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(2017) Innovations in the history of analytical philosophy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
It is a central commitment of the Tractatus that "it is impossible to judge a nonsense" (§5.5422). This essay seeks to understand the ground of this commitment in Wittgenstein's thought. To this end, various interpretations of the Tractatus on "the relation between language and reality" are considered, with each view assessed for the understanding it provides of the stance against nonsense. Having rejected as inadequate various realist readings, and then also an idealist reading, the essay recommends a view on which language and reality are internally bound together in the notion of truth. Where a fact is precisely a truth condition, and so something to be represented, a proposition (a judgment) is precisely the representation of such a fact, the representation of a truth condition.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-40808-2_5
Full citation:
Johnston, C. (2017)., Wittgenstein on representability and possibility, in S. Lapointe & C. Pincock (eds.), Innovations in the history of analytical philosophy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 127-147.
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