Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus · Chapter
5.4733 explained
Wittgenstein contrasts his view with Frege's on propositional sense: while Frege holds that every legitimately constructed proposition must have a sense, Wittgenstein argues that any possible proposition is legitimately constructed, and lac
What happens
Wittgenstein contrasts his view with Frege's on propositional sense: while Frege holds that every legitimately constructed proposition must have a sense, Wittgenstein argues that any possible proposition is legitimately constructed, and lack of sense arises only from failing to assign meaning to some constituent parts. He illustrates with 'Socrates is identical', where 'identical' as an adjective has no meaning, unlike its use as an equality sign, which involves a different symbolizing relation.
Themes in this chapter
Nonsense and Meaning
The chapter directly addresses how a proposition can lack sense due to missing meaning in its constituents, distinguishing between legitimate construction and meaningfulness.
Critique of Traditional Philosophy
Wittgenstein critiques Frege's criterion for propositional sense, offering an alternative account that challenges traditional philosophical assumptions about language.
Characters to notice
- Frege
Frege's view that every legitimately constructed proposition must have a sense is directly addressed and contrasted with Wittgenstein's own position.
- Socrates
Socrates is used as an example in the proposition 'Socrates is identical' to illustrate a case where a constituent part has no meaning.
- Mr. Wittgenstein
Wittgenstein presents his own view that every possible proposition is legitimately constructed, and lack of sense is due to missing meaning in constituents.
Key passages
“Frege says: Every legitimately constructed proposition must have a sense; and I say: Every possible proposition is legitimately constructed, and if it has no sense this can only be because we have given no meaning to some of its constituent parts.”
Frege claims that any properly formed proposition necessarily has meaning, whereas I claim that any proposition that can be formed is properly formed; if it lacks meaning, it is only because we have not assigned meaning to some of its parts.
This captures the core disagreement between Frege and Wittgenstein on the source of propositional sense.
“Thus 'Socrates is identical' says nothing, because we have given no meaning to the word 'identical' as adjective.”
For example, 'Socrates is identical' is meaningless because we have not assigned any meaning to 'identical' when used as an adjective.
Illustrates the principle with a concrete example of a nonsensical proposition.