Simplicity or singularity? Two conceptions of object in the Tractatus logico-philosophicus

Abstract

In this paper, I argue, on the basis of textual evidence, that two conceptions of object instead of one are present in the Tractatus. One of them, based on the notions of a complete analysis of meaningful sentences and of absolute simplicity, was explicitly endorsed by Wittgenstein on purely logical grounds as the official doctrine of the book while the other, based on the notions of a multidimensional formal analysis and of singularity, was noncommittally entertained by him in the form of an analogy between the object’s relation to its ‘surrounding’ logical space (of states of affairs) and the relation of a phenomenal item to the specific sense modality it belongs to and in which it is located. Armed with this distinction, I attempt to clarify the debate around the issue of the exemplarity of certain categories of things (particulars, universals) with respect to the logical notion of a Tractarian object. I also give my interpretation of how Wittgenstein deals in the Tractatus with the problem of the incompatibility of certain color ascriptions, and of the related episode of the abandonment of logical atomism in the early so-called ‘transitional period’.