Though meaningless, the propositions of logic and mathematics are not nonsense. They at least have the virtue of showing the essential structure of all possible facts. On the other hand, there are concatenations of words, purported propositions, that neither show nor say anything and thus are not connected to reality in any way. Such propositions are not merely senseless, they are nonsense. Among nonsense propositions are included the bulk of traditional philosophical statements articulating traditional philosophical problems and solutions, especially in metaphysics and ethics. This is the consequence of Wittgenstein’s presumption that meaningfulness is somehow linked to the realm of phenomena studied by the natural sciences (cf. 4.11 ff). Thus, as he claims in 6.53:
尽管是缺少意义的，但是这个关于数学和逻辑的论题不是完全没有意义的。他们至少展示了所有可能的事情的必要的结构。另一方面，语词，命题的组合，并没有展示或者言说任何有关事实的东西。这些论题不仅仅是缺少意义的，而是毫无意义的。在这些毫无意义的论题中，包括了大部分表达传统哲学问题和解决方法的传统哲学陈述，特别是关于形而上学和伦理学的表述。基于维特根斯的推测，有意义的命题是和自然科学领域方面的现象相联系的。
The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, that is propositions of natural science—that is something that has nothing to do with philosophy—and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions.
哲学研究的正确方法如下：只说那些可以言说的部分，也就是关于自然科学的命题——而那正是哲学没有探讨的——然后，当某个人想要谈论任何关于形而上学的命题的时候，向他表明他无法给他命题中的某些符号特定的意义。
In the eyes of its author (as he avers in its Introduction), the real accomplishment of the Tractatus was to have solved, or rather dissolved, all the traditional problems of philosophy by showing that they were meaningless conundrums generated by a failure to understand the limits of meaningful discourse.
在逻辑哲学论作者的眼中（正如他在前言中所断言的那样），逻辑哲学论真正的成就就是解决了，或者更确切地说，通过展示这些所提出了缺乏意义的难题是由于错误地理解了有意义的论述的界限而消解了传统哲学的问题。
3. Logical Positivism, the Vienna Circle, and Quine
a. Logical Positivism and the Vienna Circle
Logical positivism is the result of combining the central aspects of the positivisms of Auguste Comte and Ernst Mach with the meta-philosophical and methodological views of the analytic movement, especially as understood by the ideal-language camp. In all its forms, positivism was animated by the idealization of scientific knowledge as it was commonly understood from at least the time of Newton through the early twentieth century. Consequently, at its core is a view called scientism: the view that all knowledge is scientific knowledge.
逻辑实证主义结合了孔德和马赫实证主义和分析哲学运动中的元哲学和方法论，特别是由理想语言阵营所理解的方法。在各种形式上，实证主义都将牛顿时代末期到二十世纪早期的常识认识作了一个科学知识的理想化。因此，实证主义的核心被称作是科学主义：即所有的知识都是科学知识的观点。
As twentieth-century philosophy of science has shown, the definition and demarcation of science is a very difficult task. Still, for several centuries it has been common to presume that metaphysics and other branches of philosophy-as-traditionally-practiced, not to mention religious and “common sense” beliefs, do not qualify as scientific. From the standpoint of scientism, these are not fields of knowledge, and their claims should not be regarded as carrying any serious weight.
正如二十世纪的科学哲学所展现的，很难对科学进行定义和划界。然而，几个世纪以来，在哲学界，有一个普遍的假定就是形而上学和其它传统哲学的实践分支，更不用提及宗教和“常识”信念，都不能称之为科学。根据科学主义的观点，这些领域是没有任何知识的，他们的言论不应该具有任何重要的意义。
At the heart of logical positivism was a novel way of dismissing certain non-scientific views by declaring them not merely wrong or false, but meaningless. According to the verification theory of meaning, sometimes also called the empiricist theory of meaning, any non-tautological statement has meaning if and only if it can be empirically verified. This “verification principle” of meaning is similar to the principle maintained in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus that the realm of meaning is coextensive with the realm of the natural (empirical) sciences. In fact the logical positivists drew many of their views straight from the pages of the Tractatus (though their reading of it has since been criticized as being too inclined to emphasize the parts friendly to scientific naturalism at the expense of those less-friendly). With Wittgenstein, the logical positivists concluded that the bulk of traditional philosophy consisted in meaningless pseudo-problems generated by the misuse of language, and that the true role of philosophy was to establish and enforce the limits of meaningful language through linguistic analysis.
逻辑实证主义的核心是提供了一种新的消解特定的非科学观点，其方法是指出他们不仅仅是正确或错误的，而是缺少意义的。根据关于意义的证实理论，也被称作关于意义的经验主义者理论，即任何非重言式的描述如果要有意义的话，当且仅当它可以被经验地证明。这个关于意义的实证原则和维特根斯坦的逻辑哲学论中所持有的意义的领域是与自然（经验）科学的领域是共同延伸的这一观点时相似的。事实上，逻辑实证主义者直接从逻辑哲学论的字里行间中取得了很多观点（尽管他们的理解被批评为过分强调了那些与科学自然主义相关的部分，而牺牲了其它没有太多关联的部分）。同维特根斯坦一样，逻辑实证主义者得出了大部分传统哲学都涉及到了误用语言而造成的缺乏意义的伪似的命题的结论，而哲学真正的作用是通过语言分析确立和加强有意义的语言的界限。