An Anchor Theory of Sayability: Re-grounding the Tractatus Dichotomy through Perspective Relativity

This paper addresses the dichotomy between “what can be said” and “what cannot be said” in

Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. I argue that the Tractatus does not explain

why scientific propositions can be said; it merely presents a criterion without grounding it. I

propose an alternative framework in which sayability is reduced to the anchoring of subjective

value in segmented parts. On this view, whether something can be said is not a property

of the object but is relative to the analyst’s value-laden perspective and comparative frame.

Scientific propositions are a special case in which the anchor is widely shared. This paper is

a proposal for a direction of research rather than a completed theory, and its limitations are

explicitly stated.