The early Wittgenstein's truth-conditional conception of sense in the light of his criticism of Frege

• Main Author: Trebaul, Dewi
• Other Authors: Centre d'EPistémologie et d'ERgologie Comparatives (CEPERC), Aix Marseille Université (AMU)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Mikael Karlsson
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2012
• Subjects: Wittgenstein; Frege; sense; Truth-conditions; [SHS.PHIL]Humanities and Social Sciences/Philosophy; [SHS.HISPHILSO]Humanities and Social Sciences/History; Philosophy and Sociology of Sciences; Iceland
• Online Access: https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01532039; https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01532039/document; https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01532039/file/The%20early%20Wittgenstein%27s%20truth-conditional%20conception%20of%20sense%20in%20the%20light%20of%20his%20criticism%20of%20Frege%20%28Dewi%20Trebaul%29.pdf

International audience In this paper we question the differences between the truth-conditional meaning-theories propounded by Frege in the Basic laws of arithmetics and Wittgenstein in the Tractatus. We show that the rejection of the sense/reference distinction for every linguistic unit by Wittgenstein is the consequence of a thoroughly applied conception of the sense of propositions as expression of their truth-conditions. Sense can only do so, in Wittgenstein's view, if the proposition is the picture of a fact. A fact is composed of objects, but is not itself an object, and nothing associated to a fact could be an object. Thus it is misleading to consider the true and the false as objects that would be the references of propositions. Further, the sense/reference distinction is unnecessary, because reference is a condition for determinacy of sense. It is not its accidental consequence, as one could think if one interpreted Frege as conceiving sense as a mode of determination of reference that can succeed or fail, according to whether the reference exists or not. We will first sketch briefly how Wittgenstein came to reject the application of the category of reference to sentences, by giving attention to the preparatory texts to the Tractatus. We then examine the connection between this rejection and the acknowledgement of a context principle in a stronger form than the one held by Frege in his Foundations of arithmetics. We finally examine Wittgenstein's criticism to Frege's conception of truth and the rejection of its truth-conditional character.