Exclusion Problems and the Cardinality of Logical Space.

Wittgenstein's atomist picture, as embodied in his Tractatus, is initially very appealing. However, it faces the famous colour-exclusion problem. In this paper, I shall explain when the atomist picture can be defended (in principle) in the face of that problem; and, in the light of this, why the ato...

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Publicado en:Journal of Philosophical Logic Vol. 46; no. 6; pp. 611 - 624
Autor principal: Button, Tim
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Dec2017
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        au: Button, Tim
        affil: University of Cambridge , Cambridge UK
      su:
        Social marginality
        Atomism
        Cardinal virtues
        Rejection (Psychology)
        Reasoning
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          Social marginality
          Atomism
          Cardinal virtues
          Rejection (Psychology)
          Reasoning
      keyword:
        Atomist picture
        Color incompatibility
        Colour-exclusion
        Logical independence
        Logical space
        Ludwig Wittgenstein
        Sarah Moss
        Tractarian metaphysics
        Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
      ab: Wittgenstein's atomist picture, as embodied in his Tractatus, is initially very appealing. However, it faces the famous colour-exclusion problem. In this paper, I shall explain when the atomist picture can be defended (in principle) in the face of that problem; and, in the light of this, why the atomist picture should be rejected. I outline the atomist picture in Section 1. In Section 2, I present a very simple necessary and sufficient condition for the tenability (in principle) of the atomist picture. The condition is: logical space is a power of two. In Sections 3 and 4, I outline the colour-exclusion problem, and then show how the cardinality-condition supplies a response to exclusion problems. In Section 5, I explain how this amounts to a distillation of a proposal due to Moss (2012), which goes back to Carruthers (1990: 144-7). And in Section 6, I show how all this vindicates Wittgenstein's ultimate rejection of the atomist picture. The brief reason is that we have no guarantee that there are any solutions to a given exclusion problem but, if there are any, then there are far too many.
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    language: English
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