Philosophy in the modern world a new history of western philosophy, volume 4 (new history of western philosophy) ( PDFDrive ) (1) 78

PEIRCE TO STRAWSON A.J Ayer, who popularised Logical Positivism in Britain in the 1930s independent of every other elementary proposition This was clearly not true of the positivists’ protocol statements: the truth-value of ‘This is a red patch’ is not independent of the truth-value of ‘This is a blue patch’ Reflection on this led Wittgenstein to question the distinction between elementary and non-elementary propositions and to give up the idea that the ultimate elements of language were names designating simple objects In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein came to believe, he had grossly oversimplified the relation between language and the world The connection between the two was to consist in two features only: the linking of names to objects, and the match or mismatch of propositions to facts This, he now thought, was a great mistake Words look like each other, in the same way as a clutch looks very like a foot-brake; but words differ from each other in function as much as the mechanisms operated by the two pedals Wittgenstein now emphasized that language was interwoven with the world in many different ways: and to refer to these tie-ups he coined the expression ‘language-game’ 61