Mr. Copi on Objects, Properties and Relations in the Tractatus G. E. M. Anscombe Mind, New Series, Vol. 68, No. 271. (Jul., 1959), p. 404. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-4423%28195907%292%3A68%3A271%3C404%3AMCOOPA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1 Mind is currently published by Oxford University Press.
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MR. COP1 ON OBJECTS, PROPERTIES AND RELATIONS IN THE T R A C T A T U S
I AGREE with some of what Mr. Copi says. But he has no justification for asserting that according to the Tractatus 'the fact that aRb contains exactly two elements'-namely the objects a and b. All , that the Tractatus tells him is that the objects a and b ocdur ' in the sense ' of the proposition ' aRb ' (4.1211). 50 or 1000 or an infinity of other objects may occur in that sense as well. Accepting what I think is Mr. Copi's suggestion-which coincides with my own view-that Wittgenstein's theory demands that there shall be as many different possible expressive relations between ' a ' and ' b ' as there are different possible relations between a and b, ,the following arrangement of nemes might be one of them : ' o d a b e ' and this might be the fully analysed form of ' aRb '. There is no difficulty, as Mr. Copi seems to t.hink, about objects' having external properties. For example, a possible definite description of an object, e.g. ' R'b '-' the (thing that is) R to b ' would give possible external properties of it (cf. 4.023) ; of course it would not define the object. Or again, if aRb, ' Rb ' gives an external property of a. G. E. M. ANSCOMBE University of Oxfwd
