Relation to the Tractatus

According to the standard reading, in the Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein repudiates many of his own earlier views, expressed in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The Tractatus, as Bertrand Russell saw it (though it should be noted that Wittgenstein took strong exception to Russell’s reading), had been an attempt to set out a logically perfect language, building on Russell’s own work. In the years between the two works Wittgenstein came to reject the idea that underpinned logical atomism, that there were ultimate “simples” from which a language should, or even could, be constructed.

In remark #23 of Philosophical Investigations he points out that the practice of human language is more complex than the simplified views of language that have been held by those who seek to explain or simulate human language by means of a formal system. It would be a disastrous mistake, according to Wittgenstein, to see language as being in any way analogous to formal logic.

Instead, language has many context-sensitive expressions, such as indexicals.

— Wikipedia on Philosophical Investigations

2012.11.16 Friday ACHK