Logical syntax in the tractatus

Abstract

In the view of the Tractatus ‘The rules of logical syntax must go without saying if we only know how each individual sign signifies’ (Tractatus 3.334).1 This thought is presented as a commentary on Tractatus 3.33,2which runs: ‘[logical syntax] must admit of being established without mention being thereby made of the meaning of a sign’. Taken together, the two remarks present a puzzle: because a language’s syntax is usually established by stating purely formal rules for the construction of well-formed sentences, it is difficult to see what it could be to ‘establish’ a logical syntax whose rules are supposed to ‘go without saying’. Nor is it immediately apparent whether the ‘logical syntax’ under discussion is supposed to be that of a natural language, or only of an artificially constructed Begriffsschrift. Wittgenstein contrasts ‘the language of everyday life’ with ‘a signlanguage’ [Zeichensprache] which ‘obeys the rules of logical grammar – of logical syntax’ (3.323-3.325), but he also says that ‘all propositions of our colloquial [i.e. ordinary] language are actually, just as they are, logically completely in order’ (5.5563) (emphasis mine).