Wittgenstein, language and information: 'Back to the rough ground!'

摘要

To a mathematician, the "philosophy of language" is irrelevant—the structures used in mathematics and logical procedures used to manipulate them are defined axiomatically and precisely. The philosophical question "what people mean when they say..." is simply not germane. In the early generations of computer use, when the machines were concerned with numerical or data processing, they were based on languages and operating systems that were essentially mathematical in outlook: the ideal was to create a syntax that would be unambiguous, that would not allow nonsense statements, and in which every symbol would have a definite and uniquely defined meaning.