Kevin C. Klement. “Putting Form Before Function: Logical Grammar in Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein”. Philosopher’s Imprint.
Abstract: The positions of Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein on the priority of complexes over (propositional) functions are sketched, challenging those who take the “judgment centered” aspects of the Tractatus to be inherited from Frege not Russell. Frege’s views on the priority of judgments are problematic, and unlike Wittgenstein’s. Russell’s views on these matters, and their development, are discussed in detail, and shown to be more sophisticated than usually supposed. Certain misreadings of Russell, including those regarding the relationship between propositional functions and universals, are exposed. Wittgenstein’s and Russell’s views on logical grammar are shown to be very similar. Russell’s type theory does not countenance types of genuine entities nor metaphysical truths that cannot be put into words, contrary to conventional wisdom. I relate this to the debate over “inexpressible truths” in the Tractatus. I lastly comment on the changes to Russell’s views brought about by Wittgenstein’s influence.
It is often interesting to show how close the works of the XIXth and early XXth century logicians and philosophers were to the modern (post-transformational grammar) way of doing Linguistics and particularly natural language semantics. They were concerned with natural language as well, not only artificial languages.
But methinks that there has been a tradition of using Wittgenstein’s works to defend ideas that were not part of the things he meant. I have heard linguists, who tried to attack Government and Binding, making all sorts of claims by reference to Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Language. But very few had the courage to write things attributing their claims to him.
Those, who have heard of Wittgenstein through these talks, might have formed wrong ideas about his work. That is why he is a Philosopher to be rediscovered.
PS: I have posted a link to this article in my blog, right after a link to a paper by Nakanishi.