School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses

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Start date: 1980 × Type: Masters Research thesis × Subject: Philosophy × Subject: 1889-1951 ×

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    The evolution of Wittgenstein's views of meaning
    Tran, Tuan Phong ( 1999)
    The problems of meaning and language play a crucial role in Wittgenstein's philosophy. Wittgenstein believes that philosophical problems are rooted in language, and that they can be understood and resolved when questions about linguistic meaning and the way language relates to reality are properly addressed. During his philosophical development Wittgenstein held different approaches to the problem of meaning and language. A clear view about his view about meaning is necessary in order for us to be in position to understand assess his philosophy. The aim of my thesis is to explore different accounts of meaning in different periods of the development of Wittgenstein's thought. In his first account of meaning, known as the Picture Theory of Meaning in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein developed a highly sophisticated and complex picture-theory which is the basis of his contention that language is a mirror of reality. At this early stage Wittgenstein had been influenced by the thoughts of Frege and Russell. In the Picture Theory of Meaning the notion of logical form plays a crucial role. Just as each proposition must share its logical form with the state of affairs it depicts, so language, the totality of propositions, must share logical form with what it depicts the. The harmony between language and reality which makes representation is - possible is logical-pictorial isomorphism, the structural identity between what represents and what is represented. Just as the elements in a picture correspond to a possible arrangement of objects in reality, so sentences contain names, which correspond to objects in the world; and the arrangement of names in the sentence corresponds to a possible arrangement of objects in the world. Meaning is possible because language mirrors reality in this way: from the structure of language we can read off the structure of reality. In other words we can learn about the structure of reality from sentences of language. In his early view, Wittgenstein believed that fact-stating discourse is really all the meaningful discourse there is. But in the later works it turns out that fact-stating discourse is just one type of discourse among many other types, just one type of language game along with a countless number of other types of language-game. So in his later works, Wittgenstein abandoned the picture theory of meaning in favour of a use account of meaning. He urges us to think of words as tools, think of sentences as instruments. To get a correct account of language and meaning we need simply to look at how it functions in real life; we need to look at what people do with words. Whereas the Tractatus envisioned a logical structure as the essential form and link of language and world, in the later works there are flexible constraints connected with human activities, with language-games and forms of life as the basis and structure of language. A shift has occurred from a pictorial structural approach to use-activity approach. Language is not just words and rules but words and rules in the practice of use. Meaning is understood as a social phenomenon. The meaning of words should be found in the practical context of everyday life, in the stream of thought and activity, in which a given use of words is embedded.
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