Wittgenstein Workshop: McManus

In his paper, "The Unity of Language and the Generality of Logic in the Early Wittgenstein", Denis McManus dealt with Wittgnestein's views on the relation of logic to the world and, in particular, his concern with the general form of the proposition. Distinguishing his account from that of Michael Potter and Peter Sullivan, who have been concerned to show how Wittgenstein's account of propositions deals with certain problems that arise from Russell's Theory of Types, Denis was concerned with the relation of the general form of the proposition to Wittgenstein's claim that there must be elementary propositions.

Contrasting the early and middle period Wittgenstein, in part in terms of whether the topic-neutrality of the logical constants is insisted upon, he argued that the early Wittgenstein's view rested on a dogmatic assumption that he later came to recognise and revise.