ABSTRACT
The apparent similarities between Carnap and Wittgenstein, early and late, suggest the following narrative. Early in their careers, Wittgenstein and Carnap both thought that philosophical nonsense results from violations of the logic that governs the meaningful use of language; the task of the critic of philosophy is to lay out the system of logic so that violations are clearly identifiable. Each of them came to reject his early view, and to replace it with a version of a quite different conception of nonsense. On this conception, nonsense results from the use of language outside the limits of a language-game or linguistic framework; the task of the critic of philosophy is to point out when and how philosophers have transgressed the limits of their linguistic system.
