Article

Peirce e Wittgenstein su parentesi e altri segni. Un contributo alla storia della filosofia della notazione / Peirce and Wittgenstein on Parentheses and Other Signs. A Contribution to the History of the Philosophy of Notation

by Francesco Bellucci

in Versus n. 120, Peirceana three. Sull’iconismo / On Iconism, pp.121-134

Abstract (english)

This paper narrates Peirce’s discovery of the truth of the proposition 5.4611 of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, according to which the signs for logical operations are punctuation marks. In Peirce’s Alpha graphs one single sign, the oval, fulfils two different offices (truth-function and collectional function). When Peirce presents the graphs in Baldwin’s Dictionary, he uses one single notational device: the parentheses. Therefore Alpha – this paper argues – constitutes a proof of the possibility of Tractatus 5.4611.