Quote of the Week

I want to explain my views on elementary propositions and first I want to say what I used to believe and what part of that seems right to me now.

I used to have two conceptions of an elementary proposition, one of which seems correct to me, while I was completely wrong in holding the other. My first assumption was this: that in analysing propositions we must eventually reach propositions that are immediate connections of objects without any help from logical constants, for 'not', 'and', 'or', and 'if' do not connect objects. And I still adhere to that. Secondly I had the idea that elementary propositions must be independent of one another. A complete description of the world would be a product of elementary propositions, as it were, these being partly positive and partly negative. In holding this I was wrong, and the following is what is wrong with it.

I laid down rules for the syntactical use of logical constants, for example 'p.q', and did not think that these rules might have something to do with the inner structure of propositions. What was wrong about my conception was that I believed that the syntax of logical constants could be laid down without paying attention to the inner connection of propositions. That is not how things actually are. I cannot, for example, say that red and blue are at one point simultaneously. Here no logical product can be constructed. Rather, the rules for the logical constants form only a part of a more comprehensive syntax about which I did not yet know anything at that time. (Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, pp. 73-4; conversation with Schlick and Waismann on January 2, 1930)