THE PICTURE THEORY

WITTGENSTEIN

INMACULADA RODRÍGUEZ RUIZ.

PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE
UNIVERSITY OF WEST BOHEMIA
MGR. STEFANIE DACH
2021 – 2022
1. INTRODUCTION.

In this essay I am going to talk about the famous philosopher Ludwig

Wittgenstein and his theory about how language is related to the world called Picture
Theory. Then, I will exemplify it with a text from the first chapter of the book Alice in
Wonderland. I have chosen this text because it has a lot of fantasy and reality mixed that
makes easier to clarify the theory.

2. THE PICTURE THEORY OF LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN.

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was a philosopher and linguistic Austrian

during de first middle of XX century. We can fix him inside the analytical philosophy
and the logical positivism. He did a lot of research in Language and published a famous
book called The TractatusLogico-Philosophicus.

Trying to find an explanation of how the world and the language are connected
he developed the Picture Theory. For this author, the language has the aim to represent
the world giving us an image. Our language and our thoughts only make sense because
they represent things in the world.

The picture theory is mainly based on the fact that the reality, the world, is the
group of all the facts, while the language constitutes the whole propositions, each of
which describes a state of affairs in the world.1

To determine if a sentence is true or false, we should first explain the difference

between a name and a proposition. The name inside the proposition is the substitute of
the object named. They designate the simple, non-contingent objects of the world.

1
Tanius Karam (2007) “Language and Communication in Wittgenstein”. Reason and Word (57), p. 2

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 Wittgentein specifically uses the term «simple names». Our language expresses
concepts, like “pain”, “plus” or “red”2

Then we have propositions. For Wittgenstein propositions must be composed of

self-names designating objects that cannot be captured by descriptions of properties. If
the referents of simple names, the ultimate objects of reality, have no properties, they
cannot change, and if they do not change, they are eternal.

The reason for this requirement resides in the fact that if meaning depends on
the changeable reference of objects, it will never be possible to establish it in a clear and
univocal way, because just as the properties of bodies change, so would the meaning of
our terms change.

On the other hand, what characterizes a proposition is having sense and

reference, both of them. A reference of a proposition is the fact that makes it true or false.
Otherwise, in order to a sentence could be said that is true or false, it is needed that it
makes sense. We cannot talk about truthiness if the sentence doesn’t have sense. And the
sense of the sentences is connected with the linguistic conditions like grammar,
vocabulary, syntaxis, etc.

But, what happens with a false proposition? Simply, it is a proposition that

doesn’t relate to any fact. And, however, a false proposition could have sense. While a
name has no significance if his reference doesn’t exist, a proposition doesn’t lose its sense
because of the fact that has no reference. This show us that the relation between the
proposition and the world is not based on naming, but on describing.

What does a proposition describe? A set of things or combination of objects that

could be possible but not necessarily true. This explains why the truthiness of a sentence

2
Saul A. Kripke (1982), Wittgenstein: On rules and Private Langauge. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.. p.107

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depends on the real world. If the sentence pictures a possible situation, then it will be true;
if the sentence doesn’t picture a possible situation like fantasy things, then it will be false.

So, what does it mean that a proposition is true or false? It is to delimitate a

possibility inside a range of possibilities. Like Wittgenstein said in the Tractatus, «To
delimitate a point in the logical space»3.

For example, the phrase «This rose is white» has sense because it enunciates a
possibility: the possibility that the rose and the color white could be combinate. To have
sense is, thus, determinate a possibility between others. In the case that this possibility
could exist, then the positive fact of the existence makes the proposition true; and if there
is not the chance that what we have described exist, then the no-existence of the
possibility will make the proposition false.

Another clue point to mention then are the tautologies. A proposition needs to
have the possibility of being false in order to make sense. If a proposition only could be
true, then it won’t describe anything. For this reason, the tautologies of logic have no
sense, because they are always going to be true.

Therefore, the only way to guarantee the stability of the meaning of our terms is
to dissociate the referents from all the changing aspects of the world and to postulate the
existence of immutable objects, not alterable in any way, which constitute a stable base
for meaning. Thus, in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein opted for a radical metaphysics that
affirmed the existence in the world of eternal and indestructible objects whose reality is
postulated as a guarantee that language and thought will be able to acquire content.

In conclusion, the aim of the Picture Theory is to show that the relation between
the language and the world besides on the fact of describing. For that reason, if the

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TLP, 3.4.

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language describes a possible situation, then it will be true, and if it does not, then it will
be completely false. This is the main point we are going to follow to analyze the next text.

3. TEXT TO COMMENT AND ANALYZE.

Following my Picture Theory from the Tractatus I am going to analyze part of

the first chapter of the book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland called Down the Rabbit-
Hole.

Starting with the title of the chapter, we can say it is true because it pictures a
completely possible situation. Rabbits and their rabbit-holes exist.

However, in the third paragraph we could find a false proposition: «or did Alice
think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, “Oh dear! Oh dear! I
shall be late!”» Have you ever seen a rabbit talking? I do not think so, this is because
rabbits are not able to talk. We can say they have their own way of communication, but
it is so far from talking using an articulate language, words, sentences, using grammar
and syntaxis. This sentence does not picture a possible situation because rabbits do not
talk, so that is the reason to say it is false.

An important thing to distinguish when we talk about these possibilities are the
differences between the single names and the propositions. To do it we are going to take
examples from the previous mentioned paragraph. On the one hand, a single name is a
word that designates and object, like the term «rabbit». It has something in the real world
they relate to, a rabbit itself, but it is not true or false because it’s not describing anything.
We need a composition of single names mixed with other kinds of words to determinate
truthiness.

On the other hand, when we talk about propositions, they have the characteristics
of having a reference but also having sense. For example, the sentence «or did Alice think

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it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself » could be analyzed because
it uses properly the grammar and syntaxis rules, so it makes sense. We can understand
perfectly what it says, apart from if it pictures a possible situation or not, that it doesn’t
because rabbits do not talk. But this is the condition we need to analyze the truthiness of
the language, propositions well structured. In this case the proposition makes sense, but
it is false because its reference doesn’t exist, we cannot find rabbits talking. However, a
single name needs to have a reference, the specific world needs to relate to something in
the world in order to make sense.

Exactly after we have the sentence «the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its
waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it
flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-
pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field
after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the
hedge».

Here, for example, we could a find a mix of true and false propositions. We start
saying that a rabbit takes out of his coat a watch and look at it, which is completely false
because it does not picture a possible situation; however, if we focus on the second part
of the sentence it describes a girl running behind a rabbit that pops down a rabbit-hole.

We can say this second part it is true because of the reason that it is possible we
can find in the real world a rabbit running and a girl behind it. There is a chance it could
happens. And I am not talking about if this has happened in real life or not, we do not
need that it happens to be true, we just need the chance that it could happens because it
pictures a possible situation.

These are the main clues to analyze a text with my Picture Theory. In the rest of
the chapter, you will find many other examples of real situations and invented ones that
will clarify you better my theory.

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4. BIBLIOGRAPHY.

KARAM , T (2007). “Language and Communication in Wittgenstein”. Reason and word.

57.

KRIPKE, A. S (1982). Wittgenstein: On rules and Private Language. Cambridge:

Harvard University Press.

MARRADES MILLET, J (1986). “Figuration and Language in the first Wittgenstein”.

In: Quaderns de Filosofia i Ciència. Valencia: Societat de Filosofia del País
Valencià, 185-188 pp.

WITTGENSTEIN, L (2002). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. London: Taylor and

Francis Book.