Identity theories of truth and the Tractatus

Abstract

The paper is concerned with the idea that the world is the totality of facts, not of things - with what is involved in thinking of the world in that way, and why one might do so. It approaches this issue through a comparison between Wittgenstein's Tractatus and the identity theory of truth proposed by Hornsby and McDowell. The paper's positive conclusion is that there is a genuine affinity between these two. A negative contention is that the modern identity theory is vulnerable to a complaint of idealism that the Tractatus can deflect. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005.