Wittgenstein Epistemology

Thanks: Tel Asiado

Austrian philosopher Wittgenstein is best known for his early analysis of the language in Tractatus logico-philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations.

Ludwig Wittgenstein is famous for his philosophy of language, and two books, Philosophical Investigations and Tractatus. He was actively involved in the prestigious Vienna Circle, along with friends and colleagues Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege.

An Austrian philosopher, Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (1889-1951) studied engineering in Germany and England and became interested in philosophical analysis and foundations of mathematics. Before earning his doctorate from Cambridge, he became a soldier of the Austrian army during the First World War.

Wittgenstein’s Tractatus

The central theme of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), is the relationship between language, thought and reality. Wittgenstein insisted that language is the perceptible form of thought bound to reality by a common logical form. Like Gottlob Frege, he argued that the meaning of linguistic expressions must be determined by the nature of the world, otherwise the sense of expression will be vague and uncertain. From Bertrand Russell, he borrowed the idea that both language and the world must be understood in terms of their constituent parts.

Tractatus is written in the form of numbered paragraphs, often containing one short sentence. It is mainly concerned with the nature of language and its relationship to the world, and outlines his “picture theory” of meaning.

Tractatus is the only book Wittgenstein published in his lifetime. All his other works were published posthumously.

Philosophical Investigations and the Concept of Language-Games

After publication of Tractatus, he went into self-imposed exile and gave away his inherited fortune working in Austria. But by 1929, he became unhappy with his early work and returned to Cambridge. In his absence, however, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), won critical acclaim and became a major influence in school of thoughts in Europe.

For 20 years and until the end of his life, be became his own his own strong critic trying to dispel his early thinking. The content of his later writings were posthumously published as Philosophical Investigations (1952).

Wittgenstein remained concern with the nature of language, thought and reality, which his book, Philosophical Investigations, is concerned about. He introduced the idea of “language-games” – that words can only be understood in the context of human activities in which they are used. A language-game constitutes a word and its context of use.

Philosophical Investigations was largely influenced by St. Augustine. Wittgenstein called this common-place concept “the Augustinian picture of language.”

Wittgenstein Influence and Legacy

Ludwig Wittgenstein exerted influence on modern philosophy. In particular, the philosophers of the Vienna Circle and Willard Quine (from Tractatus), J.L. Austin, the Oxford “ordinary language” school of philosophy and the modern speech-act theorists. He was also an acquaintance of Alan Turing, pioneer of computing and artificial intelligence.