Grammar and the Formal Identity of Name and Object

Tal Ben-Itzhak

doi:10.15845/nwr.v13.3703

Authors

Tal Ben-Itzhak The University of New Mexico

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15845/nwr.v13.3703

Keywords:

middle wittgenstein, wittgenstein, Wittgenstein name, container name, logical picture, morphism, category, grammar, logical objects, object-designation model, world picture, picture theory

Abstract

In this paper, I will be arguing that the basic infrastructure of an ineffable formal identity between name and object which is presented in the Tractatus is still very much involved in Wittgenstein's early development of the concept of grammar. First, it will be necessary to clearly describe how the identity between name and object is initially formulated in the Tractatus. Hence, in section 1, I will show how the 'picture theory' is ontologically grounded on the identity of linguistics' and worldly atomic structural elements. I will discuss the ‘picture theory’ only briefly, since my main interest is to illuminate how that infrastructure remains a core aspect of Wittgenstein's “middle period” thinking: that is, in what way the identity of name and object is contained and presupposed within his concept of grammar and how it is still used as a condition for our symbolism to make sense. Another way to describe this paper's aim, this time from its end backwards, would be to say that it is to reveal that grammatical systems of rules are nothing other than the implementations of that special kind of identity, for the latter is always and already manifest within our symbolism

Author Biography

Tal Ben-Itzhak, The University of New Mexico

Tal Ben-Itzhak is currently a PhD student in Philosophy at the University of New Mexico and received his MA in Philosophy from Tel Aviv University. His interest is to develop a reading that captures Wittgenstein's encompassed thought, from its early rejection of Frege's scientific understanding of Logic to the various versions of manifesting Forms of Life as a muster of linguistic dispositions and decisions. His dissertation project involving Plato, Parmenides, Wittgenstein, and contemporary philosophers such as John McDowell, and Irad Kimhi, engaging the question of the unity and relation of thinking and being around problems of linguistic naming, judgment, and truth.

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