Picture Theory Of Meaning Research Articles

Logicality and the picture theory of language

I argue that there is tension in Wittgenstein’s position on trivialities (i.e. tautologies and contradictions) in the Tractatus, as it contains the following claims: (A) sentences are pictures; (B) trivialties are not pictures; (C) trivialities are sentences. A and B follow from the “picture theory” of language which Wittgenstein proposes, while C contradicts it. I discuss a way to resolve this tension in light of Logicality, a hypothesis recently developed in linguistic research. Logicality states that trivialities are excluded by the grammar, and that under the right analysis sentences which look trivial are in fact contingent. The tools necessary to support Logicality, I submit, were not available to Wittgenstein at the time, which explains his commitment to C. I end the paper by commenting on some points of contact between analytic philosophy and the generative enterprise in linguistics which are brought into relief by the discussion.

The picture theory of symbolic development in early childhood

Symbolic representation is a central facet of human development that enables people to depict experiences and communicate meaningful information with others. Participation in social interaction relies on graphical symbols, gestures, and symbolic artifacts to form relationships, acquire language, and represent the world. However, substantial theoretical differences between cognitive and social-constructivist accounts of the development of symbolic representation prevent a unified model from forming. Thus, the task of this work is to introduce a theoretical model for symbolic development in early childhood. Throughout this work, Wittgenstein’s picture theory of language is empirically grounded with nascent, cross-cultural research in iconicity and experimental semiotics in order to propose a picture theory of symbolic development in early childhood. Last, this work critically reformulates current debates regarding the representational facets of symbolic development and offers novel insights that bridge philosophy of language and cognitive anthropology.

Allegory as Language Game: Spenser with Ludwig Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein’s early philosophical masterpiece, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, builds to a logical picture of the whole world and asks what words can give us pictures of. Broadly speaking, this “picture-theory of language” exposes the underlying assumptions of allegory. Rejecting logic in his late work, especially the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein asks what, in the vast array of human circumstances, words are used for. Meaning is no longer a spectral picture inside the head; it is out in the world, woven into all our interactions. Similarly, when we interpret The Faerie Queene, we are not constructing models of what each of us alone (in competition with everyone else) pictures as the true meaning. We are interacting with the text and with one another in the delicate web that is the poem’s field. All, or almost all, such interpretations are illuminating, but none of them is final, comprehensive, or in any simple sense true.

„Unsere Aufgabe ist es nur gerecht zu sein“

Abstract “Our task is merely to be just”: Courtroom Scenarios in Wittgenstein’s Last Writings. As is well known, it was a Parisian court trial that inspired Wittgenstein to write his picture theory of language in the Tractatus logico-philosophicus – but less well known or at least far less reflected, are the courtroom scenarios he himself invented in his last writings, that is the writings dating from 1947 to 1951. There, Wittgenstein repeatedly sketches court proceedings by means of which he challenges the validity of certain statements and modes of expression in the manner of a thought experiment, so it seems as if the courtroom serves to check and rebuke those misleading modes of expression that distort the ordinary use of language and to which we repeatedly let ourselves be tempted when philosophising. In the following, I will trace the role of these courtroom scenarios in Wittgenstein’s last writings and suggest that they primarily fulfil the methodological function of a touchstone for certain philosophical modes of expression and misleading images, and in this way help to survey the actual use of language. After a brief overview of the occurrences of courtroom scenarios in Wittgenstein’s Nachlass, I will take a closer look at some of these courtroom remarks in his later writings with regard to the modes of expression and misleading images problematised by Wittgenstein: these include the importance of inner processes, the ‘picture of the hidden inner’ as well as Moorean knowledge assertions and ‘unreasonable’ doubts. Based on this, I will finally elaborate on the methodological function of Wittgenstein’s courtroom scenarios.

Wittgenstein


 The purpose of this article is to fill an interpretive gap in L. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in what has been overlooked by most scholars of the Austrian philosopher. It is the consideration of the possible influences that he would have suffered from the time of Mechanical Engineering studies and that reflected directly in his philosophy, especially those arising from the field of Physics. Due to the extensive restrictions that involve a scientific article, it will not be possible to present here what we believe to be the influences of L. Boltzmann’s thought on the Wittgenstein Tractatus – which will remain for future work. However, we present the influences of H. Hertz’s The Principles of Mechanics on at least three fundamental themes of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: on the ontological formalism of Tractarian objects, on the picture theory of language and on the conception of science of that work. It is expected that such clarifications will serve a new and important understanding of this seminal work of the 20th century, this time from the perspective of the relationship between Philosophy and Physics in Wittgenstein.

Ética, lógica y filosofía de la psicología en el "Tractatus"

This paper attempts to establish an articulation of ethics, logic and philosophy of psychology in the Tractatus. After showing the ethical purpose of the Tractatus, his picture theory of meaning, and his philosophy of psychology –stressing the role of projection– Arregui sets him-self the task of analyzing the mystical. His insistence on projection allows him to underline the function of the transcendental subject and, therefore, to offer an interpretation of the texts about the mystical, dif-ferent to the usual ones.

The Hidden Set-Theoretical Paradox of the Tractatus

We are familiar with various set-theoretical paradoxes such as Cantor's paradox, Burali-Forti's paradox, Russell's paradox, Russell-Myhill paradox and Kaplan's paradox. In fact, there is another new possible set-theoretical paradox hiding itself in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (Wittgenstein 1989). From the Tractatus’s Picture theory of language (hereafter LP) we can strictly infer the two contradictory propositions simultaneously: (a) the world and the language are equinumerous; (b) the world and the language are not equinumerous. I call this antinomy the world-language paradox. Based on a rigorous analysis of the Tractatus, with the help of the technical resources of Cantor’s naive set theory (Cantor in Mathematische Annalen, 46, 481–512, 1895, Mathematische Annalen, 49, 207–246, 1897) and Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice (hereafter ZFC) (Jech 2006: 3–15; Kunen 1992: xv–xvi; Bagaria 2008: 619–622), I outline the world-language paradox and assess the unique possible solution plan, i.e., the mathematical plan utilizing ‘infinity’. I conclude that Wittgenstein cannot solve the hidden set-theoretical paradox of the Tractatus successfully unless he gives up his finitism.

Role of Logic and Mentality as the Basics of Wittgenstein’s Picture Theory of Language and Extracting Educational Principles and Methods according to this Theory

<p class="apa">The present paper attempts to recognize principles and methods of education based on Wittgenstein’s picture theory of language. This qualitative research utilized inferential analytical approach to review the related literature and extracted a set of principles and methods from his theory on picture language. Findings revealed that Wittgenstein believed in language as a picture of the real and assumed that the real is reflected in language. He believed that language and mentality are the same and language demonstrates a full picture of mentality. Besides, the world and the language possess a logical structure and this logic rules the world and the language. Later on, his picture theory of language, logic and mentality were used to extract and introduce principles for education as listed here: the reasonability principle, mind involvement principle, matching principle, reasoning principle, creativity principle and formation of mind, comprehensibility principle, liberal thinking principle, and the principle of considering individual differences. Thus, applying the method of concept comprehension, problem oriented method, heuristic method, brainstorming method and finally interactive methods like Socratic question and answer and group discussion method.</p>

Wittgenstein and Heidegger

Wittgenstein and Heidegger

Representing Representation

This review essay of two edited volumes sketches how STS scholars have analyzed scientific representation and visualization in recent work. Several key foci have emerged, among them attending closely to materiality, engaging the digital through embodied action, turning to ontology, as well as benefitting from artistic practice and critique. In diverse ways these choices are informed by a discontentment with the Cartesian split of mind and body as well as the picture theory of language. Yet, naturalism endures as a template, an expectation, and sometimes a specter with and against which much representational work in science is done. What STS scholars have learnt about representation in laboratory and expert settings still awaits being employed more comprehensively for making sense of practices beyond the lab, especially in contested political, social and ecological environments. In setting out to do so, they ought to reflect on the kinds of logic that their practices of representing representation enact.

Rules as Icons: Wittgenstein's Paradox and the Law

AbstractIn this paper Section 1 distinguishes between two modes of interpreting legal rules: rehearsal and discourse, arguing that the former takes priority over the latter in law, as in many other contexts. Section 2 offers two arguments that following a legal rule in the rehearsing mode presents a riddle. The first argument develops from law, and submits that legal rules do not tell us anything, because they are tautological. The second one develops from philosophy (Wittgenstein's later works), confronting us with the paradox that incompatible courses of action may be derived from any rule. My solution presents a theory of rules as icons (Section 3). I use “icon” rather than “picture,” partly to avoid confusion with what is known among philosophers as “the picture theory of meaning.” Interpretation in the rehearsing mode hinges on imagination: imagining oneself in the space of reasons for action rather than reasoning oneself. In this act of imagination, we project ourselves into the rule in ways that are similar to the way we grasp the sense of paintings, music, stories, or poems. Finally (Section 4) I will defend the position that my view solves the puzzles in the second section, by arguing (a) that it is a better account of what Wittgenstein wrote than two competing theories (intuitionism and conventionalism), and (b) that it provides a more satisfactory account of how lawyers deal with legal rules in actual practice.

The Untenability of Atomistic Theory of Meaning

Atomistic theory of meaning or 'meaning atomism' expresses that each representation either in a linguistic or mental system is completely definable by itself. It explains that meaning of a sentence is determined independently of other sentences, which implies understanding a sentence does not require any further sentences for its support because, each sentence conveys a specific sense, and it is about the state of affairs of the world. Thus, 'sense' assists to identify the referent of a sentence. A sentence is meaningful if the state of affairs is found in the phenomenal world, and if it does not find in the phenomenal world, then it is judged as meaningless sentence. Meaning of a sentence is thus determined by its truth-value that stands as referent of the sentence. In this context, the paper argues how meaning atomism is inadequate to capture the whole complexity of meaning in the language system. Further, it highlights the logical problems in atomistic theory of meaning for not being qualified as a comprehensive theory of meaning. In this regard, we have considered some of the well-known traditional theories of meaning, such as; picture theory of meaning, verifiability theory of meaning, Tarski's T-Schema, Frege's notion of sense determination of propositions among others, and offer a few crucial arguments on the failure of atomistic theory of meaning in a language system.

Imagen y conocimiento: retos epistemológicos de la sociología visual

Nowadays a clear contradiction exists between a social world in which images are everywhere and a sociology that scarcely considers any kind of visual representations. This «blind sociology» takes into account neither the visual construction of the social, nor the social construction of the visual. In addition, this «blind sociology» does not use image to carry out social research. Most sociologists think that words and numbers are appropriate modes of representation to produce social knowledge but that images are not. This article is an epistemological reflection on the possibility and necessity of incorporating images into the processes by which the social sciences produce knowledge. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Picture Theory of Meaning and John Berger’s theory about the coherence of the images show that images not only can, but also must be incorporated into the processes of knowledge production. The dual nature of photographic images permits us to use them in two different ways. Photographic images can be incorporated into social research as indexes, given the existential or empirical connections that link the different parts of the image with real objects. But we can also incorporate photographs as icons, given the homology between the situation represented by the image and real facts.

Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Language: an Introduction

The reputation of Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the most influential philosophers of the nineteenth century is based on his studies of analytical philosophy, especially the philosophical study of logic, language, mathematics and metaphysics. His contribution to the philosophy of language is considerable. He stated his concepts and ideas in his two revolutionary books: 'Tractatus Logico Philosophicus' and 'Philosophical investigations' where he discussed the picture theory, notion of name, logical atomism, etc. among others. This article briefly describes the life of Wittgenstein, his work and his influence on our thinking. Key words: Picture theory of language; language game; Private; Public; Proposition; Metaphysics; NamesDOI: 10.3329/dujl.v2i4.6904Dhaka University Journal of Linguistics Vol.2(4) August 2009 pp.147-159

Towards a 'Picture Theory' Philosophy of Science

In this paper we espouse the position that the picture theory of meaning may or may not have failed as a theory of language but seems remarkably useful as a meta theory of science. We start with an exposition of a recent critic of the theory. We provide a brief exposition of the real Picture Theory as introduced by Wittgenstein in the Tractatus (1922). We examine two possible readings of the theory that do not entail the commitments most commonly criticized and defend one of them (Griffin, 1964) as both viable and immune to that criticism. We then submit the real Picture Theory as a viable new philosophy of social sciences that in our view is well overdue. The center piece of this approach is the endorsement of visualizing tools to construct pictures of empirical evidence that enable rigorous tests of theoretical arguments by visual inspection and sophisticated statistical techniques. This new justification for empirical research rejects the commonly accepted rationale for empirical research in the social sciences, that is based on a naive interpretation of Popper’s (1958) Logic of Scientific Discovery, and the notion of hypotheses testing as untenable. It endorses, instead, Wittgenstein’s real Picture Theory as a philosophy of science that is capable of bringing theory and evidence together in the service of advancing scientific knowledge. To provide a better idea of the implications of this philosophy of science to the daily practice of scientific research an example is drawn from a recent piece of research on decision-making and legislative politics.

Realism and the Picture Theory of Meaning

Realism and the Picture Theory of Meaning

TRACTARIAN SÄTZE, EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS, AND THE VERY IDEA OF SCRIPT AS PICTURE

Is it possible for a writing system to be based on pictures? In the philosophical literature, the hieroglyphic writing system of the Ancient Egyptians is sometimes taken as the example par excellence of a purely pictorial script. The hieroglyphs are assumed to be signs that do not indicate how they are supposed to be pronounced, as do the signs of the alphabets of, among other, the Indo-European languages; instead, they depict what they mean. Most prominently, Ludwig Wittgenstein draws an analogy between the pictorial semantics of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the alleged pictorial script of hieroglyphic writing:

Excuses and Other Nonsense: Joan Retallack's "How to Do Things with Words"

And even the most adroit of languages may fail to "work" in an abnormal situation or to cope, or to cope reasonably simply, with novel discoveries. J. L. Austin, "Truth" How to tell that truth that is a strange experimental friction. Joan Retallack, "G'L'A'N'C'E'S" In "The Poethical Wager," Joan Retallack jokes that however far we move away from Aristotle's Poetics, its shadow continues to loom over our thinking: (laughter) Yes, Aristotle, who has cast the most enduring shadow over the course of academic poetics, quite artificially divided everything up into what he took to be thoroughly comprehensible disciplines—theory, practice, ethics, politics, poetry. Poethical poets, whether or not they have themselves used the "h," enact the complex dynamics that criss-cross through these boundaries. (295) And certainly this criss-crossing of boundaries has been a foundational idea of contemporary innovative writing—the rule of language in the poem as the rule of thought, rather than the rules of comprehensible disciplines, literary convention, or aesthetic form. Such a poetics aims to explore the material and signifying possibilities of language as language, contesting traditional conceptions of certain kinds of language uses or subject positions as essentially "poetic" in order to open the poem to a space of social and cultural [End Page 62] investigation. But as this poetics reimagines the poem as a space of thinking and feeling, as a mode of investigation rather than representation, how are we to understand the interconnections, and mutual relevance, of the kind of thinking that poetry can offer us and the kinds of thinking offered by the disciplined ways of knowing characteristic of other fields, such as analytic philosophy, speech-act theory, formal logic, or physics? Asked this way, these questions—which are the further and more challenging questions raised by the work of Joan Retallack—become at once questions of thought and questions of genre. What happens when a poem uses specific vocabularies or language practices or logics from quantum physics, chaos theory, or mathematics?1 What happens when the very life of a poem arises from a specific and technical philosophical text, as with Retallack's "The Woman in the Chinese Room," which draws from John Searle's infamous thought experiment?2 For Retallack, as a poet-theoretician trained in philosophy and attentive to the complex intersections of disciplinary forms, "[t]he model is no longer one of city or nation states of knowledge each with separate allegiances and consequences, testy about property rights and ownership, but instead the more global patterns of [End Page 63] ecology, environmentalism, bio-realism, the complex modelings of the non-linear sciences, chaos theory" (295). But of course Retallack is talking here of models; not all of these "nation states of knowledge" are so ready to give up their testiness over property rights and ownership, the particular modes of discourse which have historically made them separate and identifiable. At the heart of Retallack's How to Do Things with Words is how to bring this questioning of disciplinarity not only into the space of experimental poetry but into the spaces of philosophy and the sciences as well, and in so doing, to enact a pragmatic, philosophical, and ethical realism—what Retallack terms a "complex realism." Venturing just such a complex interplay between poetry and philosophy, the title poem of Retallack's How to Do Things with Words opens the vexed question of aesthetics and analysis, intervening in a history of thought that presupposes (and thus articulates) a fundamental distinction between poetry and philosophy in which philosophy is based on an appeal to validity and logic, and poetry on an appeal to experience, sensation, interest. Retallack elaborates the problem in her essay ":RE:THINKING:LITERARY:FEMINISM: (three essays onto shaky grounds)," critiquing what she terms the "picture theory of meaning," which rests on "a fairly simple (this = that...

"'P' dice P"

The paper is an interpretation of the critique of the Russellian theory of judgment, in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus [5.5422]. The author holds that the picture theory of language is the Wittgensteinian alternative to Russell’s theory of types, on which his theory of judgment is based. In other words, the idea that a picture cannot represent its own pictorial form, would avoid, with difficulties of its own, the vicious circle that Wittgenstein sees in the theory of types, namely to suppose that a description of the categorical structure of the world may establish the logical syntax of language. From this diagnosis, the author draws important consequences to illuminate the celebrated Wittgensteinian distinction between saying and showing, as well as the Wittgensteinian account of propositional attitudes.

The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics

Academics and standards. Ageing and language. Alphabet - religious beliefs. Alternate sign languages. Aphasia. Australian languages. Automatic speech recognition - stochastic techniques. Black English in education. Blasphemy. Burushaski. Caddoan languages. Cargo cults. Case grammar. Chart parsing and WFSSTs. Chomsky's philosophy of grammar. Classroom language - observation and research. Cognitive grammar. Cohesion and coherence in literature. Communicative intention. Computers and language use. Conservation analysis. Counterfactuals. Deaf community and culture. Deconstruction. Dependency phonology. Dictionaries, rhyming. Diderot, Denis. Dravidian languages. Dysarthrias, developmental. Ethnicity and language. Ethnopoetics. Factivity. Fluency - disorders. Formal semantics. Formalization and functionalism in linguistic criticism. Formulaic speech. Generative grammar. Gestures. Grammar - typological and areal issues. Historiography of linguistics. Immigrant languages in education - Sweden. Indirect speech acts. Information theory. Interjections. Intonation - pragmatics. Irish bardic grammarians. Italic languages. Japanese writing system. Journalism. Language as a platonic reality. Language death. Language promotion by governments. Language - Hindu views. Lexical semantics. Lexicography, post-classical Greek. Linguistic philosophy. Logical positivism. Mesoamerican writing. Metaphor in language. Mood and modality. Morphological universals. Multilingual states - political implications of language policies. Namibia - language situation. Naming of children. Natural language generation. New Englishes. Occitan. Ogden, Charles Kay. Origins of language - recent theories. Oxford English dictionary. Palaeontology, linguistic. Pathology of language - evaluation. Performative hypothesis. Philosophy of linguistics. Phonology - redundancy rules. Picture theory of meaning. Planudes, maximus. Pragmatic presuppositions. Preaching. Procedural semantics. Pronoun systems. Propositional calculus. Proxemics. Pseudolinguistics. Puns. Rajasthani. Reading processes in adults. Shorthand. Sign bilingualism - applications to education. Slang - sociology. Social networks and language. South America - sign languages. Speaker-characterization in speech technology. Speech aerodynamics. Structuralism and semiotics, literary. Subcategorization. Syntax and semantics - relationship. Technical vocabulary - medieval and renaissance English. Telegraph and telephone. Tense. Text pragmatics. Text-to-speech conversion systems. Thought and language. Translation, machine-aided. Translinguistics. Ugaritic. Universals of language. Urban dialectology. Valency changing alternations. Voice quality. Whistles and whistled speech. Word-formation processes. (Part contents).