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The Unity of a Tractarian Fact

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Abstract

It is not immediately clear from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus how to connect his idea there of an object with the logical ontologies of Frege and Russell. Toward clarification on this matter, this paper compares Russell’s and Wittgenstein’s versions of the thesis of an atomic fact that it is a complex composition. The claim arrived at is that whilst Russell (at times at least) has one particular of the elements of a fact – the relation – responsible for the unity of the whole, for Wittgenstein the unity of a fact is the product of copulative powers inherent in all its elements. All kinds of constituents of Tractarian facts – all kinds (forms) of object – are, to use Fregean terminology, unsaturated.

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Abbreviations and References

Works by Russell

  • OF: ‘On Functions’, in A. Urquhart (ed.), The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Vol. 4, Routledge, New York, 1994, pp. 96–110

  • PLA: ‘The Philosophy of Logical Atomism’, in R. C. Marsh (ed.), Logic and Knowledge, Allen and Unwin, London, 1956, pp. 177–281

  • PM: Principia Mathematica Vol. 1, CUP, Cambridge, 1925

  • POM: The Principles of Mathematics, Routledge, London, 1992

  • PP: The Problems of Philosophy, OUP, Oxford, 1998

  • RA: ‘Analytic Realism’, in J.G. Slater (ed.), The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Vol. 6, Routledge, London, 1992, pp. 132–146

  • RUP: ‘On the Relations of Universals and Particulars’, in R. C. Marsh (ed.), Logic and Knowledge, Allen and Unwin, London, 1956, pp. 105–124

  • TK: ‘Theory of Knowledge’, in E. R. Eames (ed.), The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Vol. 7, Allen and Unwin, London, 1984

  • WL: ‘What is Logic?’, in J. G. Slater (ed.), The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Vol. 6, Routledge, London, 1992, pp. 54–56

Works by Wittgenstein

  • BB: The Blue and Brown Books, Blackwell, Oxford, 1969

  • CL: Ludwig Wittgenstein: Cambridge Letters, B. McGuinness and G. H. von Wright (eds), Blackwell, Oxford, 1995

  • LO: Letters to C.K. Ogden, G. H. von Wright (ed.), Blackwell, Oxford, 1973

  • LWL: Wittgenstein’s Lectures, Cambridge 1930–1932, D. Lee (ed.), Blackwell, Oxford, 1980

  • PO: Philosophical Occasions, J. C. Klagge and A. Nordmann (ed.), Hackett, Indianapolis, 1993

  • TLP: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, tr. Ogden, Routledge, London, 1922, and tr. Pears and McGuinness; Routledge, London, 1961

  • WWK: Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, B. McGuinness (ed.), Blackwell, Oxford, 1979

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Correspondence to Colin Johnston.

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Johnston, C. The Unity of a Tractarian Fact. Synthese 156, 231–251 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-006-0002-4

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