Wittgenstein's later view of philosophy centres on the claims that philosophy can make no discoveries and that philosophy should aim to describe the use of language. This thesis explores the hypothesis that these claims arise from the account of the nature of the internal relation in the later writings. The thesis falls into three parts. The first part examines the picture theory of representation in the Tractatus; it is argued that the theory takes its shape from Wittgenstein's early view of internal relations. The grounds for the rejection of the picture theory in the later writings are discussed; the argument against a private language is held to be based on the objections to the picture theory. The second part of the thesis looks at the account of internal relatedness given in Wittgenstein's later writings. The failure of the picture theory leads to a non-realist account of the internal relation. A proposal to preserve realism based on a causal theory of representation is rejected and Kripke's account of Wittgenstein's position is criticised. The notions of a grammatical rule and a practice are the keys to the later theory. Grammatical rules depend on the existence of natural reactions to and with signs; such natural reactions constitute a practice, and only within such a practice are there internal relations. Wittgenstein's view of psychological states is explored against the background of the notion of a practice. The third part of the thesis examines the doctrines on philosophy in the light of the account of internal relatedness which has emerged. It is argued that if this account is correct, there is no room for philosophical inquiry to discover objective truths. But if Wittgenstein's negative doctrines on philosophy are supported by these arguments, the same is not true for^ his proposals about the proper ambitions of philosophy: the task of describing rules of grammar is unproductive because there is no room for an interesting notion of a violation of a rule of grammar. Moreover, it is argued that Wittgenstein misadvertises the method one is to employ to reveal violations of grammatical rules. Finally it is asked whether the later account of philosophy suffers the same problems as beset philosophy in the Tractatus: can the negative doctrines really be stated? A way out of this problem is suggested.

The aim of the thesis is to explore Ludwig Wittgenstein’s and Wilfrid Sellars’s views on intentionality. In the first chapter I discuss the account of intentionality and meaning the early Wittgenstein developed in his Tractatus logico-philosophicus. I present his idea that sentences are pictures of states of affairs with which they share a ‘logical form’ and to which they stand in an internal ‘pictorial relationship’. I argue that Wittgenstein thought of this relationship as established by acts of thought consisting in the operation of mental signs corresponding to the signs of public languages. In the second and third chapters I discuss the later Wittgenstein’s criticism of ideas at the heart of the Tractarian account of intentionality, as well as his explanations of the phenomena that motivated it. In the second chapter I examine his rejection of the idea that thinking consists in the operation of mental signs and his criticism of the idea that meaning and understanding are mental processes accompanying the use of language. In the third chapter I turn to Wittgenstein’s criticism of the idea that representations stand in an internal ‘pictorial relation’ to objects in the natural order that are their meaning. I illuminate his later views by discussing Sellars’s non-relational account of meaning, in particular his claim that specifications of meaning do not relate expressions to items that are their meaning, but rather specify their rule-governed role in language. I conclude with a discussion of the later Wittgenstein’s account of the relationship between intentional phenomena and the objects at which they are directed. In the final fourth chapter I provide a detailed discussion of Sellars’s account of thinking. I conclude with some criticisms of Sellars’s views.