Logical Positivism- Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Tractatus

Logical positivism is philosophy that combines empiricism with a version of rationalism. It is an analytic philosophy. The Vienna circle contained many logical positivists, including Ludwig Wittgenstein who wrote his book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicua which was about rational thinking, it contained a series of statements about logic and his theories on it, each containing footnotes which become longer and longer as he tries to explain the previous footnote. He believed that language was everything, although his definition of language was broad. He believed that death was the end of facts and that mystical things were things that could not be explained.

He felt that language was of great importance and that the end is with silence, he felt that you could not have an idea with out having language, and without language things would not exist. However he did decide that language was pointless and in his last book he said that he had closed the book on philosophy and had covered everything, therefore no more needed to be said, he therefore spent a period of time where he turned up to lectures without speaking.

Wittgenstein felt that emoting had no truth value and was just something that humans needed to do to take a break, allowing the mind to separate emotive talk and rational talk. An example of this would be attending a football match, where there is very little logic needed and the game is full of emotion rather than rational thinking. Emoting has no truth value according to Wittgenstein as it cannot be verified as true or false. He felt that truth is the structure of language and creates pictures which could be something new found, without the words to describe the new thing it isn't a thing at all.

We learn words because of culture different cultures and different parts of society have different language games, which take into account not only words but gestures and context as well.  A language game can only come about however if more than one person understands it, one person cannot have their own language. There are different language games within different aspects of society such as football language, journo language etc and are only understood by people in that section of society.  We speak how we do because of what we do according to Wittgenstein. He also felt that language was needed and necessary and it was a punishment to be alone or to not have someone to speak to.

A good example of controlling language is George Orwell's 1984 Where language is brought down to news speak so that only one phrase would be needed; 'I love big brother'