceived by
the senses.

3.11 We use the perceptible sign of a proposition (spoken or written, etc.)
as a projection of a possible situation. The method of projection is to
think of the sense of the proposition.

3.12 I call the sign with which we express a thought a propositional
sign. And a proposition is a propositional sign in its projective relation
to the world.

3.13 A proposition, therefore, does not actually contain its sense, but
does contain the possibility of expressing it. (‘The content of a
proposition’ means the content of a proposition that has sense.) A
proposition contains the form, but not the content, of its sense.

3.14 What constitutes a propositional sign is that in its elements (the
words) stand in a determinate relation to one another. A propositional sign
is a fact.

3.141 A proposition is not a blend of words.(Just as a theme in music is
not a blend of notes.) A proposition is articulate.

3.142 Only facts can express a sense, a set of names cannot.


3.143 Although a propositional sign is a fact, this is obscured by the
usual form of expression in writing or print. For in a printed proposition,
for example, no essential difference is apparent between a propositional
sign and a word. (That is what made it possible for Frege to call a
proposition a composite name.)

3.1431 The essence of a propositional sign is very clearly seen if we
imagine one composed of spatial objects (such as tables, chairs, and books)
instead of written signs.

3.1432 Instead of, ‘The complex sign “aRb” says that a stands to b in the
relation R’ we ought to put, ‘That “a” stands to “b” in a certain relation
says that aRb.’

3.144 Situations can be described but not given names.


3.2 In a proposition a thought can be expressed in such a way that elements
of the propositional sign correspond to the objects of the thought.

3.201 I call such elements ‘simple signs’, and such a proposition ‘complete
analysed’.

3.202 The simple signs employed in propositions are called names.


3.203 A name means an object. The object is its meaning. (‘A’ is the same
sign as ‘A’.)

3.21 The configuration of objects in a situation corresponds to the
configuration of simple signs in the propositional sign.

3.221 Objects can only be named. Signs are their representatives. I can
only speak about them: I cannot put them into words. Propositions can only
say how things are, not what they are.

3.23 The requirement that simple signs be possible is the requirement that
sense be determinate.

3.24 A proposition about a complex stands in an internal relation to a
proposition about a constituent of the complex. A complex can be given only
by its description, which will be right or wrong. A proposition that
mentions a complex will not be nonsensical, if the complex does not exits,
but simply false. When a propositional element signifies a complex, this
can be seen from an indeterminateness in the propositions in which it
occurs. In such cases we know that the proposition leaves something
undetermined. (In fact the notation for generality contains a prototype.)
The contraction of a symbol for a complex into a simple symbol can be
expressed in a definition.

3.25 A proposition cannot be dissected any further by means of a
definition: it is a primitive sign.

3.261 Every sign that has a definition signifies via the signs that serve
to define it; and the definitions point the way. Two signs cannot signify
in the same manner if one is primitive and the other is defined by means of
primitive signs. Names cannot be anatomized by means of definitions. (Nor
can any sign that has a meaning independently and on its own.)

3.262 What signs fail to express, their application shows. What signs slur
over, their application says clearly.

3.263 The meanings of primitive signs can be explained by means of
elucidations. Elucidations are propositions that stood if the meanings of
those signs are already known.

3.3 Only propositions have sense; only in the nexus of a proposition does a
name have meaning.

3.31 I call any part of a proposition that characterizes its sense an
expression (or a symbol). (A proposition is itself an expression.)
Everything essential to their sense that propositions can have in common
with one another is an expression. An expression is the mark of a form and
a content.

3.311 An expression presupposes the forms of all the propositions in which
it can occur. It is the common characteristic mark of a class of
propositions.

3.312 It is therefore presented by means of the general form of the
propositions that it characterizes. In fact, in this form the expression
will be constant and everything else variable.

3.313 Thus an expression is presented by means of a variable whose values
are the propositions that contain the expression. (In the limiting case the
variable becomes a constant, the expression becomes a proposition.) I call
such a variable a ‘propositional variable’.

3.314 An expression has meaning only in a proposition. All variables can be
construed as propositional variables. (Even variable names.)

3.315 If we turn a constituent of a proposition into a variable, there is a
class of propositions all of which are values of the resulting variable
proposition. In general, this class too will be dependent on the meaning
that our arbitrary conventions have given to parts of the original
proposition. But if all the signs in it that have arbitrarily determined
meanings are turned into variables, we shall still get a class of this
kind. This one, however, is not dependent on any convention, but solely on
the nature of the pro position. It corresponds to a logical form—a logical
prototype.

3.316 What values a propositional variable may take is something that is
stipulated. The stipulation of values is the variable.

3.317 To stipulate values for a propositional variable is to give the
propositions whose common characteristic the variable is. The stipulation
is a description of those propositions. The stipulation will therefore be
concerned only with symbols, not with their meaning. And the only thing
essential to the stipulation is that it is merely a description of symbols
and states nothing about what is signified. How the description of the
propositions is produced is not essential.

3.318 Like Frege and Russell I construe a proposition as a function of the
expressions contained in it.

3.32 A sign is what can be perceived of a symbol.

3.321 So one and the same sign (written or spoken, etc.) can be common to
two different symbols—in which case they will signify in different ways.

3.322 Our use of the same sign to signify two different objects can never
indicate a common characteristic of the two, if we use it with two
different modes of signification. For the sign, of course, is arbitrary. So
we could choose two different signs instead, and then what would be left in
common on the signifying side?

3.323 In everyday language it very frequently happens that the same word
has different modes of signification—and so belongs to different symbols—
or that two words that have different modes of signification are employed
in propositions in what is superficially the same way. Thus the word ‘is’
figures as the copula, as a sign for identity, and as an expression for
existence; ‘exist’ figures as an intransitive verb like ‘go’, and
‘identical’ as an adjective; we speak of something, but also of something’s
happening. (In the proposition, ‘Green is green’—where the first word is
the proper name of a person and the last an adjective—these words do not
merely have different meanings: they are different symbols.)

3.324 In this way the most fundamental confusions are easily produced (the
whole of philosophy is full of them).

3.325 In order to avoid such errors we must make use of a sign-language
that excludes them by not using the same sign for different symbols and by
not using in a superficially similar way signs that have different modes of
signification: that is to say, a sign-language that is governed by logical
grammar—by logical syntax. (The conceptual notation of Frege and Russell
is such a language, though, it is true, it fails to exclude all mistakes.)

3.326 In order to recognize a symbol by its sign we must observe how it is
used with a sense.

3.327 A sign does not determine a logical form unless it is taken together
with its logico-syntactical employment.

3.328 If a sign is useless, it is meaningless. That is the point of Occam’s
maxim. (If everything behaves as if a sign had meaning, then it does have
meaning.)

3.33 In logical syntax the meaning of a sign should never play a role. It
must be possible to establish logical syntax without mentioning the meaning
of a sign: only the description of expressions may be presupposed.

3.331 From this observation we turn to Russell’s ‘theory of types’. It can
be seen that Russell must be wrong, because he had to mention the meaning
of signs when establishing the rules for them.

3.332 No proposition can make a statement about itself, because a
propositional sign cannot be contained in itself (that is the whole of the
‘theory of types’).

3.333 The reason why a function cannot be its own argument is that the sign
for a function already contains the prototype of its argument, and it
cannot contain itself. For let us suppose that the function F(fx) could be
its own argument: in that case there would be a proposition ‘F(F(fx))’, in
which the outer function F and the inner function F must have different
meanings, since the inner one has the form O(f(x)) and the outer one has
the form Y(O(fx)). Only the letter ‘F’ is common to the two functions, but
the letter by itself signifies nothing. This immediately becomes clear if
instead of ‘F(Fu)’ we write ‘(do) : F(Ou) . Ou = Fu’. That disposes of
Russell’s paradox.

3.334 The rules of logical syntax must go without saying, once we know how
each individual sign signifies.

3.34 A proposition possesses essential and accidental features. Accidental
features are those that result from the particular way in which the
propositional sign is produced. Essential features are those without which
the proposition could not express its sense.

3.341 So what is essential in a proposition is what all propositions that
can express the same sense have in common. And similarly, in general, what
is essential in a symbol is what all symbols that can serve the same
purpose have in common.

3.3411 So one could say that the real name of an object was what all
symbols that signified it had in common. Thus, one by one, all kinds of
composition would prove to be unessential to a name.

3.342 Although there is something arbitrary in our notations, this much is
not arbitrary—that when we have determined one thing arbitrarily,
something else is necessarily the case. (This derives from the essence of
notation.)

3.3421 A particular mode of signifying may be unimportant but it is always
important that it is a possible mode of signifying. And that is generally
so in philosophy: again and again the individual case turns out to be
unimportant, but the possibility of each individual case discloses
something about the essence of the world.

3.343 Definitions are rules for translating from one language into another.
Any correct sign-language must be translatable into any other in accordance
with such rules: it is this that they all have in common.

3.344 What signifies in a symbol is what is common to all the symbols that
the rules of logical syntax allow us to substitute for it.

3.3441 For instance, we can express what is common to all notations for
truth-functions in the following way: they have in common that, for
example, the notation that uses ‘Pp’ (‘not p’) and ‘p C g’ (‘p or g’) can
be substituted for any of them. (This serves to characterize the way in
which something general can be disclosed by the possibility of a specific
notation.)

3.3442 Nor does analysis resolve the sign for a complex in an arbitrary
way, so that it would have a different resolution every time that it was
incorporated in a different proposition.

3.4 A proposition determines a place in logical space. The existence
of this logical place is guaranteed by the mere existence of the
constituents—by the existence of the proposition with a sense.

3.41 The propositional sign with logical coordinates—that is the logical
place.

3.411 In geometry and logic alike a place is a possibility: something can
exist in it.

3.42 A proposition can determine only one place in logical space:
nevertheless the whole of logical space must already be given by it.
(Otherwise negation, logical sum, logical product, etc., would introduce
more and more new elements in co-ordination.) (The logical scaffolding
surrounding a picture determines logical space. The force of a proposition
reaches through the whole of logical space.)

3.5 A propositional sign, applied and thought out, is a thought.


4. A thought is a proposition with a sense.


4.001 The totality of propositions is language.


4.022 Man possesses the ability to construct languages capable of
expressing every sense, without having any idea how each word has meaning
or what its meaning is—just as people speak without knowing how the
individual sounds are produced. Everyday language is a part of the human
organism and is no less complicated than it. It is not humanly possible to
gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language
disguises thought. So much so, that from the outward form of the clothing
it is impossible to infer the form of the thought beneath it, because the
outward form of the clothing is not designed to reveal the form of the
body, but for entirely different purposes. The tacit conventions on which
the understanding of everyday language depends are enormously complicated.

4.003 Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical
works are not false but nonsensical. Consequently we cannot give any answer
to questions of this kind, but can only point out that they are
nonsensical. Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise
from our failure to understand the logic of our language. (They belong to
the same class as the question whether the good is more or less identical
than the beautiful.) And it is not surprising that the deepest problems are
in fact not problems at all.

4.0031 All philosophy is a ‘critique of language’ (though not in Mauthner’s
sense). It was Russell who performed the service of showing that the
apparent logical form of a proposition need not be its real one.

4.01 A proposition is a picture of reality. A proposition is a model of
reality as we imagine it.

4.011 At first sight a proposition—one set out on the printed page, for
example—does not seem to be a picture of the reality with which it is
concerned. But neither do written notes seem at first sight to be a picture
of a piece of music, nor our phonetic notation (the alphabet) to be a
picture of our speech. And yet these sign-languages prove to be pictures,
even in the ordinary sense, of what they represent.

4.012 It is obvious that a proposition of the form ‘aRb’ strikes us as a
picture. In this case the sign is obviously a likeness of what is
signified.

4.013 And if we penetrate to the essence of this pictorial character, we
see that it is not impaired by apparent irregularities (such as the use
[sharp] of and [flat] in musical notation). For even these irregularities
depict what they are intended to express; only they do it in a different
way.

4.014 A gramophone record, the musical idea, the written notes, and the
sound-waves, all stand to one another in the same internal relation of
depicting that holds between language and the world. They are all
constructed according to a common logical pattern. (Like the two youths in
the fairy-tale, their two horses, and their lilies. They are all in a
certain sense one.)

4.0141 There is a general rule by means of which the musician can obtain
the symphony from the score, and which makes it possible to derive the
symphony from the groove on the gramophone record, and, using the first
rule, to derive the score again. That is what constitutes the inner
similarity between these things which seem to be constructed in such
entirely different ways. And that rule is the law of projection which
projects the symphony into the language of musical notation. It is the rule
for translating this language into the language of gramophone records.

4.015 The possibility of all imagery, of all our pictorial modes of
expression, is contained in the logic of depiction.

4.016 In order to understand the essential nature of a proposition, we
should consider hieroglyphic script, which depicts the facts that it
describes. And alphabetic script developed out of it without losing what
was essential to depiction.

4.02 We can see this from the fact that we understand the sense of a
propositional sign without its having been explained to us.

4.021 A proposition is a picture of reality: for if I understand a
proposition, I know the situation that it represents. And I understand the
proposition without having had its sense explained to me.

4.022 A proposition shows its sense. A proposition shows how things stand
if it is true. And it says that they do so stand.

4.023 A proposition must restrict reality to two alternatives: yes or no.
In order to do that, it must describe reality completely. A proposition is
a description of a state of affairs. Just as a description of an object
describes it by giving its external properties, so a proposition describes
reality by its internal properties. A proposition constructs a world with
the help of a logical scaffolding, so that one can actually see from the
proposition how everything stands logically if it is true. One can draw
inferences from a false proposition.

4.024 To understand a proposition means to know what is the case if it is
true. (One can understand it, therefore, without knowing whether it is
true.) It is understood by anyone who understands its constituents.

4.025 When translating one language into another, we do not proceed by
translating each proposition of the one into a proposition of the other,
but merely by translating the constituents of propositions. (And the
dictionary translates not only substantives, but also verbs, adjectives,
and conjunctions, etc.; and it treats them all in the same way.)

4.026 The meanings of simple signs (words) must be explained to us if we
are to understand them. With propositions, however, we make ourselves
understood.

4.027 It belongs to the essence of a proposition that it should be able to
communicate a new sense to us.

4.03 A proposition must use old expressions to communicate a new sense. A
proposition communicates a situation to us, and so it must be essentially
connected with the situation. And the connexion is precisely that it is its
logical picture. A proposition states something only in so far as it is a
picture.

4.031 In a proposition a situation is, as it were, constructed by way of
experiment. Instead of, ‘This proposition has such and such a sense, we can
simply say, ‘This proposition represents such and such a situation’.

4.0311 One name stands for one thing, another for another thing, and they
are combined with one another. In this way the whole group—like a tableau
vivant—presents a state of affairs.

4.0312 The possibility of propositions is based on the principle that
objects have signs as their representatives. My fundamental idea is that
the ‘logical constants’ are not representatives; that there can be no
representatives of the logic of facts.

4.032 It is only in so far as a proposition is logically articulated that
it is a picture of a situation. (Even the proposition, ‘Ambulo’, is
composite: for its stem with a different ending yields a different sense,
and so does its ending with a different stem.)

4.04 In a proposition there must be exactly as many distinguishable parts
as in the situation that it represents. The two must possess the same
logical (mathematical) multiplicity. (Compare Hertz’s Mechanics on
dynamical models.)

4.041 This mathematical multiplicity, of course, cannot itself be the
subject of depiction. One cannot get away from it when depicting.

4.0411. If, for example, we wanted to express what we now write as ‘(x) .
fx’ by putting an affix in front of ‘fx’—for instance by writing
‘Gen. fx’—it would not be adequate: we should not know what was being
generalized. If we wanted to signalize it with an affix ‘g’—for
instance by writing ‘f(xg)’—that would not be adequate either: we
should not know the scope of the generality-sign. If we were to try to
do it by introducing a mark into the argument-places—for instance by
writing ‘(G,G) . F(G,G)’—it would not be adequate: we should not be
able to establish the identity of the variables. And so on. All these
modes of signifying are inadequate because they lack the necessary
mathematical multiplicity.

4.0412 For the same reason the idealist’s appeal to ‘spatial spectacles’ is
inadequate to explain the seeing of spatial relations, because it cannot
explain the multiplicity of these relations.

4.05 Reality is compared with propositions.


4.06 A proposition can be true or false only in virtue of being a picture
of reality.

4.061 It must not be overlooked that a proposition has a sense that is
independent of the facts: otherwise one can easily suppose that true and
false are relations of equal status between signs and what they signify. In
that case one could say, for example, that ‘p’ signified in the true way
what ‘Pp’ signified in the false way, etc.

4.062 Can we not make ourselves understood with false propositions just as
we have done up till now with true ones?--So long as it is known that they
are meant to be false.—No! For a proposition is true if we use it to say
that things stand in a certain way, and they do; and if by ‘p’ we mean Pp
and things stand as we mean that they do, then, construed in the new way,
‘p’ is true and not false.

4.0621 But it is important that the signs ‘p’ and ‘Pp’ can say the same
thing. For it shows that nothing in reality corresponds to the sign ‘P’.
The occurrence of negation in a proposition is not enough to characterize
its sense (PPp = p). The propositions ‘p’ and ‘Pp’ have opposite sense, but
there corresponds to them one and the same reality.

4.063 An analogy to illustrate the concept of truth: imagine a black
spot on white paper: you can describe the shape of the spot by saying,
for each point on the sheet, whether it is black or white. To the fact
that a point is black there corresponds a positive fact, and to the
fact that a point is white (not black), a negative fact. If I
designate a point on the sheet (a truth-value according to Frege),
then this corresponds to the supposition that is put forward for
judgement, etc. etc. But in order to be able to say that a point is
black or white, I must first know when a point is called black, and
when white: in order to be able to say,’”p” is true (or false)’, I
must have determined in what circumstances I call ‘p’ true, and in so
doing I determine the sense of the proposition. Now the point where
the simile breaks down is this: we can indicate a point on the paper
even if we do not know what black and white are, but if a proposition
has no sense, nothing corresponds to it, since it does not designate a
thing (a truth-value) which might have properties called ‘false’ or
‘true’. The verb of a proposition is not ‘is true’ or ‘is false’, as
Frege thought: rather, that which ‘is true’ must already contain the
verb.

4.064 Every proposition must already have a sense: it cannot be given a
sense by affirmation. Indeed its sense is just what is affirmed. And the
same applies to negation, etc.

4.0641 One could say that negation must be related to the logical place
determined by the negated proposition. The negating proposition determines
a logical place different from that of the negated proposition. The
negating proposition determines a logical place with the help of the
logical place of the negated proposition. For it describes it as lying
outside the latter’s logical place. The negated proposition can be negated
again, and this in itself shows that what is negated is already a
proposition, and not merely something that is preliminary to a proposition.

4.1 Propositions represent the existence and non-existence of states of
affairs.

4.11 The totality of true propositions is the whole of natural science (or
the whole corpus of the natural sciences).

4.111 Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences. (The word ‘philosophy’
must mean something whose place is above or below the natural sciences, not
beside them.)

4.112 Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy
is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists
essentially of elucidations. Philosophy does not result in ‘philosophical
propositions’, but rather in the clarification of propositions. Without
philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to
make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries.

4.1121 Psychology is no more closely related to philosophy than any other
natural science. Theory of knowledge is the philosophy of psychology. Does
not my study of sign-language correspond to the study of thought-processes,
which philosophers used to consider so essential to the philosophy of
logic? Only in most cases they got entangled in unessential psychological
investigations, and with my method too there is an analogous risk.

4.1122 Darwin’s theory has no more to do with philosophy than any other
hypothesis in natural science.

4.113 Philosophy sets limits to the much disputed sphere of natural
science.

4.114 It must set limits to what can be thought; and, in doing so, to what
cannot be thought. It must set limits to what cannot be thought by working
outwards through what can be thought.

4.115 It will signify what cannot be said, by presenting clearly what can
be said.

4.116 Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly.
Everything that can be put into words can be put clearly. 4.12 Propositions
can represent the whole of reality, but they cannot represent what they
must have in common with reality in order to be able to represent it—
logical form. In order to be able to represent logical form, we should have
to be able to station ourselves with propositions somewhere outside logic,
that is to say outside the world.

4.121 Propositions cannot represent logical form: it is mirrored in them.
What finds its reflection in language, language cannot represent. What
expresses itself in language, we cannot express by means of language.
Propositions show the logical form of reality. They display it.

4.1211 Thus one proposition ‘fa’ shows that the object a occurs in its
sense, two propositions ‘fa’ and ‘ga’ show that the same object is
mentioned in both of them. If two propositions contradict one another, then
their structure shows it; the same is true if one of them follows from the
other. And so on.

4.1212 What can be shown, cannot be said.


4.1213 Now, too, we understand our feeling that once we have a
sign-language in which everything is all right, we already have a
correct logical point of view.

4.122 In a certain sense we can talk about formal properties of objects and
states of affairs, or, in the case of facts, about structural properties:
and in the same sense about formal relations and structural relations.
(Instead of ‘structural property’ I also say ‘internal property’; instead
of ‘structural relation’, ‘internal relation’. I introduce these
expressions in order to indicate the source of the confusion between
internal relations and relations proper (external relations), which is very
widespread among philosophers.) It is impossible, however, to assert by
means of propositions that such internal properties and relations obtain:
rather, this makes itself manifest in the propositions that represent the
relevant states of affairs and are concerned with the relevant objects.

4.1221 An internal property of a fact can also be bed a feature of that
fact (in the sense in which we speak of facial features, for example).

4.123 A property is internal if it is unthinkable that its object should
not possess it. (This shade of blue and that one stand, eo ipso, in the
internal relation of lighter to darker. It is unthinkable that these two
objects should not stand in this relation.) (Here the shifting use of the
word ‘object’ corresponds to the shifting use of the words ‘property’ and
‘relation’.)

4.124 The existence of an internal property of a possible situation is not
expressed by means of a proposition: rather, it expresses itself in the
proposition representing the situation, by means of an internal property of
that proposition. It would be just as nonsensical to assert that a
proposition had a formal property as to deny it.

4.1241 It is impossible to distinguish forms from one another by saying
that one has this property and another that property: for this presupposes
that it makes sense to ascribe either property to either form.

4.125 The existence of an internal relation between possible situations
expresses itself in language by means of an internal relation between the
propositions representing them.

4.1251 Here we have the answer to the vexed question ‘whether all relations
are internal or external’.

4.1252 I call a series that is ordered by an internal relation a series of
forms. The order of the number-series is not governed by an external
relation but by an internal relation. The same is true of the series of
propositions ‘aRb’, ‘(d : c) : aRx . xRb’, ‘(d x,y) : aRx . xRy . yRb’, and
so forth. (If b stands in one of these relations to a, I call b a successor
of a.)

4.126 We can now talk about formal concepts, in the same sense that we
speak of formal properties. (I introduce this expression in order to
exhibit the source of the confusion between formal concepts and concepts
proper, which pervades the whole of traditional logic.) When something
falls under a formal concept as one of its objects, this cannot be
expressed by means of a proposition. Instead it is shown in the very sign
for this object. (A name shows that it signifies an object, a sign for a
number that it signifies a number, etc.) Formal concepts cannot, in fact,
be represented by means of a function, as concepts proper can. For their
characteristics, formal properties, are not expressed by means of
functions. The expression for a formal property is a feature of certain
symbols. So the sign for the characteristics of a formal concept is a
distinctive feature of all symbols whose meanings fall under the concept.
So the expression for a formal concept is a propositional variable in which
this distinctive feature alone is constant.

4.127 The propositional variable signifies the formal concept, and its
values signify the objects that fall under the concept.

4.1271 Every variable is the sign for a formal concept. For every variable
represents a constant form that all its values possess, and this can be
regarded as a formal property of those values.

4.1272 Thus the variable name ‘x’ is the proper sign for the
pseudo-concept object. Wherever the word ‘object’ (‘thing’, etc.) is
correctly used, it is expressed in conceptual notation by a variable
name. For example, in the proposition, ‘There are 2 objects which. .
.’, it is expressed by ‘ (dx,y) ... ‘. Wherever it is used in a
different way, that is as a proper concept-word, nonsensical
pseudo-propositions are the result. So one cannot say, for example,
‘There are objects’, as one might say, ‘There are books’. And it is
just as impossible to say, ‘There are 100 objects’, or, ‘There are !0
objects’. And it is nonsensical to speak of the total number of
objects. The same applies to the words ‘complex’, ‘fact’, ‘function’,
‘number’, etc. They all signify formal concepts, and are represented
in conceptual notation by variables, not by functions or classes (as
Frege and Russell believed). ‘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 one 1’, as it would be to say, ‘2 +
2 at 3 o’clock equals 4’.)

4.12721 A formal concept is given immediately any object falling under it
is given. It is not possible, therefore, to introduce as primitive ideas
objects belonging to a formal concept and the formal concept itself. So it

okay, so you have a teensy little point...

*pats head* there, there, little one...it'll be all right...

hmmmm see if you can quote a post and then post a HUGE post underneath it...

Y'know... I think that is even MORE perverted!!

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