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Scott Soames (USC)-"Propositions, the Tractus, and 'The Single Great Problem of Philosophy'"
Thursday, December 10, 2015, 03:00pm - 05:00pm
Propositions, the Tractatus, and “The Single Great Problem of Philosophy”
Scott Soames
The tractarian project was to replace Frege-Russell propositions with a new conception grounding a new analysis of representational thought and language. In the Notebooks Wittgenstein says:
My whole task consists in explaining the nature of the proposition.
The problem of negation, of conjunction, of true and false, are only reflections of the one great problem in the variously placed great and small mirrors of philosophy.
Don’t get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole of the single great problem.
This problem, the solution to which Wittgenstein took to have far-reaching consequences for every part of philosophy, including its self-conception, was, for him, philosophy’s only real task.
I argue that his account of atomic propositions was an incomplete realization of valuable insights, which, had they been slightly reconceived, could have been extended to all tractarian propositions, with positive results for the study of mind and language that are only beginning to emerge nearly a century later.
Scott Soames
The tractarian project was to replace Frege-Russell propositions with a new conception grounding a new analysis of representational thought and language. In the Notebooks Wittgenstein says:
My whole task consists in explaining the nature of the proposition.
The problem of negation, of conjunction, of true and false, are only reflections of the one great problem in the variously placed great and small mirrors of philosophy.
Don’t get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole of the single great problem.
This problem, the solution to which Wittgenstein took to have far-reaching consequences for every part of philosophy, including its self-conception, was, for him, philosophy’s only real task.
I argue that his account of atomic propositions was an incomplete realization of valuable insights, which, had they been slightly reconceived, could have been extended to all tractarian propositions, with positive results for the study of mind and language that are only beginning to emerge nearly a century later.
Location Philosophy Seminar Room
