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Are There Ultimate Simples?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Julius R. Weinberg
Julius R. Weinberg*
Affiliation:
539 Thurman St., Zanesville, Ohio
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Extract

In the course of modern philosophy, there have been several attempts to demonstrate the existence of ultimately simple objects by purely logical methods. One of the most recent of such attempts forms part of the foundation of Wittgenstein's logical doctrine. As Wittgenstein has, until quite recently, been considered the authoritative source of Logical Positivism, an examination of his supposed demonstration of logical simples is propaedeutic to an evaluation of the method of the school.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 2 , Issue 4 , October 1935 , pp. 387 - 399
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1935

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References

1 Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung, Der Wiener Kreis, Wien, 1929, p. 15 ff.

2 Tarski, A., Sur le terme primitif de la logistique. Fundamenta Mathematicae, Vol. 4, pp. 196–200, 1924.

3 Sheffer, H. M., Trans. Amer. Math. Soc., Vol. 14, pp. 481–488, 1913.

4 Nicod, J., A reduction in the number of primitive propositions of logic. Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc., Vol. 19, pp. 32–41, 1917.

5 Wittgenstein, L., Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, London, 1922, prop. 6.001.

6 Wittgenstein, op. cit., prop. 5.54: “a proposition occurs in another proposition only as the base of a truth-operation.”

7 Wittgenstein, op. cit., prop. 5.542.

8 Wittgenstein, op. cit., prop. 2.0211–2.0212.

9 Wittgenstein, op. at., prop. 2.0201.

10 See also Wittgenstein, op. cit., prop. 3.25.

11 Tractatus, 3.21, 2.13, 2.15, 2.18, 4.0312.

12 It is true that all formal reasoning is a begging of the question if something about the world is in question. To say that a reasoning is formally rigorous is, therefore, to deny that anything about the world has been established thereby.

13 Tractatus, 2.01.

14 Tractatus, prop. 5.5423: “To perceive a complex means to perceive that its constituents are combined in a definite way.”

15 Equivocation in Aristotle's sense. Cf. Categories 1.1cc.

16 Tractatus 4.1272.