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CHRISTIAN PAUL OLIGARIO CERVANTES-GABO VENTURILLO y JAVAREZ

ANALYTIC METHOD

Wittgenstein and the language analysis

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (6 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked
primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.

 From 1929 to 1947, Wittgenstein taught at the University of Cambridge.


 During his lifetime he published just one slim book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921)
-His tractacus provides a method of analyzing any sentence into its ultimate logical components.
- its implication is that with the mistakes corrected.
- actually Hitler and Wittgenstein were the same age and both attended the same Linz school
-But the school was small – about 300 students – so they could easily have bumped into each other or
even have become buddies.

THE ANALYTICAL METHOD

• Analytic Philosophy in principle is directed upon either solving or reducing the problem in philosophy in
general.

• Analytic Philosophers think that Philosophical problems came about as a importance of metaphysics’ to
resolve the meaning of transcendental concepts such as God, Soul, and Spirit.

-without having to determine the truthfulness of such claim on the basis of empirical methods.

• Analytic Philosophy tends to provide an accurate presentation on the nature of language in order to solve
the problem set by philosophy.

LANGUAGE AS TRUTH-FUNCTIONAL

TRUTH VALUE-

1 either of the values, true or false, that may be taken by a statement

• 2. by analogy, any of the values that a semantic theory may accord to a statement.

Semantics- the study of the actual meanings of words and sentences.


Statement -is something that you say or write which gives information in a formal or definite way.

Truth-value- is the truth or falsehood of a proposition: e.g The truth-value of “2 + 2 = 5” is falsehood.

Book page 47 : Language , for most of the logical atomists, is truth functional (practical).
It means that the truth value of the proposition is determined by the truth value of its essential part.

Example: “The red roses are in the garden” –is an example of compound logical statement.
Its truth-value is determined by the truth-value of its essential propositional part namely,
“there are red roses” and that “red roses are in the garden.” Or
“there are roses in the garden ”and “theses roses are red ” both cases remain tautologies
however.

Tautology is useless restatement, or saying the same thing twice using different words. “Speedy sprint" is
a tautology because sprint already means "speedy running."

The noun tautology originates from the Greek word tautologos, meaning “repeating what is said.” "From the public
view's perspective" is a tautology in which the words perspective and view repeat the same idea. In the study of logic,
a tautology is a statement that is necessarily true under any interpretation. "It will snow tomorrow, or it will not snow
tomorrow" is an example. No argument here — it's true any way you look at it.

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CHRISTIAN PAUL OLIGARIO CERVANTES-GABO VENTURILLO y JAVAREZ

Actually Logical atomism is a philosophical belief that originated in the early 20th century with the development
of analytic philosophy. Its principal exponents were the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, the early work of his
Austrian-born pupil and colleague Ludwig Wittgenstein, and his German counterpart Rudolf Carnap.
The theory holds that the world consists of ultimate logical "facts" (or "atoms") that cannot be broken down any
further.
The name for this kind of theory was coined in 1918 by Russell in response to what he called "logical holism"—i.e.,
the belief that the world operates in such a way that no part can be known without the whole being known first. This
belief is commonly called monism,
The term “meaning holism” is generally applied to views that treat the meanings of all of the words in a language as
interdependent
Interdependent- depending on each other.
mon·ism - a theory or doctrine that denies the existence of a distinction or duality in some sphere, such as that
between matter and mind, or God and the world.

- the doctrine that only one supreme being exist

In other words for the logical atomist, proposition are statement of facts. And these statements of facts
point to the state of affairs of things in the world.for this reason statements make sense only when they are
statement of facts. (book page 48.)
Statement- a definite or clear expression of something in speech or writing
Proposition- a statement or assertion that expresses a judgment or opinion.
For Wittgenstein Outside of the world there is nothing to talk about .

So that statements such as “Angels and spirit”, “the soul is a substance”(book page 48.) (A "substance" has certain
characteristics. It is durable, separable, and identical. An "essence" is that which makes something what it is.
The definitions of substance and essence may both be said to express what it is that makes them what they are, i.e.
their essences, if the essences are themselves durable, etc)

They do not have objective empirical uniformities. For language to be meaningful, it must picture that which is real.

For language, Wittgenstein argues that language is a picture of reality.

TRACTACUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS

For Wittgenstein, it has been said that in order for language to make sense, it must have a picture reality. (Book page
49.)

For example:
Proposition: “The car is red.”
“The flowers in the garden are beautiful “
“The house across the street is old and dilapidated (broken-down).”
Those are the statements of facts of the world.

Wittgenstein argued that, “the limits of our language are the limits of our world.” And since the world is all that can be
talked about, proposition that outside of it are necessarily non sense.

The picture theory of language, also known as the picture theory of meaning, is a theory of
linguistic reference and meaning articulated by Ludwig Wittgenstein in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

Wittgenstein suggested that a meaningful proposition pictured a state of affairs or atomic fact.

In philosophy, a state of affairs (German: Sachverhalt), also known as a situation, is a way the actual world must
be in order to make some given proposition about the actual world true; in other words, a state of affairs (situation) is
a truth-maker, whereas a proposition is a truth-bearer. Whereas states of affairs (situations) either obtain or fail-to-
obtain, propositions are either true or false.

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CHRISTIAN PAUL OLIGARIO CERVANTES-GABO VENTURILLO y JAVAREZ

WORD MEANING

What is the word meaning consist?

According to Wittgenstein,

1. The meaning of the word is a thing.


2. The meaning of a word is an idea in the mind of the speaker.

THE PICTURE THEORY OF MEANING

The idea that when we have properly analyzed a sentence, each element (each word) will refer to thing.

The sentence will have a logical arrangement of those words that will mirror the logical arrangement of things.

“In Addition Wittgenstein further discuss the differences between elementary proposition and complex proposition.

The former, on one hand presuppose a logical statement that is established by an atomic fact, which cannot be
broken-down into meaningful statements;

Proposition such as:

“The rose is beautiful.”


“The dog is barking.”
“The car is broken.”

The latter on the other hand, presuppose a combination of two or more elementary proposition connected by logical
connectives.

Statements such as:

“The house is beautiful and huge.”


“The table is brown and circular.”

Are some examples of complex proposition which can be broken down into their atomic proposition.

The truth-value of such complex proposition is identified by the truth-value of its constitutive (having the power to
establish or give organized existence to something) proposition.

Proposition are statement of facts, they relay to us what is that case.

Every proposition makes sense inasmuch as it allows us to picture the world

Thus Wittgenstein emphatically asserts that, “Whereof one cannot speak, one must Pass over into silence. ”(Book
page 50.) Or What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.”

"What is sayable at all let it be said clearly; and what you cannot speak of, of that one should remain silent... The
border is only possible to draw in language, and what lies outside the border, is simply madness."

Meaning: "Anything you can say at all, you can say clearly. Don't speak of things you can't discuss. People will only
be able to see from what you say where the border lies. Everything beyond that border is simply nonsense."

"We have to accept that there is far more of God that we will never know or understand. When we get to that position
we may often find that the best communication is wordless, actionless and happens in complete stillness"

Finally, analytic method is identified with the determination of language as expressing the state of affairs of the world.
Language is the picture of reality. Analytic philosophy center its approach in determining the limits of language
.language being a picture of reality is limited upon the determination of the world since what can be spoken about is
only the world.

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