Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Elbow Room: varieties of free will' and 'Lectures 1930-32 (student notes)'

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3 ideas

19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 4. Meaning as Truth-Conditions
A proposition draws a line around the facts which agree with it [Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: A proposition gives reality a degree of freedom; it draws a line round the facts which agree with it, and distinguishes them from those which do not.
     From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B XIII.2)
     A reaction: This seems to be the idea of meaning as the range of truth conditions. Propositions as sets of possible worlds extends this into possible facts which agree with the proposition. Most facts neither agree nor disagree with some proposition.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 5. Meaning as Verification
The meaning of a proposition is the mode of its verification [Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: The meaning of a proposition is the mode of its verification (and two propositions cannot have the same verification).
     From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C I)
     A reaction: Does this mean that if two sentences have the same mode of verification, then they must be expressing the same proposition? I guess so.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 7. Meaning Holism / a. Sentence meaning
Words function only in propositions, like levers in a machine [Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: Words function only in propositions, like the levers in a machine.
     From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], A I.4)
     A reaction: Hm. Consider the word 'tree'. Did you manage to do it? Was it just a noise?