Two Conceptions of Logical Form

In this paper a brief presentation of Wittgenstein"s picture theory of language is provided, as it is put forth in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Then some conclusions are drawn with reference to the notion of logical form; in particular, two different conceptions of logical form are expounded, and one of them is shown to be untenable. Two are the features of the picture theory which interest us here. The first is the automatism of sense, i.e. the idea that, once the referents of the names occurring in a proposition are fixed, then the sense of the proposition is automatically determined. That also means that when we know what the names occurring in a proposition refer to, we automatically grasp the sense of the proposition itself: no other piece of information is required