Witti-Buch2 2001.qxd - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

Is Logic Syntax of Language?
Wittgenstein, L. (1975). Philosophical Remarks. Ed. R. Rhees. Translated by R.
Hargreaves and R. White. Oxford: Blackwell. [PR]
Wittgenstein, L. (1979). Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: Conversations Recorded
by F. Waismann. Ed. B. McGuiness. Trans. J. Schulte and B. McGuiness.
Oxford: Blackwell. [WVC]
Wittgenstein, L. (1989). Wittgenstein's Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics,
Cambridge 1939. Ed. C. Diamond. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Endnote
1 An exception is Hintikka 1992, p. 170.
2 WVC, p. 220.
3 Archives; quoted in Proust 1987, p. 503.
4 That he remained convinced of this thesis after 1929 is evident from WVC, pp. 92,
240, PG, pp. 153, 243-48, 255, 279, and RFM, VII 66.
5 See, for example, TLP, 6.1-6.12 and LSL, pp. 185-6.
6 Archives, 102-78-05; quoted in Proust 1987, p. 502.
7 Cf. PR, VIII 78, XI 121, PG, p. 251, and RFM, VII 26, 30, 35.
8 Cf. Proust 1987, p. 516.
9 This view is most prominent in the PG (1932-34), but present earlier in WVC, pp.
240-1 (taken from Waismann's Theses, c. 1930.) Marion (1998, pp. 142-3)
proposes that lectures from 1931 contain the first hint of 'the arbitrariness of
grammar.'
10 Cf. PG, pp. 63, 306 and WVC, p. 62.
11 See, for example, WVC, p. 162.
12 See Gödel 1995, p. 337.
13 Many of these lines concern empiricism and physical laws, and it is difficult to find
any immediate application of them to Wittgenstein's logical syntax. Gödel's
insistence on mathematical intuition could be fruitfully compared with Wittgenstein's
remarks on mathematical certainty, concept formation, and justification. This is,
however, a task for another paper.
14 See Gödel 1995, p. 347.
15 Usually glossed 'strong enough to capture elementary number theory.'
16 This criticism is supposed to show that logical syntax cannot be finitary. This
summary of Gödel's criticism of Carnap is largely a gloss on Warren Goldfarb's
insightful introductory note to Gödel's paper (Goldfarb 1995, p. 327.) Goldfarb's
summary, in line with Gödel's presentation, sees the consistency critique as distinct
from the finitary critique, whereas I see the first as a critique only in conjunction with
the second, since regress is not in itself an objection to logical syntax.
17 This is only one of the ways in which logical syntax fails, in Gödel's view, to be
finitary. See 1995, pp. 341ff and 357-8.
18 See, for example, PG, p. 250.
19 Goldfarb 1996, pp. 229-230.
20 This discussion of the varieties of completeness draws on Hintikka's clarification of
these issues in his1992 and 1998. The application to Wittgenstein's views is, I
believe, original.
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