The Picture Theory of Language

The Image has gone, only You and I

It means nothing to Me

This means nothing to Me

Oh, Vienna --

The Picture Theory of Language

The Picture Theory of Language 

is considered a 

Correspondence Theory of Truth.

Wittgenstein claims there is an unbridgeable gap 

between what can be expressed in Language 

and what can only be expressed 

in Non-Verbal Ways.

Picture Theory of Language states that 

statements are meaningful IF they can 

be defined or pictured in “The Real World”.

Capt. Willard :

 Could we, uh -- Talk 

to Colonel Kurtz...? 

The Photojournalist :

Hey, man -- you don't, uh --

you don't talk to The Colonel, uh -- 

um, well, well, what you do is, you listen 

to him, uh -- the man's enlarged my mind um --

".....The Point here is that we're getting 

A Picture Theory of Language --

that's What Language Does, too; 

Language is something like A Picture of Reality, 

it's A Map of Reality and there are 

certain features singled out by Language; 

there's always much more complication 

than the actual object, than can be represented 

in the drawing or in language and so 

it's sort of like a partial model, 

that's why he says "This is something like 

a model of reality, a model where all sorts 

of aspects of the real thing are being left out 

but we're modeling certain aspects --"

".....yeah, um -- Would it be a one-to-one function 

or would it... because I was thinking that, 

if you just draw A Cat, you can make that as, 

like a general kind of picture for all cats...?"

"Alright, so, yes -- it's uh... in general 

not going to be one to one, um --

...in fact this inspires uh a sort of model of Truth 

that you get in something like, uh --

Discourse-Representation Theory, where 

this is understood as a homomorphic embedding 

there's a homomorphism, here, 

which allows for the fact that, um -- 

there isn't really an isomorphism 

a one-to-one correspondence, 

you might say "This is isomorphic to certain features over there certain things but nevertheless there might be many ways of mapping this into reality --", so this --

the cat that's arriving in my office at 2, 

is named "Belle", but actually, insofar as 

I've drawn this that could be a representation 

of pretty much any cat, right...? 

I mean this is a very generic sort of cat image; 

and language is like that too, if I say, ah --

"The Students are in the room," or even better, 

"There are students in the room", that's something 

that could represent many many different 

possible states of affairs, and so it is something 

that actually maps on to this reality 

in a certain way, but it would map on many 

different realities and that's typical -- 

From now, I have one minute to give you 

the face crowd -- yes, a logical picture of facts is A Thought 

so this is sort of A Picture in a more obvious sense 

but A Thought is A Picture of A Fact 

or a set of facts moreover, well 

that's what A Proposition is, it's really 

giving you that kind of picture 

and he says The Proposition has one 

and only one -- sentences might be ambiguous; 

Propositions are never ambiguous, and now, 

let's go for "A Thought is A Proposition with A Sense."

So we have propositions and senses of propositions,

that's What Thoughts are, really, 

and then he gives you A Structure of 

Truth and Falsehood 

and how that all works 

But now I want to jump ahead, 

past a lot of the logical technicalities 

of this, to where this is all ultimately going -- 

most of the book is actually an elaboration 

of proposition four, 

but finally, we get five :

"A Proposition is a Truth-function 

of elementary propositions", so 

we can break propositions down into 

a structure and that's reflecting a structure 

in the underlying facts but then, 

we get to the final uh -- you might say 

conclusion of all this :

Proposition 6 and 7 -- So, 6 : 

The general -- well, the general form 

of a true function is blah blah blah 

and what it really amounts to is 

something like a state of affairs and then 

a sign that tells you whether obtained, 

whether it exists or does not exist, 

that's the general form of a proposition 

and that allows us to say certain things,

but there are lots of things we can't say 

there are lots of uses of Language 

that aren't just depicting reality, even though 

that's what we do much of the time 

and so in the end he says 

"what we cannot speak about, 

we must pass over in silence --"

The Photojournalist :

-- uh he's a poet-warrior in that...

in the classic sense, uh I mean --

sometimes, he'll, uh, well, You say, 

"Hello," to him, right, and, uh, 

he'll just walk right by you, and 

he won't even notice you, and then, 

some-suddenly, he'll grab you,

he'll throw you in a corner and 

he'll say "Do you know that 'if' is 

the middle word in 'Life' --" 

....if you keep your head when 

all about you're losing theirs, 

blaming it on you, if you can trust 

yourself, and all men doubt you --

I mean, I know, I -- I can't, 

I'm a little man, I'm a little man, he's -- 

he's a great man, uh -- uh --

I should have been a pair of ragged claws, 

uh scuttling across floors of silent seas, 

I mean -- uh, hey -- don't go anywhere --

don't go without me, okay, 

I wanna get A Picture.