Ludwig Wittgenstein o wewnętrznym stosunku odwzorowania między językiem a światem

The paper is devoted to the interpretation of proposition 4.014 of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, which tackles „the…internal relation of depicting that holds between language and the world”. Three different approaches to interpreting Wittgenstein’s early work are distinguished. First, there is a metaphysical approach in which the “internal relation” is to be understood as a substantial relation of isomorphism between language and the world. Secondly, there is an anti-metaphysical approach which denies that Wittgenstein intended to offer any explanation of how language connects with the world. In this account the “internal relation” does not have anything genuinely relational. It is only by using a sign with sense that both the logical form of a symbol and the logical form of what it signifies are simultaneously constituted. Thirdly, there is a so-called therapeutic interpretation in which observations on an internal relation, as well as the whole discourse referring to correspondence, are no more than a reflection of how we actually employ expressions and have nothing to do with the metaphysical problem of the relation between language and the world. The paper endorses the anti-metaphysical approach and elaborates its argument by resorting to the notion of “logical space” and including an interpretation of 1.13 (“The facts in logical space are the world”). It is argued that the concept of “the world” and, likewise, those of “fact” and “language”, are formal concepts which, as such, constitute conditions of all representation.