Tuesday, November 06, 2007

5.461 The apparently unimportant fact that logical pseudo-relations like v and [if…then] need brackets – in contrast to real relations – is of great importance [bedeutungsvoll].

The use of brackets with these seemingly primitive signs indicates [deutet] already indeed that these are not real primitive signs. And surely nobody is going to believe that brackets have an independent meaning.

OK, although brackets have a use, so have they as much meaning as anything else in logic? What would an “independent meaning” [eine selbständige Bedeutung] in logic be?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

He's suggesting that if we knew the 'real primitive signs' then we would not need to use brackets, so brackets 'really' have no meaning. But I agree that there's something problematic here, in supposing there could be real primitive signs (presumably these real primitive signs would have to be independent on one another, and like you, I'm not convinced there could be truly independent logical relations).

DR said...

Thanks again.

Perhaps the very idea of "real primitive signs" is the problem, and perhaps that's what he is getting at.