The Definition of a Word

A necessary condition is some thing that needs to be present in order for a thing to be whatever it is. For example, having an r s s feed posted to the podcast section of itunes is a sufficient condition for being a podcast, but it isn't a necessary condition. The prevailing theory around the time witkenstein starts doing his work was that if you understood all these necessary and sufficient conditions of any one thing, you'd be able to provide the definition of that thing. Well, witkenstein didn't agree. But to understand why he didn't agree with this, i think it's important for us to have a little context. It's important to understand how fascinated he was