Logic and its Application in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Early Philosophy

Abstract

The paper presents Ludwig Wittgenstein’s distinction between logic and its
application. It proves that Wittgenstein in his early works (especially in ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’) considers two
perspectives in the philosophy of language: the first one from the viewpoint of
necessary logic and the second one from the viewpoint of the contingent
application of logic in natural language. The first section, Logical Notation and Natural Language, shows that Wittgenstein’s early
philosophy first of all belongs to the philosophy of logic. The second section,
Logical Necessity in Logical Notation, points on
necessary conditions of expressing logical necessity in the classical
proposi-tional calculus. The third section, Contingent
Application of Logic, describes the contingent application of logic in
natural language as the matter of arbitrary decisions, which cannot be
anticipated by logic and cannot be ex-pressed by logical notation.