Friedrich Waismann on the Many-Level-Structure of Language and Problems of Reductionism

Abstract

The article presents the philosophical and linguistic conception of Friedrich Waismann - the theory of many-level-structure of language. The key point of this theory is that each language stratum has its own logic: different concepts of truth, the methods of verifiability and the completeness of description are used in different strata. All this has an influence on the structure of logic itself. This approach suggests that all homogeneous statements (identical in a logical sense) are grouped in one stratum. The relations between the different strata are of a most complicated, peculiar and elusive nature and that does not allow to reduce statement of one stratum to another. According to Waismann, these considerations lead to a new picture of the language, naturally divided into strata.