This product, therefore, is identical with the
proposition. For it is impossible to alter what is essential to a symbol
without altering its sense.
4.466 What corresponds to a determinate logical combination of signs is a
determinate logical combination of their meanings. It is only to the
uncombined signs that absolutely any combination corresponds. In other
words, propositions that are true for every situation cannot be
combinations of signs at all, since, if they were, only determinate
combinations of objects could correspond to them. (And what is not a
logical combination has no combination of objects corresponding to it.)
Tautology and contradiction are the limiting cases--indeed the
disintegration--of the combination of signs.
4.4661 Admittedly the signs are still combined with one another even in
tautologies and contradictions--i.e. they stand in certain relations to one
another: but these relations have no meaning, they are not essential to the
symbol .
4.5 It now seems possible to give the most general propositional form: that
is, to give a description of the propositions of any sign-language
whatsoever in such a way that every possible sense can be expressed by a
symbol satisfying the description, and every symbol satisfying the
description can express a sense, provided that the meanings of the names
are suitably chosen.
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