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Categorial Indeterminacy, Generality and Logical Form in W ittgenstein's T ractatus
Author(s) -
Campbell Christopher
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
european journal of philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.42
H-Index - 36
eISSN - 1468-0378
pISSN - 0966-8373
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0378.2011.00490.x
Subject(s) - generality , indeterminacy (philosophy) , simple (philosophy) , context (archaeology) , sort , object (grammar) , epistemology , task (project management) , logical consequence , computer science , philosophy , mathematical economics , mathematics , linguistics , arithmetic , psychology , economics , history , management , archaeology , psychotherapist
Many commentators have attempted to say, more clearly than W ittgenstein did in his T ractatus logico‐philosophicus , what sort of things the ‘simple objects’ spoken of in that book are. A minority approach, but in my view the correct one, is to reject all such attempts as misplaced. The T ractarian notion of an object is categorially indeterminate : in contrast with both F rege's and R ussell's practice, it is not the logician's task to give a specific categorial account of the internal structure of elementary propositions or atomic facts, nor, correlatively, to give an account of the forms of simple objects. The few commentators who have hitherto maintained this view have mainly devoted themselves to establishing that this was W ittgenstein's intention, and do not much address the question why W ittgenstein held that it is not the logician's business to say what the objects are. The present paper means to fill this lacuna by placing this view in the context of the T ractatus 's treatment of logic generally, and in particular by connecting it with W ittgenstein's treatment of generality and with his reaction to R ussell's approach to logical form.