Is logic a consequence of structure of language i.e. syntax?

Question

I was reading the paper An elucidatory reading of the Tractatus and in page-3 section- Ineffabilist Readings, it was written

"The order in our propositions, which renders them capable of thus picturing the facts, we call ‘logic’. Hence, logic can be seen as the order of possible situations in which things can find them-selves as reflected in language".

Can you please approve/disapprove the above fact by Wittgenstein's statements.

Wittgenstein said in Tractatus :

"6.13 Logic is not a theory, but a reflection of the world. Logic is transcendental".

Is he talking about the structure of language or the logic that we usually study in textbooks?

Answer 1

Yes, it is a reasonable summary of the Tractarian pictorial view of language :

3 A logical picture of facts is a thought.

4 A thought is a proposition with a sense.

5 A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions.

The world is "made of" facts that in turn are made of objects.

Objects are "symbolized" by names and a proposition expresses a thought (its sense) :

3.1 In a proposition a thought finds an expression that can be perceived by the senses.

3.22 In a proposition a name is the representative of an object.

And :

4.22 An elementary proposition consists of names. It is a nexus, a concatenation, of names.

The sense of a proposition is related to the fact because the logical form of the linguistic expression "pictures" the structure of the fact.

When W speaks of the trascendental nature of logic, he is asserting that logic is not an empirical study of facts (like any other science) but it is prior to our understanding of facts themselves.

In this way, W's reflections on logic - grounded in the pioneering works on logic of Frege and Russell - is quite different from modern approach to mathematcial logic as a mathematical discipline.