Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Works of Love', 'The Blue and Brown Notebooks' and 'Notebooks 1914-1916'

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2 ideas

19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 2. Meaning as Mental
Propositions assemble a world experimentally, like the model of a road accident [Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: In the proposition a world is as it were put together experimentally. (As when in the law court in Paris a motor-car accident is represented by means of dolls, etc).
     From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Notebooks 1914-1916 [1915], 14.09.29)
     A reaction: [see Tractatus 4.031] This is the first appearance of LW's picture (or model) theory of meaning. It may well be the best theory of meaning anyone has come up with, since meaning being out in the world strikes me as absurd.
19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / b. Indeterminate translation
The doctrine of indeterminacy of translation seems implied by the later Wittgenstein [Wittgenstein, by Quine]
     Full Idea: Perhaps the doctrine of indeterminacy of translation will have little air of paradox for readers familiar with Wittgenstein's latter-day remarks on meaning.
     From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (The Blue and Brown Notebooks [1936], II.§16 n) by Willard Quine - Word and Object II.§16 n
     A reaction: This may be right, and I am inclined to link the names of Wittgenstein and Quine among those who led philosophy up a relativistic and sceptical cul-de-sac for many years. You can think too hard, you know.