Page:Wittgenstein - Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922.djvu/53

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TRACTATUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS

propositional sign corresponds the configuration of the objects in the state of affairs.

3.22 In the proposition the name represents the object.

3.221 Objects I can only name. Signs represent them. I can only speak of them. I cannot assert them. A proposition can only say how a thing is, not what it is.

3.23 The postulate of the possibility of the simple signs is the postulate of the determinateness of the sense.

3.24 A proposition about a complex stands in internal relation to the proposition about its constituent part.

A complex can only be given by its description, and this will either be right or wrong. The proposition in which there is mention of a complex, if this does not exist, becomes not nonsense but simply false.

That a propositional element signifies a complex can be seen from an indeterminateness in the propositions in which it occurs. We know that everything is not yet determined by this proposition. (The notation for generality contains a prototype.)

The combination of the symbols of a complex in a simple symbol can be expressed by a definition.

3.25 There is one and only one complete analysis of the proposition.

3.251 The proposition expresses what it expresses in a definite and clearly specifiable way: the proposition is articulate.

3.26 The name cannot be analysed further by any definition. It is a primitive sign.

3.261 Every defined sign signifies via those signs by which it is defined, and the definitions show the way.

Two signs, one a primitive sign, and one defined by primitive signs, cannot signify in the
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