The place of facts in Pictorial Theory

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the role played by facts in the picture theory of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Indeed, such ‘theory’ claims that the proposition is a model of the facts. Thus, the analysis must work about the capacity that a proposition has to represent a fact and how a fact relates with the truth. So, our approach will be a philosophical analysis of the conditions of enunciation required by a meaning-ful discourse about the world. Hence, we aim to investigate what is the contribution made by the so called ‘picture theory’ to the realm of science and to the realm of philosophy, once that in the Tractatus Wittgenstein determines the limits of what can be said and what can be only shown. Consequently, the notion of ‘fact’ is fundamental to understand what is the ‘truth’ according to the Tractatus’ picture theory. And this seems to be relevant to the contemporary philosophy of language, as nowadays has prevailed a certain notion of truth as contingency rather than necessity. This interpretation is certainly a legacy of the Tractatus that was being built and modified by philosophers of language, including Wittgenstein himself in his last phase, that of the Philosophical Investigations.