A Challenge to Tractatus 4.062 and Two Types of Theories of Truth

Kensuke Ito

Kensuke Ito will be giving a talk entitled “A Challenge to Tractatus 4.062 and Two Types of Theories of Truth” at the Virtual International Consortium of Truth Research on October 26, 2020 at 10:00 am EDT.

Abstract: In 4.062 of Tractatus, Wittgenstein repudiates the possibility of ‘mak[ing] ourselves understood with false propositions just as we have done up until now with true ones’, because ‘a proposition is true if we use it to say that things stand in a certain way, and they do; and if by ‘p’ we mean ~p and things stand as we mean that they do, then, construed in the new way, ‘p’ is true and not false’. This paper challenges this conclusion by distinguishing two possible cases in which people exchange truth-apt information through false propositions. The first case presents a semantic option, where false propositions become true ‘construed in the new way’ while people aim at conveying truths, whereas the second case presents a pragmatic option, where false propositions remain false while people aim at falsehoods. Wittgenstein’s conclusion applies to the semantic option, but not to the pragmatic one.

If you are interested in attending, please email VICTRgroup@gmail.com for details about the zoom link and for a copy of the paper to be read in advance.

Kensuke Ito is a graduate student at University of Connecticut, who is interested in some of the central concepts in the analytic tradition such as truth, assertion, proposition, and their origins or precursors.

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