Wittgenstein: Independent Logic

Profound ideas often arise out of the most uncanny situations. Ludwig Wittgenstein composed what may be the most influential philosophical work of the twentieth century as a prisoner of war during the First World War. His poignant writings included many propositions that flew in the face of contemporary philosophers at the time, unveiling a new perspective from which to consider the study of logic. While peers struggled with the rules governing the logic of semantics, Wittgenstein sought to emphasize the whimsical nature of language.

One of Wittgenstein’s key points reads, “Logic must take care of itself.” He elaborates, explaining that, “In a certain sense, we cannot make mistakes in logic.” These statements at first seem cryptic. One may wonder if they contain any significant thought at all. These two ideas, however, represent the quintessential difference between Wittgenstein’s philosophy and that of his colleagues. Any thinkable name, symbol, or designation is logically permissible, according to Wittgenstein. He considers, as an example, the sentence, “Socrates is identical.” Many well known philosophers, such as Frege and Russell, would contend that this sentence is nonsensical because the term “identical” is the wrong kind of symbol for such a sentence structure. Logic demands that the expression “Socrates is” may only be followed by a particular group of symbols. In general, it is presumed that logic dictates the way in which words may be stringed together to form a logical thought. Wittgenstein, however, explicitly denies this sentiment. This sentence, according to him, fails to make sense not because of a mismatched symbol, but because we have failed to assign any meaning to “identical” at all. This departure from previ...

... middle of paper ...

...te the repeated symbol.

The key to understanding Wittgenstein’s philosophy is recognizing that language itself does not add sense to sentences - people do. Confusion arises when we assume meanings for words that don’t hold, or take meanings for granted when they fail to exist at all. Logic, fortunately, is not concerned with such confusion. For a symbol or name to be conceivable means that it is logically valid in any context, but the symbol itself holds no meaning until we assign one. This is exactly what is meant by the claim, “Logic must take care of itself.” The sentence, “Dandelion run cow,” as nonsensical as it may seem, makes perfect sense if we define the words to mean “he”, “enjoys”, and “cinema”, respectively. This illustrates the ultimate whimsical nature of language and its independence from logical value, a point masterfully indicated by Wittgenstein.