Keywords
compositionality
Frege
Tractatus
Wittgenstein
How to Cite
Abstract
The Principle of Context (PCtxt) and the Principle of Compositionality (PCmp) only conflict when they are construed as claims about the origin of meanings. I will clarify this point by means of an historical survey into the treatment that PCtxt receives in Frege's Grundlagen and in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. I will argue that Frege actually introduces non-equivalent formulations of PCtxt generating an unstable notion of meaning when related with PCmp. The Tractatus solves this imbalance by assuming both the contextuality and the compositionality at the very core of the notion of meaning, thus by ruling out the claim of two separated –sensitive to collision– principles. My thesis is that in the stage of development of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein found a way to meet and fit together the tensions between PCtxt and PCmp emerging in Frege's philosophy of language and detected by latter commentators.This journal is registered under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License. Thus, this work may be reproduced, distributed, and publicly shared in digital format, as long as the names of the authors and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana are acknowledged. Others are allowed to quote, adapt, transform, auto-archive, republish, and create based on this material, for any purpose (even commercial ones), provided the authorship is duly acknowledged, a link to the original work is provided, and it is specified if changes have been made. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana does not hold the rights of published works and the authors are solely responsible for the contents of their works; they keep the moral, intellectual, privacy, and publicity rights.
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