Wednesday, November 14, 2007

5.5563 All propositions of our ordinary language are in fact, just as they are, logically completely in order. – That simplest of things, that we should give here, is not a likeness of the truth, but rather the full truth itself.

(Our problems are not abstract, but possibly the most concrete that there are.)

What problems are these?! It sure looks abstract. See PI 97, which refers to this. Propositions are just as OK in ordinary language as they are in any concept-script, “Only it is easier for us to gather their logical form when they are expressed in an appropriate symbolism,” p. 50 Letters to Ogden. On the same page, he says that “That simplest of things” should be an expression parallel to “the highest good” or “the good and the beautiful,” so he might be alluding to a Platonic illusion of pure simplicity.

Anscombe points out (p. 91) that this contradicts Russell’s claim on p. 9 of his Introduction to the TLP that language only has meaning “in proportion as it approaches to the ideal language which we postulate.”

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