ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book investigates Gottlob Frege’s development of modern, formal logic, and the advantages of thinking of meaning in terms of the notion of logical form. It looks at some of the central themes in the work of the later-Wittgenstein. This involves moving away from the logico-semantic approach of Frege, Bertrand Russell, and his own earlier self and investigating instead language as it is actually used in everyday contexts. The book traces the history of the search for meaning determinacy from Locke to Ludwig Wittgenstein. John Locke and the early moderns thought it involved ‘looking inside’, so they identified meaning with subjective ideas in the minds of individual thinkers. Wittgenstein’s introduction of a social account of meaning offers the possibility of an account of meaning determinacy lacking in the other approaches.
