TRACTATUSLOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS 1137
3.1431 The essence of a propositional sign is very clearly seen if we imagine one
composed of spatial objects (such as tables, chairs, and books) instead of
written signs.
Then the spatial arrangement of these things will express the sense of the
proposition.
4 A thought is a proposition with a sense.
4.06 A proposition can be true or false only in virtue of being a picture of reality.
3.143 Although a propositional sign is a fact, this is obscured by the usual form
of expression in writing or print.
For in a printed proposition, for example, no essential difference is
apparent between a propositional sign and a word.
(That is what made it possible for Frege to call a proposition a composite name.)
3.141 A proposition is not a medley of words.—(Just as a theme in music is not
a medley of notes.)
A proposition is articulated.
3.142 Only facts can express a sense, a set of names cannot.
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie withinthe world, since if it did it
would itself be accidental.
It must lie outside the world.
6.42 And so it is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics.
Propositions can express nothing of what is higher.
6.421 It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words. Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.)
4.1 Propositions represent the existence and and non-existence of states of affairs.
5 A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions. (An elementary
proposition is a truth-function of itself).
5.6 The limits of my languagemean the limits of my world.
6.4 All propositions are of equal value.
6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything
is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists—
and if it did, it would have no value.
If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole
sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is
accidental.
6.422 When an ethical law of the form, “Thou shalt...,”is laid down, one’s
first thought is, “And what if I do not do it?” It is clear, however, that
ethics has nothing to do with punishment and reward in the usual sense
of the terms. So our question about the consequences of an action must be
unimportant.—At least those consequences should not be events. For there
must be something right about the question we posed. There must indeed
be some kind of ethical reward and ethical punishment, but they must
reside in the action itself.