Elucidation and Ostension in the Tractatus

  • Oscar Joffe Humboldt Universität, Berlin
Keywords: Objects, Russell, Judgment, Names, Primitive Terms

Abstract

Wittgenstein writes at §3.263 of the Tractatus that “[t]he meanings of primitive signs can be explained by elucidations. Elucidations are propositions that contain the primitive signs.  They can therefore only be understood if the meanings of these signs are already known”. Hacker has argued that such elucidation should be understood in terms of ostension. But Hacker’s reading, I argue, renders mysterious Wittgenstein’s claim at §3.02 that “what is thinkable is also possible.”  In the second part of the paper, I try to  show that the problem incurred by Hacker’s understanding of §3.263 is strongly reminiscent of a problem Wittgenstein first raised for Russell’s multiple relation theory of judgement in 1913 (recapitulated at Tractatus §5.5422). It is therefore unlikely that Wittgenstein should have thought of the elucidation of Tractarian names in the ostension-based way Hacker suggests.

Author Biography

Oscar Joffe, Humboldt Universität, Berlin

Oscar Joffe is a doctoral student at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Before coming to Berlin, he studied philosophy in St Andrews, Stirling, and Glasgow. His main interests are in the history of analytic philosophy (particularly Frege and Wittgenstein), logic and language, and the historiography of philosophy. He is currently writing a thesis on the notion of elucidation in Frege and the early Wittgenstein, supervised by Michael Beaney and Wolfgang Kienzler.

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Published
2022-12-31
How to Cite
[1]
Joffe, O. 2022. Elucidation and Ostension in the Tractatus. Disputatio. 11, 23 (Dec. 2022), 165-187. DOI:https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7958419.