Intentionality in the Tractatus

In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein seems to appeal to the idea that thoughts manage to explain how sentences, primarily elementary sentences, can be such that their subsentential elements refer to objects. In this respect, he seems indeed to appeal to the claim that thoughts, qua endowed with not only original, but also intrinsic, intentionality, lend this intentionality that their constituents possess to names, by transforming them into ‘names-of’, i.e., symbols endowed with both original and intrinsic intentionality as well. Such a claim, however, entails that there must be superfacts (as he implicity meant them in the Investigations), i.e., facts that involve necessary relations among their members and therefore are not contingent. Since according to the Tractatus’ ontologico-metaphysical assumptions there cannot be non-contingent facts in the world, the most likely chance is that such facts are facts for the limit of the world, i.e., the metaphysical subject. Curiously enough, in his later critique of mentalist semantics in the Investigations, Wittgenstein fails to appeal to this claim, which can block the infinite regress that he there charges the mentalist position with. Since in the Investigations non-contingent facts seem to be allowed, this failure is even more striking. For it may have solved the meaning-lending problem in the Investigations just as it solved it in the Tractatus, without however resorting to the problematic metaphysical subject.