Philosophical Investigations 9:4 October 1986

ISSN 0190-0536 $z.so

Wittgenstein’s Grundgedank and the

Independence Thesis

Donald Peterson, Imperial College, London

The reasons behind the logical independence thesis and the

significance of the ‘fundamental thought’ in Wittgenstein’s Tructu-
tus are rather mysterious, and it will be argued here that once a
short missing argument is supplied, the logical independence thesis
can be seen as a consequence of the ‘fundamental thought’. The
Grundgedank is expressed in an emphatic statement:
The possibility of sentences is based on the principle that objects
have signs as their representatives.
My fundamental thought is that the ‘logical constants’ are not
representatives; that there can be no representatives of the logic of
facts. (Tractatus 4.0312)

The first paragraph is a statement of the picture theory’s naming

thesis, and the second expresses Wittgenstein’s Grundgedunk that
this is inapplicable to the logical constants: ‘I’,
‘v’, etc. The
‘-I,

same thought is expressed with equal emphasis in the Prototractatus

(4.0101, 4.0102, 4.0103) and in the Notebooks 1914-16 (p. 37), and
Wittgenstein’s early concern with this question can be seen from his
letters to Russell in 1912, e.g.:
. . . there are NO logical constants.
(22/6/1912, Letters p. 10)
If ‘p v q’ does not mean a complex, then heaven knows what it
means!! (Summer 1912, Letters p. 13).

(See also McGuinness 1974.) If, e.g., we interpreted ‘p v q’

according to the picture theory, we would take it to name three
objects -the fact p, the disjunctive relation v, and the fact q -and
to say that these are arranged to form a molecular fact whose
structure is the same as that of the sentence ‘p v q’. This, however,
Wittgenstein denies. The arguments against this pictorial view of
the logical constants appear mainly in the 5.4’s. A particularly
315
316 Philosophical Investigations
persuasive line of reasoning which might be called the ‘argument
from equivalence’ runs as follows:

A sentence is a truth-function of elementary sentences.

(Tractatus 5)
At this point it becomes manifest that there are no ‘logical objects’
or ‘logical constants’ (in Frege’s and Russell’s sense). (Tractatus 5.4)
The reason is that the results of truth-operations on truth-
functions are always identical whenever they are one and the same
truth-function of elementary sentences. (Tractatus 5.41)
And ifthere were an object called ‘-’, it would follow that ‘- - p’
said something different from what ‘p’ said, just because the one
sentence would then be about - and the other would not. (Tractatus
5.44).’
And this is anticipated to some extent in the Notebooks:
With the logical constants one need never ask whether they exist, for
they can even vanish. (Notebooks p. 19).
The use of ‘logical constant’ is ambiguous between the constants in
language and the objects in the world which they might be thought
to designate, but the point is clear. T w o sentences which are
truth-functionally equivalent, e.g. ‘- - p’ and ‘p’, say the same
thing, and if true describe the same fact, and since these sentences
may contain different constants it follows that these do not denote
constituents of the fact: for otherwise the facts described would
be different. E.g. ‘p v q’ and ‘- p I)q’ describe the same fact, so it
cannot be that one describes a fact containing disjunction while the
other describes a fact containing negation and material implication.
Facts, then, do not contain logical objects; and the logical constants
do not function denotatively: they are not names, representa-
tives, or proxies of objects which are constituents of facts. All facts
are logically atomic, and molecular sentences are not pictures of
logically molecular facts.
It is important in this connection to distinguish between a fact’s
being a Sachverhalt or ‘state of affairs’, and its being logically
atomic. It is a matter of stipulation in the Tractatus that the
ontologically basic Sachverhalt is a configuration of Tractarian
‘objects’, and the Cmndgedank is the additional and distinct thesis
that none of these may be a ‘logical object’, i.e. that Sachverhalte are
logically atomic. But since the word ‘atomic’ carries connotations

1. See also Tractatus 4.441, 5.254, 5.42, 5.43, 5.44, 5.441, 5.461.
 Donald Peterson 317

of both logical and o r m l q d -simplicity, the translation of

Sachverhalt as ‘atomic fact’, as in Russell’s ‘Introduction’ and in
C.K. Ogden’s translation of the Tractatus, creates a confusion
which does not exist in the German text.
Discussing the pictorial view that logical constants are names of
logical objects, R.J. Fogelin says:
From this it is an easy extension to think of logical truths as pictures
of logical facts. ... If there are logical facts, then the propositions
expressing them will mutually imply each other and will be implied
by every proposition whatsoever. Thus the doctrine of independ-
ence is lost. (Wittgenstein p. 36)

and Fogelin concludes that the pictorial view of the constants

therefore
presents a fundamental challenge to Wittgenstein’s working out of a
picture theory of proposition meaning within the framework of an
atomistic ontology. (loc cit).
This argument, which appeals to one of the paradoxes of classical
entailment (tautological implication), shows that on the view
denied by the Grundgedank, ‘logical facts’ will exist in the world,
and, since each of these will be entailed by every fact, the
independence thesis (1.21, 2.061, 2.062) will be lost. E.g. on the
pictorial view ‘Either it’s raining or it’s not raining’ depicts a
logically necessary or tautological fact, and this is entailed by every
fact, including itself. This argument does allow, though, that
molecular but logically contingent facts might be logically indepen-
dent of one another. Fogelin is right that this incompatibility exists
between the pictorial view and the independence thesis, but, as I
shall now argue, the Grundgedank plays a more basic role than he
suggests: in denying the pictorial view it does not just make room
for the independence thesis, but rather it gives the reason for it.
The dyadic logical relations - entailment, equivalence, sub-
contrariety, inconsistency, etc. - concern logical form rather than
content. In the case of atomic sentences - those which contain no
logical constants - we can say that p = p and that p k p: but apart
from these trivial cases, logical relations require constants - they
require that at least one of their terms have molecular form. And
likewise in the case of the monadic logical properties of tautolo-
gousness and contradictoriness, logical constants are a prerequisite:
there is no such thing as an atomic formal tautology or contradic-
318 Philosophical Invesligations
tion. If there were molecular facts - configurations of atomic facts
and logical objects - then these too would have molecular logical
form, and would bear logical relations to one another, and to
atomic facts. But since the Cvundgedank and its supporting
arguments demonstrate that there are no logical objects in the
world, which is to say that all facts are logically atomic, it follows
that such logical properties and relations do not attach to facts in the
world. Since the formal logical properties and relations require
moiecularity, these are excluded from the world of facts. Thus
there are no relations of entailment, inconsistency, etc. between
facts: all facts are logically independent (and no facts are tautolog-
ical or contradictory). The only logical relations of which facts
could conceivably be terms are reflexive equivalence and entail-
ment, but since these are relations between a fact and itself, they do
not constitute counter examples to the independence thesis. The
denial that there are logical objects within facts leads to the denial
that there are logical relations between facts: the Grundgedank
therefore leads to the independence thesis, and need not be seen as a
merely defensive manoeuvre designed to render independence
compatible with the picture theory.
The above argument does not itself exclude all quasi-logical
relations between facts, and as Wittgenstein later saw, considera-
tions of colour - or for that matter of other determinables - are
problematic. However it is by no means clear that there can be
incompatibilities between colour-facts in the world. Since red and
green are incompatible, for example, it cannot simultaneously be
the case that X is uniformly red and that X is uniformly green. That
is, it cannot be that the world contains at one time a fact
corresponding to each of these two descriptions. But since these
facts cannot simultaneously exist, they cannot bear a relation to one
another, whether this is a relation of incompatibility or any other:
the instantiation of a relation requires relata. Just as I cannot own a
non-existent car, so a colour-fact cannot be incompatible with a
non-existent colour-fact. Thus, whatever analysis is to be given of
colour incompatibility, it cannot involve incompatibility between
facts in the world, whether these are taken to be Tractarian
Sachvevhalte or not.
Through its consequence of the logical independence thesis,
Wittgenstein’s fundamental thought can be seen as basic to other
Tractarian doctrines, beyond the scope of this note, such as his
 Donald Peterson 319

thesis, developed in the 5’9, &at logical relations are internal

(structural, syntactical) relations holding between sentences, and
his views on deduction and logical notation. But the present point
is that with respect to the properties and relations of formal logic,
the independence thesis follows from the Grundgedank.2

REFERENCES

Fogelin R.J. Wittgenstein. London: RKP. 1976.

McGuinness B.F ‘The Grundgedank of the Tractatus’. In
Understanding Wittgenstein. G. Vesey ed.
London: macmillan, 1974.
Wittgenstein L Tractatus logico-philosophicus. D.F. Pears and B.F.
McGuinness trans. London: RKP. 1961.
Wittgenstein L. Notebooks 1914-16. 2nd ed. G.E.M. Anscombe
trans. Oxford: Blackwell, 1979.
Wittgenstein L. Letters to Russell Keynes and Moore. 2nd ed. G.H.
von Wright ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1977.

Department of Computing
Zmperial College London
S W 7 2BZ

2. My thanks go to J.L.Watling for his comments.