Early Wittgenstein on Judgement

In 'Notes on Logic' and the Tractatus Wittgenstein put forward different accounts of judgment sentences, both of which are attempts at finding a way through a dilemma. On one hand, 'A judges p' is not a truth-function of p and cannot express a relation between a subject and something named by p, since the sentence p is not a name for anything. On the other, p must occur as a complete sentence in the analysis of 'A judges that p'. It cannot be broken up into its components in the manner of Russell's multiple relation theory of judgment. This chapter shows how Wittgenstein's attempts at reconciling these competing demands are closely tied to the evolution of his views about elementary sentences from 'Notes on Logic' to the Tractatus. A larger aim is to shed light on the picture theory of meaning by showing how it developed out of the very different account of sense in 'Notes on Logic'.