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Ontology, semantics and philosophy of mind in Wittgenstein's Tractatus: A formal reconstruction

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Abstract

The paper presents a formal explication of the early Wittgenstein's views on ontology, the syntax and semantics of an ideal logical language, and the propositional attitudes. It will be shown that Wittgenstein gave a “language of thought” analysis of propositional attitude ascriptions, and that his ontological views imply that such ascriptions are truth-functions of (and supervenient upon) elementary sentences. Finally, an axiomatization of a quantified doxastic modal logic corresponding to Tractarian semantics will be given.

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Lokhorst, G.J. Ontology, semantics and philosophy of mind in Wittgenstein's Tractatus: A formal reconstruction. Erkenntnis 29, 35–75 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00166365

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