How it means is not what it means: a defence fo Stroud's "Wittgenstein and logical necessity"

The primary task of this thesis is to provide an elaboration on and quahfied defence of Barry Stroud's exposition of Ludwig Wittgenstein's ideas in his paper "Wittgenstein and Logical Necessity". This paper is Stroud's response to Michael Dummett's well known explication of Wittgenstein's views on logical and mathematical necessity in his paper "Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics". I track the debate between Dummett, Stroud, and Hilary Putnam as to the actual nature of Wittgenstein's views, but also attempt to properly situate the field of debate. I argue that the debate properly belongs to the philosophy of meaning, and on that basic claim that what Stroud has to say about Wittgenstein's targets, strategy of argument, and methodology, is correct but stands in need of some elaboration.