From Tractatus to Later Writings and Back -- New Implications from the Nachlass

Abstract

As a celebration of the \emph{Tractatus} 100th anniversary it might be worth revisiting its relation to the later writings. From the former to the latter, David Pears recalls that ``everyone is aware of the holistic character of Wittgenstein's later philosophy, but it is not so well known that it was already beginning to establish itself in the \emph{Tractatus}" (\emph{The False Prison}, 1987). From the latter to the former, Stephen Hilmy's (\emph{The Later Wittgenstein}, 1987) extensive study of the \emph{Nachlass} has helped removing classical misconceptions such as Hintikka's claim that ``Wittgenstein in the \emph{Philosophical Investigations} almost completely gave up the calculus analogy." Hilmy points out that even in the \emph{Investigations} one finds the use of the calculus/game paradigm to the understanding of language, such as ``in operating with the word" (Part I, \S 559) and ``it plays a different part in the calculus". Hilmy also quotes from a late (1946) unpublished manuscript (MS 130) ``this sentence has use in the calculus of language"), which seems to be compatible with ``asking whether and how a proposition can be verified is only a particular way of asking `How do you mean?'." Central in this back and forth there is an aspect which seems to deserve attention in the discussion of a semantics for the language of mathematics which might be based on (normalisation of) proofs and/or Hintikka/Lorenzen game-dialogue: the explication of consequences. Such a discussion is substantially supported by the use of the open and searchable \emph{The Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen}. These findings are framed within the discussion of the meaning of logical constants in the context of natural deduction style rules of inference.