Publications

In this paper, we argue against Göran Sundholm’s claim that the Tractatus is the “finest exposition of realism in logic”. We do not directly criticize the basis of his reading, but try and put forward two aspects of the book that point in the other direction, antirealism. In both cases our arguments rely on later remarks which we claim only express ideas that were in nuce in the Tractatus. First, we claim that readings of the latter in terms of simple language–world relations should be replaced by a semiotic triad, and that the “method of projection” is the source of Wittgenstein’s later remarks on “verificationism”. Secondly, we present Wittgenstein’s explicitly antirealist account of arithmetical equations, for which no logical calculus applies. We conclude showing that this account brought Wittgenstein in 1929 closer to Brouwer’s “epistemic realism”, coupled with an “ontological idealism”, than Sundholm’s own standpoint, which is rather the coupling of “epistemic idealism” with “ontological Platonism”.

Marion, M. et Okada, M. (2024). Sundholm on Wittgenstein and Realism. Dans A. Klev (dir.), The Architecture and Archaeology of Modern Logic: Studies Dedicated to Göran Sundholm (p. 361-383). Cham : Springer Nature Switzerland.