What Is Logic?

HAO WANG Rockefeller

University, New York

Logic as an activity deals with the interplay or the dialectic, as

one thinks, between the known and the unknown, form and content,
or the formal and the intuitive. For this purpose it is useful to select
from what is taken to be known a universal part which remains
fixed throughout all particular instances of the interplay. The
propositions in such a universal part make up the logical truths. -
There are alternative answers to the question: What is to be required
of the concepts and the propositions of this universal part? Different
choices can be and have been made with regard to (a) the kind and
the degree of their universality, and (b) the degree of precision and
systematic character of their codification. These different choices
lead to different conceptions of logic, such as those of William of
Occam, Kant, Hegel, Frege, Brower, the early Wittgenstein, the
later Wittgenstein, and Gödel.
One problem is to find some frame within which one can make
explicit how these choices and their natural development lead to the
major different conceptions of logic in the literature. Historically
the books by Aristotle, collected together after his death under the
title Organon (general instrument), are commonly taken to be a sort
of definition, by extension and by implication, of the scope of what
goes under the label 'Logic'. They seem to include the beginnings of
all the different conceptions and different parts of logic.
The book Categories has the flavor of Kant's transcendental logic
and Hegel's logic. The book On Interpretation (or On Exposition)
touches on what is known as the philosophy of logic or the theory
of truth and meaning. The Prior Analytics has to do with a theory of
correct inferences, including some observations on modal logic.
The Posterior Analytics suggests a study of scientific methods. The
Topics may be seen as a treatment of the art of thinking. - It is not
easy (a) to formulate explicitly a unifying task of all the books in
the Organon and (b) to see in an instructive manner all the diverse
directions in logic as natural developments of these uneven
beginnings.
John V. Canfield speaks of 'Wittgenstein's claim that, surprising
as it may seem, in all his later work he is doing logic' (see his
Wittgenstein: Language and World, p. 5), apparently paraphrasing a
statement of 6.1.48 in one of Wittgenstein's unpublished
manuscripts (see his note 2, p. 214). A challenging problem is to
determine Wittgenstein's conception of logic in his later work and
the sense in which he is doing logic in all his later work. To
approach this problem, I shall consider his conception of logic as it
is characterized in his On Certainty. There are interesting
similarities and differences between his conception and Hegel's.
It seems to me that Gödel’s conception of logic as the theory of
concepts agrees well with Frege's original intentions in putting
concepts at the center of logic. I shall try to indicate that, by taking
into consideration the tradition of Cantor,

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 Hao Wang
Frege's conception of logic quite naturally leads to Godel's. - As a
digression, I shall also comment briefly on Brouwer's conception of
logic.

1. Wittgenstein's conception of logic in "On Certainty"

For Wittgenstein, philosophical investigations are conceptual
investigations (Zettel, 458) which are a special kind of linguistic
investigations, 'to deal with those points about language which have
led, or are likely to lead, to definite philosophical puzzles or errors'
(G.E. Moore, Philosophical Papers, p. 324). For those, such as
Kant or Hegel, who do not include the conceptual in the linguistic
and are not primarily concerned with philosophical puzzles, these
investigations can be seen as a specialization within philosophy
which results from Wittgenstein's governing strategy of choosing
some way to 'look at this problem in order for it to become solvable'
On Colour, p. 15). Since Wittgenstein does capture certain essential
features of the tasks of philosophy, his specialization is of interest
also to those who do not share his conception of philosophy.
Given the central place of language-games in his later work, his
claim that 'in all his later work he is doing logic' agrees with the
following observations by him:
36. "A is a physical object" is a piece of instruction ... about the
use of words, and "physical object" is a logical concept. (Like
colour, quantity,...)
51. It ["We cannot have miscalculated in 12 x 12 = 144"] is a
logical proposition; for it does describe the conceptual (linguistic)
situation. [Compare 43.]
56. This language-game just is like that. - And everything
descriptive of a language-game is part of logic.
82. What counts as an adequate test of a statement belongs to
logic. It belongs to the description of the language-game. [Compare
109 and 110.]
501. Am I not getting closer and closer to saying that in the end
logic cannot be described? You must look at the practice of
language, then you will see it.
617. Indeed, doesn't it seem obvious that the possibility of a
language-game is conditioned by certain facts?
618. In that case it would seem as if the language-game must
'show' the facts that make it possible. (But that's not how it is.)
Both Hegel and the later Wittgenstein take logic to be sachlich
(contentful) and related to grammar. Both of them envisage a wider
range of logical concepts than is customary; they admit, implicitly
by Hegel and explicitly by Wittgenstein (65, 96, 99, etc.), that logic
changes over time but deny that it is empirical (98). At the same
time, Hegel, unlike Wittgenstein, imposes a system on his logical
concepts and considers them largely in isolation from the use of
words. The main difference between them is, I think, Wittgenstein's
more stringent requirement than Hegel's on saying, in logic and
philosophy, no more than we know. - There are clearly alternative
choices which depend on one's preference to assert, in philosophy,
more with less assurance or less with more assurance.
I find the remarks on logic in On Certainty attractive, because
they suggest, I believe, both a key to Wittgenstein's later philosophy
and a broad perspective for considering alternative conceptions of
logic and its place in philosophy. For in-

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 What Is Logic?
stance, there are remarks which relate logic to familiar notions such
as one's picture of the world ( Weltbild, 94-98), one's frame of
reference (83), and 'the foundation of all operating with thoughts
(with language)' (401). It is easy to agree that every conception of
logic lies within the boundaries determined by these notions.
The traditional philosophical problem of the a priori asks for a
determination of the universal receptive scheme of the human mind.
A reasonable starting point is one's picture of the world or the
things in one's system of beliefs which stand fast:
144. The child learns to believe a host of things. I.e. it learns to
act according to these beliefs. Bit by bit there forms a system of
what is believed, and in that system some things stand unshakably
fast and some are more or less liable to shift.
94. But I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself
of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I
distinguish true and false.
Wittgenstein compares what stand fast and what are liable to shift
with the river-bed and the moving waters. He observes that certain
empirical propositions belong to the river-bed but are not part of
logic:
83. The truth of certain empirical propositions belongs to our
frame of reference.
97. But I distinguish between the movement of waters on the river-
bed and the shift of the bed itself; though there is no sharp division
of the one from the other.
98. But if someone were to say "So logic too is an empirical
science" he would be wrong. Yet this is right: the same proposition
may get treated at one time as something to test by experience, at
another as a rule of testing.
401. I want to say: propositions of the form of empirical
propositions, and not only propositions of logic, form the
foundation of all operating with thoughts (with language).
The statement under 401, even though Wittgenstein is not
satisfied with its formulation (see 402), does confirm the belief that
he excludes from logic the empirical part of our frame of reference.
- Another natural question is whether mathematics, according to
Wittgenstein's (restrictive) conception of it, belongs to logic.
Mathematics is, I believe, a part of logic according to
Wittgenstein's later conception of logic: since the propositions of
mathematics belong to the river-bed and they are not empirical
propositions. - I do not know whether there are explicit statements
by him on this point. It seems to me that he is taking for granted the
logical character of mathematical statements in the following
observation:
43. What sort of proposition is this: "We cannot have
miscalculated in 12 x 12 = 144"? It must surely be a proposition of
logic. - But now, is it not the same, or doesn't it come to the same,
as the statement 12 x 12 = 144?
I would like to say that logic for Wittgenstein gives us what we
really know and that philosophy has to go back to what we really
know. That is, I believe, the reason why his philosophy, early and
late, centers on logic, and why he says that, in doing philosophy, he
is doing logic - by continually using it as the ground of testing. His
early philosophy tries to resolve the difficulty in Frege's and
Russell's logic by transforming it into and offering an answer to the
fundamental question. What is logic? His later philosophy retains
the central place of logic in philosophy by offering a different
answer to the same question.

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 Hao Wang
In Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein gives an account of
his early ideal of logic, which may be seen as his explication of
what he takes to be Frege's ideal too, and indicates his reason for
being dissatisfied with it:
97. Thought is surrounded by a halo. - Its essence, logic, presents
an order, in fact the a priori order of the world: that is, the order of
possibilities, which must be common to both world and thought.
But this order, it seems, must be utterly simple. It is prior to all
experience, must run through all experience; no empirical cloud-
iness or uncertainty can be allowed to affect it. - It must rather be of
the purest crystal. But this crystal does not appear as an abstraction;
but as something concrete, indeed, as the most concrete, as it were
the hardest thing there is (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus No.
5.5563).
107. The more narrowly we examine actual language, the sharper
becomes the conflict between it and our requirement. (For the
crystalline purity of logic was, of course, not a result of
investigations: it was a requirement.) The conflict becomes
intolerable; the requirement is now in danger of becoming empty. -
We have got on to slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a
certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that,
we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need friction. Back
to the rough ground!
The ideal of logic as described in paragraph 97 contains several
requirements which are not equally essential. The essential
requirement of logic is, I believe, to present 'the order of
possibilities, which must be common to both world and thought.' It
is not essential that logic be utterly simple, prior to all experience,
or of the purest crystal. The rough ground to walk on provided by
Wittgenstein's later conception of logic is only one of the alternative
solutions: for instance, Hegel's logic and Gödel’s conception of
logic are solutions too.
Hegel's codification of his logic has a systematic character but
lacks precision. Frege's ideal of logic includes the possibility of a
precise and systematic codification. - It is a familiar fact that
Wittgenstein began his work in logic and philosophy by trying to
resolve Russell's paradoxes which brought to light an intrinsic
difficulty in Frege's logic. Wittgenstein's early logic may be seen as
a refinement of Frege's, which among other things resolves the
difficulty; its main significance is in philosophy rather than in the
development of logic as a subject on its own. I would like to begin
with Frege's logic and consider its relation to the views of Cantor,
Brouwer, Wittgenstein, and Godel on logic.

2. From Frege to Godel

Frege published in 1879 his Concept Writing (Begriffsschrift), a
formula language, modeled upon tliat of arithmetic, for pure
thought, his Foundations of Arithmetic in 1884, and the first volume
of his Tlie Fundamental Laws (Grundgesetze) of Arithmetic in
1893. On 16 June 1902, when the second volume of Grundgesetze
was at the print-shop, Russell wrote Frege a letter (in German) to
state the two forms (about concepts and about classes) of what has
since been known as Russell's paradox, and to question Frege's
assertion in his Begriffsschrift that 'a function, too, can act as the
indeterminate element.' Frege replied on 22 June to say that the
discovery of the

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 What Is Logic?
contradiction seemed to show that the crucial Rule V of his
Grundgesetze is false. The second volume of Grundgesetze was
published in 1903, which included an appendix to take into account,
unsuccessfully, Russell's paradox.
In the words of a translation of Russell's letter, approved by him,
the two forms of his paradox are:
You state that a function, too, can act as an indeterminate
element. This I formerly believed, but now this view seems
doubtful to me because of the following contradiction. Let w
be the predicate: to be a predicate that cannot be predicated of
itself. Can w be predicated of itself? From each answer its
opposite follows. Therefore we must admit that w is not a
predicate. Likewise there is no class (as a totality) of those
classes, which, each taken as a totality, do not belong to
themselves. From this I conclude that under certain
circumstances a definable collection ( Menge) does not form a
total-ity.
It is customary to think of these two forms of Russell's paradox as
slight variants of each other. I was surprised when Godel repeatedly
emphasized the importance of distinguishing the extensional (about
sets and classes) from the intensional (about predicates or concepts)
paradoxes in his discussions with me from 1971 to 1972.1 soon
began to appreciate the relevance of this contrast to his conception
of logic and to the familiar distinction between sets and classes in
the literature. In recent years I have come to believe that the same
contrast is crucial for a clarification of Frege's conception of logic
and its relation to Cantor's set theory. - I have discussed some of the
relevant points in my paper 'Philosophy through mathematics and
logic', presented at the Kirchberg centenary celebration of Wittgen-
stein, August 1989. (See its Proceedings, pp. 142-154.)
There are two familiar and natural ways of construing sets. On the
one hand, given a multiplicity of objects, some or all of these
objects can be conceived together as forming a set; the process can
be iterated indefinitely. This way may be called 'the extensional
conception of set'. On the other hand, a set may be seen as the
extension of a concept or a property in the sense that it consists of
all and only the objects which have the property. This way may be
called 'the intensional conception of set'. We tend to use both
conceptions and expect no conflict between them. Yet in practice it
makes a difference whether one takes the one or the other
conception as basic.
Roughly speaking, Frege begins with the intensional conception
and Cantor begins with the extensional conception. From the
intensional perspective, it appears obvious that there should be a
universal set, a set of all sets, since every set has, for instance, the
property of being identical with itself and we may define the
universal set V as the set of all sets x, such that x = x. Yet from the
extensional perspective, it seems unlikely that there should be such
a set. For one thing, V has to belong to itself. Moreover, given V, we
can also form the set U of all its subsets, which is even 'bigger' than
the universal set V. Therefore, from the extensional perspective, it is
unreasonable to believe that every concept determines a set as its
range of instances.

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 Hao Wang
Indeed, Russell's paradox can be, and probably was, obtained by
reflecting on the strange relation between U and V and its
connection to Cantor's proof that the set of all subsets of any set S is
'bigger' than S. - Since V is the universal set yet included in U, there
is a one-one correlation / between the members of V and those of U.
Since, however, U is the set of all subsets of V, we can construct, by
Cantor's famous argument, a 'diagonal' subset D of V which is not
the correlate F(x) of any member of V. This contradicts the
proposition that /is a one-one correlation between V and U. More
explicitly, D is the subset of V such that a set x in V belongs to D if
and only if x does not belong to j{x). It follows that there is no set x
in V such that j{x) = D. This contradicts the condition that every
subset of V, being a member of U, is the j[x) of some x in V.
Moreover, since V is supposed to be the universal set, we could take
the identity function as the correlation function / The diagonal set D
is then actually Russell's set of all sets which do not belong to
themselves. - We can now look at D directly to get Russell's
paradox, independently of the dubious assumption that there is a
universal set V.
Russell's paradox shows that, even for those who do not adopt the
extensional conception of set as basic, there are certain concepts
whose ranges of instances cannot be sets. It shows this by
presenting, as an example of such concepts, the concept P: P(x) if
and only if x is a set and x does not belong to x. If the range D of all
the instances of this concept were a set, then we would have: D
belongs to D if and only if it falls under the concept P, or, therefore,
if and only if D does not belong to D. This is a contradiction,
because sets are objects and, given two objects d and b, it must be
the case that either d belongs to b or d does not belong to b.
-Moreover, even if we leave aside the extensional conception, we
are inclined to think that generally no object belongs to itself.
The situation with the intensional form of Russell's paradox is
somewhat different. We are inclined to think that there is indeed a
universal concept C such that all concepts, including C itself, fall
under it: namely, every concept is a concept or has the property of
being a concept. Generally we are more willing to admit that a
concept may apply to itself. Moreover, we are more willing to say
sometimes about two concepts that a statement of predication
between them is neither true nor false but just meaningless - more
than to say so about a statement of the form that a set d belongs to a
set b. For instance, we are inclined to agree that it is meaningless,
rather than false, to say that virtue is triangular. - In any case, there
are important differences between concepts and sets (or objects in
general) according to our intuitive conceptions of them.
Frege seems to assume implicitly that every set is the extension of
some concept, so that set theory is a part, and indeed a corollary, of
the theory of concepts. This assumption leads to no contradiction
but is misleading methodologically. - The difficulty in Frege's logic
comes essentially from his belief that the range of instances of each
concept is a set, that every concept has an extension and 'the ex-
tension of a concept' is always a set, and therefore an object.
Given the fact that this belief leads to contradictions, it is
important to distinguish between the sets built up from below and
the collections of the instances, or the ranges, of concepts. A natural
and convenient terminology is to call these

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 What Is Logic?
ranges 'classes': the entities falling under a concept (its range of
instances) form a class, which may or may not be a set. A class
which is not also a set is a proper class. Sets are objects and
concepts and proper classes are not objects. Since classes are
parasitic on concepts, we can restrict our basic ontology to objects
and concepts, leaving out classes as no more than a construct for the
purpose of convenience. - The distinction between sets and proper
classes has a long history. For instance, it corresponds closely to
Cantor's distinction between consistent and inconsistent (or
absolutely infinite) multipliciates in his 28 July 1899 letter to Dede-
kind.
Neither Frege nor Russell makes any explicit distinction that
corresponds to the one between sets and classes. Frege discusses
Russell's paradox in the appendix to the second volume of his
Gnindgesetze. In this context, he uses the word class (Klasse). After
describing the extensional form of Russell's paradox, he asks:
What should be our attitude to this? Are we to suppose that
the law of excluded middle does not hold for classes? Or are
we to suppose that there are cases in which to an
unexceptionable concept no class corresponds as its
extension? In the first case we should find ourselves obliged
to deny that classes are objects in the full sense; for if classes
were full objects the law of excluded middle would have to
hold for them.
As we now know, the distinction between sets and classes can be
used to clarify these statements to some extent. The main point is,
as Godel emphasizes, that Russell's paradox is no longer a serious
problem for set theory, but it does reveal a problem for an attempt
to develop a theory of concepts. Or, as Godel puts it, the
extensional paradox is no longer a problem but the intensional
paradox remains a problem for us: the paradoxes are a very serious
problem, not for mathematics, however, but rather for logic and
epistemology'. (Godel's Collected Works, volume two, p. 258.)
Godel, like Frege, believes that logic is primarily a theory of
concepts. If we assume or can prove that every set is the extension
of some concept, then set theory is derivable from the theory of
concepts. In any case, Godel shares Frege's belief that set theory is
a part of logic. That is why I see Godel's conception of logic as a
natural development of Frege's conception of logic. The difference
is that Frege did not make much use of Cantor's work but Godel
took the tradition of Cantor fully into consideration.
In this regard Cantor's 1885 review of Frege's Foundations of
Arithmetic brings to light some of the differences between their
approaches to numbers and sets (Cantor's Gesammelte
Ablwndlungen, p. 400):
The author comes ... to take what the school logic calls the
'extension of a concept' as the foundation of the concept of
number. He entirely overlooks the fact that in general the
'extension of a concept' is something quantitatively entirely
undetermined. Only in certain cases is the 'extension of a
concept' quantitatively determined. Then it certainly has, if
finite, a definite [natural] number, and, if infinite, a definite
cardinality. For such a quantitative determination of the
'extension of a concept', however, the concepts

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 Hao Wang
'number' and 'cardinality' must previously be given already
from somewhere else. To undertake to base the latter
concepts on the concept 'extension of a concept' is a reversal
of the correct [order].
For Frege sets are nothing but extensions of concepts. It follows
that, once we have a satisfactory theory of concepts, we have also a
characterization of what the sets are. Since, however, the paradoxes
of set theory show that the natural idea of correlating a concept with
every linguistically 'unexceptionable' predicate does not work, an
alternative course is to ask directly what sets we can envisage,
rather than deriving all of them from concepts. By developing set
theory independently from a completed theory of concepts, the
direction is reversed. Instead of going from concepts to sets as their
extensions, we now ask which concepts (or predicates) have (sets
as) extensions. From this perspective, only concepts which have
extensions can be said to have a size or a number: The (cardinal)
number ( Anzahl for Frege and cardinality for Cantor) of the
instances of such a concept is simply the number of the members of
the set which is its extension. And Cantor proposes a way to go
from small numbers to large numbers by an analogy of the way sets
are built up from below according to the iterative concept of set.
In short, Frege sees concepts as the subject matter of logic and
takes sets as derivative. Cantor is primarily concerned with sets and
has little to say about concepts. Godel agrees with Frege in taking
concepts as the central concern of logic but follows Cantor in taking
the concept of set (also) as a primitive concept. It seems to me that
Frege and Godel agree on beginning with the following three
propositions:
(A) All that exists (all that there is, is a being or an entity or a
'thing') is either an object or an concept.
(B) Sets are objects.
(C)Logic is concerned with the pure or nonempirical concepts and
objects. -
Even if no empirical objects exist, we still have what may be called
the 'pure' con
cepts, as well as the (pure) sets studied in set theory (as conceived
on the basis of
the empty set in the familiar iterative conception of set). The only
difference, rela
tive to our knowledge, between sets and concepts is: we have a
fairly well-
developed set theory but no mature theory of concepts.
An attractive characterization of this conception of logic, shared
by Frege and Godel, is to say that logic is the study of formal
concepts, in the sense of concepts which are universally applicable.
- Frege begins his essay 'On formal theories of arithmetic' (1885,
reprinted in his Collected Papers, edited by Brian McGuinness,
1984, pp. 112-121) by distinguishing two views, both of which bear
the name 'formal theory', and then saying, 'I shall agree with the
first'.
This first theory says, among other things, that arithmetic is a part
of logic. In the process of explaining this theory, Frege makes it
clear, I think, that logic is the study of formal concepts:
Of all the reasons that speak in favor of this view, I here want
to adduce only one based on the extensive applicability of
mathematical doctrines. As a matter of fact we can count just
about everything that can be an object of

18
 What Is Logic?
thought ... From this we may undoubtedly gather at least this
much, that the basic propositions on which arithmetic is based
... must extend to everything that can be thought. And surely
we are justified in ascribing such extremely general
propositions to logic. -1 shall now deduce several conclusions
from this logical or formal nature of arithmetic.
Clearly we can say the same thing about sets as Frege says about
numbers: we can view as a set just about everything that can be an
object of thought. From this perspective, we can say that arithmetic
and set theory are parts of logic, even if we are not or not yet able to
reduce them to the theory of concepts, which is for both Frege and
Godel the central part of logic. -1 have made a preliminary attempt
to illustrate what a system of logic might be like according to this
Frege-Godel conception of logic on pp. 309-310 of my Reflections
on Kurt Godel, 1987.

3. From Frege to Brouwer and to the early Wittgenstein

Brouwer (1881-1965) completed and published in 1907 his
dissertation 'On the Foundations of Mathematics', which consists of
three chapters: (1) The construction of mathematics; (2)
Mathematics and experience; (3) Mathematics and logic. An
English translation of the dissertation is included in volume one of
his Collected Works, edited by A. Heyting, 1975, pp. 11-101.
Brouwer begins the third chapter by arguing that (a) mathematics is
independent of logic, and that (b) logic depends upon mathematics.
The main objective of the chapter is, he says, to show that, through
the gullible use of logical instead of mathematical language,
mathematics has been led astray in some of its branches.
According to Brouwer, the words of a mathematical
demonstration merely accompany a mathematical construction that
is effected without words (p. 73): 'On the basis of linguistic images
which accompany basic mathematical truths in actual mathematical
structures, it is sometimes possible to build up linguistic structures,
sequences of sentences, proceeding according to the logical laws'
(p. 75). Brouwer sees the familiar logical laws as extracted from an
especially elementary kind of mathematical reasoning (restricting
oneself to what he calls 'relations of whole and part'), so that they
are not automatically applicable to other kinds of mathematical
reasoning.
Commenting on Russell's assertion of the universal validity of
logical principles in the context of a discussion of his paradox,
Brouwer says (p. 89):
But this is mistaken: the logical principles hold exclusively
for words with a mathematical content. And exactly because
Russell's logic is no more than a lingusitic system, deprived
of a presupposed mathematical system to which it is related,
there is no reason why no contradictions would appear.
It is possible to view Brouwer's critique of classical logic in its
relation to constructive mathematics as a special case of a general
issue about the true and the knowable. We do not know whether all
that is true is knowable. The law of excluded middle in classical
logic says that every proposition p is either true or

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 Hao Wang
false, that either p or its negation is true. Unless we assume that all
that is true is knowable, we cannot infer from this that every
proposition or its negation is knowable. Likewise in the special case
of mathematics we cannot infer from the law of excluded middle
that every proposition is either provable or refutable. If there is
some mathematical proposition p which is neither provable nor
refutable, we are faced with the problem of giving a meaning to the
statement that p is true (or false), above and beyond the accessible
meaning that p is provable (or refutable).
Brouwer's critique of classical logic interprets the law of excluded
middle as saying that every proposition p is either provable
constructively or refutable constructively. Thus interpreted, the law
of excluded middle becomes a substantive assertion which is hard
either to prove or to refute. It is then natural to exclude the law of
excluded middle from logic as something prior to mathematics.
Certain other laws remain evident under this interpretation. For
instance, the law of noncontradiction remains true because it is
refutable in every case that a proposition is both provable and
refutable. When the laws of classical logic are examined according
to this interpretation, we arrive at the system of intuitionistic logic.
Generally, without assuming that all that is true is knowable or
provable (in one sense or another), one may continue to think in
terms of both the true and the provable in parallel. There is no
conclusive reason not to have both a logic of truth and a logic of
provability or knowability or necessity. - In fact, this parallelism is
generally adopted in the customary practice.
As we know, the intuitionistic predicate logic is a subsystem of
the classical one. Moreover, as Godel shows, classical predicate
logic and number theory may also be taken to be subsystems of the
intuitionistic. Roughly speaking, the classical laws involving only
negation, conjunction, and universal quantification all are
intuitionistic laws as well. Since it is possible to define disjunction,
implication, and existential quantification from these logical
constants in classical logic, there is an exact sense in which the
classical systems are subsystems of the intuitionistic. Furthermore,
Godel also gives an interpretation of intuitionistic logic in terms of
modal logic. (See Godel's Collected Works, volume one, pp. 287-
295, 301-303.)
Apparently Brouwer paid no direct attention to Frege's work but
considered only the related views of Dedekind, Cantor, and Russell.
In contrast, Wittgenstein studied carefully the work of both Frege
and Russell. The conception of logic presented in his Tractatus is
related to Frege's conception in such a way that one sees both a
fundamental continuity and several fundamental innovations.
The fundamental continuity is the shared belief that logic is the
study of formal concepts (4.122 and 444.126). Wittgenstein's list of
formal concepts includes object (thing, etc.), complex, fact,
function, number, etc. (4.1272). He distinguishes formal concepts
from proper concepts, in order to exhibit the source of the
confusion between them, 'which pervades the whole of traditional
logic' (4.126).
In his recent book Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics (1991),
Michael Dummett singles out (on p. 21) three methodological
principles, enunciated by Frege at the end of the Introduction to his
Foundations of Arithmetic. - (1) Against psychologism: 'the
psychological is always to be sharply separated from the logical, the
subjective

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 Wlwt h Logic?
from the objective'. (2) The 'celebrated context principle': 'the
meanings of words must be asked after only in the context of
sentences, not in isolation'. (3) Concept and object: 'the distinction
between a concept and an object is always to be kept in view'. -
Dummett observes that Frege was vividly conscious of the
connection of (2) with his repudiation of psychologism.
Of these principles, it is clear that Wittgenstein adheres to (1) and
(2) in his Tractatus. The status of (3) is not so obvious. On several
occasions Wittgenstein says explicitly that the 'objects' in the
Tractatus are to take the place of both the concepts and the objects
in Frege's work, perhaps with the help of (some strengthened form
of) the context principle. Here are some examples. - 'Relations and
properties, etc. are objects too' ( Notebooks 1914-1916, p. 61,
16.6.15). 'Objects' also include relations; a proposition is not two
things connected by a relation. 'Thing' and 'relation' are on the same
level. The objects hang together as it were in a chain. (
Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge, 1930-1932, edited by
Desmond Lee, p. 120, a report of Wittgenstein's explanations to Lee
of the first few assertions of the Tractatus.) 'And this is the origin of
the bad expression: a fact is a complex of objects.' Here the fact that
a man is sick is compared with a combination of two things, one of
them the man and the other the sickness. ( Philosophical Grammar,
p. 58.)
Like Frege, Wittgenstein takes the concept of number as a formal
concept. But his treatment is different from Frege's. For him: 'A
number is the exponent of an operation' (6.021). Wittgenstein does
not try to reduce arithmetic to logic but rather deals with them
separately. It is, in my opinion, largely a matter of terminology
whether one chooses to regard the treatment of the concept of
number in the Tractatus as a part of what Wittgenstein takes to be
logic. A more significant point for me is that number is a formal
concept and that for Frege formal concepts belong to logic.
Both Frege and Russell get involved in set theory (or the theory
of classes) in their study of logic. It is surprising that Wittgenstein
disposes of set theory without any ceremony in his 6.031: 'The
theory of classes is completely superfluous in mathematics. - This
is connected with the fact that the generality required in
mathematics is not accidental generality.' This observation is, I
believe, based to a large extent on Wittgenstein's identification of
set theory with Russell's theory of classes and on his disposal of the
main axioms of Russell's theory, namely the axioms of infinity and
reducibility:
5.535. What the axiom of infinity is intended to say would
express itself in language through the existence of infinitely many
names with different meanings.
6.1233. It is possibale to imagine a world in which the axiom of
reducibility is not valid. It is clear, however, that logic has nothing
to do with the question whether our world really is like that or not.
The assertion 6.031 on the superfluity of set theory in
mathematics is a comment on 6.03, which gives the 'general form of
an integer'. Since we arrive at numbers as the exponents of the
iterations of the successor operation (6.02 and 6.021), set theory is,
therefore, Wittgenstein seems to conclude, not needed in
mathematics. -This inference seems to depend in part on his
consistent position that natural numbers or integers are the only
meaty part of mathematics.

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 Hao Wang
On the other hand, since the axioms of infinity and reducibility
are needed for getting numbers in Russell's system, the observations
on the nonlogical character of these axioms are supposed to show
that set theory as a part of logic is insufficient for the purpose of
getting mathematics within logic, construed as a theory of classes
(or, in the case of Frege, as a theory of concepts). Putting the two
parts together, Wittgenstein gets his conclusion 6.031: The theory
of classes is entirely superfluous in mathematics.
It seems to me that the surprising simplicity of logic in the
Tractatus has much to do with the implicit assumption of a
principle which Wittgenstein explicitly rejected later in 1932. The
assumption may be called 'the principle of finiteness': We can treat
the finite case and the infinite case in the same way; hence, it is
sufficient to consider the finite case. If we assume this principle,
then the theory of classes is superfluous also in another way. One
can then eliminate all class terms as 'incomplete symbols' from all
the basic contexts simply by substituting for each class its members:
each statement involving any class terms can be turned into a
combination of conjunctions and disjunctions of statements
involving only the names of individual objects. (For a more detailed
exposition of this remark, see pp. 98-99 of my Beyond Analytic
Philosophy, 1985.)
One way to explicate Wittgenstein's conception of logic in the
Tractatus is to determine what he takes to be the concepts of logic -
the 'logical constants'. The following four assertions are relevant:
4.0312. My fundamental idea is that the 'logical constants' are not
representatives; that there can be no representatives of the logic of
facts.
5.4. At this point it becomes manifest that there are not 'logical
objects' or 'logical constants' (in Frege's and Russell's sense).
5.472. The description of the most general propositional form is
the description of the one and only general primitive sign of logic
['the sole logical constant' in 5.47].
5.54. In the general propositional form propositions occur in other
propositions only as bases of truth-operations.
From 5.54, it follows that the general form of a truth-function is
also the general form of a proposition: this is asserted in 6 and
6.001. Hence, the problem of deter-mining the logical constants or
the logical signs are to determine the truth-functions. The crucial
operation N(S) for this determination is explained under 5.5, 5.501
and 5.502. - The variable S stands for a set of propositions which
may be given by an enumeration or a (propositional) function (the
set S being that of all its values) or a formal law (the set having as
members all the propositions generated by the law) (see 5.001).
Given any S, N(S) is the (finite or infinite) conjunction of the
negation of every member of S (5.502). Every proposition is a result
of successive applications to elementary propositions of the
operation N(S) (6 and 6.001).
If S has p as its only member, N(S) is the negation of p; if S has p
and q as its only members, N(S) is the joint negation of p and a
(neither p nor a) (5.51). If S is the set of all the values of the
propositional function Fx for all values of x, N{S) is the negation of
(Ex)Fx (5.52). - According to G. E. Moore, Wittgenstein said in one
of his lectures in 1932 'that there was a temptation, to which he had
yielded in the Trac-

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 What Is Logic?
talus, to say that (x)Fx is identical with the logical product of Fa, Fb, Fc, ... and (Ex)Fx
identical with the logical sum of Fa, Fb, Fc, ...; but that this was in both cases a mistake'
(Moore's Philosophical Papers, p. 297).
The operation N(S) is highly complex because the set S is a subset of given propositions to
be selected by either an enumeration or a (prepositional) function or a formal law (5.501, as
just summarized), but no specification is given of what these functions and laws are.
Furthermore, N(S) is taken to be a conjunction of the negation of every member of S, thereby
obliterating, among other things, the difference between the finite case and the infinite case. -
The next part of Moore's record of Wittgenstein's lectures in 1932 seems to be directed to this
confusion (p. 298):
He went on to say that one great mistake which he made in the Tractatus was that of
supposing that in the case of all classes 'defined by grammar', general propositions were
identical either with logical products or with logical sums (meaning by this logical
product or sum of the propositions which are of values of Fx as, according to him, they
really are in the case of the class 'primary colors'. He said that, when he wrote the
Tractatus, he had supposed that all such general propositions were 'truth-functions'; but
he said now that in supposing this he was committing a fallacy, which is common in
Mathematics, e. g. the fallacy of supposing that 1 + 1 + 1 + ... is a sum, whereas it is
only a limit, and that dxjdy is a quotient, whereas it is also a limit.
In the light of these observations, a corrected version of the logic of the Tractatus would
certainly include quantifiers among the primitive logical constants. Furthermore, they seem to
suggest that what Wittgenstein calls the 'classes denned by grammar', which appear to
correspond to the sets of set theory or to the extensions of those concepts which do have
extensions, should be included in logic too. - I would like to propose a conjecture or a
hypothesis: once we correct the Tractatus according to the above 1932 observations by
Wittgenstein, the resulting conception of logic is essentially what I have called the 'Frege-
Godel conception of logic'.
It seems to me that this conception of logic satisfies Wittgenstein's characterization of logic
in the Tractatus:
2.0121. Logic deals with every possibility and all possibilities are its facts.
* * *

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