We will begin by looking at Wittgenstein's first book, The Proposition (later re-named the Tractatus Logico-Philosphicus by G.E.Moore), until we can see its significance i.e. both its sense and its meaning. Thinking about the limitations of its significance will then lead us on to entertain the thought that the difference between sense and meaning might be neither the only, nor even the most relevant way to think about language. Finding new ways to think about the relevance of other distinctions, such as the difference between saying and showing, will lead us directly into the heart of the so-called "private language argument" of the Philosophical Investigations, with its abolition of the inner world, its attack on abstraction in favour of the concrete, its reversal of the priority between logic and grammar, and its insight that the actual is intelligible only in terms of the possible.
Note on texts.
Texts of central readings will be provided in each lecture.
They will be extracted from the following publications:
1. Early:
Tractatus Logico-Philosphicus, (either tr by Ogden, or by Pears & McGuinness) (an abridgment of this work will be handed out in the first class)
Letters to C.K.Ogden.
1914-16 Notebooks.
2. Transitional:
Philosophical Grammar
The Blue and Brown Books
Philosophical Remarks
Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief
Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics
3. Late:
Philosophical Investigations
Zettle (two editions)
On Certainty
Culture and Value
Remarks On Colour