philosophical topics

vol. 42, no. 2, fall 2014

Wittgenstein and “Tonk”: Inference and

Representation in the Tractatus (and Beyond)

Martin Gustafsson
Åbo Akademi University

ABSTRACT. Which concept is the more primitive when it comes to the

functioning of the logical constants: representation or inference? Via a
discussion of Arthur Prior’s famous mock connective “tonk” and a couple
of responses to Prior by J. T. Stevenson and Nuel Belnap, it is argued that
early Wittgenstein’s answer is neither. Instead, he takes representation and
inference to be equally basic and mutually dependent notions. The nature
and significance of this mutual dependence is made clear by an investiga-
tion into the Tractarian notion of a proposition. It is further argued that
even if Wittgenstein later abandoned the Tractarian conception of what a
proposition is, he never gave up the idea that inference and representation
play interdependent and equally fundamental roles in logic.

I. INTRODUCTION

In 1944, Wittgenstein made the following couple of remarks:

Is logical inference correct when it has been made according to rules;
or when it is made according to correct rules? Would it be wrong, for
example, if it were said that p should always be inferred from ~p? But
why should one not rather say: such a rule would not give the signs “~p”
and “p” their usual meaning?

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 We can conceive the rules of inference—­I want to say—­as giving the
signs their meaning, because they are rules for the use of these signs.
So that the rules of inference are involved in the determination of the
meaning of the signs. In this sense rules of inference cannot be right or
wrong. (Wittgenstein 1978, VII–30)

Similar passages can be found at other places in Wittgenstein’s manuscripts from

the 1930s and onward. In such passages, he seems to be expressing a relatively
radical version of what is nowadays called an “inferentialist” conception of the
meaning of the logical constants. In 1960, Arthur Prior famously argued that such
a conception is untenable. For, if it were true that rules of inference cannot be right
or wrong because they determine the meanings of the logical signs, then, Prior
argued, nothing could stop us from introducing a connective “tonk” the meaning
of which is determined by the following rules:
Introduction rule: From p, p tonk q may be inferred.
Elimination rule: From p tonk q, q may be inferred.

This, however, seems disastrous. For with this new connective, it appears possible
to deduce any proposition you like from any other proposition. No matter what
propositions p and q are, q can now be deduced from p. And this does away with
logic altogether. Or, as Prior puts it, the new form “p tonk q” is extremely conve-
nient and “promises to banish falsche Spitzfindigkeit from Logic forever” (1960, 39).
Prior’s own conception of logical inference is not entirely clear. At the begin-
ning of his short paper, his target seems to be the very idea that the validity of
inferences arises from the meanings of logical expressions—­the idea that logical
inferences are, as he puts it, “analytically valid.” But many have read him as reject-
ing only the inferentialist version of that idea. Such readers argue that Prior’s argu-
ment has no force against the claim that logical inferences are valid in virtue of the
meanings of the logical expressions, if those meanings are taken to be somehow
determined otherwise than by the rules of inference that govern the use of the
expressions in deductions. According to such a non-­inferentialist version of the
idea that logical inferences are valid because of what the logical expressions mean,
the meanings of the connectives are somehow determined prior to the use of the
connectives in deductions, and can therefore serve to license or forbid such deduc-
tive patterns.
My discussion in this paper will focus on the Tractatus, and on the question of
how Wittgenstein’s early conception of logic and the logical connectives is related
to Prior’s “tonk”-­example. At first sight, it may seem as if Prior’s attack does not
concern Wittgenstein’s early view of logic. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein may seem
to be proposing, not an inferentialist conception of the logical connectives in terms
of rules, but a semantic account of the connectives in terms of truth-­conditions.
That would mean that the apparent inferentialism that can be found in his later
writings involves a sharp break with his early conception.
I will argue that this interpretation is mistaken. This is not because there are
no significant differences between early and later Wittgenstein’s conceptions of

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logic, but because it locates those differences in the wrong place. There is a sense
in which even Wittgenstein’s early conception of logic can rightly be described as
inferentialist, and another sense in which not even his later conception can be so
described.
I will explain and back up this claim by contrasting Wittgenstein’s early
view with two responses to Prior: J. T. Stevenson’s genuinely semantic response
(Stevenson 1961) and Nuel Belnap’s inferentialist one (Belnap 1962). Contrasting
Wittgenstein’s view with Stevenson’s will make it clear why it is natural to char-
acterize the Tractarian conception as a species of inferentialism. Contrasting
Wittgenstein’s view with Belnap’s will make it clear that the Tractarian species of
inferentialism is nonetheless quite different from the sort of view that tends to be
associated with that label today. In particular, early Wittgenstein’s inferentialism
does not involve the claim that the notion of inference is more primitive than
the notion of representation when it comes to understanding the function of the
connectives. Indeed, if inferentialism is defined as a view according to which the
notion of inference has such explanatory priority, then early Wittgenstein is not an
inferentialist at all. As we shall see, his view is instead that with regard to the func-
tioning of the connectives the notion of inference and the notion of representation
are equally basic and mutually dependent.
By early Wittgenstein’s lights, as reconstructed in the light of the “tonk”-­
example, Stevenson’s and Belnap’s conceptions are the Scylla and Charybdis you
need to avoid in order to arrive at a truly satisfactory response to Prior. By the same
Tractarian lights, these antagonistic viewpoints rest on a similar sort of confusion:
they both fail to get into clear view the way in which the notions of inference and
of representation must come in one package. According to early Wittgenstein, you
cannot grasp one of these notions without grasping the other—­a proposition can
figure in inferences only insofar as it is a picture of the world, and vice versa.
What I provide below can be regarded as a preamble to a study of the later
Wittgenstein’s discussions of logic. In the final section, I sketch what I take to
be some fundamental continuities and discontinuities between the early and
the later viewpoints. I suggest that later Wittgenstein retains the idea that infer-
ence and representation are inseparable and equally basic notions (here I am in
sympathy with McDowell 2005). But I also claim that this inseparability now
achieves a different character, due to the dramatic changes that the very notions
of inference, description, proposition, and logic undergo in the later writings.
In particular, these notions are no longer seen as notions the essence of which
can be captured once and for all in a formally precise and general systematic
fashion. Rather, they are conceived as dynamic and open-­ended, and that leads
to a major shift in Wittgenstein’s whole outlook. One interesting consequence
is that this later, dynamic conception makes visible a different way of interpret-
ing Belnap’s p­ osition—­an interpretation that is indiscernible from Wittgenstein’s
early standpoint, but which allows us to see the relation between Belnap and later
Wittgenstein in somewhat less antagonistic terms.

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 II. “TONK,” TRUTH TABLES, AND THE TRACTATUS

In his comment on Prior’s article, Stevenson argues that there are two reasons why
people have been tempted by the idea that rules of inference determine the mean-
ings of the logical connectives. To begin with, the connectives do not have a denot-
ing function: they do not purport to refer to anything. Moreover, we ordinarily vali­
date particular inferences by appealing to some rule of inference, such as modus
ponens. Taken together, Stevenson claims, these two points have encouraged the
conclusion that rules of inference are what give meaning to the connectives.
However, he continues, this conclusion is premature—­for a rule can validate
an inference only if the rule is sound. The rule must never permit the deduction of
a false conclusion from true premises. And whether a given rule is sound depends
on the meta-­linguistic interpretation we give of the relevant connective or connec-
tives. The interpretation is stated by means of truth tables, and determines how the
truth-­value of the conclusion is related to the truth-­values of the premises.
Hence, Stevenson argues, the meanings of the connectives are provided by
meta-­linguistic interpretations of the just mentioned sort. They give meanings
to connectives against which rules of inference can be tested and proven correct
or incorrect, sound or unsound. Supposedly, this suffices to handle Prior’s worry.
Just try to give a truth table for “tonk” that makes both the introduction rule and
the elimination rule sound. You will not succeed: an interpretation that makes one
rule sound inevitably makes the other unsound. Stevenson concludes that even
if the claim that logical inferences are valid in virtue of the meanings of the logi­
cal connectives is not defensible in its inferentialist version, it is defensible if we
instead think of these meanings as given “in terms of truth-­function statements in
a meta-­language” (Stevenson 1961, 127).
As Michael Dummett notes, this sort of view is widespread among contem-
porary logicians and is encouraged by presentations found in standard textbooks
(Dummett 1978, 291). A fruitful approach to Wittgenstein’s thoughts on logical
inference is to consider the deep-­going differences between the Stevensonian sort
of conception and what the Tractatus has to say on the subject. One thing that
might immediately spring to mind is the claim, in 5.132, that “ ‘Laws of inference’,
which are supposed to justify inferences, as in the works of Frege and Russell, have
no sense, and would be superfluous.” It may be argued, however, that the tension
between this remark and a view such as Stevenson’s is not very clear. After all,
Stevenson would say that rules of inference do not justify particular inferences in
any philosophically deep sense, since their “justificatory” status is entirely parasitic
on truth-­function statements in the meta-­language. Hence, to get clear on the dif-
ference between Stevenson and the Tractatus, I propose that we focus elsewhere,
namely, on the fact that Stevenson’s meta-­linguistic truth-­function statements have
no place whatsoever in the Tractarian system.
This may seem like a surprising statement. Aren’t truth tables of crucial
importance in the Tractatus? As has been noted by many commentators, however,

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the truth tables in the Tractatus are not meta-­linguistic devices, and do not pro-
vide what is nowadays thought of as semantic interpretations (Baker 1988, 86ff.;
Mounce 1981, 41; Ricketts 1996, 81; Ostrow 2002, 104). Rather, they serve as re-­
articulations that make logical relations between propositions more perspicuously
visible. Tractarian truth tables are signs at the same level as “~p,” “p&q,” and so on.
The difference is notational: truth tables are given in a notation that is designed to
provide an entirely clear presentation of the logical features of the relevant propo-
sitions. Thus, the sign

“p q ”
T T T
F T F
T F F
F F F.

expresses the same proposition as the sign “p&q,” though in a more perspicuous
manner. It is how “p&q” gets translated into the truth table notation.
Now, according to the Tractatus, it is essential to a proposition that it is deter-
minately true or false. And that a proposition is determinately true or false means
that it constitutes “an expression of agreement and disagreement with truth-­
possibilities of elementary propositions” (4.4). The truth table notation is designed
precisely with the purpose of displaying such agreements and disagreements with
truth-­possibilities. (Even an elementary proposition constitutes an expression of
agreement and disagreement with truth-­possibilities of elementary propositions,
since it is a truth-­function of itself.)
This has three important and interrelated consequences. First, if what is essen-
tial to a proposition is its agreement and disagreement with truth-­possibilities of
elementary propositions, then logical equivalence means propositional identity:
“If p follows from q and q from p, then they are one and the same proposition”
(5.141, 5.41). Hence, according to the Tractatus view of what it is to be a propo­
sition, the signs “p&q,” “~(~pv~q),” and “~(p⊃~q)” all belong to the same proposi-
tion. Consequently, their truth table translation is the same, namely, the truth table
given above. So, a translation into the truth table notation makes the notational
differences between these signs disappear.
The second consequence of how the truth table notation is supposed to work
is that if, in ordinary linguistic practice, there are two occurrences of the same
propositional sign that serve to express different propositions, then the corre-
sponding truth table renderings will be different. Wittgenstein thinks such cases
are common. On one occasion of utterance, the sentence “Max has a sister or
a brother” may be used to say something that is true if Max has both a sister and a
brother. On another occasion of utterance, it may be used to say something that

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is false if Max has both a sister and a brother. According to Wittgenstein, none of
these uses is wrong. They are just different, and, hence, the propositions expressed
by these superficially identical utterances will be captured by different truth tables.
The third consequence is that something qualifies as a logical connective—­a
truth-­operation, as Wittgenstein calls it—­only if the result of applying it to a ­couple
of propositions (or to one proposition if the operation is negation) can itself be
rendered by some truth table. If no result that can be rendered in this sort of way
is forthcoming, no determinate proposition has been generated, and no truth-­
operation has been applied. Thus, suppose someone claims to have invented a new
connective, but refuses to acknowledge any translation into truth table notation as
a correct rendering of the construction formed by joining two propositional signs
by means of this alleged connective. Then a problem arises about the status of that
construction. It may look like some sort of logically compound proposition, but,
according to Wittgenstein, we have been given no reason whatsoever to regard it
otherwise than as a merely orthographic juxtaposition of the propositional signs
and an empty scribble.
What does all this have to do with how the early Wittgenstein would handle
the problem about “tonk”? Well, remember that for Stevenson, who conceives
truth tables as providing meta-­linguistic interpretations of logical connectives, it
is natu­ral to think that the problem about capturing the envisaged use of “tonk” in
a truth table means that either the introduction rule or the elimination rule must
be unsound. By contrast, from the perspective of the Tractatus, the problem about
capturing the envisaged use of “tonk” in one single truth table is a problem, not
about soundness, but about propositional identity. What it shows is that insofar as
the different occurrences of the sign “p tonk q” belong to determinate propositions
at all, and insofar as the rules for the use of “tonk” are rules of inference (and not
just, say, rules for the decoration of wallpaper with ink marks), “p tonk q” must
belong to one proposition when used in accordance with the introduction rule
and to another proposition when used in accordance with the elimination rule.
The impossibility of providing a joint truth table for the two uses does not mean
that the rules are unsound, but that each rule constitutes an incomplete specifica-
tion of the use of two different connectives. When “p tonk q” is inferred from “p”
in accordance with the introduction rule, and when the orthographically similar
“p tonk q” serves as a premise from which “q” is inferred in accordance with the
elimination rule, what we have are two different compound propositions that look
the same on the surface. It so happens that the connectives that occur in them are
both called “tonk,” but those connectives are no more similar than, say, disjunction
and conjunction. As Cora Diamond puts this Tractarian response,
it is through logic that we can identify any proposition as the same
proposition as some proposition uttered or written earlier [. . .]. Logic
will show us that the two rules through which the connective “tonk”
was introduced (or supposedly introduced) in fact provide partial speci­
fications of two logical connectives; and that a proposition P-­tonk-­Q
inferred from P is not in general the same proposition as the equiform

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 proposition P-­tonk-­Q used by itself as a premise from which to infer Q.
We can get this out of logic if the logic that we need in order to do the
job of identifying propositions is truth-­functional logic, for that will
impose the conclusion, not that the rules for “tonk” are logically wrong,
but that they go part of the way toward introducing two logically dis-
tinct connectives. (Diamond 2002, 255)

But what if he who introduces “tonk” refuses to acknowledge that the rules for
its use specify the use of two different connectives? What if he insists that “tonk”
means the same in both sorts of inferences, and that if we do not see this we have
misunderstood his explanations? The Tractarian response is that such heartfelt
insistence on sameness of meaning can in no way alter the fact that it is possible
to acquire unification here—­to think of the suggested rules as rules governing one
and the same piece, as it were—­only by abandoning the very idea that the use in
question is a logical use, that the pattern is a pattern of inference, and, hence, that
“tonk” is a logical connective at all. This person’s constructions may look like propo­
sitions, and if such look-­alikes are written down one below another it may look
as if what is going on is logical inference. However, to the extent that those look-­
alikes resist translation into the truth table notation, they are not propositions—­
and there is no inference going on either, not even an unsound one.
One might still feel unclear about the real difference between Wittgenstein’s
and Stevenson’s ways of showing why “tonk” is not a viable logical connective.
Stevenson uses truth tables to distinguish between sound and unsound rules of
inference. Wittgenstein seems to use truth tables to impose restrictions on what is
to be counted as “proposition” and “inference.” But is this difference really deep-­
going? Isn’t it just a verbal issue: Wittgenstein prefers to use a narrow conception
of inference according to which only those patterns that are governed by what
Stevenson calls “sound rules of inference” are to be called inferential, whereas what
Stevenson counts as “unsound” patterns are not counted as inferences at all by
Wittgenstein? Isn’t all we have here two terminologically different ways of getting
at what is fundamentally the same point, namely, that truth-­functional logic sets
limits on what constitutes logically adequate behavior?
In order to see what is mistaken about this attempt to trivialize the difference
between Wittgenstein and Stevenson, we need to understand better what it means
to say that, according to Wittgenstein, we cannot identify propositions without ref-
erence to the function those propositions have in inferences. When I introduced the
problem about “tonk,” I presented it in a standard sort of way, namely, as a problem
about how the meaning of a logical connective is related to the role that the con-
nective plays in inferences. Similarly, in presenting Stevenson’s conception of how
truth tables work, I talked about them as giving interpretations of the connectives.
However, in my presentation of Wittgenstein’s view, there was a shift of focus. I
started talking about how the identity of a proposition is related to the role that the
proposition plays in inferences. And I talked about truth tables, not as giving mean-
ing to the connectives, but as logically perspicuous re-­articulations of the logical
structure of propositions. This shift from focusing exclusively on the c­ onnectives to

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focusing also on the identity of propositions is no coincidence. For it is crucial to
Wittgenstein that the functioning of the connectives is inseparable from what it is
to be a proposition. Let us look in more detail at how this idea works.
It is a central idea in the Tractatus that, unlike what standard logical notations
might tempt us to believe, the logical connectives do not contribute anything to
the content of the sentences in which they occur. The connectives are to be thought
of in what Wittgenstein calls operational terms, and “[a]n operation is the expres-
sion of a relation between the structures of its result and of its bases. The operation
is what has to be done to the one proposition in order to make the other out of it”
(5.22–5.23). Peter Sullivan uses a simple example to illustrate how the truth table
notation serves to clarify this role of the connectives. The point is most easily seen
if we consider the condensed version of the notation, in which a proposition is
given by an expression in which the last column of the truth table is stated within
parentheses before the elementary propositions are listed. In this condensed ver-
sion, “p&q” is translated as “(TFFF)(p,q).” Now, suppose we negate this latter for-
mula. In standard notations, what we do is to add a negation sign: “~(p&q).” This
construction gives the impression that the negation sign gives some sort of genu-
ine contribution to the content of the sentence, and trying to understand what this
contribution is leads to all sorts of puzzles. By contrast, in order to negate “(TFFF)
(p,q),” we do not add a new sign. Rather, we turn the proposition into a new one
by replacing all “T’s” with “F’s,” and vice versa. Starting from “(TFFF)(p,q)” we thus
obtain “(FTTT)(p,q).” This makes it clear that negating a proposition is not a mat-
ter of adding anything to it, but of using it as a base from which a new proposition
is generated according to a determinate pattern of transformation. As Sullivan puts
it, “[n]egation is characteristic only of the relation between two propositions, never
of any proposition itself ” (Sullivan 2000, 180). And similarly for the other opera-
tions of propositional logic.
So what we get in the Tractatus is a conception of truth-­operations according
to which their role is exhaustively displayed once a way has been found to exhibit
clearly the logical interrelations between propositions. This point is vividly mani­
fested precisely by the fact that in the truth table notation, where logical inter­
connections are made transparently visible, there is simply no need for the con-
nectives. Now it seems quite appropriate to characterize this conception as a form
of inferentialism. After all, according to the Tractatus, it is precisely by making the
connectives disappear in favor of a clear exposition of logical interconnections that
the truth table notation can be said to do full justice to what truth-­operations are.
How, then, can the Tractatus avoid the problem about “tonk”? Not by a require-
ment of soundness. Rather, the central idea here is the Tractarian conception of
what a proposition is. According to the Tractatus, a proposition is either true or
false. The logical operators operate on and produce as results propositions qua
such intrinsically true-­or-­false units. And the Tractarian objection against Prior’s
“tonk”-­example can now be expressed as follows. The example presupposes that
the entities on which logical operators operate, and which figure in inferences, are

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not given as true-­or-­false units in this sense. The introduction rule and elimination
rule for “tonk” can seem to determine a unified pattern of use only if it is taken for
granted that “p” and “q” can be identified extra-­logically, in merely orthographic
terms, as sign-­designs, concatenations of letters, or whatever—­and, hence, that the
so-­called use determined by such rules is externally imposed on an already given
raw material of logically inarticulate sounds and shapes. It presupposes that the
relevant notion of inferential practice is basically a matter of manipulating such
extra-­logically individuated units. By contrast, to identify those units as true-­or-­
false propositions means to see that the introduction rule and the elimination rule
for “tonk” cannot be taken to govern one and the same connective. The units are
propositions and the use is inferential only if “tonk” has different functions in
these two different patterns of employment.

III. INFERENCE AND REPRESENTATION

One way of expressing early Wittgenstein’s dissatisfaction with the connectives in

standard logical notation is to say that he thinks they invite confusion between
features that are essential to the logical structure of a proposition and features
that are the accidental byproducts of how the proposition happens to have been
generated from elementary propositions. For example, Wittgenstein thinks the dif-
ferences between “p&q,” “~(~pv~q),” and “~(p⊃~q)” are accidental leftovers from
the three different ways in which we happen to have generated one and the same
proposition by the successive applications of truth-­operations to the elementary
propositions “p” and “q.” The truth-­table notation does away with this “diachronic”
dross and displays only the synchronic essentials, namely, what the three signs
have in common qua belonging to one and the same propositional symbol.
It is easy to underestimate how radical Wittgenstein’s view of the connectives
is meant to be. For example, it is tempting to think that Wittgenstein must still hold
that connectives leave some sort of positive contribution to the sentences in which
they occur, if not to their content then to their form (as Russell seems to have done;
cf. Baker 1988, 40). After all, the use of a connective obviously makes some sort of
difference. This, in turn, may lead to the idea that Wittgenstein’s opposition to any
account which explains the meaning of logical connectives in terms of their being
“representatives” (4.0312) means that he must be embracing the anti-­thesis to such
a representationalist view.
Now, in contemporary jargon, the term “inferentialism” is often used to label
such an anti-­thesis. However, this is precisely the sense in which early Wittgenstein
is not an inferentialist. To be an inferentialist in that sense is to think that the con-
nectives do leave a special contribution to the propositions of which they appear to
be parts, albeit one explainable in terms of inference rather than representation. The
problem is that it would be difficult to spell out this idea without suggesting the fol-
lowing division of work: what provide the representational content of a ­proposition

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are the elementary propositions from which it has been generated, whereas what
provide the logical properties of the propositions are the connectives. In short,
the upshot would be that Wittgenstein had a representationalist conception of the
sense of elementary propositions, and an inferentialist conception of the sense of
the connectives, and that these two aspects of the proposition—­its representational
function and its inferential function—­are in that sense separable, the first being
provided by the elementary propositions and the second by the connectives.
This is the sort of interpretation that Elizabeth Anscombe is warning against
early on in her book on the Tractatus. According to Anscombe, Wittgenstein’s
“whole theory of propositions is [. . .], on this view, a merely external combination
of two theories: a ‘picture theory’ of elementary propositions [. . .], and the the-
ory of truth-­functions as an account of non-­elementary propositions” (Anscombe
1971, 25–26). The sort of view Anscombe criticizes here is one according to which
Wittgenstein thinks the whole domain of meaningful elementary propositions can
in principle be given before and independently of the introduction of the truth-­
operations. The idea would be that Wittgenstein conceives the truth-­operations—­
and thus the generation of logical complexity1—­as add-­ons to an already given set
of meaningful elementary propositions.
It is clear that Anscombe is right to reject this sort of interpretation. Such a
composite conception is straightforwardly incompatible with Wittgenstein’s claim
that “[a]n elementary proposition really contains all logical operations in itself ”
(5.47), and also with the central paragraph 3.42:
A proposition can determine only one place in logical space: neverthe-
less the whole of logical space must already be given by it.
(Otherwise negation, logical sum, logical product, etc., would intro-
duce more and more new elements—­in co-­ordination.)
(The logical scaffolding surrounding a picture determines logical
space. The force of a proposition reaches through the whole of logical
space. [Der Satz durchgreift den ganzen logischen Raum.])

Sullivan agrees with Anscombe on this point, and argues that Tractarian
truth-­operations must not “be understood by reference to a prior and independent
conception of their domain” (Sullivan 2000, 189). Rather, Sullivan notes, the role of
truth-­operations and the sense of elementary propositions can only be conceived
as mutually presupposing each other. As Wittgenstein remarks already in 1914:
“Just as we can see ~p has no sense, if p has none; so we can also say p has none if
~p has none” (Wittgenstein 1979, 118; quoted in Sullivan 2000, 189).
What I am emphasizing here is early Wittgenstein’s view that the relation
between the nature of description and the possibility of logical complexity and
interconnectedness—­between what it is for a proposition to represent a pos­
sible state of affairs and what it is for it to stand in inferential relations to other
­propositions—­is internal. According to the author of the Tractatus, neither of these
two functions—­that of representing a possible state of affairs and that of stand-
ing in determinate inferential relations to other propositions—­is less fundamental
than the other. Rather, he conceives of the possibility of logical complexity and

84
i­nterconnectedness as given as soon as there is picturing, as soon as there are true-­
or-­false descriptions of the world. It is not as if we need to add logical machinery in
order to be able to generate complex propositions out of elementary propositions.
The logical machinery is already there with the elementary propositions’ capacity
to depict the world truly or falsely. There is no separate carrier of the possibilities
of logical complexity, aside from the elementary propositions themselves.
Notice, though, that early Wittgenstein is not just defending the general idea
that the representational and inferential aspects of a proposition are interdepen-
dent and equally fundamental. As 3.42 and 5.47 make quite clear, he is defending a
particular (and, as it turns out, deeply problematic) conception of how this inter-
dependence should be understood. More precisely, he insists that an elementary
propo­sition contains all logical operations in itself—­that the whole of logical space
must already be given with any elementary proposition. According to Wittgenstein,
any elementary proposition is either true or false, and that suffices to generate all
the logic there is, namely, the universally applicable operations of the propositional
calculus. Against this Tractarian claim, it seems arguable that the idea of inter­
dependence between representation and inference does not by itself require such
logical homogeneity, but is quite compatible with a more diversified conception
of logical space. Such a non-­Tractarian conception would be one according to
which logic is not exhausted by the universally applicable operations of the propo­
sitional calculus, but involves a large variety of more local logical domains—­say,
the logic of color predicates, the logic of length attributions, and so on and so forth.
For ­example, one might want to claim both (a) that the representational function of
the proposition “a is red all over at time t” is inseparable from its entailing “a is not
blue all over at time t” and (b) that the logic at work in this entailment cannot be
accounted for simply in terms of the universally applicable operations of proposi-
tional logic but is irreducibly a matter of specific features of the color predicates, and
is thus not already given by just any true-­or-­false description of the world.
The rejection of such a diversified conception of logical space is crucial to the
whole Tractarian system. It manifests itself in Wittgenstein’s insistence that an ele-
mentary proposition is neither contradicted nor entailed by any other elementary
proposition, but is a truth-­function only of itself (4.211, 4.53)—­whereas the non-­
Tractarian notion of “local” logical domains amounts precisely to the denial of
this idea that analysis must have as its terminus such logically independent atoms.
The rejection of logical diversity is also central to Wittgenstein’s conception of the
general propositional form—­his general notion of what it is to be a true-­or-­false
picture of the world. After all, given the inseparability of representation and infer-
ence, a diversification of logical space would amount also to a diversification of
the very notion of description—­which means the disintegration of the very idea
of a general propositional form, as conceived by the author of the Tractatus. Of
course, the notion of a general propositional form did eventually fall apart for
Wittgenstein, and this process of disintegration started precisely by his coming to
recognize that phenomena such as color exclusion cannot be handled by means of
Tractarian analysis. I shall come back to this in the final section of this paper.

85
 What I have been arguing can be put by saying that there is a sense in which
the author of the Tractatus conceives of logic as a purely formal business. According
to him, logic disregards, or treats as arbitrary, the specific contents of propositions.
Color predicates, say, do not have a logic of their own: to the extent that color
exclusion is a matter of logic, it has to be accountable for by means of the austere
resources of the propositional calculus.
However, I have also emphasized that the formality of logic in the Tractarian
sense does not involve the further step of abstracting from the very meaningfulness
of linguistic expressions, treating them as non-­interpreted shapes or sign designs.
Taking this further step is characteristic of our contemporary (post-­Carnapian,
post-­Tarskian) notion of syntax, whereas in the Tractatus, it is crucial to logic
that it must already “presuppose that [. . .] elementary propositions [have] sense”
(6.124). According to early Wittgenstein, it is precisely “by representing a possi-
bility of existence and non-­existence of states of affairs” (2.201) that elementary
(and other) propositions occupy positions in logical space. To say that a propo­
sition represents such a possibility is already to say that it is true or false, and this
is already to say that it stands in inferential relations to other propositions. It is not
possible to drive a wedge between propositions qua pictures and propositions qua
nodes in an inferential network of other propositions: there is representation only
if there is inference and vice versa.
At the end of the previous section, some readers may have felt that I dismissed
too quickly the claim that the early Wittgenstein has a representationalist view of
the nature of logical interconnectedness. For, even if Tractarian truth tables are not
meta-­linguistic statements, it might still have seemed that the notions of truth and
falsity do have a more basic explanatory role in the Tractatus than the notion of
inference. After all, isn’t Wittgenstein’s idea that it is because propositions are either
true or false that they stand in inferential relations to each other? And doesn’t his
view about what it is to be true or false—­his so-­called picture-­theory—­determine
that those inferential relations must conform to the simple propositional calculus
with which logic gets identified in the Tractatus? I hope my discussion in this
section has made it clear that early Wittgenstein does not think that the notions of
truth, falsity, and picturing have this sort of prior and independent status vis-­à-­vis
the notion of inference. To have a determinate place within a network of inferen-
tial relations—­a network whose structure is perspicuously articulated by the rules
of propositional logic—­is not just a consequence but an integral part of being a
true-­or-­false picture in early Wittgenstein’s sense.

IV. DEDUCIBILITY AND CONSERVATISM

We are now in a position to clarify further the special character of Wittgenstein’s

conception of the connectives, by comparing it with a second response to Prior’s
“tonk”-­example. What I have in mind is Nuel Belnap’s five-­page paper, “Tonk, Plonk

86
and Plink,” from 1962. In this paper, Belnap defends the claim that the mean-
ings of the connectives are defined by the rules for their employment in deduc-
tion. According to Belnap, the reason why “tonk” cannot be defined in terms of
deducibility, whereas a connective such as “and” can be so defined, is that the
proposed rules for “tonk,” unlike those for “and,” are incompatible with certain
antecedent assumptions we make about deducibility. Allegedly, these assump-
tions are “antecedent” in the sense that they are made before or independently
of the introduction of any connectives at all. To give substance and precision
to this claim, Belnap employs as his characterization of this antecedently given
context of deducibility the structural rules of Gentzen, which he states as follows
(Belnap 1962, 131):
Axiom. A├ A
Rules. Weakening: from A1, . . . , An├ C to infer A1, . . . , An B├ C
Permutation: from A1, . . . , Ai, Ai+1, . . . , An├ B to infer

A1, . . . , Ai+1, Ai, . . . , An├ B.
Contraction: from A1, . . . , An, An├ B to infer A1, . . . , An├ B

Transitivity: from A1, . . . , Am├ B and C1, . . . , Cn, B├ D to

infer A1, . . . , Am, C1, . . . , Cn├ D.

A crucial point here is that this characterization of our antecedently given con-
ception of deducibility is taken to be complete, in the sense that it gives us “all the
universally valid deducibility-­statements not involving any special connectives”
(Belnap 1962, 131). What this means is that we can demand, with respect to any
subsequently introduced connective, that the rules for its employment do not allow
new valid deducibility-­statements unless those statements involve the connective
in question. Thus, the idea is that if we introduce, say, “&” in the ordinary way, we
extend the system by adding new deducibility-­statements such as “A, B├ A&B”—­
and all those added deducibility-­statements will themselves involve “&.” In Belnap’s
terminology (originally proposed by Emil Post), this extension will be conserva-
tive. By contrast, Prior’s way of introducing “tonk” allows precisely the addition of
a new deducibility-­statement that does not contain “tonk”; namely, “A├ B.” This is
not consistent with the completeness claim above, and hence the extension is not
conservative.
Belnap claims that it is only by failing to see the restriction provided by the
antecedently given context of deducibility that Prior can argue that the illegitimacy
of “tonk” undermines an inferentialist account of the logical connectives. Once we
make clear what the antecedently given context is, we can see that the illegitimacy
of “tonk” does not undercut the (correct) idea that logical connectives are defined
in terms of deducibility. What it does undercut is just the (wrongheaded) idea that
such definition occurs in vacuo, without any preconception of what it is to deduce
one proposition from another.
Now let us consider how the Tractarian conception of inference and repre-
sentation is related to Belnap’s account. In order to get clear about this, we have

87
to think harder about two intimately related issues that arise as soon as one views
Belnap’s argument through Tractarian spectacles. The first issue is this: In precisely
what sense is the “antecedently” given context of deducibility antecedently given?
What, exactly, does it mean to say that Gentzen’s universally valid deduction state-
ments do not involve any special connectives? In what sense can we view the con-
nectives as “introduced” only “after” those deductive patterns are in place?
The second issue is the following. Belnap says Gentzen’s axiom and rules gov-
ern the use of sentences. This means that Gentzen’s structural rules must assume
some notion of sentential identity. Indeed, this is clear already from the simple
axiom, “A├ A.” To understand the axiom we must understand what it is to say that
a certain sign written to the left of a deduction sign is an inscription of the same
sentence as the sign written to the right of the deduction sign. In particular, we
need to understand what identity criteria Belnap will have to presuppose if his
account is going to do the sort of work he wants it to do.
The importance of these two issues becomes clear once it is noticed that if the
notion of sentence that is assumed in Gentzen’s axiom and rules is the Tractarian
notion of a true-­or-­false description of the world—­the Tractarian notion of a
proposition, a Satz—­then it will be utterly misleading to say, as Belnap does, that
the context specified by the axiom and rules is given antecedently to the subse-
quent introduction of specific connectives. As we have already seen, the Tractarian
notion of a proposition is such that no wedge can be driven between the identifi-
cation even of elementary propositions and the availability of the whole of logic.
According to early Wittgenstein, standard logical notation makes it seem as if it is
the connectives that bring with them the machinery of logic, but in fact all of this
machinery is in place as soon as elementary propositions are used to assert that
such-­and-­such is the case.
Now it is of course true that the validity of certain deductive patterns is
visible even at a level of abstraction where the particular logical structure of the
premises and of the conclusion is not specified. For example, no matter what
particular logical structure a proposition has, you can always deduce it from
itself; if one and the same proposition occurs twice among the premises in a
valid inference then you can always delete one occurrence of it without making
the inference invalid; and so on. Gentzen’s rules can be seen as specifying such
patterns of inference at this very high level of abstraction. This is no problem for
early Wittgenstein.
What is doubtful, from a Tractarian viewpoint, is the further thought that
Gentzen’s rules somehow specify an initially given core of deducibility relations
that gets extended when the connectives are added. Against this sort of idea, early
Wittgenstein would claim that the very talk of deducing a proposition from itself,
or of the double occurrence of one and the same proposition among the prem-
ises of an inference, makes clear sense only if the whole of logic is already in
place. Otherwise, we are no longer talking about propositions, and, hence, not of
deducibility.

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 This means that from the Tractarian viewpoint, what Belnap calls a conser-
vative extension is not an extension at all. Rather, it is just a matter of spelling out
in some further detail the logic already presupposed by the very notion of propo-
sition that must be taken for granted if Gentzen’s rules are to be taken as dealing
with inferential patterns. And what Belnap calls a “non-­conservative extension” is
not an extension either. Rather, to accept such an “extension” means leaving the
domain of logic and of meaningful language use altogether. It means to start doing
something completely different from inferring and describing—­such as, perhaps,
decorating wallpaper with ink marks.
Thus, from a Tractarian viewpoint, there is a deep similarity between Belnap’s
and Stevenson’s seemingly antagonistic conceptions. Stevenson thinks an answer
to Prior’s challenge requires a distinction between sound and unsound rules of
inference, thereby suggesting that activities governed by the latter sort of rules
are indeed inferences, albeit somehow illegitimate ones. As we saw, Wittgenstein
thinks these notions of unsoundness and illegitimacy make no sense. Someone
who is “following unsound rules of inference” is not trafficking in propositions
at all, and whatever he is doing it is not a matter of inferring. Belnap, on his side,
thinks an answer to Prior’s challenge requires a distinction between conserva-
tive and non-­conservative extensions, thereby suggesting that there is some sort
of continuity, albeit an illegitimate one, between the practice that is captured
by Gentzen’s system and the practice you get if you “extend” the system non-­
conservatively. From early Wittgenstein’s viewpoint, this “extension” just means
that what you do is no longer logic.
Another way of describing what early Wittgenstein would see as the simi-
larity between Stevenson and Belnap is to say that they both want to meet Prior’s
challenge by issuing restrictions on what constitutes proper logical behavior.
Wittgenstein thinks the very idea of such restrictions is based on a misunder-
standing. He would claim that what Stevenson and Belnap think of as improper
logical behavior just isn’t logical behavior at all. Nor is there anything illegitimate
about it: we are perfectly free, say, to decorate wallpaper with patterns of ink marks,
if we like. There is nothing that needs to be forbidden here, and hence no restric-
tions to be made. Logic takes care of itself.
According to early Wittgenstein, then, Belnap is wrong to think that Gentzen’s
rules and axioms by themselves can capture a conception—­even a preconception—­of
deducibility. From a Tractarian viewpoint, to say that a sentence is deducible from
others—­as opposed to saying, for example, that writing down a certain concate-
nation of sign-­designs below some other concatenations of sign-­designs is to pro-
duce a permitted pattern of wallpaper decoration—­means to work with a notion
of a sentence as an already meaningful, true-­or-­false, entity. And to work with such
a notion of a sentence is already to have introduced the whole of logic. So, accord-
ing to the author of the Tractatus, the balancing act attempted by Belnap—­to claim
to have access to a genuine notion of deducibility without yet having introduced
the connectives—­just cannot succeed.

89
 To what extent is this Tractarian objection justified? That is a difficult question
to answer. Let us begin by noticing the static, once-­and-­for-­all character of the
Tractarian distinction between, on the one hand,
(i) language use taking place within logical space: genuine inference
and description trafficking in true-­or-­false pictures of the world,

and, on the other hand,

(ii) non-­logical scribbling: a more or less regulated production of empty
shapes, ink marks.

What characterizes the Tractarian way of making this distinction is precisely

the conception that the whole of logic is given as soon as there is a true-­or-­false
description of the world and the corresponding general conception of what a
description, a Satz, is. This view of logical conduct as in this sense a fundamentally
homogenous, once-­and-­for-­all demarcated form of activity makes it seem as if
everything which does not fit the Tractarian conception of what logic is will have
to be void of any descriptive and inferential force whatsoever. An activity must
either fully live up to the Tractarian preconception of what logic amounts to or
be classified as a mere game with empty scribbles—­mere wallpaper decoration,
so to speak. No room is left for the possibility of activities that do not fulfill all
the Tractarian requirements but which can nonetheless be seen as continuations
and developments of our established conceptions of description, inference, logic,
and language. According to the Tractatus, no such logico-­linguistic development
is conceivable: what might appear as an instance of it will, in the end, either be
revealed as fulfilling all the old Tractarian requirements after all (and as owing its
descriptive and inferential force to the features identified in those requirements),
or it will have to be classified as mere scribbling.
Can Belnap’s account of deducibility and his distinction between conservative
and non-­conservative extensions be read as an attempt to free us from such a static
view, by offering a notion of how logic can be genuinely dynamic while still reject-
ing the lax, “anything goes” form of conventionalist inferentialism against which
Prior’s “tonk”-­example is directed? After all, the conception suggested by Belnap
does seem to involve the two ingredients which are necessary for the successful
navigation between the Scylla of static Tractarianism and the Charybdis of logical
anarchy. On the one hand, it seems to allow for some open-­endedness with regard
to the possible development of logic. On the other hand, by acknowledging that
such development never occurs in vacuo, but has to start from some preconcep-
tion of what it is to deduce one proposition from another, it also seems to steer free
of the opposite anarchic threat.
Worries that Belnap does not succeed in this endeavor—­or that this sort of
endeavor is not even his to begin with—­arise when one sees him making remarks
such as the following:
It is good to keep in mind that the question of the existence of a connec-
tive having such and such properties is relative to our characterization

90
 of deducibility. If we had initially allowed A├ B, there would have been
no objection to tonk, since the extension would then have been conser-
vative. Also, there would have been no inconsistency had we omitted
from our characterization of deducibility the rule of transitivity. (Belnap
1962, 133)

Several commentators have argued that Belnap is here spoiling his case against Prior,
since he makes it seem as if he cannot avoid precisely the sort of arbitrariness or
overly lax conventionalist inferentialism that the “tonk”-­example undermines. After
all, Belnap is suggesting that we could have had a notion of deducibility—­recognizable
as a notion of deducibility, albeit different from the one we actually happen to have—­
such that any sentence B would be deducible from any other sentence A, and that
our not having such a notion is just a matter of choice or perhaps ingrained habit.
This seems very similar to the sort of idea that Prior rejected and ridiculed.
Hence, even commentators sympathetic to Belnap want to correct him at this
point. Consider Steven Wagner’s objection that
the fact that there is no such connective as “tonk” has to do with the
truth about deducibility, not, as Belnap seems to suggest, with our beliefs.
As long as “├” means deducibility, it is nonsense to suppose that the
existence of a connective satisfying [Prior’s rules for the use of “tonk”]
depends on our characterization of ├. As long as it is not up to us what
follows from what (except trivially due to our power to change the mean-
ings of words), it is similar nonsense to speak of our “allowing A├ B.”
We can, of course, falsely believe that A├ B, but that will not help the
definition of “tonk.” (Wagner 1981, 291)

According to Wagner, however, Belnap’s confusing the truth about deducibility with
what we believe about deducibility is just a minor shortcoming with little bearing
on his main argument:
Fortunately, Belnap’s error (which we might trace to an overly formal-
istic viewpoint) is easily patched up without damage to the rest of his
article. The claims I have just criticized can be dropped; what remains
is the observation that [the rules for “tonk”] are jointly unsatisfiable.
Belnap’s general response to Prior could then be that while we can
expect contradictions to flow from an unsatisfiable definition, there is
no reason to throw out the satisfiable definitions of similar form. (Ibid.)

Early Wittgenstein’s reaction to this would be to say that Belnap’s error is not as
easily amended as Wagner suggests. He would agree with Wagner that the error
can be traced to an “overly formalistic viewpoint,” but he would argue that this
sort of bad formalism goes to the heart of Belnap’s project, as it must be inher-
ent in the very attempt to conceive of deducibility as a notion of which we can
have a grip before we have introduced the truth-­operations. More precisely, early
Wittgenstein would claim that Belnap’s viewpoint is “overly formalistic” precisely
in the sense that it detaches inference from representation, and thus makes it seem
as if units somehow less rich than full-­fledged, true-­or-­false descriptions can func-
tion as premises and conclusions in deductions. According to Wittgenstein, such

91
bad formalism, strictly thought through, makes it impossible to understand why
there could not be radically different antecedently given contexts of deducibility,
contexts that even allow A├ B—­just as there are no limitations on how different
various systems for how to decorate wallpaper can be.
Notice, however, that this criticism presupposes the characteristically Tractarian
conception of what a proposition, a Satz, is. In particular, it presupposes not only
that propositions are logical units (rather than mere shapes or ink marks), but that
the relevant notion of “logical unit” is such that any proposition carries with it the
whole of logic. If we reject this Tractarian supposition, there seems to be no imme-
diate connection between the notion of deducibility as something that might get
extended in various ways, and the sort of bad formalism characterized by a detach-
ment of inference from representation. Rather than detaching inference from rep-
resentation, it seems as if we could free both inference and representation from the
static strictures invoked by the Tractatus, and think of them in non-­static, open-­
ended terms—­as mutually dependent yet dynamic phenomena. This would be
to rethink the very concepts of proposition and logic along similar lines, making
the individuation criteria for propositions a dynamic yet still logical matter. Even
if this would be a rejection of the very idea of Tractarian Sätze, it would retain
the conception of inference and representation as mutually dependent, together
with the idea of propositions as fundamentally logical units the identification of
which could not occur prior to clarifying their role in inferences qua true-­or-­false
descriptions of how things are.
It is difficult to decide if Belnap’s response to Prior’s “tonk”-­example can be plau-
sibly construed along such lines. The passage quoted earlier, where Belnap seems to
say that our antecedently given context of deducibility could have been such that
A├ B were allowed and that there would then have been no objection against “tonk,”
certainly suggests that his inferentialism involves a detachment of inference from
representation, making him ultimately defenseless against Prior. On the other hand,
perhaps this passage can be seen as an unfortunate lapse which is better disregarded
in favor of an interpretation which ascribes to him no such detachment.
Pursuing this issue is beyond the scope of the present paper. I brought up
Belnap only to shed light on early Wittgenstein’s conception, and to identify one
of its blind spots. I think the identification of this blind spot is crucial for a proper
understanding of the later, post-­Tractarian development of Wittgenstein’s views. I
shall end this paper by saying something very brief and incomplete about what it
is in his early conception of logic that is still retained in his later works, and what
it is that is thrown overboard.

V. AFTER THE TRACTATUS

Which notion is the more primitive when it comes to the functioning of the logical
connectives: representation or inference? In this paper, I have argued that early

92
Wittgenstein’s answer is neither. Instead, he takes representation and inference to
be equally basic and mutually dependent with regard to how the connectives work.
If we define “representationalism” as the view that representation has explanatory
priority, and “inferentialism” as the view that inference has explanatory priority,
then early Wittgenstein rejects both representationalism and inferentialism as
involving a misguided aspiration to separate two notions that belong together.
For early Wittgenstein, then, the notions of inference and representation
interlock—­and they interlock precisely in the notion of a proposition, a Satz. The
individuation of a proposition, and thus the identification of two concrete propo­
sitional signs as belonging to one and the same proposition, requires logic—­it
requires seeing how the proposition is inferentially related to other propositions.
And seeing this is also to see the proposition as a representation of a possible
state of affairs, as a true-­or-­false description of the world: to be a true-­or-­false
description and to be a piece in the game of logical inference are two sides of the
same coin.
This is why early Wittgenstein would resist the idea that in order to avoid the
sort of logical anarchy illustrated by “tonk,” we need to invoke restrictions on what
is to count as proper logical behavior. Such restrictions will seem to be needed only
if one thinks that those units to which the rules of logic apply can be identified
extra-­logically, in merely orthographic terms—­whereas it is Wittgenstein’s point
that the rules of logic apply to propositions only qua intrinsically true-­or-­false
units, and that it is only through logic that the identification of such units can
occur. Logical law and order are, so to speak, essentially built into the propositions
themselves qua true-­or-­false descriptions, and there is no such thing as imposing
logical order from without on a descriptively inert raw material of mere shapes or
ink marks.
As I have emphasized, early Wittgenstein’s way of spelling out this viewpoint
is tied to the specifically Tractarian notions of language and logic, according to
which logic is exhausted by the truth-­operations of the propositional calculus and
any true-­or-­false description can be seen as generated by the successive applica-
tion of such operations to logically independent elementary propositions. I have
identified an important sense in which this is an essentially static and closed con-
ception. According to this sort of view, any elementary proposition, simply as a
true-­or-­false description of the world, carries with it the whole of logic, and there
is no room for genuine logical variety and development.
In sections 3 and 4, I suggested that this static Tractarian conception can be
abandoned in favor of a dynamic and open-­ended one which does leave room
for logical variety and development. Importantly, I also suggested that this sort
of dynamic conception can retain the Tractarian idea that neither representation
nor inference should be given explanatory priority when it comes to understand-
ing the function of logical terms. What I want to suggest in this final section
is that Wittgenstein’s post-­Tractarian writings involves an attempt to develop
such an alternative, non-­static viewpoint. Thus, the difference between early and

93
later Wittgenstein is not that early Wittgenstein is a representationalist and later
Wittgenstein an inferentialist. On the contrary, the rejection of both represen-
tationalism and inferentialism, as defined above, is a common theme in all his
writings, early and late. The relevant shift is a quite different one, from a static
and closed to a dynamic and open-­ended conception of what logic and language
might be.
At the time when he wrote the Tractatus, Wittgenstein appears to have thought
that what he had to say about logic was a necessary development of a very obvious
and very simple observation: Any meaningful description of the world purports to
state that things are thus-­and-­so; and either things are as we describe them or they
are not. At the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s, his reflections on
color exclusion, generality, and other related difficulties made him realize that the
Tractarian conception was not as innocent as he had thought. Rather than being
based on a careful scrutiny of how we actually proceed when we describe things
and perform inferences, he now began to see it as an imposed requirement based
on an a priori fantasy of how description and inference must function.
Invoking the notion of family resemblance, later Wittgenstein tries to
undermine this Tractarian fantasy. According to him, the many different things
we call “descriptions,” “propositions,” instances of “linguistic” and “inferential”
behavior, and so on, are related to each other in many different ways, and it is
because of these relationships that we call them “descriptions,” “propositions,”
“inferences,” and so on. Importantly, this is not just to make a static point about
the presently surveyable use of those words. Rather, Wittgenstein is remind-
ing us of the open-­endedness of this use. The notion of family resemblance is
used to say something about the unforeseeable dynamics of linguistic practice.
Hence, to say that our concept of a proposition is a family resemblance concept
is not to suggest, say, that it is possible to capture by something like a disjunctive
definition to the effect that something is a proposition if and only if it has at
least some of the properties f1, f2, f3, . . . , fn. It is to make a much more radical
claim, namely, that there is no such closed list of properties—­that there is no
definition in that sense. We can give examples, point out differences—­but then
we have to go on from there:
But haven’t we got a concept of what a proposition is, of what we take
“proposition” to mean?—­Yes; just as we also have a concept of what we
mean by “game.” Asked what a proposition is—­whether it is another
person or ourselves that we have to answer—­we shall give examples
and these will include what one may call inductively defined series of
propositions. This is the kind of way in which we have such a concept
as “proposition.” (Wittgenstein 1967, §135)

This might seem to make later Wittgenstein vulnerable to the threat of logical
anarchy. From where can he now muster the resources to reject the introduction of
“tonk” into logic? As I pointed out in my discussion of Belnap in section 4, however,
to abandon static Tractarianism is not to think that logical development occurs

94
in vacuo. On the contrary, the notion of family resemblance serves to emphasize
precisely the necessary (if unpredictable) continuity of conceptual development.
Arguably, then, later Wittgenstein is still in a position to deliver a sort of answer
to Prior similar to the Tractarian one described at the end of section 2—­albeit
freed from the sort of static Tractarianism that he has now abandoned. More pre-
cisely, Wittgenstein can respond to Prior as follows. We all sense the absurdity of
the “tonk”-­example. Why? Well, because there is a sharp discontinuity between the
envisaged use of “tonk” and what we recognize as logical inference. Indeed, it is
clear that the very use of the “tonk”-­example as a reductio of inferentialism trades
precisely on this ability of ours to perceive a discontinuity at this point. In other
words, the worry about the threatening logical breakdown is itself a manifestation
of the fact that we do have a perfectly clear sense that, whatever logic is, it is not like
that. And if we take this sense of absurdity seriously, it seems that we would have
to say that the only way of making the use of “tonk” continuous with recognizably
logical conduct—­the only way of making the envisaged rules for “tonk” recogniz-
able as rules of logic—­is to think of the introduction rule and the elimination rule
as rules for two different connectives. The idea that these two rules could be logical
rules for one and the same sentential connective is just out of the question. This is
not to delimit proper from improper logic: it is just to say something about what
logic is.
Importantly, this response can work only if it carries with it the idea that the
units on which the rules of logic operate are not individuated extra-­logically—­
say, as merely orthographic units. If two occurrences of the orthographic pat-
tern “p tonk q” were instances of the same logical unit simply in virtue of being
instances of the same orthographic pattern, then, clearly, it would be perfectly
possible to think of the introduction rule and the elimination rules for “tonk” as
rules for one and the same connective. However, Wittgenstein never abandons
the idea that the notions of “proposition” and “language” that are of importance if
we want to understand what it means to describe things and perform inferences,
are logical notions. As he puts it in a 1937 manuscript, “Logic, it may be said,
shews us what we understand by ‘proposition’ and by ‘language’ ” (Wittgenstein
1978, I–137).
But this also suggests that later Wittgenstein retained the idea that the notion
of proposition is one in which the notion of inference interlocks with the notions
of representation, description, and truth. Indeed, if the logical notion of propo-
sition that Wittgenstein is talking about in the 1937 passage just quoted were a
notion of proposition that could be understood exclusively in terms of inference
rather than representation, then it would remain utterly unclear what sort of entity
such a proposition is really supposed to be and how it could be a “logical” unit at
all. After all, logical inference is precisely truth-­preserving, and to account for it
without bringing in this truth-­preserving aspect from the very start seems impos-
sible without reducing it again to the manipulation of extra-­logically individuated
units (shapes, sign-­designs, or whatever)—­a manipulation whose truth-­preserving

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character must now be somehow guaranteed at a later stage of meta-­linguistic
interpretation, by externally imposed restrictions on which inferences are to be
counted as proper and which are to be counted as improper. If we really are to
think about the units we manipulate in logic as logical units rather than mere
orthographic entities, their being capable of being true or false thus appears just
as essential and basic as—­and indeed indissolubly tied up with—­their capacity to
figure in inferences.
It is far beyond the scope of this paper to prove that what I have just said is
in fact in line with Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of logic and language. My aim
here is just to indicate the possibility of seeing his development otherwise than in
terms of the abandonment of an early representationalist conception in favor of a
later inferentialist one. To substantiate my proposal just a little further, I would like
to round off by saying a few words about one of the paragraphs in Philosophical
Investigations that might seem to go against my reading, namely, the notoriously
difficult §136.
§136 contains a discussion of the Tractarian way of stating the general form of
the proposition: “This is how things are.” Wittgenstein argues that giving this as the
general form of the proposition is the same as giving a definition to the effect that
a proposition is whatever can be true or false. And then he goes on to claim that
“to say that a proposition is whatever can be true or false amounts to saying: we
call something a proposition when in our language we apply the calculus of truth
functions to it” (original italics).
On a first reading, this may already sound vaguely inferentialist; and the rest
of the paragraph is easily read precisely as an inferentialist reversal of a supposedly
Tractarian form of representationalism. Wittgenstein continues:
Now it looks as if the definition—­a proposition is whatever can be true
or false—­determined what a proposition was, by saying: what fits the
concept “true,” or what the concept “true” fits, is a proposition. So it is as
if we had a concept of true and false, which we could use to determine
what is and what is not a proposition. What engages with the concept
of truth (as with a cogwheel), is a proposition.
But this is a bad picture. It is as if one were to say “The king in chess
is the piece that one can check.” But this can mean no more than that in
our game of chess we only check the king. Just as the proposition that
only a proposition can be true or false can say no more than that we only
predicate “true” and “false” of what we call a proposition. And what a
proposition is is in one sense determined by the rules of sentence for-
mation (in English for example) and in another sense by the use of the
sign in the language-­game. And the use of the words “true” and “false”
may be among the constituent parts of this game; and if so it belongs to
our concept “proposition” but does not “fit” it.

On a more careful reading, however, it seems quite arguable that the criticism
Wittgenstein makes of his early self in this paragraph is not a matter of rejecting a
representationalist conception in favor of an inferentialist one. In fact, the question
which of these notions is explanatory prior never comes up in any evident way.

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Wittgenstein’s focus is on the issue of propositional identity, and nowhere in this
paragraph does he question the idea that the notions of truth and falsity—­and,
by implication, the notions of representation and description—­are central to an
important conception of what a proposition is. On the contrary, he emphasizes
that these notions play a constitutive role for such a conception. So, if anything, he
points out that if we want to understand this conception of what a proposition is—­
and if this conception of a proposition is going to be one which really matters in
relation to language use as we know it (rather than to some a priori fantasy about
what language must be like)—­we need to conceive of it as in a sense even more
intimately related to the notions of truth and description than what the author of
the Tractatus had proposed.
What I am proposing is that the criticism of the Tractatus delivered in §136
can be rendered as follows. By invoking a fantasy of what describing the world
must amount to, the author of the Tractatus unwittingly (and in direct opposi-
tion to his actual intentions) separated the notions of truth and description from
anything that we would recognize as part of real-­life language use. This, in effect,
meant that what he took to be an innocent matter of deep-­level analysis amounted
to a requirement that language be made to fit an externally imposed ideal. The
notions of truth and of “describing how things are,” thus abstracted from what
actually happens in real-­life descriptive and inferential activity, became like a
“cogwheel” with which something must be made to engage in order to count as a
proposition.
Wittgenstein’s italics mark the liberation from this requirement: “we call
something a proposition when in our language we apply the calculus of truth
functions to it.” If I am right, this is not a statement of an inferentialist conception.
Rather, it is a reminder of how the notions of inference and representation inter-
lock in the notion of a proposition, without one being explanatory prior to the
other. As such, it formulates an insight which is central already in the Tractatus.
What the italics indicate, however, is that this Tractarian insight has now been
freed from the preconception that the application of the calculus of truth func-
tions will have to adapt to the design of Tractarian analysis, according to which
all logical complexity can be understood in terms of the successive application
of truth-­operations on logically independent elementary propositions. As color
exclusion and countless other instances of real-­life language use show, descrip-
tion and inference as we know them just do not follow any such simplistic and
uniform pattern.2

Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the University of Chicago, the
University of East Anglia, and the University of Southern Denmark. Thanks to the
members of these audiences for valuable suggestions and criticisms.

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 NOTES

1. I talk of logical “complexity” here as a feature of non-­elementary propositions, in contrast with the
“non-­complex” character of elementary propositions. There is, of course, a different and equally
important sense in which already an elementary proposition is logically “complex”; namely, in
contrast with the logical non-­complexity of a name.
2. Of course, there is more to say about §136, in particular about the end of the paragraph which I
left out in the above quotation. There, Wittgenstein says things that might seem to bring worries
about “tonk” back to life. He suggests that the way in which the use of “true” and “false” belong
to our concept “proposition” is analogous to the way “check belongs to our concept of the king
in chess (as so to speak a constituent part of it).” And he continues: “To say that check did not
fit our concept of the pawns, would mean that a game in which pawns were checked, in which,
say, the players who lost their pawns lost, would be uninteresting or stupid or too complicated or
something of the kind.”
The worry, then, might be that Wittgenstein would want to say something analogous about
“tonk”—­namely, that, in the end, we refrain from accepting “tonk” simply because such a game
would be uninteresting or stupid or something of the kind. A full discussion of this worry goes
beyond the scope of this paper. Let me just say that I find the suggested analogy implausible. Even
if it is clearly one of Wittgenstein’s aims in §136 and in many other passages to resist the philo-
sophical tendency to make fetishes out of notions such as “truth,” “description,” and “inference,”
I do not think he would deny that the activities of description, truth-­telling, and inference are
much too central to our lives to be properly conceived as merely “interesting.” Indeed, if the read-
ing I have presented in this paper is correct, it is in fact quite unclear, according to Wittgenstein,
in what sense the use of “tonk” offers an alternative to these activities as we know them. Would
the idea be that decorating wallpaper is less interesting and more stupid than describing and
inferring? But why would that matter? And could not wallpaper decoration be quite interesting
and intellectually demanding in various ways? Or, is the alternative supposed to be that of living
a life where one never makes descriptions and never draws inferences, but only engages in empty
scribbling? Well, that certainly seems like a pretty uninteresting and stupid mode of existence,
but it would surely be implausible to suggest that this can somehow account for the fact that we
describe how things are and draw inferences. After all, we learn to describe and infer without ever
taking into consideration whether it would be “interesting” to do so. And I find it hard to imagine
that Wittgenstein would want to deny this point. Thus I take it that, whatever Wittgenstein is try-
ing to say at the end of §136, it will not undermine my account of how he would react to Prior’s
objection against inferentialism.

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