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Ideas for '', 'Against Liberalism' and 'Philosophical Remarks'

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3 ideas

19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 2. Meaning as Mental
Language pictures the essence of the world [Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: The essence of language is a picture of the essence of the world.
     From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Philosophical Remarks [1930], p.85), quoted by J. Alberto Coffa - The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap 17
     A reaction: Hence for a long time the study of language seemed to be the way to do metaphysics. Now they study mathematical logic, with the same hope.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 5. Meaning as Verification
You can't believe it if you can't imagine a verification for it [Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: It isn't possible to believe something for which you cannot imagine some kind of verification.
     From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Philosophical Remarks [1930], p.200), quoted by J. Alberto Coffa - The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap 13 'Constr'
     A reaction: In 1930 LW was calling this his 'old principle'. As it stands here it is too vague to assert very much.
19. Language / F. Communication / 3. Denial
We learn 'not' along with affirmation, by learning to either affirm or deny a sentence [Rumfitt]
     Full Idea: The standard view is that affirming not-A is more complex than affirming the atomic sentence A itself, with the latter determining its sense. But we could learn 'not' directly, by learning at once how to either affirm A or reject A.
     From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], IV)
     A reaction: [compressed] This seems fairly anti-Fregean in spirit, because it looks at the psychology of how we learn 'not' as a way of clarifying what we mean by it, rather than just looking at its logical behaviour (and thus giving it a secondary role).