Philosophy and the Analysis of Language

Abstract

Both Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and Russell, advancing the philosophy of Logical Atomism, maintained that statements are, or purport to be, records of facts. Wittgenstein held that philosophers, by improperly interpreting language, create for themselves pseudoproblems, and that, to avoid confusion, we should throw statements into a form in which their true function, that of picturing facts, would be revealed more clearly and readily than it is in ordinary language.