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.
