Ongoing Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus reading group.
So, given my adoration for the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, I was wondering if anyone is interested in participating in a reading group of it.
The text is available in a very nice and convenient format online, which can be found here.
It's fairly short and not too burdensome.
Would anyone be interested in such a reading group? I'm not sure if I'm the right person to be the leader of it; but, if all else fails I might be able to assume that role. Although, I feel as though someone more in touch with Bertrand Russell descriptivism would be more qualified to be able to elucidate the starting logical atomist propositions.
Thanks and looking forward to any interested participants given how prevalent Wittgenstein's name gets dropped around hereabouts.
EDIT: The reading group has started. Please check here as the commencement point.
The text is available in a very nice and convenient format online, which can be found here.
It's fairly short and not too burdensome.
Would anyone be interested in such a reading group? I'm not sure if I'm the right person to be the leader of it; but, if all else fails I might be able to assume that role. Although, I feel as though someone more in touch with Bertrand Russell descriptivism would be more qualified to be able to elucidate the starting logical atomist propositions.
Thanks and looking forward to any interested participants given how prevalent Wittgenstein's name gets dropped around hereabouts.
EDIT: The reading group has started. Please check here as the commencement point.
Comments (668)
Me too.
Anyone with more courage want to handle this reading group?
How about we proceed like this:
We take a smallish chunk at a time - let's say e.g. we start with propositions 1 and 2 and their sub-propositions. My attitude towards philosophical texts is generally negative, so I could start things off by listing the problems I see in it and then others can come in and tell me why I'm wrong/how I've misunderstood? I'm not thin skinned so I can take the pain and will hopefully gain in the process.
I'll do a skim read of the whole thing this weekend and come back next week with a more detailed plan of splitting it up into chunks (which of course we can modify as we go along) if people are okay with that idea.
Sounds good.
Can anyone recommend a good companion to use for the tractatus?
Assuming you are looking for clarity and consistency over abstruse technical insight, I would highly recommend you all consider using this book. It is available in PDF on UNESCO's library site, along with many others here. (There is no copyright infringement.)
I remember reading at least some of Pears's The False Prison years ago and was impressed (v.1 is early LW, v.2 late). He argues for lots of continuity as I recall, so that's interesting.
((I was back then too enamored of the later stuff to study TLP seriously...)
Thanks.
Yes, please. It's easy to get distracted from the points raised in the Tractatus, as it sort of requires one to have a laser focus and infinite working memory of sorts.
Thanks!
As I see that I've assumed the role of the orchestrator or sorts, I leave it to other members to decide on how (what companion to use and how many propositions we'll be covering at some rate) and when to start the reading group.
Although, I do like the juicy technical analysis offered by any other author if anyone has someone of that sort in mind.
Thanks.
I'm thinking something along the lines of Max Black or such.
Hey Posty, sorry I was unclear in my original post! The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has made the PDF publicly available for anyone who wishes to use it for educational purposes. :) It's through a project called Memory of the World. You can find the PDF here. It is also available in ebook format here.
Other books are available as well, such as Anscombe's Introduction to the Tractatus, Essays on the History & Interpretation of the Tractatus, and Routledge's version of the Tractatus.
Also, I think that I might possibly have a decent handle on later Wittgenstein works like On Certainty - if such a thing is possible - but I'm really terrible with the Tractatus so please take my suggestions with a mountain of salt.
If you can could you check if those links are available still? I seem to get a 500 error when trying to view them. Seems to be an issue with the server. I will check back latter and see if I can search those books through the website. Thanks.
I'm hoping on starting this soon, while there's some interest.
NVM: A google search gives me the results I was looking for:
http://traumawien.at/stuff/theory/g-e-m-anscombe-an-introduction-to-wittgensteins-tractatus.pdf
and
https://www.scribd.com/document/28696305/An-Introduction-to-Wittgenstein-s-Tractatus
or
http://traumawien.at/stuff/theory/g-e-m-anscombe-an-introduction-to-wittgensteins-tractatus.pdf
Definitely intense -- that's a course designed for graduate students looking to market themselves as a specialist or competent in Wittgenstein scholarship for tenure-track jobs. And it's Conant, who is the great exponent of what I glean to be your take on Wittgenstein. So if you actually manage to follow some of that you'll be very smart by the end. :)
Quoting Posty McPostface
Yeah, it's better if you just cruise around memoryoftheworld.org for yourself. A lot of great stuff there and you don't have to hunt around the web each time you want a book.
@Posty McPostface Well, I skim read the Tractatus this weekend as I said I would, only to realize that in order to understand any of it, you have to understand all of it. Nevertheless, if we're going for a reading group, and we are not being lead by an expert, one approach is to go through it in bit-sized serial chunks. Any division is going to be arbitrary to some extent, but how about the following division into 10 such slices:
Session 1: Propositions 1 through 2
Session 2: Proposition 3
Session 3: Proposition 4.0
Session 4: Propositions 4.1 through 4.2
Session 5: Propositions 4.3 through 4.5
Session 6: Propositions 5.0 through 5.1
Session 7: Propositions 5.2 through 5.4
Session 8: Propositiions 5.5 through 5.6
Session 9: Propositions 6.0 through 6.2
Session 10: Propositions 6.3 through 7
I'm doing my part too. I have some files, I want to share, which you can review and decide if they're any good.
I think the session idea is good too. I think you have some grasp as to what is being covered in each one.
One or two preliminary issue(s) that I feel ought to be covered before all this starts, is the concept of the limits of philosophy, personified through the application or import of solipsism. Apart from that, a brief understanding of knowledge by acquaintance, which Wittgenstein elaborates on in great detail (which is basically a critique of Russell's descriptivism), and in some regards refutes the systematization or the ability to reduce concepts to logical simples. This is elaborated on in the Investigations about/with 'family-resemblances'.
I hope, you're getting my drift because I'm not quite ready to spell it out, as I'm still getting acquainted with these ideas.
It may be that for your purposes, a reading group of the Tractatus is not the best idea, but rather a reading group based around articles on the Tractatus (such as the solipsism one). That way, the Wittgenstein experts on this forum might have more to contribute?
Well, you get to call the shots here so, just to be consistent with the intent of the OP, we can start the reading group and then as things go by, play it by ear.
Sure, let's start sooner than latter. We might be able to fill each other in based on availability and some common companion we would all follow. Let me know if you have any specific companion in mind so I can premtively prepare for any questions or issues.
Thanks for offering your time and patience.
All will be revealed in due time.
Thanks.
Appreciated MetaphysicsNow. Looking forward to getting this started.
Did you decide on any companion to the Tractatus or just play it by ear?
Thanks again.
A point about terminology first of all - the translation I have uses "facts" as the translation for "tatsachen", and these I just take to be facts of the common-or-garden kind - e.g. the fact that Theresa May is Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, that tap water is mostly hydrogen dioxide. The translation I have uses "state of affairs" to indicate the fundamental truth-evaluable consituents of facts (as per proposition 2). I'll stick with "state of affairs" in this post, but am happy to adopt a different terminology if appropriate. Lastly, "objects" are the things the combinations of which constitute states of affairs (2.01)
My overall impression is that W is attempting to present us with a mix of rationalism and empiricism. Why? Well, on the rationalism side, taking 2.012, 2.0121 and 1.13 together there seems to be a particularly strong form of the principle of sufficient reason in play, and there is also a form of foundationalism evident in 2.0.2 - 2.0211. Everything that actually exists seems to depend on everything that might possibly exist (2.013) and the modal world is one that outstrips any of our perceptual capacities. Yet when I come to know an object (and I presume that W believes we can know objects) my knowledge encompasses all its possibilities (2.0123) and so has to outstrip what is available from perception. So much for the rationalism, what about the empiricism? Well that for me comes down to what these things called objects, the combinations of which make for states of affairs, actually are supposed to be. I take it that it is no coincidence that at 2.0131 we have W talking about specks in the visual field, and then going on at 2.0251 to say that space, time and colour are forms of objects. My initial inclination - which I admit may be naive - is to suppose that these objects can thus be thought of as elements of the visual field, which would make these objects, which are a basic ontological element of his system, objects of perception, so if we do come to know them it must be on the basis of perception. Of course, there is the somewhat cryptic remark at 2.0232: In a manner of speaking , objects are colourless. But note the hedge with which that begins. I think here that W is saying that objects are colourless in the sense that although a specific object participating in a state of affairs must have some colour - since the state of affairs itself is (on my understanding) the state of affairs that an element of the visual field has a certain specific colour - nevertheless that object could have any other colour - it could have been a constituent of many different possible states of affairs. But, even here there is an element of rationalism in play, since objects do not exist independently of possible states of affairs (2.0122), and the entirety of possible states of affairs is written into the very essence of the object (2.012, 2.0141).
So, I suppose this at least raises the question of where W stands in relation to rationalism and empiricism - is he trying to offer an alternative way of melding/surpassing them than Kant proposed? After all for W space and time are on the surface at least forms of objects, not forms of perception of objects as in Kant. However, having said that, by adding colour into the forms of objects, W seems to be tying the notion of an object and an object of perception so closely together that making a distinction between them is not easy, and so in stating what the forms of objects are he would also be giving us the forms of perception.
A few related side questions which occured to me but to which I have no response:
Why have colour as a form of objects and not shape? Is the latter supposed to be subsumed under the form of space?
Is a world entirely without colour unimaginable? In 2.0131 we have not just vision but also hearing and touch being gestured to, yet it is colour that wins the prize at 2.0251, not pitch or hardness.
One point I am having a little difficulty understanding concerns 2.05 - 2.063. If the totality of existing states of affairs determines the non-existent states of affairs, why can we not infer the non-existence of some states of affairs given the existence of other states of affairs (2.062)? Is the determination talked about in 2.05 not logical determination?
So, as it stands at the moment, given my understanding of the propositions 1 to 2.063, I'm going to be under the impression that the space of possible states of affairs is to be thought of as the visual field. If that is a fundamental error, it would be good to find out before I go any further!
((I have a week of vacation coming up, so good timing! My intention is just to read and work and talk -- if we hit some stumbling block or something really really interesting, I'll figure out which box has Cora Diamond and David Pears in it. The Notebooks are in there somewhere too.))
First incautious thoughts.
You can imagine a collection of things, but even if you imagined a collection of everything, you would not be imagining a world. A collection of things is only the substance of a world, and it must also have form to be a world. The collection must be structured. Do we say here that it must be structured in a particular sort of way to be a world? Are there ways of structuring a collection that are not world-forming ways? I think the answer to that is "yes". (We'll see. What I am thinking of is structuring the collection conceptually, i.e., by a hierarchy of predicates and class membership, that sort of thing. That's a structured collection, but it's not a world.) There is a special sort of form we're looking for, the arrangement of objects into states of affairs*. A collection of objects arranged into states of affairs is a possible world; the actual world is one of these, the one in which a particular collection of states of affairs is the case.
Need to go back there a moment. You can have
(1) A collection of things;
(2) A collection of things arranged into states of affairs;
(3) A collection of states of affairs;
If you add that some states of affairs are the case and some aren't, then you can also have
(4) A collection of states of affairs that are the case;
(5) A collection of the holdings of states of affairs.
And we should go back again, and note
(2a) A collection of things arranged into possible states of affairs;
(3a) A collection of possible states of affairs;
I think we take two steps away from things. We consider them as they could be arranged into states of affairs (logical space), and shift our interest from the things themselves to these possible arrangements. Then we consider whether any individual possible state of affairs is the case; if it is, this is a fact (Tatsache). Now we're looking at collections of facts, not states of affairs, not things -- and this is a possible world, a collection of facts. How the "lower levels" get dragged along is a point of interest.
Is there anything gained in talking about possible facts? What would that be? A state of affairs is already a possible arrangement of things -- what would be the possible holding of a possible arrangement be except a possible arrangement?
I'm going to stop right here, so we can nail down how to understand facts. (I've been doing some of this by looking and some by not looking, so maybe I've made a hash of it.)
There's lots of stuff I haven't gotten to yet -- the gesture toward picturing in 2.0212, which explains why we're doing all this. Geez, why didn't he start here?
And we need to get to the biggy, which is @MetaphysicsNow's question about the atomicity (!) of [s]facts[/s] states of affairs.
No, I don't think LW is building a sort of phenomenalist world like Goodman in The Structure of Appearance, or like Russell might have been doing around this time. (Don't know Russell well enough to know what he was doing right before the TLP.)
I would guess color turns up as a key exemplar of the way logical space works. (Hume noticed this with the "missing shade" business, and LW returns to issues of color throughout his work.) When he says in 2.0251 that "Space, time, and colour (colouredness) are forms of objects", I don't think this is meant to be an exhaustive list such as Kant might have given. They are examples of how objects are tied to a particular subspace of logical space, how what states of affairs they can be part of is prejudged.
I think I see what you're getting at -- the comparison to Kant, rationalism and empiricism -- but it doesn't quite feel true to the text. There's only the one mention of knowledge, at 2.0123-2.01231, and the suggestive variation in 2.0124, where instead of me knowing an object, objects are given. If anything, it seems like LW is specifically avoiding the tradition of starting with a perceiving subject. Instead we're going to start with how representation is possible and get to who does this representing later.
What do you think?
* This is Sachverhalt. Pears & McGuinness "state of affairs", Ogden & Ramsey "atomic fact". ((I only have Ogden & Ramsey, but we all have the German, right? I'm happy to follow the P&M terminology.))
EDIT: Dang it! Wrote "facts" for "states of affairs".
1. Interpretation of the sections we're currently working on.
2. (Optional) Upshot of the proposed interpretation for understanding the book so far.
3. (Optional) Upshot of the proposed interpretation of the book so far for the philosophical issues it addresses.
Changed it. Currently digesting what both @MetaphysicsNow and you have said.
Objects and atomic facts are simple.
Facts are the logical relations between objects and atomic facts in logical space.
States of affairs are the resulting pictorial form of the relation between atomic facts.
Logical space is the ontology of where atomic facts and objects reside in.
Facts cannot depict themselves, only in pictorial form are they apparent.
I'll leave it there for the moment being... Basically, when we talk about objects, they are atomic facts, correct?
In case anyone is confused here's the whole thing broken down to its constituents.
I thought "states of affairs" and "atomic facts" are different translations of "Sachverhalten." Or, are you saying that specifically for this discussion, you will use those terms in that way?
No, if memory serves me correctly according to Max Black, the two are distict and separate in meaning.
If states of affairs are the pictorial form of logical relations between atomic facts, which are further understood as simples, then they are not one and the same, no?
I don't know what you're talking about. "Picture" is "Bild".
Ok, I digress. Sorry.
@Posty McPostface On the terminological points, we should think of "atomic fact" and "state of affairs" as synonyms. Atomic facts are combinations of objects/things. So we have a threefold ontology of facts, atomic facts and objects/things. The relationship of facts to atomic facts is pretty much that the former are just collections of the latter, with atomic facts being things that can exist with absolute independence. The relationship of atomic facts to objects seems to be more complicated, since it is not just one of whole to its parts insofar as the parts (objects) cannot have an existence independent from the whole (atomic facts) whereas typically a part-whole relationship does allow for independent existence of the parts (buildings and bricks for instance). However, at this point I need to have a think about ST's post and a reread of the sections of the Tractatus before saying anything else.
Strange, as I've always been under the impression that states of affairs was synonymous with pictorial forms (the basis of Wittgenstein's picture theory of meaning) or depictions of the logical relations of atomic facts in logical space. I might go to my local community college tomorrow to confirm if that is the case and pick up a companion that lead me to my sentiments about this and post about it then with greater confidence.
Thanks.
Here are some propositions that might eludicate the matter:
Quoting Wittgenstein
and,
Quoting Wittgenstein
Quoting Wittgenstein
I don't read it that way at all. A fact, Tatsache, is the Bestehen of a state of affairs or atomic fact. Bestehen is in O&R as "existence", but I don't know. I think of it as obtaining or holding. It can even be persistence or insistence, though that's not much better in context than "existence". It's, at root, an emphatic version of "stand", if that helps anyone.
((BTW, does anyone here have better German than I do? he asked hopefully.))
Anyway, I think states of affairs are more or less by definition possibilities, and a fact is such a possibility obtaining. Thus the world (i.e., the actual world) is fully determined by which possibilities happen to obtain.
My reading here is colored by my sense of the TLP as the link between Frege and Tarski, and then eventually PWS as the fulfillment of this whole approach. Facts are the on/off switches of states of affairs because we'll eventually define a possible world by running down a list of propositions and assigning truth values (Frege's contribution).
https://books.google.com/books?id=uzY9AAAAIAAJ&q=sachlage#v=snippet&q=sachlage&f=false
For all intents and purposes, it seems Sachlage (state of affairs) is indistinguishable from Sachverhalt (atomic facts), along with some nuances related to Tatasche (facts).
So, never-mind my quibbles.
OK, so Sachlage is the sense of a proposition. Think that narrows it down a little.
Yeah, good point. I totally forgot about Sachlage, which O&R render as "state of affairs".
At a glance, he seems to use Sachlage where there's a sense of the relation to other objects being "external", accidental. 2.0121 reads that way.
2.014-2.0141 repeats this same pattern of pushing the possible Sachlagen into the object as Sachverhalten.
It looks like maybe a rhetorical distinction.
I think that it might sometimes help to break these words apart and refit variations on each word into Wittgenstein's sentences just to see what comes out.
For Sach-lage, I like to think of "how stuff lies together". It might also mean an "objective situation" or "state of affairs", or even (in limited cases) "cause".
For Sach-verhalt, I like to think of "how stuff holds together". The dictionary definition is literally "Tatsachen und ihre Zusammenhänge", so it might also mean "facts and their relationships".
Now, re-reading the sections you quoted, let me re-translate them a bit. Not to improve them, but just to show how monkeying around with the translation can help provide different thoughts about interpretation:
What do you think? Is this useful or misleading and overly complicated?
It's a semantic quibble over what obtains in reality (Sachverhalt) and what not necessarily so or is otherwise possible (Sachlage). Further complicating the issue is talk about 'complex' and 'simple', facts. I suppose someone more in touch with Frege might be able to better answer the question pertaining that Sachlage has a 'sense' where Sachverhalt does not necessarily do so.
Very nice.
Yeah, that's not how I understand Sachlage. More like a possible configuration of atomic facts giving rise to it having a 'sense'. Please correct me if I'm wrong. The companion I referenced above seems to support this interpretation... Pages 44-49.
Sachverhalt is what is and Sachlage is what could be.
Hope I didn't oversimplify it.
I don't think so. He uses the word "possible" a lot in the first couple pages, and with both.
2.0122 is another:
"The thing is independent, in so far as it can occur in all possible Sachlagen, but this form of Independence is a form of connection with the Sachverhalt, a form of dependence."
I think it's facts that are the actuality of either.
Sorry, I don't think that I understand what is meant by "semantic quibble" here.
Quoting Posty McPostface
I'm not sure if you're objecting to my way of posing things ("how stuff lies together") or the dictionary-definition I provided of "objective situation", or both. But like I said my object was not to present a 'best' way of reading these passages, only to show how different ways of translating the words might provoke different notions of what's going on in those passages.
Quoting Posty McPostface
As to your suggestion here, let's look at the larger scaffolding for a second:
[quote=L.W.]1. The World is all that is the case.
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not things.
1.2 The world divides into facts.
2. What is the case—a fact—is the existence of a state of affairs. [Was der Fall ist, die Tatsache, ist das Bestehen von Sachverhalten.][/quote]
The world is all that is the case and what is the case is the Bestehen of a Sachverhalten. One way of thinking about this is that the world is "how stuff hangs together". And it is holding together particular ways the facts might lie together--Sachlage.
So I am tempted to think that it is not semantic quibbling to worry about the best translation of these terms, different ways of rendering them, etc. I am willing to accept your goal of a simplified way of rendering things but I would be wary of doing so at the expense of other avenues.
Edit: Wow, I am tired and made all kinds of little errors in e.g. singular/plural, and it's amazing how such small mistakes present ideas in a totally different (wrong) light as a result of the acerbic beauty of this book.
What's the stuff about sense?
ADDED: Maybe don't -- it sounds like maybe we'd be getting way ahead of ourselves.
This sounds good, except it's the possibility of things lying together, not facts.
From.
Thanks for clarifying these confusing concepts, Srap Tasmaner and John Doe.
Yeah, we're not nearly there yet!
I'm going to wait for MN to chime in.
See y'all tomorrow.
Still waiting on what @mcdoodle has to say. Sorry for jumping ahead, just that you kind of have to to clarify what is meant in some holistic manner of the whole shtick.
Hope you guys are having a good summer. I know I am. =]
@Srap Tasmaner
I can see that - there is as you indicate a lot of emphasis on modality in the opening sections dealing with states of affairs and objects, including what seems to be an almost impossible constraint on knowledge of objects requiring knowledge of all the possibilities for that object. However, on the other hand doesn't at least some of what is going on in these opening propositions suggest a distinction between actual and possible states of affairs? For instance, one thing we can be sure of is that in these sections, there is no such thing as a merely possible object: objects just are and they make up the substance of the world. States of affairs are combinations of these objects, so it looks like at least some states of affairs must be actual and not just possible.
Another thing that makes me doubt that states of affairs are just possibilities is that, possibilities - whatever they are - certainly seem to be real for W (although of course not actual) and so they exist, and at proposition 2 we have a fact described as the existence of states of affairs. If states of affairs are just possibilities, then 2 would seem to imply that facts are just possibilities too, whereas facts - like objects - seem to be always in the realm of the actual for W (don't they? he does talk about negative facts, of course, so perhaps talk about possible facts also makes sense for him). Anyway, this specific point may be a translational issue - perhaps (2) should better be read along the lines "a fact is the obtaining of states of affairs".
(
This distinction I do have a problem with, at least at the moment as an interpretation of W - given 2.012 and 2.0121 . I may not be understanding you clearly, but I take it that the idea is that the difference between (1) and (2) is that the latter has the requisite form. However, arguably whatever form a collection of objects has is derived from and only from those objects, so any collection of objects has form at least in some sense. So the issue would then be to find some non-accidental way of distinguishing between types of forms such that on the one hand we have states of affairs, and on the other just some other kind of collection of objects. Perhaps there'll be some answers to this when we move on to W's theory of representation.
By the way, the proposal about how to present subsequent post formatting as we move on to other sections seems to be a good one to me.
Should we move on, or do people think there is more to milk out of these first few propositions?
"The book deals with the problems of philosophy, and shows, I believe, that the reason why these problems are posed is that the logic of our language is misunderstood. The whole sense of the book might be summed up in the following words: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.
"Thus the aim of the book is to draw a limit to thought, or rather--not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts: for in order to be able to draw a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought).
"It will therefore only be in language that the limit can be drawn, and what lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense (Tractatus, p. 3)."
No no no, we can't move on yet!
(If there are things we think we'll be better able to address after covering more, I could see keeping a little list somewhere of what we want to come back to. That's reasonable.)
In this case, I'm not at all sure we have a common understanding of these sections and we haven't yet addressed the key issue here, which is the atomicity of atomic facts. I'd try starting on the latter, but don't we need the former first?
As for some Sachverhalten being actual rather than possible -- I'm a little puzzled by the dichotomy. S is actual entails S is possible. Do you do that differently?
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
There's so much I want to say here but I'm at work now!
So yes, I think LW wants to say something just like this. The step I began with, of just imagining a collection of things, may be an imaginary step, a step no one can actually take. Maybe it's a step philosophers sometimes think they or others take.
Is it possible to get this wrong? I mean, is it even possible to imagine incorrectly here, or must we imagine things in their connectedness?
That connectedness, the way things participate in Sachverhalten -- couple thoughts. First, there's this strong sense of necessity everywhere. You can say that my car can just happen to be in a parking lot, but my sense is he wants to say my car can't just happen to be capable of being in a parking lot. This possibility seems to be, well, part of the essence of my car. And likewise of a parking lot, that it can have cars in it. Now one thing LW seems to walk right up to saying and not quite say is that an object just is all the possible Sachverhalten it could participate in, that these are an object's essence.
Historical-contextual note. If that's roughly the road we're on, this looks spookily like a context principle for things. Frege tells us the meaning of a word is the contribution it makes to determining the truth value of propositions in which it appears. Look familiar? W is coming really close to saying the essence of an object is the contribution it makes to ("the actuality of"?) the Sachverhalten in which it participates.
((Various autocorrect fixes.))
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
This is where I think it would be pertinent to use at least some comprehensive companion to refer to in regards to matters of what was meant by Tatasche, Sachverhalten, and Sachlage. I believe I might have answered this above in regards to the companion I quoted; but, I don't have a PDF available to that matter. Any suggestions or should we just dismiss this issue as to treating Sachverhalten as actual and obtaining to the world, and Sachlage as possible and not necessarily obtaining to the world, and Tatasche as being a composite of the previous two?
My issue was the suggestion that something isn't a possibility if it is an actuality. That struck me as an odd way to approach modality. I just want to avoid us talking past each other -- I don't know that there's real disagreement here between me and @MetaphysicsNow.
I wasn't raising an issue of interpretation at all.
Not the very best way to begin a post.
If you'd like to offer a different take on the passages under discussion, I'm sure we'd all be interested.
I don't understand the "composite" business.
For the other issue, I'll have to wait until I can look at the text again. I don't think he distinguished Sachlage and Sachverhalt this way, but you could be right. His terminology is whatever it is, though, and we can certainly use terms he didn't to make these distinctions.
I just assume that Sachverhalt is what is actually the case in t=0, and Sachlage is what is possible in t=0....1.
Dunno if that makes any sense.
Such a distinction makes perfect sense and would be useful. Whether it tracks W's usage is something we'd want to know, just to make sure we don't misunderstand him.
Yeah, if you know any companion that would answer this question about the lingering ambiguity please post a link. I'm also apprehensive to commit to that interpretation.
I believe you, Sam. But I'm under the impression you think we have already made a mistake or are in danger of making a mistake, only you haven't told us. And you haven't said what the right way would be.
We're just talking here. I'd like to hear what you have to say.
Thanks!
(The following are from the O&R translation.)
I'm going to pick out just a few remarks that are especially on point, but pretty much everything from 1 to 2.063 is required, and I'm leaving out a lot of local context to highlight these:
(One issue I'm just a little concerned about -- maybe not much -- is that from the style it can be hard to tell whether you're reading a positive claim or simply (!) a contextual definition. I think it's actually all the former and none of the latter in these remarks, but there are a few others I lean toward seeing as contextual definitions.)
2.021 - 2.0212 jumps out as being something like an argument, when mainly we're being treated to interwoven assertions.
1.21 and 2.062-2.062 are essentially equivalent, since we've already been told (2) that a fact is the existence of an atomic fact.
Let's start with a simple-minded analogy. (Not an example of what W is talking about, but an analogy, to get us started.)
We can imagine the world being different, different ways of the world being different. If I think to myself, "If only everyone were nicer to me!" that's a difference. I imagine the rest of the world going on as it does except everyone is nicer to me. But everyone is a lot of people, and it's a class that splits readily given any predicate: "If only everyone I know were nicer to me!" (Taken together with "If only everyone I don't know were nicer to me!" you get the original wish.) Everyone I know is still quite a few people and we could continue splitting using predicates (everyone I know from work, everyone I know from work I go to the bar with, etc.). It becomes natural to expect there to be a smallest unit of difference we could eventually reach -- "If only she were nicer to me!" for some "she". (We're going to pretend to stop here for a moment, since this is just an analogy.) At each point along the way, the complementary class could be left as is, still not as nice to me as I'd like, and only the new smaller class I'm looking at changing. Once we get to a single element -- "she" -- we can imagine only her being nicer and no one else.
When we think about differences in the way the world might be, we expect to be able to find a smallest unit of difference. Must we be able to do so? Can we imagine always being able to go still smaller, never reaching something that is only a class member and not itself a class?
The analogy we used solves itself. The difference we were interested in is niceness, and there is a smallest unit to which the predicate nice applies, a person. (Okay, we're pretending again -- we could wish she were nicer to us Tuesdays, or last Tuesday around 3, etc.) Our classes of people must have people as members, and we must be able to identify individual members, else what sort of classes are these anyway? (That's quite weak, but we'll save real thinking for the text itself.)
It seems clear that any predicate will have such a smallest unit of applicability, and then the smallest unit of difference in the world we can imagine is such a predicate applying or not applying to one such a unit.
That's it for the analogy, a simple-minded view of how something like analysis might work, and of what might count as a fact.
Tomorrow, I'll have a go at what W actually says unless someone else beats me to it.
As far as I know, those are the atomic facts that pertain to actual facts. An interesting corollary question is whether Wittgenstein meant to impress upon us differing degrees of fact-hood or factually bound claims about the world depending on Sachverhalt and Sachlage. But, then again if the world is the totality of facts, then does that make this a redundant claim?
This is what I meant about there being 'composite' facts derived from atomic facts and/or states of affairs. Tatasche seems to entail both, yet I'm not sure if there was a distinction being made in the Tractatus about the two. In my mind, there is as I've read some notions of Wittgenstein implying the existence of 'plain facts' and 'complex facts'.
I'll stop there, as its verging on the nonsensical.
I'm reading the following to help clarify the issue:
Wittgenstein on facts and objects: the metaphysics of the Tractatus
2.0201 Every statement about complexes can be resolved into a statement about their constituents and into the propositions that describe the complexes completely.
This website is helpful:
http://faculty.fiu.edu/~hauptli/Wittgenstein'sTractatus.html
Although, I disagree with the author that Sachverhalt are the same as Sachlage.
Edit: Actually, the author incorrectly references Sachverhalte as 'states of affairs', so maybe not such a great reference to the pertaining questions.
Well, these are just objects. The relation of objects (in a chain) are what constitute atomic facts. The properties of objects and things doesn't get mentioned until we bring up the idea of complex or simple facts, which are constituted in the form of states of affairs, I think.
There's something niggling at me that makes me want to say that the difference between an actual state of affairs and a possible state of affairs is significant to understanding W here, but I'm having difficulty putting my finger on what might be the difference between our positions here. I'll have a rethink and see if I can be more precise - but you may be right that there is nothing significant here.
@Sam26" I think it is pretty clear that whatever "objects" are for W, they definitely are not the medium-sized dry goods we're familiar with in our everyday lives. Perhaps my use of "object" = "object of perception" gave you the impression that I was in danger of making that kind of link, but really I'm not. I am still tempted by the idea of linking W's logical space to the idea of the visual field, and so tying objects to smallest identifiable elements of the visual field, but (1) that's a long way from confusing objects with everyday macroscopic or microscopic things and (2) I'm not wedded to that idea. I appreciate that the Tractatus has very little to say explicitly about perception (5.5423 is about the only exception that I noticed during my skim read) and perhaps W thought that one of the problems with previous philosophy is that philosophers were trying to say things about perception that could not really be said (interestingly, 5.5423 has a diagram).
@Srap Tasmaner
I think @Posty McPostface touches on what I'm about to say in his last post. Do we need to be careful about introducing talk about predicates when expounding W's arguments in this part of the Tractatus? 2.0231 says that we do not get material properties until we already have configurations of objects, and predicates are generally used to signify material properties. Unlike Frege who had a basic ontology of concept and object, and a corresponding predicate/name distinction, W in the Tractatus seems to be burrowing down deeper and has only objects and names. Of course, these are issues we'll be digging into in more depth when we start dealing with W's theory of symbolism. I get, though, that you are just giving an analogy of how one might argue for some kind of foundationalism, but we might need to come back to W's argument for foundationalism once we've dealt a little more with his ideas about depiction (somewhere he gives the metaphor of depiction involving putting out feelers, and there needs to be something that feelers can grab hold of - if everything they grab hold of dissipates when grabbed, then they never end up touching reality).
@Posty McPostface The link to the Jeff Speaks lecture notes was useful, thanks.
I'm travelling for the next few days - I'll have the Tractatus with me and will have some time to be on the internet, but it might be intermittent.
As we go along you might find these useful:
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Jeff Speaks
Wittgenstein on logical form and the nature of philosophy by Jeff Speaks
I actually sent an e-mail to Professor Jeff Speaks about this issue. I'll post what he has to say about it if he replies.
I also sent an e-mail to Professor Conant in regards to the same issue. Let's see who gets back.
Quoting Jeff Speaks
I don't understand. Are you unhappy with how things are being handled thus far? If so let me know what would you like for me to change in the manner we're going about things here. Others might have different opinions, but since we're not sticking to any particular companion or interpretation of the Tractatus then by default this is the only method to go about answering lingering questions about what W meant by this or that proposition.
For the matter, MetaphysicsNow is in charge of how were approaching the reading group.
No. I am not unhappy.
Certain posts lead me to mistakenly believe the collective reading has begun and someone forgot to tell me or I did not notice.
I am excited about the prospect of the group and am therefore anxious.
As long as you don't forget me when it comes to launch time, you may disregard my childlike impatience.
:smile:
Yes. It has begun.
Quoting Posty McPostface
Quoting Arne
And now I am saddened.
This is the thread.
We're still working on 1 - 2.063. Haven't even gotten to pictures yet. Haven't even nailed down what the terms in the first sections mean. Jump right in! We've basically just started.
I am in exactly this boat, fwiw.
is there an agreed upon text?
No. I only have Ogden & Ramsey. We've been using German where necessary for clarity.
Don't be and feel free to chime in whenever you want. I don't think there's any detriment if you bring up questions we already tried to cover. In fact we would have already gone through the interpretation phase so win win for you. :smile:
Thoughts?
Yes
What do you mean?
My last post took predication as an analogy and followed the process in one direction, and reached a less than satisfying conclusion. Mainly I think LW is reasoning backward. For my analogy, that would be a claim something like this: If there were not a unit of predication, then we could not form classes in the first place. That's certainly quicker.
Here the chain of reasoning seems to run like this:
(1) It is possible to form a picture of the world (true or false);
(2) Therefore whether a proposition has sense does not depend on whether another proposition is true.
(3) Therefore the world has substance.
There's not much we can do about (1) as a premise. We're about to get to the picture theory, so we'll have more meat on these bones soon. At the moment, we're in no position to evaluate (1).
(2) we might also not be in a position to judge -- having been told nothing about propositions and their sense yet. I would like to think I can makes sense of it, but -- infuriatingly -- the remark right before this, which seems to set it up, uses a completely different set of terms:
If this were not so we might just say this: the sense of a proposition is the states of affairs (or atomic facts) it describes, actual or not; the truth of a proposition is the obtaining of such a state of affairs. Naturally we want to keep those separate somehow. Why, specifically, should the sense of a proposition not depend on the truth of another? Because truth simply has no place here. If states of affairs are independent, they can obtain or not, without regard to whether other states of affairs obtain or not. We are essentially defining a "state of affairs" as the smallest unit of difference between one (possible) world and another. Such a difference belongs to logical space. If some state of affairs does obtain, it is part of reality, the actual world; there is in logical space another world, exactly like the actual world except that this state of affairs does not obtain.
We're not done, but I want to stop here to note the interpretative problem: 2.0201 is not about propositions but statements. It's also not about states of affairs, but about complexes. "Complexes"? And this is the commentary on 2.02: "Objects are simple." I think we're still on roughly the right track, but there are some intermediate steps, and I think it's what we need to get from (2) to (3).
To get from (2) to (3), we're going to jump ahead a little:
(Starting to feel like I'm going to end up quoting the whole book.)
We should by now be able to recognize what 2.024 is about. There's the vast logical space of possibilities, some of which obtain here in reality. There is something that can be the way it is or another way. That something is substance, what abides whether it is this way or that, what it is that is either this way or that. (More in a minute.)
Now let's go back to the sense of propositions. Because the sense of a proposition "has to do with" (I don't really know how to put this) the (possible) states of affairs it describes, as distinct its truth or falsehood, which "has to do with" whether those states of affairs are factual -- because of this, the sense of a proposition is about substance. And since substance is independent of factuality, there is no place here, in the determining of sense, for the truth or falsehood of any proposition.
Reasoning backward again, we might say this: a proposition that describes a different world from ours, or describes our world different in some way, perhaps different only in respect of a single fact, is clearly still about something, even though that something is not actual. I think W goes even further: what such propositions are about is exactly the same thing that propositions about the actual world are about.
Continuing to work backwards in this way, I think it's not crazy to view substance, objects, as in some sense theoretical posits. They are simply that thing that propositions are about -- I suppose really we should say what propositions are ultimately about, since it takes analysis to get there.
*
I really only meant to address independence, but I've dragged in substance too. The last little bit about independence was @MetaphysicsNow's question from before:
vs.
I think the way to take 2.04-2.05 there is that if you're not on the existent list, you're on the non-existent list, and it's one or the other. There is no dependence between atomic facts, or between existent atomic facts.
Again, I think we can get this independence reasoning backward.
That is to say, we can define a way of logically partitioning the world into units that are independent, the smallest unit of difference between one way the world might be, or is, and another.
*
Stopping here. To do:
Then I guess we'd be ready to move on to the picture theory and see how things start to fit together.
I think this needs to be expanded a little more, although I agree with it.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yeah, so again, how does it obtain in reality, not the world.
Also, this might help:
“I want you to realize that when I speak of a fact I do not mean a particular
existing thing, such as Socrates or the rain or the sun. Socrates himself does not
render any statement true or false. What I call a fact is the sort of thing that
is expressed by a whole sentence, not by a single name like ‘Socrates.’ . . .We
express a fact, for example, when we say that a certain thing has a certain
property, or that it has a certain relation to another thing; but the thing which
has the property or the relation is not what I call a ‘fact.”’ (‘Logical atomism’,
41, Russell)
Expanded how? At this point anyway, I'm guessing, because we don't have anything yet on propositions or truth.
Quoting Posty McPostface
Do you mean here, how one and not the other, or how does obtaining work?
If you mean the difference between reality and the world -- I can go back to the text, but it's just going to be a question of how he's chosen to use these words. Just a technical question, important for interpretation maybe, but I don't think anything else is riding on it. I don't think he ever quite lands on something that jumps out as a "possible world" -- if he had that might help. Maybe he's deliberately avoiding that, but I'm not sure why.
If it's the latter, that would seem to be a pretty deep mystery.
Did I write something that conflicts with this quote? (And where's that quote from?)
Yeah, I feel that it inevitably leads us to address Logical Atomism and how Wittgenstein's views differed from Russell.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
You can find more info here:
https://users.drew.edu/jlenz/br-logical-atomism1.html
Do a Ctl+f to find the quoted text in that page, which is elaborated on.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I mean to say the latter. I feel that the difference between Sachlage and Sachverhalte is crucial here. I might be wrong. As for my opinion, I think atomic facts are what constitute the world, and reality is constituted/construed by states of affairs, speaking as an observer of the world.
Ah, so that's Russell. I feel like reading that would only confuse matters. Does that seem crazy? I mean, it's hard enough to get a handle on what W is saying. Maybe more historical context would help, but there's also that danger of substituting a view that's easier to grasp for W's. Do you see what I mean?
Let me put it this way: if we need, say, Russell to understand Wittgenstein, then okay. If Wittgenstein cannot be understood on his own, then bring on the comparisons. But I'm not particularly interested in an historical approach just to be historical -- I don't care if Russell thought A, but W thought B.
.
Quoting Posty McPostface
Obtaining per se -- I can't even imagine having anything to say about that.
As for the Sachverhalt/Sachverlage thing -- I don't see this splitting as one's actual and the other's possible. There's some distinction in the text but I don't see it as that, so I don't want to assign the terms those meanings.
On the other hand, we can make such a distinction. If the words W uses obscure that distinction, then so much the worse for his chosen terminology -- unless there's an argument in the text, explicit or implicit, that we ought not be distinguishing this way.
So if the point were that one's actual and the other's not -- that's not much help is it?
Quoting Posty McPostface
I also don't see anything in the text about the way the world is versus the way we observe it. Maybe that'll come out later, but I'm not reading ahead.
Btw, do you mean this is in fact your view, or it's your understanding of LW?
I get what you're saying; but, I suppose if we want to talk about these propositions, then some understanding of logical atomism is necessary. And, given that Russell so heavily influenced the early Wittgenstein, then it's only pertinent that we bring up how their views differed from each other.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Same.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Why not? If Wittgenstein wanted to avoid the ambiguity he could have just stuck to one term instead of convolution the whole thing with both terms. I doubt Wittgenstein would have done this unintentionally had there been some reason.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I'm not quite sure yet. It might become more apparent as we progress though the work. Too early to say at the moment.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yeah, I might be jumping ahead.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
To answer your question with another question; Are facts observer independent or dependent?
If by "logical atomism" you specifically mean Russell's views around this period, see below.
I thought there were a lot of people who took TLP itself to be one of the definitive statements of something called "logical atomism" though, so reading it ought to do the trick. Then again, this is just labeling, and I don't care. We're reading TLP and that's enough for me.
Quoting Posty McPostface
I'm no scholar, so I can't speak to that. I think there's plenty of textual evidence that Frege greatly influenced Wittgenstein, early and late, and Frege I know a bit about. That's a dodgy way of saying I'm slightly skeptical of "Russell's influence on Wittgenstein" being a thing.
Quoting Posty McPostface
I think there is a distinction suggested -- I just don't think it's actual vs. possible.
As for terminology in general -- this is frustrating, as I've noted. The way he rings the changes on world, reality, fact, etc., I'm not quite sure what he's up to. Is every noun he uses used in some specific technical sense? (I forget whether I posted the thought that it can be hard to tell whether you're reading a thesis, an actual claim, or a contextual definition sometimes -- if I didn't, I have now.) I don't know. I have never believed, for instance, that he was using the phrase "forms of life" as a technical term, but the commentariat have made it one. I don't know where to draw the line. I guess we have to draw it as we go.
Quoting Posty McPostface
Yes. In the Tractatus and in reality.
See:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/190055
It jumps ahead a little but illustrates my trifle...
I'm under the impression that the world is the totality of facts and reality is the totality of those facts and states of affairs.
I'm gonna leave this open to debate with others if they contest that way of framing the issue.
is the difference between "states of affairs" and "atomic facts" reconcilable?
It is my understanding that they are not synonymous?
It is also my understanding we are using the Ogden translation?
The facts in logical space are the world.
What is logical space?
and if the facts in logical are the world, then there can be no other space within the world that is not subsumed by logical space?
The quotes I've posted are from Ogden & Ramsey. It might be simplest just to settle on this as the official version -- it's available free (and legally) from Gutenberg.
In chitchat I've freely alternated between their rendering of Sachverhalten as "atomic facts" and the Pears & McGuinness rendering as "states of affairs".
Quoting Arne
Maybe? I honestly don't know how much is riding on whether W makes a consistent distinction between the two words and what that distinction is.
Quoting Arne
Certainly.
Quoting Arne
That's a good question. I've been using the phrase to designate the vasty realm of possibilities. You can define a subspace of those possibilities that obtain and that's the world, our world, reality, actuality -- however that works, might depend on what level you're defining from.
Once more into the breach -- assuming "states of affairs" here is Sachlagen.
Quoting Posty McPostface
And Max Black notes that Sachverhalten and Sachlagen are really hard to distinguish.
Let's look at it this way. What can objects "do"? What sorts of things happen to objects?
Here's one way of thinking about this. Suppose your domain of discourse has two objects called a and b. (This is an analogy, using math.) You can make a set {a, b}. This possibility is intrinsic to a and b being in your domain. There might also be some relation R that holds between a and b: aRb is true. Part of the formalization of aRb might be something like {a, {a, b}}.
When we look at a, we could say it might find itself in something like {a, b}, or in something like {a, {a, b}}. In the first a is "combined" with another element; in the second it is "combined" with another element in a more particular way. If there are other relations possible between a and b, the latter may not be specific enough to distinguish R from any other relation or function. At least it's distinct from {b, {a, b}}.
Roughly speaking, I think of Sachlagen as the possibility of an object coming together, being combined, with other objects in some way, perhaps not precisely specified. But W says that in Sachverhalten, objects are combined in a definite way.
Of an object participating in a Sachverhalt, we could say: it is combined with other objects, it is combined with other objects in a particular way. We could also not look at the other objects and just say it is part of a Sachverhalt -- which implies other objects that are also parts. All of these different ways of looking at a Sachverhalt and an object combined in it will be true. I think of Sachlage as being a way of thinking about it in terms of other objects, coming together with them, maybe even coming together with them in a specific way -- looking at the whole thing with a focus on the elements. I think of Sachverhalt as the totality, like a set of objects together with a relation defined on that set. An object can be part of such a totality, and here we focus on the relation between the object-member of and the totality, not between the object and the other objects that are also there.
I think it's just a perspective switch, but it does leave room for applying Sachlage where the way the objects are combined is unspecified or less specified. Both can be possible or actual, but there is a natural way to take not specifying the "how" as leaving wider usage for Sachlage, more possibilities. Of course, given a set and a lot of different relations defined on that set (analogy again) there would be more specific set-with-a-relation things than just the set thing -- same way there are usually more permutations than combinations -- so a term for sets arranged in some specific way would have the wider usage.
I've probably not been clear -- too many words -- but this is my sense of how the terms are used, and it doesn't line up at all with actual and possible.
In terms of a bunch of objects, and maybe even how exactly they're combined: Sachlagen. The thing objects are combined into: Sachverhalt.
I just want to call attention to the shape of this argument. There's metaphysics here, but it's a metaphysics implied by what we understand about representation.
What that last means can play out differently: is this metaphysics implied by the fact of representation, or by our ideas, possibly mistaken, about representation?
Also, when it comes to talking directly about representation, we'll have to be careful. We have derived our metaphysics from the fact of representation, let's say: this is how things must be for representation to be possible, for us to be doing what we think we're doing by forming representations of the world. We cannot then come to representation and say: given that the world is this way, here's how representation works, is possible, is the way we think. That would be patently circular. This is the metaphysics required by our ideas about representation; of course it will work out as the underpinnings of representation, if representation is what we think it is.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
If the actual world is partitioned into independent facts, then there can be no smaller unit of difference between this world and any other. If there could, then that difference would be independent of the rest of whatever partition it was included in. So they are the same.
We should be able to do some of this reasoning forward now.
Suppose the world has no substance -- no "substrate" that is the same no matter how things happen to be. Then for a proposition to have sense, it would presumably have to be about actual atomic facts -- is there an alternative? In which case a proposition asserting the actuality of what the proposition is about would have to be true.
Now why would we be unable to form a picture of the world if the sense of a proposition depended on the truth of another? That will have to wait until we get to the picture theory.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-Wittgenstein-s-Logical-Space
http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9780631185376_chunk_g978063118537614_ss1-8
http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9781405106795_chunk_g978140510679513_ss1-104
I don't think there's a better place to post than Quora, as there's a lot of qualified individuals there.
Why are you asking me? Suit yourself.
Is there something in the text I've misread or overlooked? Wouldn't be a huge surprise. Just point me in the right direction. Or post what you think is the key passage and show me how I should be reading it.
Just out of courtesy. I'll get back with a more detailed post tomorrow or later today. Might take a while. But if you read the Max Black post I referenced Wittgenstein does talk about mögliche Sachlagen...
2.012
In logic nothing is accidental: if a thing can occur in an atomic fact the possibility of that atomic fact must already be prejudged in the thing.
-------
2.0121
It would, so to speak, appear as an accident, when to a thing that could exist alone on its own account, subsequently a state of affairs could be made to fit.
If things can occur in atomic facts, this possibility must already lie in them.
(A logical entity cannot be merely possible. Logic treats of every possibility, and all possibilities are its facts.)
Just as we cannot think of spatial objects at all apart from space, or temporal objects apart from time, so we cannot think of any object apart from the possibility of its connexion with other things.
If I can think of an object in the context of an atomic fact, I cannot think of it apart from the possibility of this context.
--------
and jumping ahead a little:
2.202
The picture represents a possible state of affairs in logical space.
---------
2.203
The picture contains the possibility of the state of affairs which it represents.
----------
I'm going to refrain from interpretations at the moment and meditate over this a little.
Sorry if this isn't much of help, just trying to reread or bring up again what has been said in a new light.
Sure, and he also wrote this:
Why don't we just table this until we finally move on to the picture theory.
Yes, and those atomic facts and their relations are what make up the actual world. Me picturing them as possible states of affairs is what constitutes my reality (hinting at the Tractarian solipsism that we'll encounter).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Sure, although it seems it seems like its just us two at the moment. So, I hope someone else can chime in also... :confused:
EDIT: It's an insurmountable trap to talk about states of affairs independently of atomic facts, if you get the point.
I think the difference is, when speaking of objects, whether it's appropriate to call an object a "part".
If it is combined with other objects in a definite way, we have an atomic fact, and it is surely appropriate to call the object a "part" of this atomic fact. But what about all the possible atomic facts which it could be a part of, the possibility of being a part of which is prejudged in the object? Would you say it is a "part" of those? That seems wrong. So 2.013 has that little "gleichsam" in it.
So there's a distinction near the one you're talking about: an object isn't part of something that's only possible; that appellation we'd reserve for being so combined in something actual.
Where does that leave states of affairs? I read "state of affairs" as a way of looking at atomic facts, possible or actual, in which we still only consider the objects so combined as objects, rather than as parts. It's, as I've said before, a slightly more "external" view -- you have to take the "internal" view to see an object as a part. It can be two different ways of seeing the same thing: a grape can be a grape and at the same time a part of a bunch; a bunch of grapes is a thing, and it's partly made up of grapes, not "bunch-parts". (LEGOS would probably be a better analogy.)
Here's what really puzzles me about treating atomic facts themselves as always only actual and never possible: what about facts? There's all this business about facts being the existence, the obtaining, of atomic facts. The world is all the atomic facts that obtain. What's the point of all that if atomic facts are by definition actual? Doesn't that just make facts redundant? And how do we make sense of some atomic facts existing and some not? What could a non-obtaining atomic fact possibly be?
Quoting Posty McPostface
"If we build it, they will come"???
Quoting Srap Tasmaner I'm going to refer to "gleichsam" analogically as "manner and form" here (jumping ahead a little): Yes, but it's one and the same to talk about atomic facts and states of affairs in some manner or form. I mean, we are limited by what we can think of to be true, and if we can't think illogically, then we're somewhat limited in our ability to talk about what is being said in manner and form. Or at least borrowing from Wittgenstein, a picture cannot depict its own form.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
It's a self referential ambiguity here, again made apparent with Sachlage and Sachverhalten.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I tend to think, that what obtains is the actuality of a state of affairs although both can exist in possibilities, made apparent by atomic facts. (Yeah, we're talking past each other here, again.) Maybe, to drive the point home, is that atomic facts are tautologies or true in every circumstance, where states of affairs are truth apt.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
They can be both, I think; but, much like tautologies, it's redundant to assume that some obtain or not without superimposing states of affairs on them.
Here's me hoping: :sweat:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/190476
Edit (I'll just repost it again):
Quoting Jeff Speaks
Edit #2: The author left out atomic facts, but, I think you get the point by now.
I just don't see how to square this with 2.04-2.06. Some atomic facts obtain and some don't. If "atomic fact" means "state of affairs that obtains", then an atomic fact that doesn't obtain is a state of affairs that obtains that doesn't obtain. So it's not that. Second try: an atomic fact is "the obtaining of a state of affairs", and the obtaining of something is now something that can obtain or not. I can have an obtaining that obtains or an obtaining that doesn't obtain.
Facts I can deal with. Even in ordinary usage we can distinguish between "The vase is on the table" and "That the vase is on the table", the former a proposition and the latter a fact it expresses. Now we're in the realm of possible facts (I think?!) and it just looks confused to me.
I've read that quote, and it is not obvious to me that the underlined statement is true. I remain confused.
ADDED: Besides which, I think "states of affairs" there is Sachverhalten.
Well, he does use: "existent atomic facts", so I'm not sure what he means by "existent/bestehenden" or "nonexistent/Nichtbestehen". So, again the issue with actual vs possible or obtaining and not obtaining. So, again I would say that existent atomic facts are what obtain in reality from the world. Maybe a fancy way of saying 'a true states of affairs existent in reality', because it would be redundant to say 'a true atomic fact in the world existent in reality'; but, not 'an atomic fact obtaining in reality from the world'.
I'm probably wrong about all this for the matter.
Edit: Playing around with "a" and "an" here.
Edit#2: Sorry for using "obtaining" and "existent" and "not obtaining" and "non-existent" interchangeably here. Hope it doesn't muddy the waters.
https://www.quora.com/Wittgenstein-Tractatus-States-of-affairs-and-atomic-facts-What-s-the-difference-between-Sachverhalten-and-Sachlage-in-the-Tractatus-Does-one-obtain-from-the-other-and-is-one-actual-rather-than-possible-in-reality/
Maybe the question was ill phrased?
Maybe there will be other answers as well. I do worry sometimes about getting the German wrong, connotation, usage, and so on, do it's good to get input on that. Of course we'd need to know what was typical usage was asking Viennese elite about a hundred years ago for our baseline. More work than I'm willing to do.
I'm going to rethink my position in view of
I think I've been wrong not to look harder at logical space, the world, and reality.
Wow, you stumbled on something worth publishing about. Honestly...
Now I'm totally confused about Sachlage and Sachverhalt.
Edit: I'm going to stick with the O&R translation due to the above. I'm pretty sure Sachverhalten is atomic facts and not a state of affairs.
Let's stick with this for just a bit, then I really think we need to go back.
One thing that's really noticeable is the parallelism between the descriptions of Sachverhalt and picture:
(German below -- you can see the same phrases being used.)
So a picture is clearly a Sachverhalt, but what it pictures is presents is, near as I can tell, never a Sachverhalt, but a Sachlage. Now that's interesting.
There's something that seems vaguely to support what I was saying before:
That "from without" I could make go with my "external" view -- a picture will present atomic facts from the outside, thus as Sachlagen. It's not much.
What I was wondering about was whether the key to reading 2.11 was that the picture presents the obtaining and non-obtaining of atomic facts in logical space, emphasis there, and thus as Sachlagen, that seeing atomic facts as possibilities -- possibilities that are actualized, but no matter -- is seeing them as Sachlagen.
But I think that's wrong. "Situation", "how things stand", that's not bad here. What 2.11 says is simply that the picture shows you what the situation is in logical space, how things stand -- and how things stand is which atomic facts obtain and which don't. In other words. Sachlage seems to be used in just its ordinary sense in 2.11.
-----------------------------------------
Or we could just blunder on into the picture theory -- the main thing we skipped was the stuff about form, and we can pick that while doing the picture theory.
Yeah, I'm pretty much in agreement with everything you've said thus far as that's how I've been interpreting Sachlagen, which obtains from Sachverhalten in a picture in logical space.
I'm amazed at how distorted the other translation can lead to a whole different interpretation. Once we're finished with this reading group I strongly suggest we reach out to some scholar and have our ideas about this distortion in interpretation considered seriously as grounds for some kind of paper or some such matter.
Hopefully not this:
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
because this is obviously false. Sachervalten are combinations of objects, the primary simples of reality; pictures have elements but they're not objects -- presumably they'd be complexes.
What we can say is that there is an isomorphism between them -- that pictures have exactly the same kind of structure, the same kind of structure among their elements, that holds among the parts, the objects, in an atomic fact.
(And we can nod here at my question about how to deal with this isomorphism -- I argued that the metaphysics is specifically whatever representation needs, and so there's barely any sense in asking, say, how does W know these structures are the same?)
Also not this:
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
If the picture said of things that are, that they are, and of things that aren't, that they aren't, the picture would be an assertion. It doesn't and it isn't.
I had wanted to say that 2.11 is a little wrong -- that it should say that a picture shows how things might stand in logical space. But what 2.11 actually says is that the picture shows the obtaining and the not obtaining of atomic facts. We're at one remove from the atomic facts themselves. In this sense, the picture doesn't show, doesn't present the atomic facts themselves at all. So that bears looking at.
*
So we're doing the picture theory now. I make that 2.1-2.225. If you'd like to have a run at summarizing and interpreting, have at it. If not, I'll put something together over the next day or so.
Try this link:
http://www.kfs.org/jonathan/witt/ten.html
Super easy toggling between English and German, along with an easy tree format.
I'll get back to your previous message in due time.
Interesting.
Posty and I are still here, just about to work on the picture theory for real.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Oh yeah, we got this earlier:
((Wasn't ready to be doing this.))
I haven't gone back to the text, but here's my new thought:
There's the logical space of possible atomic facts. That's all of them, with no thought at all for which obtain, which don't. The only restrictions here -- I think -- would be form and logic. But again, obtaining not an issue.
Then there are the possible partitions of the entirety of logical space into atomic facts that obtain, and atomic facts that don't obtain. Such a partition is a Sachlage, a way things might stand in logical space.
There's a sense in which the Sachlage doesn't affect which atomic facts an object may participate in -- again, that's only down to form and logic. But we can still look to the partitions, and say here's a partition that includes atomic facts an object could participate in, here's one that includes atomic facts an object cannot, because of formal or logical reasons. Atomic facts here are still all possible atomic facts, but we can look at those in terms of the possible partitions of logical space, the Sachlagen.
This starts to sound right to me. And it leaves Tatsache as the obtaining or not of an atomic fact. A Sachlage is still just a partition, a possible way logical space might shake out, but I think we'll want a way to say here's a partition that obtains. But a partition is on a whole different level from an atomic fact, so we can't talk about this the same way. Such a partition actually obtaining would be a collection of Tatsachen, of facts, and now we're in a position to sort out what is meant by "reality", by "the world".
We never do in fact talk about a partition being factual. Instead, we talk about the collection of atomic facts that would be factual if a partition obtained. That leaves us with two options: list the atomic facts and say they obtain; list the obtainings, the facticities of the atomic facts, and say they -- what? Are? It seems where we want to end up is saying this or that atomic fact is a fact -- I'm just not quite sure that's what W's taxonomy does.
Thoughts?
ADDED: One further note about the big logical space: [s]it would include, I think, atomic facts that are mutually exclusive.[/s] ((ADDED: WRONG)) It's not a consistent space at all. Everything possible is there. The partitions of this space will all be logically consistent, I think.
MORE ADDED: This would make the Sachlagen the possible worlds I had been hunting for, with the curiosity that [s]we don't directly specify an actual world[/s] ((ADDED: mainly wrong)) -- as, for instance, an indexical, the way Lewis would have it -- instead, we shift to collections of facts. (Still haven't gone back to see how "reality" and "world" slot in here -- that's next.)
Last part.
We call the partition in effect, that Sachlage, "reality", so it's the complete set of obtaining and non-obtaining atomic facts. The world is all of the atomic facts that obtain, the positive "half" of the Sachlage. But I don't know yet whether there is a function over partitions that assigns one the value "true" and the rest the value "false". Maybe.
W seems instead to focus on the Sachlage itself as a function that assigns some atomic facts the value "fact" and some not. From just the ones that are assigned "fact" -- the "positive half" -- you get the whole thing. It's a partition. And focusing on this level keeps to the forefront that shifting the value of a single atomic fact (from fact to not, or vice versa) is always an option, and that switch defines the difference between one partition, one Sachlage, and another.
Last last part, some of what each of us had right and wrong:
You were right that Sachlage is associated with possibility -- it's possible assignments of the value fact to atomic facts.
This assignment is in some sense "external" -- the atomic fact as a whole gets designated fact, without regard to its internal structure -- I think. But since a Sachlage is consistent, we rule out things like the same object participating in multiple atomic facts, a restriction not in place in the "big" space of all possible atomic facts.
I would expect to be able to say that a Sachlage also rules out mutually exclusive atomic facts -- and may have said so above -- but there are no mutually exclusive atomic facts! They are all independent.
I don't know quite how to take the last bit.
I'm hearing a prefiguring of the digital; logical space as the virtual world, atomic fact as a bit. This would explain why W. cannot define or give an example of an atomic fact. "The cat is on the mat." is a complex (picture?), which might have the addition of an extra atomic fact, (T) or (F). A picture is an array of bits, so is a sentence. Any bit can be changed independently of any other bit, but the resulting array may not make sense any more, to say nothing of its truth.
And the virtual world is the world of language and thought, where babes are hot or not, cats are on or off mats, wardrobes lead or do not lead to Narnia, and so on.
An atomic fact is absolutely a bit here, good call.
I don't think though that a complex has an extra bit that's on or off; either the right set of bits is on or it isn't. Calling them a set like that, treating them as a unit, implicitly adds another bit, in a sense, but it's not something that shows up on the same level. It isn't another fact.
Yeah, that was a tad "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" and exactly the kind of thing W wants to 'sort out'. A picture does not contain its own truth... still, its truth status is a matter of atomic fact, and that's what I was trying to point to.
I got an email back from Jeff Speaks, recommending that I pick up Scott Soames, History of Analytic Philosophy Volume I. I'll see what I can find through libgen and the other website posted by another member as I don't really have money to spend on the book currently.
In the Quora page I posted someone said that in the P&M translation the distinction was simply omitted out of personal preference? Strange.
Quoting unenlightened
While waiting around, I started reading The False Prison by David Pears, and within a few pages it is suggested that this little exchange is very nearly the whole point of the Tractatus. So there you go.
https://www.amazon.com/Philosophical-Analysis-Twentieth-Century-Dawn/dp/069112244X
Thanks.
I'm going to scour and compile a summary based of what we've covered thus far. Going to take a while for me to do that, so stay tuned.
Thanks.
I'm still here too. I thought I would get up something about the picture theory to finish off prop 2. Then we could spend some time reviewing and talking about 1-2 as a unit. Do you want me to hold off on that?
Sure, why not?
Kinda worried that we'll never complete this group reading, :sweat:
Think I'll have time today to do the picture theory post, and then we can talk.
Atomic facts are like tautologies that exist in logical space and are observer independent, which are denoted as simple objects. They are true in every possible world.
States of affairs are combinations or an amalgamate of atomic facts in logical space and are observer dependent, that are denoted by an observer creating a reality of their own. They are true in each particular case.
Facts can only be described as observer dependent and hence refer to states of affairs in logical space, with an observer giving rise to their content.
OK, I'll stop there and then we can see what can be said about the world from that.
Hey Posty. (Been busy and what time I've had here has gone to the damn two envelopes paradox, but I have not forgotten about TLP.)
Quoting Posty McPostface
Maybe this will turn out to be right, but I just don't think it's in what we've read so far. The possible realities are built in, there from the start. What you're talking about is picking one. As far as props 1-2 are concerned, we're still just establishing what representation is, how it works, how it's possible.
Here's one thing I keep thinking about: can we think "state of affairs" as always short for "state of affairs in logical space"?
A state of affairs is a function defined on logical space that assigns the value obtains or the value doesn't obtain to possible atomic facts, the elements of logical space. But there's an oddity here: must such a function be defined over the entirety of logical space? Why not just some subspace? When we consider pictures, it is inconceivable that a picture would present how things (could) stand in all of logical space; a picture presents how things (could) stand in some subspace of logical space.
Here's an analogy. Given a deck of cards, either the ace of spades is on top or it isn't. If you define a state as [ace of spades on top], that picks out an equivalence class of many possible states of the deck, in each of which the ace of spades is on top, but with the other 51 cards distributed in all the other possible ways. You have the option here of saying [ace of spades on top] is a complete description of part of the deck, or a partial description of the complete deck.
Which gets us back to my question. Which way you go could matter to you, epistemically, but if it matters to LW he hasn't said yet. For instance, objects contain within themselves all possible ways things could stand in logical space; looked at from object-side, there are only complete realities, and in each there are atomic facts this object could be part of that obtain or don't. Or start with atomic facts: each divides logical space into those states of affairs in which it obtains, and those in which it doesn't, and there is somewhere a pair in which all other atomic facts have the same value.
We get "world" for all obtaining atomic facts; "reality" for all obtaining and not obtaining atomic facts; I think it turns out "state of affairs" is kept around for its useful ambiguity: it covers the case where you only have a subspace defined, the case where only the positive facts are defined, and the case where absolutely everything is defined.
I would add this: the extreme realism of the TLP suggests that every partial state of affairs, up to and including the partial state of affairs that is the world, is one and only one complete state of affairs, one reality, whether you know it or not. We, picture makers, only ever deal with complete realities, but we always fail to completely specify them.
What I find exciting about the Tractatus is the intimation that everything there is to say about the world is immanent in stating facts. This is hard to express clearly, but it's as if he anticipates Gödel, Tarski, etc. There is no extra bit for "true" or "provable" or "constructibe" or even "member of a class"; there are only the atomic facts. All such ways of describing how things stand are immanent in saying how things stand with the atomic facts themselves.
And then he got rid of atomic facts - see Philosophical investigations.
Thanks, bro.
I should not wish to be spared the trouble of thinking.
My working assumption is that Wittgenstein understood it when he wrote it, so yes, it is possible.
It would be a start.
I don't know what you're on about it, but it looks off topic to me.
I'm not sure we're far enough along to begin some Grand Appraisal. It's a strange book. Hard to tell what's premise and what's conclusion, or, maybe better, what's a speculation and what a consequence of that speculation.
I intend to continue trying to take it on its own terms. Insofar as I have an agenda, that's it.
Yes, this is where we differ. See:
1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.
and
2 What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.
So, Quoting Srap Tasmaner
yes and no? I think once again the distinction between what obtains and not is important, and atomic facts just are, where states of affairs actually obtain in reality.
2.1 We make to ourselves pictures of facts.
In other words, states of affairs.
But, then we get this, which is just confusing:
2.04 The totality of existent atomic facts is the world.
2.05 The totality of existent atomic facts also determines which atomic facts do not exist.
2.06 The existence and non-existence of atomic facts is the reality. (The existence of atomic facts we also call a positive fact, their non-existence a negative fact.)
2.063 The total reality is the world.
Therefore, some epsilon delta form of solipsism?
This is a Good Thing™.
Quoting Wittgenstein
As I understand it, you do believe that there's an early and later Wittgenstein. I don't think this is entirely true. After all, I think Wittgenstein wanted to publish both books side by side.
Or at least objects. See PI?46 and thereabouts.
The grammar built from objects and facts would work quite well, qua grammar. Indeed, it's not at all distant from the grammar of interpreting first order language. The annoying thing was that what counts as an object changes form occasion to occasion. Hence, the grammar of the Tractatus can never be more than a special case, a sub-class of language; a language game.
Take your pick, says Piglet:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_space
Cool, so there's only about two thirds of the book between where we are now and that.
Sadly, or not so sadly, depending on how much you like this reading group, yes... I think so.
Haha.
My long-promised take on pictures will happen tomorrow. I'm leaning toward pushing on into 3 pretty quickly too. Stuff there that rounds out what we've been working at.
Cool, thanks!
This is from the Scott Soames book I referenced above:
I think it's a good explanation...
So, basically he (Wittgenstein) raises the issue of 'possible worlds' but neglects to pursue the matter further. Kind of unfortunate given how popular the idea is nowadays with two dimensional ism or possible world semantics (the author does note though, that Wittgenstein first brought it up though); but, that kind of clarifies the whole issue up, yes?
Read the footnotes starting with '3', then '4'. It's all in there.
Here we go. Thinking I'll post bits as I get them done, then you can read and comment while I'm doing the next bit. (Here and there you'll notice me futzing with the translation a bit.)
The picture theory is presented in 2.1-2.225. It's broken into chunks as follows:
2.1-2.141 deals with facts.
2.15-2.1515 is structure, form of representation, and the representing relation.
2.17-2.182 picks up the strand of the link to reality from 2.1511-2.1512
2.19 throws in the world
2.2-2.225 is a bit of a kitchen sink summation, with some emphasis on truth and falsehood.
We have already talked a bit about 2.11: a picture presents "how things stand", "what the situation is" in logical space. There's trouble right off the bat. Why doesn't he say "how things might stand"? Or "what the situation might be"? To drive home this is not an oversight, remember 2.11 is the comment on 2.1: "We make to ourselves pictures of facts ((Tatsachen))." That's facts, not possible facts, possible atomic facts, whatever.
Sticking with 2.11: what the picture presents is the obtaining and not-obtaining of atomic facts; this is the gloss on "how things stand in logical space". And we have seen exactly this formula before, in 2.06: "The obtaining and not-obtaining of atomic facts is reality." Alright, then, a picture presents reality. (And here we remember that even though Tatsache was originally introduced simply as the obtaining of an atomic fact, we have since refined that as a positive fact, and there are also negative facts.)
Wait, so does that mean pictures are by definition "accurate" or "true" or something?
If a picture, a picture of facts, presents reality, then what are we to make of [s]2.01-2.02[/s] 2.201-2.202, which seems to say exactly what I pointed out he didn't say at the start: "The picture depicts ((bilden)) reality by representing ((dartellen)) a possibility of the obtaining and not-obtaining of atomic facts. The picture represents a way things might stand, a possible situation, in logical space."
Now there's a little variation in the verbs here — hard to say yet whether this is a technical usage or not. In 2.11 it's plain stellen: a picture presents, puts before you, offers maybe. In 2.202 it's darstellen, which is more like "depicts" or "represents" — it's "present or put there", so I guess it becomes "depict" or "represent" because some sense of displacement is built in.
Leaving the usage of verbs aside as uncertain, we'd have to conclude that reality is a possible situation in logical space. That doesn't seem so bad. The way things are is a way things might be. But there's more: 2.21 says "The picture agrees with reality or not; it is right or wrong, true or false."
So a picture, of facts, presents reality, by representing a possible situation in logical space. What it represents is its sense and the picture is true if its sense agrees with reality. (2.221-2.222)
A picture represents a way things might stand in logical space. I've been calling that sort of thing a possible partition of logical space into existing, or obtaining, atomic facts and non-existing atomic facts. There are many, many such partitions possible.
Before going on, is this right? Should we think of a way things might stand in logical space as a way logical space might be partitioned into obtaining and not-obtaining atomic facts? I really can't think of an alternative. That makes some of LW's grammar seem a little weird to me, but I'm hoping that's mainly a linguistic issue. The phrase he uses in 2.06 and again in 2.11, "the existence and non-existence of atomic facts" — how are we take that if not as a partition?
Maybe we're inclined to say, no, it's not like a list of atomic facts with a check mark next to the ones that exist. But is that a partition? Or is that a representation of a partition? What is the partition "itself"? Suppose I have a collection of red marbles and blue marbles. I can make a rule to sort the marbles by color. Is that rule the partition? Or is it the rule we follow in constructing the partition? What if I get two boxes and put all the reds in one and all the blues in the other? Is that physical separation the partition? I think, again, and oddly, that's a representation of the partition, a representation that happens to use the very things it represents. If I explained to someone that I could sort the marbles by color and they didn't know what I meant, I could do the boxes and say, "I mean like that." But was physically separating the marbles into boxes necessary? I don't think so.
So a partition is purely logical, formal. In most usages it is simplest to identify the partition as the rule you use to create it, but that's slightly abusive. We need something like the rule and the application to a given space, or the rule applied to a given a space. It is a function, defined on a specific domain, and assigning to each member of that domain some single value from some finite list.
Now, Wittgenstein says that what a picture represents is its sense, a possible partition of logical space, and that its sense, this partition, can agree or disagree with reality. If the sense of the picture corresponds with reality, then the picture is true. It is the picture itself that is truth-apt, not its sense. He does not say that the sense of the picture is true or false but the picture itself. Agreement with reality would appear to consist in representing the partition "actually in effect" — I don't have handy another way to say this.
Next installment: structure, form of representation and all that.
Thus we get 2.172: "The picture, however, cannot represent its form of representation; it shows it forth." (More below.)
We're still working through whether and how pictures are veridical. We begin with pictures tied to facts and reality. Thus at 2.15: "That the elements of the picture are combined with one another in a definite way, represents that the things are so combined with one another." That's are. No question that the elements of a picture are combined in a definite way. Of course they are. So what does a picture represent? Obviously a veridical picture shows things combined as they are. What about a non-veridical picture? Doesn't it show things combined in a way that they aren't? (More on this in a moment.)
We get the rest of the terms we need in the remainder of 2.15: "The connection of the elements of the picture is called its structure, and the possibility of this structure is called the form of representation." Structure makes perfect sense, but form of representation is the possibility of this structure? And then in 2.151 he says: "The form of representation is the possibility that the things are combined with one another as are the elements of the picture."
So this is what 2.172 says the picture cannot represent. It represents a possible situation in logical space, atomic facts existing or not, and it represents (vorstellen this time instead of darstellen) that things are combined the way its elements are, but it does not represent the possibility of itself having the structure it shows the things it represents having.
The form of representation is the possibility of this fact, the picture, having a certain structure; what's notable about this structure is that its elements can be coordinated with the things it represents. This is the representing relation. The representing relation is what makes a fact a picture, and this relation is immanent in the picture. (Evidently pictures are not signs at all, are not arbitrary — that will come later. Pictures are models.)
All this leads up to 2.17: "What the picture must have in common with reality in order to be able to represent it after its manner — rightly or falsely — is its form of representation." So its form of representation — the possibility of the picture having the structure that it does, its elements being combined as they are — this possibility is what the picture has in common with reality.
So now we can come back to the true and false problem. We can look at this backwards: what the picture does not represent, it cannot get wrong; what no picture represents is its own form of representation. This it cannot help but get "right". But what is it?
((Timeout. Possible that "form of representation" is not the best translation here. P&M use "pictorial form" which is scarcely better. The key word here is Abbildung which seems to cover lots of stuff related to projection — reproductions (as of pictures), mappings and such in mathematics. As a matter of fact, it seems likely that this idea of projection — from what is represented to the picture — is exactly what's missing here. LW has all these descriptions that run from the picture to reality — the feelers and all that — but almost nothing in the other direction, which is quite strange.))
It seems like he was on the verge of saying that a picture has the same structure as what it represents, but he doesn't — he says it has in common with what it represents this form of representation, or projection or mapping. So we can conclude that this possibility of the structure the picture has is also a possibility found in what is pictured.
Remember my marbles? Physically sorting the red and blue marbles into separate boxes is a way of physically representing the logical partition of the marbles by color, using the marbles themselves. The physical arrangement of them into separate boxes creates a correspondence, a systematic correspondence like a mapping or a projection, between how the marbles are combined or separated and the logical partition. This is a physical model of a logical possibility. That's suggestive anyway.
I'll stop here and wait for your input, @Posty McPostface. Need clarity on the form of representation, and then we'll make some sense of the true and false business. Maybe that won't be clear until we push into 3 and propositions.
Some interesting mathematical messing with the picture here, but probably a side issue, except to note that they manage to fill in the blank spot, and it contains the whole picture again, twisted upside-down, and so ad infinitum.
There is a sense in which this is an impossible picture, and thus 'meaningless' in Witty-speak, and another sense in which it is a necessarily incomplete and distorted representation of the reality that we we see that we are part of. I think this goes some way to explain the difficulty of pinning down the relation of world and logical space - gallery and picture.
=]
No problemo.
Just to start out in case anyone is interested, here are some useful links:
http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/wolniewicz1.html
https://www.quora.com/What-is-Wittgenstein-s-Logical-Space
I'll read up on it, and delve more into this aspect as time allows me to. I should have everything ready by the end of this week, as I'm still composing everything.
Sorry for this snag, although an important one we ought to cover.
Thanks.
http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/wolniewicz1.html
https://www.ontology.co/pdf/wolniewiczb.pdf
I see that Wittgenstein regards only one possible world as actual. Does he also explain what makes a possible world actual?
I believe the answer is presented in the above quote from the website you referenced. I see now that I'm going to have to delve into Stenius' interpretation of the Tractatus. Dang...
Well, it just says that the actual world is represented by a designated point in logical space. But why is this point designated?
Just think of it as an observer that obtains a specific reality from what they observe, the world. Yeah, it's getting mystical and solipsistic here. As the author notes in that referenced text, this isn't subjective idealism, but closer to objective idealism of Plato and Leibniz.
Was Wittgenstein a modal realist like David Lewis, that is, did he believe that all possible worlds are just as real as the actual one and the actual one is simply the possible world in which we happen to live? I see that in the article you linked, reality is identified with the totality of all possible worlds (the logical space).
I think that can't be true because reality obtains from atomic facts and the various possibilities they can configure in to give rise to states of affairs in logical space. Wittgenstien doesn't talk about modalities in the Tractatus per the previous posts I made from the Scott Soames book.
My personal opinion is that possible realities branching out and diverging from the actual world kind of fade off and become meaningless. Take it for what's that worth, just an opinion. It kind of sounds like a consensus based objective idealism of sorts, which gets deeply elaborated on in his Investigations...
Ok, that's a common intuitive view although upon reflection I fail to see why a particular possible world should be more real than others, or what it would even mean...
I think it's about which view is closest to reality. The second link I provided talks about homomorphic and isomorphic states of affairs or realities. I think it all comes down to a pragmatic coherentist view in regards to possible worlds and their relationship with the world.
Edit: Under Fregian logic, I don't think there's room for isomorphic propositions. So my bad.
Hence showing as opposed to saying is one thing that Wittgenstein carried from the Tractatus into the Investigations.
And he got it from Frege.
It's at least in "Concept and Object" (maybe that's "function"): he tries several ways of explaining the difference between a concept (or function) and an object, explains the trouble with talking about concepts (you're forced to talk about them as if they're objects), and then finally says, I can't tell you the difference but I can show you. And then that's pretty much the point of the predicate calculus: you can see the difference.
Nice. Thanks.
LW tends to talk about the logical constants this way too. I can't remember if that's in Frege, but it might be.
It's a really good companion, from what I gather. If you're interested in it helping us guide through the Tractatus, let me know.
Been away for a few days, so I'll try to get back into this.
We're going to work on logical space some more?
Glad you're back.
It's a crapshoot. Do you think we need a companion to help guide us? As I'm reading the Routledge one provided in the first page of this thread, I feel like it can only help us along the way.
That'd be pleasing. What do we find in logical space?
Substance.
No substance. Facts and logical operators.
2.021 Objects form the substance of the world. Therefore they cannot be compound.
2.024 Substance is what exists independently of what is the case.
A substance is something which remains the same thing through change, although change is ambiguous here and rather irrelevant according to Wittgenstein. Substance is what is constant across all possible differences in the atomic facts.
SO propositions are found in logical space.
There's already a holism coming through here.
2.025 It is form and content.
The thinking here is something like this. There must be something common, something constant across all possible alternative scenarios. This is (at least close to) what is known traditionally as substance. But what is actually required, according to Wittgenstein, is a common form. What might be meant by ‘form’ here? The notion of form has already been introduced in the idea of the form of an object: it is the ways in which that object can combine with other objects to form atomic facts. Wittgenstein introduces a related notion in connection with atomic facts:
2.032 The way in which objects hang together in the atomic fact is the structure of the atomic fact.
2.033 The form is the possibility of the structure.
Form and content become the substance of logical space. (sorry, other way around)
2.0211 If the world had no substance, then whether a proposition had sense would depend on whether another proposition was true.
2.0212 It would then be impossible to form a picture of the world (true or false).
2.026 Only if there are objects can there be a fixed form of the world.
2.027 The fixed, the existent and the object are one.
I'm quoting at leisure from the Routledge companion to the Tractatus. Sorry.
I think the latter is what's in the text, but I don't know how to understand that. Surely these obtainings and non-obtainings are not entities of some kind in addition to the atomic facts themselves. So I want to say it's the former, the atomic facts themselves, obtaining or not, that are the elements of logical space.
As far as I understand, Wittgenstein uses the terms existent and non-existent, so we might want to stick with that; but, yes-I think so.
Yes, what? There were two options.
Sorry for being ambiguous. I meant to affirm the former you're talking about.
SO logical space is a grammatical system. Substance provides the interpretation of that logical system. That interpretation is in the form of facts.
Is that what 3.4 says?
Gee, thanks.
I'm in agreement here. I just wanted to highlight that there is no infinite regress here, which presupposes substance in the form of atomic facts composed of objects (or vice-versa), meshed together giving rise to facts through the structure of logical form, which all takes place in logical space. So, in every possible world, objects obtain (are existent to use W's terminology) equally, and all propositions are equal in merit (jumping ahead a little).
SO, do we now move on to logical form or facts? I feel as though we've covered facts already so many times... We can also mention modality, which Wittgenstein talks about a little in terms of what is possible and necessary.
Edit: Rejigged the wording a little.
To answer this better here is a passage from the companion I'm using, which should clarify the issue:
Cool. I've been reluctant to rely on an interpreter because, well, what an interpreter gives you is an interpretation. But I'm coming around. We'll just treat Michael Morris as a virtual participant in our little group. He doesn't get the last word, but he gets a word, and that's bound to be helpful.
I want to talk about these two, which should be a way into logical form:
One natural way to approach representation is in terms of things: a picture that shows things that actually exist is on its way to being a true picture; if it shows them related as they are in reality, or better, were at a specific time and place, then it's true. There's some of this in TLP, because we get the correspondence between the elements of the picture and the components of the facts it presents.
But what LW says is that the picture represents its sense. And in 3.1431 the arrangement of some physical things can express the sense of a proposition — and I think here we're not talking about propositions about those tables, chairs and books. I think the example we want is something more like this: you're explaining, say, how a figure can be translated in plane geometry, but drawing it on a blackboard with multiple chalk colors is just a confusing mess, so instead you cut out a shape, lay it on a piece of graph paper and then slide it from one position to another. This would be a way of using things to say what you can also say in (x, y) notation. Both are models. Both express the sense of a proposition.
What's puzzling though is that we seem to still need the isomorphism between the elements of a model and some special designated objects — which gets to my confusion over @Banno's remarks. The model is a model of something: it agrees or disagrees with what it models, represents it rightly or falsely. Do we say that what is modeled also expresses the sense of a proposition, and that the model and what is modeled agree if they express the same sense?
Well, going back to 1.1, The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
So, no. Pictures don't represent things, but facts.
About sense, I'm not quite there yet.
This could use some expanding on. What do you think?
I mean what LW means when he talks about correspondence:
We already know that "how things might stand in logical space" — what atomic facts obtain and what don't — is the sense of a picture, and thus the sense of a proposition. This is what is expressed and what is asserted to be the case.
If I assert that the cat is on the mat, what I assert is that a certain state of affairs obtains, that such-and-such is how things stand in logical space. That's the sense I'm expressing. Is there an identification of facts (broadly) and senses in the offing here? "That the cat is on the mat" is a fact, and it's a sense I can represent, express, model. The question is whether this cat's being on this mat is itself an expression of the sense of the proposition that the cat is on the mat.
Propositions and reality are said to share the logical form. Some facts are isomorphic to other facts given the right mapping (the logical form of representation). But there's some trouble here about "sense": are we saying that we get these correspondences because there are underlying structures in common, or do we in essence just project linguistic structure onto reality? We're accustomed to saying that a proposition expresses something about the world. But there's an option here to say that the fact itself is an expression of the same thing, the sense, that the proposition expresses.
Is my puzzlement clear yet?
I'm not quite sure; but, I have the feeling that Wittgenstein deviated from Frege and Russell. I don't think there is much isomorphism due to not associating a fact, or 'that' sentence with anything else than elements in reality. Notice using 'reality' here, instead of 'world'.
Take 2.1513 for example:
According to this view the depicting relation which makes it a picture, also belongs to the picture.
2.151 The form of representation is the possibility that the things are combined with one another as are the elements of the picture.
I'll get back to you on that.
2.1513 According to this view the depicting relation which makes it a picture, also belongs to the picture.
2.172 The picture, however, cannot depict its form of depiction; it shows it forth.
And, the version of Wittgenstein's stipulative isomorphism becomes clear.
So, hence saying and showing are not the same, or where one finds oneself at the limit of saying, then showing becomes necessary.
The world is structured in a certain way: (a) it divides into facts; and (b) facts have a certain structure of their own.
When we come to talk about sense-- pictures, thoughts, propositions-- we note that these are also structured in a particular way: the picture and the propositional sign are facts that each have a structure that mirrors the structure of facts, or, rather, possible facts, ways things might be, and either are or aren't. This is their sense. It is what they say. (What they cannot say, what is not part of the sense of a picture or a proposition, is the logical form itself, which they show.)
In "practical" or operational terms, this being the case means that learning about the structure of models is learning about the structure of facts and the world. Else representation is impossible. I guess the question is whether saying that facts have logical form amounts to saying facts have propositional form, are the expressions of propositions, rather than saying propositions also have logical form.
It's possible that this amounts to an ontological question, and Morris suggests that TLP is deliberately neutral on ontology, in at least some respects.
So, as promised, I'm returning to this post. Yet, I'm not entirely sure what the question is. If you could possibly specify further what you are asking, I might be able to answer better.
My impression is that sense arises out of modality of possible configurations of atomic facts. Nothing more or less. Logical form is inherently expressed through this modality. I know it sounds like something what Kripke might possibly say; but, it seems correct.
Yeah, this I agree with.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, they complement one another. What isn't said is said through what can be said. Kinda tautologous.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Please clarify.
Thank you for participating in this (nearly) abandoned reading group for the matter.
Banno says logical space is populated by propositions. I thought it was populated by possible facts. Propositions have a structure that mirrors the structure of facts, so maybe this makes little difference, in one sense. BUT-- IF a propositional sign, which is a fact that has the form, the structure of another fact, can consist of any sorts of things, not just entities we're accustomed to thinking of as symbols, THEN might we not say the fact itself is in effect a propositional sign, a perceptible expression of a proposition?
That seems slightly crazy, but it dissolves the difference between me and Banno (and it's terribly important we do that). It does mean thinking of propositions as something a bit different from, you know, sentences we assert.
Not clear to me yet. Rest of the book will make it all plain as day, I'm sure.
Let me know if the following helps a little:
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/33878/what-is-the-difference-between-propositional-sign-and-proposition-in-wittgenstei
Good discussion. (I skimmed a little.)
Here's a point against my suggestion: you would have to say that the projection of the fact onto itself is trivial.
Yeah but that misses the whole issue by talking about signs.
Well the way I've done this we do get a solid distinction we can work with, between trivial and non-trivial mappings or projections.
It is curious to think of a possible fact actually obtaining as a possibility being expressed. The projection we need, the form of representation, would be a mapping onto substance.
Not sure if the projection is going in the direction W wants though...
Oh, and "expressed" can be glossed as "becoming perceptible by the senses," like a propositional sign. That's cool.
I would have thought that things like "Pp" and "PPp" were our symbols. Allow them to picture the world, then they have what we would now call an interpretation, in terms of what WItti called substance, and they become propositions. The ones that are true are facts.
So how do you read 3.1431?
The written signs 'stand in' for the items in the picture of the world. Hence:
What is happening is that the picture is presented as signs, using symbols:
What I find difficult here is that the picture theory continued into PI, yet I would have it replaced by use. I wonder what @Sam26 has to say about this.
Where do you see that Wittgenstein continued with the picture theory in the PI? If anything he rejects it, although when considering use, and the multiplicity of uses, some statements are pictures in a manner of speaking. It's just that the picture theory doesn't explain all statements. Just as some definitions of the word game don't explain all uses of the word game. Use is primary in the PI, but even use has it's limits.
Not just I, but Anthony Kenny, too. In PI Wittgenstein shows how an incorrect picture of the world can be foisted on the unwary philosopher by a twist of grammar. What has carried through is that the picture can be wrong.
The picture, if it is a fact, depicts the form of the world; but it cannot depict this form, it can only display it (2.172 and hereabouts).
The proposition, as it where, depicts (or brings forth?) this logical form.
So we have a picture of the world, and with this at hand we interpret our signs, rendering them as symbols, and setting forth the logical form of the world in propositions...
Yet when I re-read that, I find it unsettling.
?520; but there are numerous examples. The picture theory is not absent from PI.
But we ought take care as to what we think the picture theory is. The elements of the picture correspond to the elements in the world; and the structure of the picture is shared with the world. One way of thinking of this is that the picture is a model of the world; that seems to be the way Witti thought of pictures in the Tractatus. I suspect this view is what is rejected in PI, where a picture is more just one way of seeing how things are amongst many other pictures, the choice depending on what one wishes to do. The picture does not model how things are so much as set out what we can do.
Yes, picturing is something we do with statements. So I agree with your point. I'm not sure where you think Wittgenstein went wrong in the PI. Picturing is clearly a use in the PI.
It's just that I would go further that I think he does, and reject the notion of a picture as a model that is distinct from reality. Doing so might lead away from thinking of language games as incommensurate with each other.
But this is all beyond the exegesis of this thread; let it rest.
A picture is a fact, and thus part of reality, part of the world.
That's all on my part. Anyone interested in assuming command of this thread is always welcome too.
Post something when you feel like it. I'll keep the thread bookmarked.
Will do. I found this book in my local CC library. It's pretty awesome; but, I've been brain farting too much to entertain it. I'll probably buy it this coming month and use it as a side companion.
I can cover what has already been covered in some small snippets if necessary.
Edit: I'm thinking about skipping the entire picture theory part, due to its obscure content. Any ideas if this is a good idea?
Wittgenstein says the following proposition 5.62. Which states:
Thus, we can infer that:
Then, the introductory grand statement will become clearer:
So, what are we to do now? Resort to quietism? That seems like the only logical conclusion from a Tractarian solipsist...
Without going too deep, as to from which philosopher (most notably Kant, and Schopenhauer) was Wittgenstein dialectically opposing or affirming, we can just take what Wittgenstein says on face value. So, the issue becomes about whether Wittgenstein is professing realism or idealism. The clue as to what Wittgenstein chooses is revealing here:
Thus, we are constrained to talk about the limit of thinking and thought. To put this another way, we are all solipsists unaware of our limits. Those who understand their limits with respect to the world as opposed to the perceptual or phenomenological perception of reality will understand the point made by Wittgenstein in talking about leading the fly out of the bottle.
I'll stop here for a moment and post after this later.
Philosophy, like mathematics begins with a command. "Think about it like this: ..." "Let x be ..."
"Picture language as a picture of the world."
"picture language as picturing the world"
Perhaps this is the change from TLP to PI, from static to dynamic (see Pirsig). The reflexivity of depicting language as a picture is static; TLP is the correct picture, and having the correct picture 'once and for all' there is nothing more to be said that can be said.
But the command itself is the epitome of doing something with language. I inscribe the world on the world, and the world is changed by it. And this change is not inexpressible after all, but can be further inscribed, so what appears in TLP as the limit to the expression of thought, turns out to be no limit, but a dynamic incompleteness that is always open to further investigation.
What does Prisig have to say about this?
Quoting unenlightened
Yes, the TLP is two dimensional. But, that's how language seems to operate.
Quoting Posty McPostface
Well there you have it, language is two dimensional, but it operates - and operates recursively, and that makes it dynamic. So there is TLP, the last word in philosophy, and the fact that the limits of expression have been expressed extends the limits of expression, so that they cease to be the limits, though there are still limits. ( I'm struggling at my own limits of expression here, but if I can make this understandable, then it becomes possible to explore further again.) Looking at the picture of language as a picture, I see something that has been unclear, become clear. So my world has changed.
I might have a go at a separate thread if I can find the right levers... I think I'm talking about transformations of insight - awakenings.
Yes, and I think that is what Wittgenstein was getting at with the Tractatus. The only thing left out and latterly added ad hoc in the PI was the fact that we can learn and expand our limits. But, the TLP is beautiful and neatly sealed whereas the PI is open for doubt, which then also gets elaborated on, ad hoc in On Certainty.
But, the issue arises that solipsism never was solved; by which I mean to say that it persists. I might be mistaken about this. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Quoting unenlightened
Please do. I think it might be of use to analyze. And if you do, please reference this exchange we had as the template of thought upon which about getting the fly out of the bottle is made possible, or not...
Not solved, but dissolved. I think what W. arrives at is that solipsism followed through loses its bite. The forum of logical solipsists still has one post responding to another as if 'we' were separate communicators. 'One' simply 'communicates' in 'scare-quotes'.
I'm not following you here. I can't see your beetle, only mine.
We sure can talk of our beetles. I'm doing that right now. I just can't show you it.
It's important to note that solipsism has a significant stipulative definition when Wittgenstein uses it. I am not sure you grasp it.
Quoting unenlightened
I can still maintain a solipsist attitude when presented with the issue of other minds. Keep that in mind.
Quoting unenlightened
Commonality? Please explain.
Quoting unenlightened
That's true. I'm not arguing over the stipulative definition imposed by Wittgenstein on solipsism. I rather embrace it and learn to expand my own limits in my own way. Again, the problem of other minds comes to mind.
Hence, what?
Anyone welcome to continue with us where we left off.
That's fine. Let me know when you want to begin?
But I think you missed the preface, and even before the preface, not Russells comments but W's. Well, what do you have to say about that?
I don't know. Please elaborate.
I think we left off here:
2.22 The picture represents what it represents, independently of its truth or falsehood, through the form of representation.
What is "the form of representation"?
“… and whatever a man knows, whatever is not mere rumbling and roaring that he has heard, can be said in three words.” Kürnberger
Who was this Kürnberger guy, and what are these three words Ludwig is referring to?
I dont know. Some historicism I see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Pinsent
David Hume Pinsent (24 May 1891 – 8 May 1918) was a friend, collaborator and platonic lover of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) is dedicated to Pinsent's memory.
So could it be that these three words were "Ich liebe dich", "I love you"?
Most likely. Wittgenstein dearly loved Pinsent.
That can all be true.
In the wiki quotes, I read a statement of the physicist Freeman Dyson, mostly famous for the Dyson sphere, if you know about that, but anyway here it is:
Freeman Dyson, "What Can You Really Know?", The New York Review of Books (November 8, 2012)
So this inexpressible might as well have been an expression of love and affection, something that appears easy, but apparently is not, as it has been obscured by language. And it might be that Wittgenstein's critique of language, and why he was so obsessed with it, was to expose this aspect, in order to arrive to the things that really matter the most in this world, feelings and love that is.
I never would have thought of Wittgenstein as a misogynistic fool. Thanks for the highlight of my day.
What was your point?
But we can see here, between us two I mean, how language can lead to the greatest misunderstandings.
I like your psychological touch to the intent or "reason" why the Tractatus was written for Wittgenstein. I wonder what other members think?
Well I don't know, really, but I would like to explore that possibility, enjoy it even, I mean in logic it's all about possibilities, isn't it?
Huh, googling for the term, I came up with this:
https://ludwig.guru/s/enjoy+the+possibilities
I see it like in Logicomix, I don't know if you know about it or read it, but you might enjoy it as I did.
Yes, indeed.
That which we cannot talk about must pass over in silence.
And to add:
In that silence, "work" is done.
But what kind of "work" you mean?
Depending on whether you adopt the principle of bipolarity, not so much.
Quoting Pussycat
Deeds, acts of kindness/charity. That kind of "work".
What does bipolarity have to do with this? But it's like these Viennese "philosophers" said in the comix above:
What we cannot speak of, we must pass over in silence. Where "speak" naturally mean "speak logically!". Your work gave us the means to expel religion, metaphysics, ethics etc from rational discourse. Since "what cannot be spoken about logically" is, quite literally, non-sense, and, obviously, beneath the dignity of serious minds!
Only to get the answer from Wittgenstein:
Just wait a minute! The meaning of the "Tractatus" has completely escaped you! Its point is the exact opposite: the things that cannot be talked about logically, are the ones which are truly important!!
Only a comic, one would say, perhaps mirroring the views of its writer. However, Wittgenstein, at a later time, in his lecture on ethics to the Heretics Society at the university of Cambridge, closes his speech thus:
"My whole tendency and I believe the tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of language. This running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. Ethics so far as it springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it".
http://sackett.net/WittgensteinEthics.pdf
Or as he says elsewhere:
Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.
or in PI:
My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense.
So I think that the Tractatus gave the wrong impression, thus giving birth to trends like analytic philosophy and logical positivism, where ethics, and metaphysics in general, are either seen as meaningless or treated with contempt. This is what I meant when I wrote that "it can lead to completely different conclusions and worldviews".
But what do you think about all this?
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/4290/principle-of-bipolarity
But, the seventh proposition of the Tractatus can be interpreted as self-referential to all the previous propositions. Hence, the principle of bipolarity can apply to all the other propositions and maintain that we must remain silent when thinking about them, as nonsensical, I think.
I think it mostly depends on what the "silent things" are thought and taken to be, if they are false propositions, logical propositions, directive and prescriptive, or ethical and metaphysical etc.. And secondly what are we supposed to do with/in the silence.
So much confusion because of the 7th proposition, like its a 7th seal or something. For someone that wanted to clarify and elucidate thoughts, not very succesful, is it?
But why do you think that W was praised so much and admired in the circle of Vienna?
So, where do you want to start? From the beginning? We've covered a lot already, so maybe skim the thread and then see what questions you have then?
Yes, I am here.
Great to have you with us, @Fooloso4. We are around propositions 2.5. If you want to start over, I'm fine with that also.
So there are some prerequisites for understanding the book, because Wittgenstein spent a great deal of his time thinking about the connection of logic to language, most probably had long conversations about that with his supervisor Bertrand Russell, and it seems that he has aware of the progress that Gottlob Frege made on the matter, so the Tractatus can be seen as a response to thoughts expressed by these thinkers, and more. But what is interesting in the section above, is his last sentence concerning the book's object, seeking out just one person to both understand it and like it, so that it could be considered a success, a failure otherwise. But if we - analysts - are to remain loyal to Wittgenstein and the Tractatus, then I reckon that we should do and expect the same, that our goal would be accomplished should there be someone that reads our comments with understanding and takes pleasure from them, otherwise we would have failed to render the book's intended meaning.
(Here is a good place for someone to wonder - especially one that didn't take pleasure - whether pleasure is related to understanding, and vice versa).
Indeed.
Yes, like Nietzsche advises, read the original. Alas, my german is poor, but luckily Wittgenstein took care to provide an english translation!
The underlying structure of the world is logical rather than physical. Its substance is some unnamed, unidentified objects. This is deeply problematic and W. does not deal with it. Perhaps at this stage he was unaware of the problem. In any case, we can put that aside in order to get a clearer view of the picture of reality he is drawing. More on this picture at the end of 2.
Here we have the ontology of the Tractatus. Simple objects contain within themselves the possibilities of combination, it is by the combination or configuration of objects that material properties are produced. It is by combination that facts are produced.
At 2.1 there is a shift from the substance and structure of world to what we can say about it:
A logical picture of reality is not necessarily a true picture of reality. The picture must be compared to reality. (2.223) But how is this picture to be compared to reality? Where do we find these simple objects? They are by their nature not things that can be seen or found. Their existence seems to be determined a priori.
In some ways, but the object/form is quite different than either the Platonic Forms or the idea of matter and form.
Lovely analysis. Please go on.
Wittgenstein never names the simple objects, he merely assumes they must exist. Plato's Forms on the other hand are the Forms of what W. would call complexes - Beauty, Justice, Good.
Thank you. I will.
But les us continue with the preface:
And indeed he was right not to claim novelty, for many of the thoughts and ideas in the Tractatus had already been expressed by others, basically idealist philosophers dealing in logic, figures like Aristotle and Plato among the ancients, Kant and Hegel among his near contemporaries, Frege and Russell among his peers, at least the ones I know of and have studied, more or less. But there were some fresh and new ideas as well. In any case, I think that his main idea - one that he never abandoned - was very clearly expressed, much more clear than any other thinker ever did. Which is, as he states above, that many, if not all, philosophical problems are not really problems, but only appear so due to the misuse of language, as if language has been compromised somehow. This reminds of Kant and his work, the "Critique of Pure Reason".
So, according to the Tractatus, a limit to thinking cannot be drawn, since we have to think the unthinkable. A limit in thinking may as well exist, but we, as humans, wouldn't know what this limit is or where it lies. However, the same does not hold for language, the expression of thoughts that is, where we can draw a limit between things that make sense and others that do not - the nonsensical. But this assertion has commentators confused, since it seems that there are contradictory remarks in the Tractatus, the relation between logic, thought and sense, I mean.
And so the Tractatus is one of the few philosophical works of the modern era, since the time that philosophy has been made into a system and standardised, since philosophers were obliged to give sources - by whom, is a question - that pays no or very little attention to sources, which can be seen as a sign of arrogance and impertinence on the part of the writer, but then again, others might see it differently.
Like master like man, like they say. :)
... or to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle. It seems that language games - proverbs and the sort - have always been part of Wittgensteinian thought since the beginning, but maybe he was too timid then, lacking in self-confidence, weak even, to promote and support them in his philosophical system, which he did at a later time when he had grown stronger. Nevertheless, he was always sincere enough to admit and confess that he had trouble coping with language: "My difficulty is only an - enormous - difficulty of expression", or blaming himself: "I work quite diligently and wish that I were better and smarter. And these both are one and the same". I explain myself so that I won't get misexplained, like they say.
Now, if I am allowed to cheat a little, I would like to quote some passages from later in the book:
So the issue for W is how can our language, or rather its use, become the clearest it can be. This examination ends up being an investigation into the logic that governs the world, and so the various language problems become logical problems, which he considers they are, or must be, the simplest of all:
The sphere to which he is referring brings a little bit of Parmenides, if anyone has heard of it/him.
While "simplex sigillum veri" means "simplicity is the sign of truth" in Latin. Or "Keep it simple, stupid" in English, which has KISS as an acronym, like the guys in the US Navy, being in a playful mood, commonly say.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle
A minimalist approach, that is, an economy, like the "principle of least action" in the physical world, consisting of a small number of axioms or principles or concepts that everyone can understand.
This is the second step in W.’s attempt to draw the limits of thoughts. The first was made at 2.225:
In the Investigations W. says:
I am going to let myself off and skip over most of his discussion of propositions, the details of which do not bring into sharper focus the picture of the Tractatus I am drawing.
Recall from the preface:
Although W.’s concern will be primarily linguistic the elements of a propositional sign need not [edited to include 'not'] be words:
The proposition, the book is on the table can be expressed by putting a book on a table or an object that represents the book on an object that represents a table.
The elements are names:
Using the spatial object analogy, a picture of what is the case, the facts regarding what objects in a room, we can use a dollhouse as a model to express the fact that there is a chair next to the desk and a book on the desk. We can also use C for chair, B for book, and D for desk and arrange them in such a way to represent the fact that the a chair next to the desk and a book on the desk. Or we can use the names chair, desk, book and the relations “on” and “next to”.
One point that needs clarification: the names used in propositions and the things named are not the elemental names and elemental objects. Chairs and desks are not elementary. They can be broken down into parts. They are complex or configured or compound names and objects.
The demarcation of logical space is essential to the limits of thought and language.
When the sign for chair, desk, and book are arranged in their proper relations we have a logical picture of the room.
A thought must be logical and to be true it must be an accurate picture or representation of the world, of what is the case, of the facts.
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting Fooloso4
So do you think that the Tractatus asserts that a limit to thought can be drawn, or should we take what he says in the preface, that the limit can only be drawn in language (and not in thought)?
This is a difficult problem. As we progress there is more to be said, but the question cannot be adequately addressed without discussing large sections of the text.
A few general questions and observations:
He says we cannot draw a limit to thought because this would require that we find both sides of the limit thinkable. If both sides are thinkable then there is no limit. But doesn’t the same hold for language, the expression of thought? Wouldn’t one have to say the unsayable, speak nonsense? Is nonsense thinkable? Is nonsense illogical?
Why would he he say that the aim of the book is to draw a limit to thought only to immediately correct himself? Why not just say a limit to the expression of thought or the limit of language? Is there a clear distinction between thought and its expression? Do we think first and then express what has been thought?
At 4.114 he says:
Is he saying that a limit to thought can be established after all?
Exactly, proposition 4.114 I had in mind when I wrote above:
Quoting Pussycat
I remember reading about this a while ago, some find it contradictory, others not. I don't know what to make of it, I just don't bother with thoughts in the Tractatus (what can be thought), but only with language (what can be said).
I took another look at this this morning.
In the preface the problem is to draw a limit, but the problem at 4.114 it is to set a limit. Drawing a limit here means to go as far as thought can go, but one can set a limit at some point before the end. The limit he sets is at the point where thoughts loose their clarity:
There is still the problem of the limits of logic/world and:
As for the illogical, we see the pattern here repeating, thinkable/unthinkable - logical/illogical. But i really doubt that W saw anything as illogical.
That was stipulated at 4.112
Quoting Pussycat
What cannot be thought as determined by the limits he sets to philosophy is not the illogical but the nonsensical. This is not to say that we cannot think something that is nonsense but that it is disqualified as a philosophical activity.
The ethical is outside the limits of language/world. Thus outside the distinction between logical and illogical. The relationship between thought and ethics/aesthetics. Is the feeling that the world is mystical something that is thought? Does what makes itself manifest show itself in thought?
This is a new term for me. I had to look it up. The problem with such labels is that once the label is applied or accepted one is implicated in a variety of assumptions he or she may not hold. How T 6.54 is to be interpreted, what it means for his propositions to be nonsensical, are open questions not determinations that should inform one’s interpretation.
What does this mean? Is it that anything we say about the world does not convey its sense? In that case, all propositions about the world are nonsense since they talk about what is in the world. As far as I can see this commits us to neither the irresolute idea that they convey “ineffable insights into the nature of reality” or that they are a “string of words that convey no content whatsoever”. (Bronzo Resolute Reading)
On my tentative reading they simply do not convey what cannot be said but can only shown. To see what is being shown means to move beyond the propositions about the world.
The limits of logic, world, and language are the same.
If the limits of logic and the world are the same then by determining a limit to the world we can determine a limit of logic.
Here is the most important case:
As to language:
This quote has been of my interest recently. Does it imply a form of solipsism?
Yes, presumably. However W says that we cannot determine a limit to either of them (rest of 5.61). We can only say that they have the same limit (because logic fills/pervades the world - so in that sense, they are one and the same), but there isn't any investigation we can make that could lead us finding that limit.
Quoting Fooloso4
I think what he means by this is that logic rests on its head, so to speak, in a closed circle, a sphere rather, as I quoted T 5.4541 above: that the propositions of logic (and logic in general), being tautologies, can only describe/show/represent the structure, the form of the world, but they do not actually tell us absolutely anything about the world's content.
This is where the distinction between saying and showing becomes crucial. Quoting Pussycat
As I understand it, his main concern is not with what is in the world, its content, but what stands outside of it.
I think what he means is that for someone to be able to describe the world fully, as philosophers commonly purport to do/have done, he must go the world's limit, exit the world that is, and look at it from the outside, outside looking in, like they say. Which is why he says later:
i.e. at the world's limit, at logic's limit, solipsism=realism, but this so-called equality holds only at that limit, and philosophers (the philosophical I) are or are striving to be solipsists.
Yes, but W never says that there is actually something outside the world, I guess this does not make any sense for him. Being outside the world is equivalent to being at the world's limit.
This is something I want to address but would like to work up to it.
Do you disagree with what @Pussycat has stated in the previous responses?
This is true with regard to objects and facts but the 'I' is not a thing, not an object or thing.
Yes, very confusing. I wonder what can that possibly mean, or do we just have to remain silent about the philosophical self?
I think there are some areas of agreement but some areas of disagreement. I have tried to address the objections he has made.
I would like to go through 4 and 5 before saying more on this. It has been a long time since I read the Tractatus. I will forego a discussion of them except in so far as they address the issues you and Pussycat are anxious to address.
No, take your time. I started a separate thread on
See:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/4876/the-philosophical-self
Maybe you are confused as I were, still I am a little bit by the way - logic is like this, what can you do! :) - but my take is that Wittgenstein addresses the concept of solipsism to see if it is justified, or pure nonsense, and he finds out the former, that it is. But first you must bear in mind that philosophy and metaphysics deal with the world as a whole, or at least this is what is desirable for them, it is what they are striving to do. I mean, metaphysics does not want to talk about some particular cases, but describe and expose the totality of things. But by dealing with the whole, a peculiar thing happens, in that the self, the philosophical (non-psychological) "I" is taken to the world's limit, to its periphery, the boundaries. This, Wittgenstein says, has to do with how our world is structured, its logical form, the fact that propositions of logic are tautologies, that the world is my world, and so solipsism is directly derivable from all this.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/242949
4
4.01
3.5
Thought and a thought are not the same. A thought is a representation, a picture or model. It is the product of thought, the activity of thinking - representing, picturing and modelling the facts of the world.
4.022
4.031
4.12
A proposition is able to picture reality because they share a logical form or structure. Only propositions that point to a state of affairs, that is, to some fact, have a sense. They can, however, only point to a state of affairs it they have the right logical form. Propositions can fail to point because they lack sense (sinnlos) or because they are nonsense (unsinn). The former does not point to a fact, the latter does not represent a fact because it does not have a logical form.
4.003
By the logic of our language he means logical form. But logical form cannot be represented, there can be no propositions about logic form.
4.04
4.128
4.1
4.11
4.111
4.112
4.113
4.114
4.115
4.116
Tentatively: the limits of thought is where the boundaries of thought loses its sharpness, that is, where it no longer represents a state of affairs.
It should be noted that W. has said nothing about the facts of the world, only their logical form. He has not presented a picture of reality. Philosophy does not picture reality, it clarifies those pictures. It says nothing about the natural world, nothing about the facts of the world, nothing about reality. Philosophy lacks sense (sinnlos). Tautologies and contradictions also lack sense (sinnlos) but are not nonsense (Unsinn). (4.461) They tell us nothing about what is the case.
There are no philosophical propositions, for propositions represents states of affairs, the facts of the world. But as we shall see, W. will refer to his propositions. Since they do not represent a state of affairs they lack sense (sinnlos). Since philosophy’s place is above or below the natural sciences it is not in the logical space of the world/language/thought. What is says then must be nonsense (Unsinn).
This is, of course, not the end of the story. There is still more to be said.
If this confuses somewhat, then maybe, in the relevant propositions we were discussing 5.631-5.641, you could replace the "philosophical" with the "logical", the "metaphysical" with the "logical", so that "metaphysical subject" becomes "logical subject", and re-read the passages again with that replacement in mind and place. e.g.
"The logical (philosophical) self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the logical (metaphysical) subject, the limit of the world".
So where is this logical I/subject to be found?
philosophical I = logical I . Purely logical I mean, unmarred and untarnished by the psyche - whatever that is. Non psycho-logical, as if you take away the psyche from it, only to end up with pure logic. Why then solipsism?
I don't know whether you caught our conversation with dear Wallows from the beginning, but this is what I believe, I wrote it here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/236523
The mystical, or the dionysean aspect of reality, the irrational, in contrast to the logical, the rational and the apollonian, if you know what I mean.
Yes, I did read it. I don’t think he was trying to “dissolve language”, but to set boundaries to what language does - represent reality, and how it does it - logical form. It sets limits to the sphere of natural science. (4.113) From the inside by clarification and elucidation, and from the outside by marking the limits of the logical space of representation. This leaves what shows itself, what can be seen and experienced as opposed to thought and represented.
I am not sure that reference to the “dionysean aspect of reality” is helpful since it raises questions as to what this means, it presents another layer of interpretative problems.
I also have reservations about calling the mystical “irrational”. I would use the term transrational except it has already been taken and has another meaning. It is outside the logical form or structure of the world and its modes of representation. It is experiential. Attempts to represent such experience in language leads to irrational or nonsensical propositions.
The ethical, aesthetic, and metaphysical are also outside of the sphere of the logical. And so too lead to nonsense when one attempts to represent what is experienced.
Quoting Pussycat
I don't think this is right. It is because logic has nothing to do with an "I" that a logical I or logical self does not make sense.
What is the metaphysical, to you, I mean?
Quoting Fooloso4
Whereas the philosophical I or philosophical self makes sense? What does that mean?
It is not clear whether you are asking what I think is meant by the metaphysical as used by Wittgenstein or by others or my thoughts on the metaphysical. The first is the only question that I think is relevant to the discussion. Here a further distinction needs to be made between the question of whether logical form and simple objects are meant to be a metaphysical ontology he accepts or rejects as nonsense, whether this is saying something metaphysical (6.53), and what he means by the metaphysical self.
I do not think the discussion of form and content is intended as a metaphysical theory, although it might serve as such if one were “doing metaphysics”. But Wittenstein is not. I think his intent is to mark the boundaries of the physical and sayable on the basis of logical structure. They are elucidatory.
As to the philosophical I, it is metaphysical self, the subject who experiences.
I was asking about your own thoughts, as you yourself were not very clearly whether these were your own opinions or the opinions concerning those in the Tractatus, when you said above: "The ethical, aesthetic, and metaphysical are also outside of the sphere of the logical. And so too lead to nonsense when one attempts to represent what is experienced". But why not do both?
Anyway, I think that Wittgenstein wants, maybe unknowingly, to dispose of the old and traditional metaphysics, only to replace it with another, as it is usually the case in the historical process of metaphysics.
Quoting Fooloso4
But supposedly, metaphysics is void of experience, a priori, just like logic is. Or not?
I was referring to the Tractatus, what I think W. is saying.
By do both do you mean give my own opinion? If so, the reason is that it muddies the water. Whether or not I agree with W. or anyone else must be secondary to the question of what it is that I am agreeing with. All too often someone will say I agree with this or that philosopher, but what they are agreeing or disagreeing with is their own misconception of what the person they are agreeing or disagreeing with said.
My own opinion is that the Tractarian analysis of simples and compounds is wrong. He himself seems to have come to this conclusion in the Philosophical Investigations.
What I am trying to do at this point, however, is to understand the Tractatus on its own terms.
Quoting Pussycat
What is it that you think he is rejecting and what is he proposing in its place? One obvious problem is to explain how such a metaphysics escapes the accusation of nonsense.
Quoting Pussycat
Not. If there is a metaphysics it is not a theory or doctrine. It is something that cannot be talked for such talk would be nonsense because it does not share the logical structure of the physical world and the language that represents it.
Yes, this is what happens very often indeed. But there are also cases when one actually agrees with someone else, but thinks he disagrees. And this says something about the world, as Wittgenstein would say. But why is that? Here "why" has two different connotations: 1) the reason for this, as for example "why did the apple fall from the apple tree? 'cause it was heavy and there is this force of gravity bla bla bla", so cause and effect and natural sciences, and 2) as in "why do things like apples have to/are made to fall? why is the world like this and not some other where apples wouldn't fall? Why isn't there an accurate way of knowing whether I agree or disagree with someone? (not from a bio-logical/psycho-logical point of view) Is there a fundamental reason for this? Can we imagine, think of a world where this wouldn't happen? And how would that world be like?", questions like these don't have to do with the natural sciences, but rather relate to philosophy/ontology/metaphysics, and logic. And it so happens that many philosophers - but not only philosophers, everyone apparently, physicists, mathematicians, and other scientists, and the common people of course - conflate the two into one, or take evidence from the physical to "prove" the meta-physical positions, which is of course wrong and absurd, 'cause "everything we see could also be otherwise" (again, why is that - two different why's - and this says something about the world). So, to answer here your question as to what W is rejecting, I think he was trying to separate the two, so that one knows exactly with what kind of questions he would be dealing. And he pinpoints the problem in language, as the example hopefully showed, because even a simple "why" can mean two entirely different things, the "why" sign, I mean. The first "why" points somewhere in the world, whereas the second "why", where does it point? It doesn't point anywhere, it has been taken to the limits, not a part of the world.
So problems arise when we conflate these two different kind of questions into one, when we talk about the second with having the first in mind, and vice-versa.
Oh well, I guess something like that. :meh:
Quoting Fooloso4
Metaphysics has changed significantly since antiquity, since Aristotle first discovered it as a science, so it is difficult to say what it really is, or what it's subject matter is. However, a common characteristic in all its variants is that it is a priori, unrelated to experience, just like logic is, so some say they are essentially the same.
I do not think that W. thought of it in that way. I will be discussing some of his comments on God.
I think that Wittgenstein's use follows that of Kant. The metaphysical refers to questions of God, soul, and world. They are not objects in the world and thus cannot be known by the natural sciences or by experience of things in the world. Nor can they be known a priori.
Solipsism, the shift from the world to my world, is the turning point. I will have more to say on this. For the moment I would suggest that we keep in mind that what he means by solipsism may not be what others mean.
Kant did not reject metaphysics, he rejected a priori metaphysics. God and the soul were for Kant matters of faith. W. too rejects a priori metaphysics.
Quoting Pussycat
I will be posting my reading of section 5 later today. We can discuss it then.
The existence of God cannot be proven a priori but that did not lead Kant to deny the existence of God. It cuts both ways, it cannot be proven that God does not exist either. This leaves space for faith. As he famously said in the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason:
Wittgenstein affirms the freedom of the will. It is not in the world. It is at the limit.
W. is not denying the existence of the soul but a particular concept of the soul as an object in the world containing or possessing thoughts, beliefs, etc.
The cube can be perceived in two different ways - with a in front and with b in front. Thus we really see two different facts. It is then not simply a matter of the configuration of objects that establish the facts, but the way in which we see them.
This is a linguistic limit in so far as we cannot name all the different simply objects, but it is also an epistemological limit since we cannot identify or say what those objects are.
What is the significance of his shift from language and the world to “my language” and “my world”? The self cannot be found in the world. It can play no part in logical relationships, and propositions about it are nonsense. My world and my language do not connote a relationship between facts or objects.
My language means not simply English or German but the way in which I represent reality.
The logical relationships within the world are not the only relationships. There is also a relationship between the “I” and the world.
In what way does the limits of language show that the world is my world? Suppose someone were to reject W.’s claim saying: “There must be more to my world”, to which the response would be: “What more is there”? And of course no answer could be given. If an answer could be given, whatever is said would be within that limit. I take this to be a form of skepticism. He is not denying that there may be more than I can say or think but that it is nonsense to say this because it does not point to anything. It does not mark a limit to the world or to language but to my world and the language I understand. But the same is true for all of us.
Solipsism - solus "alone" and ipse "self”. That language which alone I understand, is that language which solus ipse is understood. If there is a language I do not understand then even though the propositions are in proper logical order to picture reality, they are for me without sense (sinnlos) because I do not know what state of affairs they represent. They cannot represent if they cannot be understood.
5.621
The world is all that is the case (1). The facts that make up the world are not independent of the subject who perceives and represents those facts. This is the point of the cube having two facts. Facts are not independent of their representation. A picture is a fact. (2.141)The facts of the world include the representation of facts.
“It alone could not be mentioned”, solus ipse. The I (ipse) alone (solus) that writes the book is not something that is found in the book.
The subject is metaphysical because it is not a part of the physical world. Propositions about it are nonsense, for it does not represent anything in the world.
That which sees is not something seen. Just as the eye is not in visual space, the subject is not in logical space. The subject that represents is not something represented.
What is the connection between the metaphysical subject and the contingency of facts?
The I alone which sees the world, that experiences, that describes, has no logical connection to the world. We can only say how things are, not how they must be or will be.
My world is the world I see, the world I experience, the life I lead. My limits are its limits.
You are confusing an epistemological distinction - a priori and a posteriori with an ontological distinction - in terms of the Tractatus, what is and is not part of the world of factual relations. Metaphysics as a science is not what the science attempts to address, the objects of metaphysics - in this case, God, soul, and world. Kant rejects the idea of a metaphysical science of God, soul, and world, but does not reject the idea of metaphysical reality - the existence of God, soul, and world.
The error is evident when you say:
Quoting Pussycat
Kant does not say that “the metaphysical” is a priori, he says that there can be no a priori knowledge of the metaphysical claims of the antinomies, claims about God, soul, and world.
In addition, you are ignoring two different kinds of experience - our experience of things in the world and ethical/aesthetic experience:
But that discussion is yet to come.
Meanwhile you have completely ignored my discussion of 5.
Please distill your thoughts. I can't gather them all in one coherent fashion,
I am attempting to follow the Tractatus step by. What W. presents is already a distillation, which I have further reduced to a set of quotes followed by my own brief comments. In what follows I will first restate those comments and then tie it all together.
Free will.
The soul is not part of the natural world.
The “I” plays a role in determining the facts.
There is a limit to knowledge based on the fact that we cannot identify or name all of the simple objects.
“My language” means not simply English or German but the way in which I represent reality.
There is a relationship between the “I” which is not a part of the world it represents factually.
Solipsism: The “I” alone (solus "alone" and ipse "self”) is a limit of the world, the limit of what I can say and think. This is not a fixed limit, since it is always possible to learn something new, but a limit nonetheless. We cannot step out beyond ourselves.
The facts that make up the world are not independent of the subject who perceives and represents those facts. Facts are not independent of their representation. My world, the microcosm, is the world as I represent it.
“It alone could not be mentioned”, solus ipse. The I (ipse) alone (solus) that writes the book (The World as I found it) is not something that is found in the book. The I is a limit of the world.
The subject is metaphysical because it is not a part of the physical world. Propositions about it are nonsense, for it does not represent anything in the world. That which sees is not something seen. Just as the eye is not in visual space, the subject is not in logical space. The subject that represents is not something represented.
The I alone which sees the world, that experiences, that describes, has no logical connection to the world. We can only say how things are, not how they must be or will be.
My world is the world I see, the world I experience, the life I lead. My limits are its limits.
The self or I or soul or subject is free. It is not a part of the world. The world is for each of us mine - my world, the world as I perceive it, the world as I represent it in my language, the world as I live it. The limits of my world are not the limits of the world. This limit marks a form of skepticism.
Your impression is wrong, very wrong. I do not generally discuss my education or credentials in the forums because I prefer that the arguments be evaluated on their own merit.
Quoting Pussycat
If you look back over the discussion you will find that you asked:
Quoting Pussycat
To which I responded:
Quoting Fooloso4
The issue here is not metaphysics as a philosophical discipline or science but specific questions or concerns of metaphysics - the metaphysical questions of God, soul, and world. Kant did not reject the questions of metaphysics, he rejected a priori solutions to these questions. Pure reason, that is, a priori reason, reaches an impasse as the antinomies show. This means that there can no a priori science of metaphysics. It does not mean there can be no God or soul but that such things are not within the purview of a science. They are for Kant matters of faith not knowledge.
On one reading of the Tractatus they are to be disregarded as nonsense. What I am claiming is that although they are nonsense in that they do not represent things in the world, they are not to be dismissed, they are what matters.
Quoting Pussycat
Believe whatever you want about me, but pay attention to the text. Where does the text contradict anything I have said about it? Where have I made a false step?
Quoting Pussycat
That is uninformed, condescending, and evasive. The real problem here is that if my analysis is right then some of your basic claims about the text are wrong. And so, instead of addressing my analysis you create a smokescreen.
No, he seems to know what he is talking about. "A priori metaphysics" is somewhat superfluous and I'm still not sure what purpose was it suppose to serve.
These are concepts that Wittgenstein doesn't explicitly talk about in the Tractatus... Are you inferring them from what has been said contrasted to what hasn't been said?
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, I think so. But, it's just redundant to state a limit where none can be drawn, no?
Quoting Fooloso4
Not true, the facts of science are indisputable.
Quoting Fooloso4
The subject may not represent itself; but, that is irrelevant. The form is the same.
Quoting Fooloso4
I disagree. I think that whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent. That we cannot talk about the "metaphysical subject" doesn't mean it doesn't exist in the world.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, but, the world came first. I cannot doubt you don't have a beetle if you say it exists.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes and no, because if we are to talk about the logical space of the first person, then yes, the limits of your world are one and the same as the limits of the actual world. But, you can always tell me you have a beetle if I can't see one.
Sorry to interrupt but yes, he does. According to the index:
free will, 5.1362
soul, 5.5421, 5.641, 6.4312
Quoting Wallows
Then you disagree with Wittgenstein. As quoted by Fooloso4 above:
Ah, I see. But, then if the metaphysical self doesn't reside in the world, then where does it reside then?
5.632 The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world.
5.633 Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found?
You will say that this is exactly like the case of the eye and the visual field. But really you do not see the eye.
And nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye.
Interesting. But the metaphysical self is then transcendental?
A quiet, considered response. No matter anyone's qualifications or experience, the least anyone can do is show respect. Fooloso4 listens and responds patiently and carefully.
Keeping it on track.
Because W. does not treat God and soul a priori. I will have more to say on this in #6 of the Tractatus.
Quoting Wallows
He does. I quoted them above.
Quoting Wallows
The most important limit he points to is the limit of my world. He need not trace the boundary of that limit in order to point to the fact that there is a limit. He denies that there can be knowledge of the whole. He is in that sense a skeptic. (There are various forms of skepticism.) He is not denying the possibility of knowledge but of knowledge of the whole. Compare the systematic philosophy of Spinoza and Hegel.
Quoting Wallows
It is not a denial of science. The two dimensional drawing of the cube yields two different facts. These facts are not independent of the subject who looks at it one way and then the other and sees the fact that looked at one way a is in front and the other that b is in front. The same set of lines yields two different facts, but those facts are dependent on the subject. (5.5423)
Quoting Wallows
The logical form that underlies the facts and propositions is the same. The subject is neither one of those facts and so cannot be represented in a proposition. The subject’s relation to the world is not a logical one. More on this in # 6.
Quoting Wallows
The metaphysical subject does exist, it is not, however, in the world. The eye that sees the world does not see itself in the world.
Quoting Wallows
Right. And that is what is meant when I say that the limits of my world are not the limits of the world. There is more to the world than to my limited world. He is in this way a skeptic, but not in the modern sense. It is rather in the way that Socrates is - knowing that there are things he does not know, that my limits are not the limits of all that is.
Quoting Wallows
It depends on what you mean by transcendental. If used in the sense of what goes beyond certain limits then yes. For Kant transcendental means the conditions for the possibilities of experience. W. says that two things are transcendental - logic (6.13) and ethics/aesthetics (6.421). I will have more to say on this when I get to 6.
Please read my post on 5 (the one you said was incoherent. I assure you that it is not). It is mostly direct quotes from the text and addresses all of the questions you raised.
Then what can be said about the subject at all if it forms cannot be depicted? A subject cannot represent itself; but, to another person or even "God", his or her form is apparent in behavior or mannerisms or characteristics. Or to put this another way, "traits" cannot be modeled but observed.
Quoting Fooloso4
I never said your posts are incoherent. I wouldn't dare to say that to a grad student which I assume you are. I merely, am asking if what you're saying can be expanded on instead of having to use the Tractatus as punchlines. The work is easy to use as a means to end a sentence; but, I hope we can delve more deeply into the metaphysical self and its relation to the world through the logical form in logical space.
[ Apologies for interrupting the current flow a little. I've just taken a look at previous contributions and found this. At one time I was interested in Pirsig and his concept of 'Quality' from his 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'. Did you start a separate thread on it ? Not too sure how dynamic/static aspects fit in to the picture ? What did you mean by the part I emphasised in holds? ]
There are some things that can be said relating to the will, which I will address, but it is more about what is seen, what is experienced. The saying/showing distinction can obscure this since showing is dependent upon seeing. And this is why all of this leads to silence.
Quoting Wallows
Right, just as the eye sees but in seeing does not see itself, the subject represents but does not represent itself.
Quoting Wallows
You said:
Quoting Wallows
A bit off putting since I spent a good deal of time and effort combing through the Tractatus trying to show the rungs of the ladder.
Quoting Wallows
It has been a long time since I was a graduate student. If I was still in school I would not have time for this.
Quoting Wallows
Everything has been leading up to doing just that. I am mirroring Wittgenstein's approach, climbing the rungs of the ladder.
Cheers.
:up:
[/quote]
Obviously, this picture is distorted and impossible. But the distortion and impossibility accurately depicts what philosophy is always trying to do, which is to encompass the world in thought. It does this by self-reference: A man is looking at a picture in a gallery that as you follow it turns out to be a picture of the same man looking at the same picture in the same gallery. 'Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one can make a picture'. 'The observer is the observed.' Escher is often concerned with the limits of depiction, with how two dimensions can try to represent three, but never quite makes it into the third dimension.
Transcendental, as the term is used here, means both what transcends or is not contained within and, in the Kantian sense, the condition for the possibility of knowledge - of language, of representation of the world. Logic is the scaffolding (6.124). W. differs from Kant, however, in that for W. there is no need for a transcendental subject as a condition for knowledge.
That the world is as it is is accidental. That things are as they are is not because that is how they must be. It could have been otherwise. There is nothing that causes things to be as they are in any absolute sense. No necessity that the sun will rise tomorrow. The view of the ancients - God and fate is clearer in so far as they acknowledged a terminus, that is, we cannot go further than saying how things are. Why they are as they are and not some other way yields no answer.
It is because there is no necessity, no compulsion making one thing happen because another has happened, that my will cannot determine what will happen.
The laws of nature are not logically necessary laws and thus not immutable. The fact that something violates the laws of nature does not mean it is not possible for such a thing to occur if it not logically impossible for it to occur.
W. is using the term ‘sense’ (Sinn) here in different way than he had been using it. Prior to this sense referred to propositions and they had a sense insofar as they pointed to a state of affairs (4.022). Here he is not referring to propositional sense, for the sense of the world has nothing to do with the facts of the world. The facts of the world are accidental, and thus have no value.
There are no propositions about value. If one attempted to put the non-propositional sense of the world into words the proposition would be senseless (sinnlos). The value of the world is experiential.
The ethical is not within the facts of the world, it is the condition for the possibility of knowledge of the world in terms of value and meaning.
The connection between the self and the world is via the will.
6.422
The exercise of the will does not determine what happens in the world. There is no logical, that is to say, necessary connection between what I do and what happens. The effect of the exercise of the will is on the subject. The world as a whole is different for the happy man and the unhappy man.
In the Notebooks 1914-1916 says a bit more about the happy man:
He asks:
And answers:
Happiness requires that I not be dependent on a world that is independent of my will.
He does not mean that he believed that when he dies there would be no one and nothing left to read his work. The end of the world is for each of us the end of my world, for that is the world alone that I experience, solus ipse.
Here we see another sense of the importance of limits for W., or in this case of what is without limits.
The question of the immortality of the soul is of no importance to W.
One sense of this might be with regard to the problem of evil and the claim that if there is evil there cannot be a benevolent God. He is saying that the former has no bearing on the latter. Another sense is made explicit: God does not reveal himself in the world. We can know nothing of God by looking at the world.
It in not how the world is that is mystical, but that it is. In “A Lecture on Ethics” W. describes the ethical experience par excellence as follows:
Such phrases he points out, are nonsense, but what they attempt to express, the experience, is meaningful.
The proper connection for W. between ethics and aesthetics is not with regard to modes of expression but with regard to a way of looking at things:
Drawing the limits of the world has not only a semantic but an ethical importance as well. To view the world sub specie aeterni as a limited whole is to view the world in independence from it. To see that the world is my world is not simply to see how logic limits the world from inside through language, but to see how ethics enters the world from outside through my will.
6.53
The central point here is not the distinction between what we cannot say but can only show, it is a matter of what shows itself, what can be seen if we look at things in the right way. The meaning of the world is something experiential, something mystical, something transcendent, something ecstatic - (exstasis, to stand outside of or beyond).
But later on...
So is the Good - ethics - more or less identical than the Beautiful - æsthetics??
Impressive analysis.
Thanks.
What do you think about Proposition's 6.5 and 6.53?
6.5
For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed.
The riddle does not exist.
If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.
====
6.53
The right method of philosophy would be this: To say nothing except what can be said, i.e. the propositions of natural science, i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy: and then always, when someone else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions. This method would be unsatisfying to the other -- he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy -- but it would be the only strictly correct method.
I might put it this way: if logic is the transcendent condition for language then what is the transcendental condition for silence? The answer is ethics. Ethics is not about questions and answers or riddles, it is about the will and experience. It is about what one sees when he looks at the world in the right way, sub specie aeterni.
Philosophy sets boundaries. The boundaries of language exclude the metaphysical, but this is not a rejection of the metaphysical but rather means that the metaphysical is misunderstood and only leads to nonsense if one attempts to treat it as if it were within the bounds of language. Thus the right method of philosophy leads to silence about such things. There are not known discursively but experientially.
So you see now its purpose?
Not yet. @Fooloso4 care to expand on "a priori metaphysics"?
Anyway, what do you make out of this exchange so far? Does it seem like Fooloso4 is doing a good job no?
What do you disagree with?
What are your thoughts about the following propositions?
6.362 What can be described can happen too: and what the law of causality is meant to exclude cannot even be described.
6.363 The procedure of induction consists in accepting as true the simplest law that can be reconciled with our experiences.
6.3631 This procedure, however, has no logical justification but only a psychological one. It is clear that there are no grounds for believing that the simplest eventuality will in fact be realized.
6.36311 It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise.
6.37 There is no compulsion making one thing happen because another has happened. The only necessity that exists is logical necessity.
Fooloso4 - You have been doing an excellent job of moving the discussion forward.
You have persevered with patience under the most trying of circumstances.
You have my full support and appreciation.
Disgraceful. Continuing false allegations against Fooloso4. And the ignoring of same.
I never said anything against Fooloso4. I even said in my previous comments that I think he is right.
Anyway, I hope Fooloso4 might be able to contribute more to these issues. Quite interested in his input.
Once again: the term metaphysics is used both in the sense of a science and a subject area that may or may not be addressed via science, that is, as something that can be known discursively. What is now called Aristotle’s metaphysics, the question of being qua being was not addressed a priori. First philosophy was not for Aristotle an a priori science. The question is whether metaphysics is for Wittgenstein a priori. My answer is: no, it is existential and experiential. It has nothing to do with science. That is the point of setting the bounds of science.
As to Kant: he holds that there can be no knowledge of anything outside of experience, and so it follows that there can be no knowledge of God or the soul. Some have taken this to be a rejection of the existence of God and soul since they are not objects of experience. But that is not the case. From the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason:
Kant rejects a priori arguments attempting to prove the existence of God and soul. They are not objects of knowledge a priori but matters of faith. For a detailed discussion see: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-religion/
Quoting Pussycat
I have already asked you to point out where I have made a mistake or questionable move. Where specifically do my own views differ from his? What textual evidence points to that difference? I do not make my views pass as his. I set his statements in quotes and then comment on them. The two are easily distinguished.
Quoting Pussycat
The following are direct quotes from the text. I cited them in my post.
What do you think about Wittgenstein's answer to Hume's problem of induction in the Tractatus?
You missed out the relevant part of the quote by Pussycat. I will bold it.
I think that he is doing a good job, but partly. For the other part, [b]its really bad: he makes his own views pass as W's, most commonly they appear at the end of a paragraph.
— Pussycat[/b]
You didn't say anything against Fooloso4 but by ignoring the accusation against him you failed to support him.
Yes. His contributions are valuable. You keep asking questions of him and others. It's a good way forward. He keeps on giving. So generously.
Well, I don't think there are any issues anymore. So, let's wait to hear from @Fooloso4...
I am not a participant in the reading, and that is what should matter. Carry on...best wishes.
I think the larger issue has to do with his claim that the laws of nature and the law of causality are not necessary laws. It follows that there can be no law of induction. I am generally in agreement. I see the laws of nature as descriptive rather than prescriptive or proscriptive. They mark regularities, but I am not certain that things must always follow the same patterns as they do now. I am by temperament not a determinist, but I do not know enough to take an unyielding stance.
I do not know if this is what you are inquiring about though. What do you think about Wittgenstein's answer to Hume's problem of induction in the Tractatus?
See:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/249463
How does that answer the question about induction?
I included several of those statements in my discussion of 6.
What does W mean by the following?
6.37 There is no compulsion making one thing happen because another has happened. The only necessity that exists is logical necessity.
What does logical necessity mean here?
So, you ask questions but do not answer them?
Logic determines what is possible. It tells us nothing of what is actual.
Well, according to this website, answers the question about why Wittgenstein denied Russell's empirical claim that "there is no rhinoceros in the room". How does this relate to the issue about Hume's problem of induction is that Wittgenstein basically affirmed the issue of the problem of induction by the assertion that empirical claims like Russell's rhino in the room are just as untenable as knowing that the sun will rise the next morning, which according to Hume is just a psychological belief, not a certainty.
Do you agree with all this or not?
So, with the above in mind, does Wittgenstein ever make the claim that, logic and the world, are one and the same? Or is there some distinction drawn between the two? Or in other words, how does logic relate to the world, if as we've discussed the metaphysical self lies beyond it?
I cannot comment on the rhino. I do not know what was said. I do not know, as the link assumes, that it had something to do with induction.
Here’s the problem:
How can we determine whether the proposition that there is a rhino in the room is true or false? How can we compare it with reality if we reject empirical evidence?
Hume’s problem of induction is not about what can be verified empirically here and now, such as whether there is a rhino in the room, but about what we infer will be the case based on prior experience. For example, if every time I walk into Russell’s room there is a rhino I might after numerous times infer that there will be a rhino in his room the next time I visit. There might, but then again, there might not. That is something I cannot know until I visit. It does not follow logically that because there has been a rhino in the past there will be one in the future
Quoting Wallows
They are not the same. The world is made up of objects. Objects have logical form and combine to make facts. Logic is the structure, the scaffolding of the world, not the world itself. If you read my posts you will find that I have addressed all of this.
I'm a little slow, please bear with me. Here is a good paper on the issue of there being a rhino in the room.
I have my contention with this due to Wittgenstein explicitly stating in proposition 5.1361:
Although he does change his views later in the Investigations.
I think I got sidetracked with the whole Rhino and induction thing. Let me know where we left off.
Sorry and thanks.
From which you extract:
Quoting Fooloso4
Now where exactly does W. say explicitly in the Tractatus that the things that are not within the bounds of language "are not known discursively but experentially"? Particularly the second.
Amity, amity
why show you such enmity?
after all
there's no calamity
But I am just trying to be honest here, you understand honesty, right? Honesty's form I mean, its logical form, irrespective of its content.
I do not extract that from the quote. He explicitly states that this is what philosophy does. I quote it and reference it in a post on the section of the Tractatus where he says it.
Quoting Pussycat
If they are not within the bounds of language then by definition they cannot be known discursively. As to the experiential, I discussed this in my post on part six, specifically with regard to the will and the world of the happy man. What do you think he means by the world of the happy man?
Mind you that Wittgenstein's friend David (Hume) Pinsent was a descendant of David Hume. A coincidence? But there are no coincidences in logic.
I see no problem with this one, I was referring to your last sentence.
Quoting Fooloso4
But what does "discursively" mean? Rational thinking? So that pure reason or rationalism cannot reveal the truth about what is outside the bounds of language? Most likely this is what W meant, but by saying that "these cannot be known discursively", it endangers that we leave and throw reason completely out of the game. In a similar tune in stanford's article on Kant that you shared, it says somewhere:
Why would Kant deal with reason with what is outside the bounds of language, if the latter - the unreasonable - were unknowable? (but neither with this I have a problem)
Quoting Fooloso4
Now with this, I have a problem. I don't see anywhere in the Tractatus Wittegenstein:
a) say explicitly that what is outside the bounds of language can be known experientially.
b) even imply or hint that such is the case.
I read your comments on part 6, where you repeat this claim, but again I cannot see how you came to this conclusion. So if you could, for my sake, answer whether there are excerpts in the Tractatus containing a) and b) above, and which are those.
As to the world of the happy man, we can take the usual example of the half-full/half-empty glass: how can we use language and science to describe the situation? one way is this: we say that this glass can hold a maximum of 100 ml of water, and it now holds 50, this is a scientific proposition, a proposition of natural sciences, expressing a definitive fact, which cannot be changed no matter how hard we try. Now, the happy man says: "oh what joy, this glass is half-full, and I will get to drink some water! :smile: ", whereas the unhappy man says: "oh what a bummer, this glass is half-empty, couldn't it have been full! :sad: ".
(If good or bad willing changes the world, it can only change the limits of the world, not the facts; not the things that can be expressed in language).
So the worlds of the happy and unhappy man are quite different. For the first his world waxed, as optimism shined in, for the second it waned, as pessimism caved in.
(In brief, the world must thereby become quite another. It must so to speak wax or wane as a whole.
The world of the happy is quite another than that of the unhappy).
It is related to the term discourse, thus to language and the expression of thoughts.
Quoting Pussycat
That depends on the game. When the game has to do with the facts of the world, what is the case, or natural science then reason plays a role, but if we are talking about ethics and aesthetics then, according to W., it plays no role; such statements would have no propositional sense because it does not refer to the facts of the world.
Quoting Pussycat
Above the passage you quoted, in the same paragraph:
Wittgenstein does.
Quoting Pussycat
Your question is pretty jumbled. Kant uses reason to set the limits of reason, of what can be known via speculative reason and what illusions the non-critical use of reason leads to.
Quoting Pussycat
The sense of the world, its value lies outside the world. It is what is experienced by the happy man.
The world of the happy man as well as the world of the unhappy man is the world as they experience it.
As to God:
So where is it that W says that we cannot know God using reason, but that we can know God experientially?
In answer to the first part of the question, once again:
In the Tractatus W. is almost silent about God, which of course would be expected, but there are a few statements in the Notebooks, a few of which I already pointed to can be found in an earlier post.
He expresses a trust in God as a father (NB 11.6.16)
In A Lecture on Ethics he speaks of the experience of feeling absolutely safe in which nothing can injure him regardless of what happens (Philosophical Occasions p.4)
The meaning of life cannot be found in either the world or in the “I” but only in the relation between them.
Although what happens in the world is independent of my will, nothing that happens in the world has any meaning independent from the will.
Once again:
So there W closes the lecture with:
So "does not add to our knowledge in any sense". Then why do you say that these sort of things, God etc, can be known experientially? Wittgenstein above strictly ousts knowledge away from them, why don't you?
In other words, as I have been saying, there is not discursive knowledge regarding the ethical.
It is quite clear that there is ethical experience. One knows what it is, according to W., to be a happy man. One knows what it is to be in agreement with the world, with one's conscience, the will of God. One knows what it is for life to have value and meaning. One knows what it is to live in the eternal present. One knows the mystical (it makes itself manifest). One know how to see the world aright and what it is to see the world aright. One knows how all things stand, how it is all related, that is, God.
I overslept and missed the lecture.
Where are we in the text, @Fooloso4?
Anyway, you brought me W's lecture on ethics to corroborate your analysis of the Tractatus that whatever is beyond logic, language and the world is only knowable experientially and not by rational discourse, however W clearly does not attribute any knowledge and in any sense to all these experiences, as he notes at the end of his lecture. And neither is there a similar statement in the Tractatus, relating - how to call them, transcedental experiences, or even better metaphysical experiences, as you would have them - to knowledge.
There are various forms of knowledge including things that can only be known via experience. And that is why Wittgenstein remains silent about such experiences. What he says at the end of the lecture:
supports that. I have highlighted "our" because this points to the difference between discursive knowledge, that is, knowledge that can be conveyed from one person to another, and what I can know only by experience.
Your complaint is like saying that there can be no knowledge of the taste of vanilla ice cream.
A couple of more quotes from the lecture:
The meaning and value of life are not things that can be expressed in language. I cannot know what they are based on anything you can say, but that does not mean I cannot know that life has meaning and value. It is not a criticism of either W. or my interpretation of him to point out that they do not relate to discursive knowledge, that is rather, exactly the whole point of the distinction between what can be said and what shows itself, what makes itself manifest.
Watch out! you will get a bad grade. :razz:
And?
I have not idea what the chimaera you are referring to that you say he is referring to is. If you would like to discuss it cite in in context and tell me what you think it is.
Here he is starting to attack also the "thinking" mode of being ethical, besides the "saying". For the "saying", it is clear as rain what he contends, he said it so many times over, and we discussed it as well, agreeing that what he means is that language and logic cannot capture ethics, that all ethical propositions are nonsensical, and so all ethical ideologies that have been written are in fact ethical idiotologies, with the most prominent moralists and ethicists being the most idiots of all. But this left people with believing that it's ok if we cannot speak of the ethical, because we can think of it, and also act upon this thinking, so that we can know what the right/good/ethical way to live is, and also follow it. Well here he is trying to also bring down this castle, the last fort, the last resort of the ethical man.
So Ethics is no science for W as there is nothing to be learnt by studying it. This applies to thinking as well, not just saying: "nothing we could ever think or say should be the thing".
So here comes the part about the chimera, hell, I thought he wrote it "chimaera", I like it better this way, just like I prefer daemon to demon. Anyway, he sees the "absolute right way to live life", as that being thought of or expressed by the ethical man, as a chimera. What he means by that? Let us first take what the wikipedia article is saying about the chimera: "The term "chimera" has come to describe any mythical or fictional animal with parts taken from various animals, or to describe anything composed of very disparate parts, or perceived as wildly imaginative, implausible, or dazzling. The sight of a Chimera was an omen for disaster". So by chimera he means that we, more than often, get carried away or are overwhelmed by thoughts and feelings that point us to an "absolute right road", but that this is wildly imaginative, not having anything to do reality, but rather with psychology as he contends later:
It is therefore when and because we feel good with ourselves, pleasurable, that ethical thinking and saying springs. But it's all purely imaginative and overwhelming. So I see here W argue in favour of amorality, just like Nietzsche, the opinion that ethics is non-existent, in thinking or in saying, in this world or beyond. And it is a contradiction in thought, or rather a paradox, if the only possibility for an ethical man would be for him to deny ethics alltogether.
I don’t know who you are referring to but certainly not anyone who understands Wittgenstein. He is not “starting to attack also the ‘thinking’ mode of being ethical”. Setting the bounds of thought is fundamental to the Tractatus (see the preface, 4.113-4.114).
Quoting Pussycat
There never was a “thinking mode of being ethical” for W. Ethics was always beyond the bounds of what can be thought.
You have completely missed the point. The “ethical man” has nothing to do with either what is said or thought to be ethical.
Quoting Pussycat
Right. He is not attacking ethics, he is attacking the idea of a science of ethics.
The ethical cannot be found in the world. He was quite clear on this in the Tractatus. Ethics has nothing to do with states of affairs.
It is not ethics that is a chimera but the idea of an ethical state of affairs.
Quoting Pussycat
Again, you do not understand him. See the paragraph after the one you quote:
His investigation of the ethical is to take place via personal experience. It is the common ground.
Quoting Pussycat
Here you betray your lack of understanding not only of Wittgenstein but of Nietzsche as well. What they have in common is the fundamental importance of value and meaning for life. They differ, however, in where that is to be found. For Nietzsche it is the revaluation of values. For Wittgenstein:
Right, so how does this "ethical man" differ from someone that is not? If it doesn't have anything to do with whatever he says or thinks, then what else is there?
This has already been addressed. It is not a matter of what he says or thinks, but of what he does, how he lives.
You really do have a large blind spot.
I have gone through the whole of the Tractatus section by section, section by section, beginning on page 12. I skipped over the parts that address formal logic and, so to speak, climbed the rungs of the latter.
Ok, and what he does and how he lives can be described by a very certain state of affairs, like we are watching him from afar how he goes about his own business and life, and record all his actions in our little book. But, according to W, there is no ethical state of affairs, "no absolutely right road", as he puts it. Therefore in fact, the way the ethical man lives is also nonsensical and idiotic, just like his saying or thinking, as far as he believes this to be so that is.
With regard to actions and consequences:
It is not the consequences of our action, which is something over which we have no control, but “good will”.
Actions are guided by conscience:
I figure we're kind of doing this at whim, so feel free to address any part you find confusing from the book and we will try and address things as they come along.
Cheers.
No, they are fundamentally different. There is for Wittgenstein no categorical imperative.
How are they fundamentally different, since the foundation in the both of them is the will, no?
Kant attempts to develop a moral science. It puts the will on the wrong side of the boundary that Wittgenstein establishes both in terms of where the will is located and what ethics is about.
Is there any ethics that is not based on will - on volition or choice?
Utilitarianism?
Utilitarianism says that one's choice of action and policy should be guided by what promotes the greater good. Although not generally expressed in these terms, one could say that the Utilitarian wills whatever has the greatest utility.
Yes, I was gonna say Utilitarianism. Something like Russell seems to be advocating in the famouse radio debate with father Copleston.
http://www.scandalon.co.uk/philosophy/cosmological_radio.htm
Here Russell seems to be open to the possibility that ethical matters could be judged just like scientific questions regarding color perception!
While here ethical matters are decided according to the effects of our actions: we take into account all possible actions together with all their possible consequences, subtract the unpleasant consequences (NP) from the pleasant (P), sort them by their outcome (P - NP), and pick the action-consequences pairs from the top of the list.
So in both of these ethical theories, the will is either absent (as in the first), or plays a rather non significant role (as in the second).
But for Kant the will is the foundation of ethics, all ethics are based on the will. Just like you say it is for W, putting aside questions of where the will is to be found. Do you understand what I am saying?
Why would we do this if we did not will to do or choose what is good or best or just or most fair or most beneficial or least harmful?
Quoting Pussycat
The will is not absent. All such theories have at their basis the will - the wish or desire or want or motivation to do what is right or good. They differ in how they attempt to determine what that is.
For this theory I said that the will plays a non significant role, since ethical matters are judged according to pleasure. So if for example our will is to do action A, but it is judged that its consequences will be most unpleasant, then, in order to be ethical, we would refrain from doing it, and do some other action B instead, that causes less discontent and/or more pleasure, so it is not a matter of/for the will, the will succumbs.
Quoting Fooloso4
I said that the will is absent from the first theory, not from both of them. It is absent from the scientific version of ethics since there a person is supposed to be impaired or have an affliction that causes him to act most unethically, or be gifted with something that makes him most ethical. So the will is completely unimportant, just like a color-blind person won't start seeing colors because he wills it so.
Since we desire pleasure and avoid pain, and move toward the one and avoid the other, it is a matter of will, of what one wishes to pursue or shun.
Quoting Pussycat
No, the will to do what causes less discontent and/or more pleasure wins out.
Quoting Pussycat
By analogy with color blindness, the ethical person will still will or want what is perceived to be good and avoid what is perceived to be bad. Since they are not able to make the distinction correctly, however, their actions may not be ethical.
The ability to make the distinction correctly, however, does not assure that one will act ethically. Being able to see that 'x' is bad 'y' is good does not mean that one will avoid 'x' and do 'y'.
No matter who wins, what is ethical, according to this theory, does not reside in the will itself (good willing does not make it ethical), but is judged by other factors that got nothing to do with the will, any will : via a rigorous analysis of all the actions, consequences and circumstances, the theory says that we can arrive at the most pleasant-giving action of all, which is then defined as the ethical, the most beautiful way to live life. This analysis does not need will, neither its approval, for it to be carried through, to be concluded. Now whether one chooses, desires or wills to act upon the conclusion, is a different matter, there sure the will is queen, but steps behind the king, playing second fiddle.
Quoting Fooloso4
Basically their actions would be as if we showed a color-blind person colors and told him to identify them. The color-blind person maybe would very much desire to be correct in his color identification, but we already know that it would be a shot in the dark, the result is to be decided only by chance, some lucky coincidence - so to speak. So again here, what is ethical has nothing to do with willing it or not, but is based on a fact, a scientific fact, which as W - to get him back in the game - says:
6.43 If good or bad willing changes the world, it can only change the
limits of the world, not the facts; not the things that can be
expressed in language.
So science was able to express in language the ethical, just as it was done with color-blindness, and this ethical fact found is unchangeable by will. Moreover, it doesn't matter at all what we will, since it is just statistics, say x% of our actions are going to be ethical, unknowingly.
Of course it needs the will to be carried through. It needs the will even to attempt to determine what is ethical. Without the will to do good there would be no need for ethics. You are confusing the determination of ethical action and the motivation for ethical action. Even with Kant the good will is not sufficient for determining what is in accord with one's moral duty. This is the point of the categorical imperative.
Quoting Pussycat
Once again, you have misunderstood Wittgenstein. For W. ethics has nothing to do with what happens in the world. He is quite clear that ethics is not a science. He is also clear that it does have to do with the will. I provided ample evidence of this based on the Tractatus, the Notebooks, and the Lecture on Ethics.You jump from a remark made by Russell to the conclusion that W. held that ethics is a science and has nothing to do with the will, the opposite of what he says.
If you have not been convinced then there is nothing more that I can say.
Unless you have something substantive to say based on the Tractatus I think we are done.
Fooloso4, can you elaborate on the "will" to do good according to Wittgenstein? I am under the impression that the will to do good is derived from the transcendental self wrt. to the world. Yet, if the self cannot be encapsulated within the bounds of the world, then what can be said about the will?
This is not about a science of ethics, it is about why someone would think one sort of thing good and another evil. It does not follow that the one is good and the other evil.
Have you read my posts on this? Any answer I give will only be repeating what I have already quoted him saying
What is the difference between this logical atomism that Wittgenstein is proposing and the preceding Idealism movement?
It is the connection of things that is important. Simple objects contain their possibilities for occurring in states of affairs, but we cannot tell from these objects what is actually the case, that is, how the world really is.
The Tractatus is mind independent. Idealism plays no role. It is objects in logical space that determine all that is.
Please be patient as I am slow. Where have you addressed this already?
6.422
So our question about the consequences of an action must be unimportant.—At least those consequences should not be events. For there must be something right about the question we posed. There must indeed be some kind of ethical reward and ethical punishment, but they must reside in the action itself.
(And it is also clear that the reward must be something pleasant and the punishment something unpleasant.)
6.43
If the good or bad exercise of the will does alter the world, it can alter only the limits of the world, not the facts—not what can be expressed by means of language.
In short the effect must be that it becomes an altogether different world. It must, so to speak, wax and wane as a whole.
The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.
6.43
If the good or bad exercise of the will does alter the world, it can alter only the limits of the world, not the facts—not what can be expressed by means of language.
In short the effect must be that it becomes an altogether different world. It must, so to speak, wax and wane as a whole.
The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.
6.432
How things are in the world is a matter of complete indifference for what is higher. God does not reveal himself in the world.
Being happy means being in agreement with the world (NB 8.7.16)
Living in agreement with the world is living in accord with one’s conscience, which is the voice of God.
I am then, so to speak, in agreement with that alien will on which I appear dependent. That is to say: “I am doing the will of God” (NB 8.7.16)
No, once again, it is you that have misunderstood me. I quoted W to make an argument for this particular theory that we were discussing, I didn't say nor do I believe what you say next. The question here is: "what would happen to ethics if it was found that ethics is one of the natural sciences?". Of course W in the TLP does not see ethics this way. So you see that it is you that is jumping to conclusions, probably because you are so blinded by your beliefs that you are not even able to hypothesise anything else, but then again your condition does not have anything to do with philosophy, rather as W would say, it is only of interest to psychology.
The topic is the Tractatus but you jump from W. to Kant because both discuss the will and then to a misrepresentation of Russell in order to show that for him the will plays no part in ethics. Based on that misrepresentation you make a dubious claim about a science of ethics, try to tie it back to the Tractatus, and conclude that there are ethical facts and an ethical science.
What you fail to see is that for W. the will does not make ethical determinations. The will does not make ethical determinations for Kant either. In addition, however ethical determinations are made, to choose and act ethically does require the will. Simply determining that one should choose or do ‘x’ does not mean one will choose or do it. I might decide that I would benefit more by not doing ‘x’ even if it harms others. The will alone is not sufficient but is necessary if one is to choose and act ethically. Simply following the rules is not enough because one might not follow them when he can go undetected and it is to his advantage to not follow them.
As to a science of ethics: Russell is not claiming the possibility of a science of ethics but a science of perception - just as the physicist can give an answer to why an object looks yellow or blue, he suggests that there is "probably an answer of the same sort" as to why I think one sort of thing good and another evil. That does not mean that there is a science that determines whether it is good or evil but rather a possible science of moral perception. Moral perception, however, is not moral truth:
Your question which for some reason you were not able to previously articulate:
Quoting Pussycat
What evidence do you have that such a thing is possible? Where in the world are the facts of meaning and value located? How are they known?
You seem to have moved without making a clear distinction from challenging my interpretation of the Tractatus to what appears to be an ambiguous challenge to the Tractatus itself. From challenging what I said about the role of the will in the Tractatus to challenging the role of the will in ethics to an assertion of ethical facts to speculation about a science of ethics.
Quoting Pussycat
There is nothing here that indicates that you have distinguished Wittgenstein’s position from your own claim of a science of ethics. Nothing that indicates that they are not seen by you as one and the same.
I never encountered Wittgenstein's beliefs about human psychology; but, know from my readings that he believed that to answer the question as to what is ethical, one ought to understand how human psychology works.
I attached the paper. Hope you enjoy it.
Yes, the topic is the Tractatus, but we got sidetracked discussing this question: "is the will fundamental in all ethical theories?". All my previous comments had to do with that. Wallows, first, mentioned utilitarianism, but he didn't expand further, so I decided to say a few things. And then I remembered the debate that Russell had with Copleston, and since Russell had a close relationship with Wittgenstein, I thought it would be pertinent to throw Russell into the discussion. As for Kant, some of the things that Wittgenstein said in the Tractatus, I think that they are directed towards him, so Kant is important here as well. Now, as it seems, I might have misrepresented Russell, however I did not say that for him the will plays no part in ethics, nor did I try to tie anything back to the Tractatus - my comments had nothing to do with the Tractatus but with the question above standalone - or make any conclusions. I just took his two possible ethical theories to help me with whether the will is fundamental in ethics.
Quoting Fooloso4
Well, this is what I've been saying all along, that the will is not making ethical determinations, at least in the ethical theories above, and this I see as "the will not being fundamental in ethics", as in those theories we could have - in principle - a computer program determine what is ethical. Because the question was not whether the will plays some role in ethics, but whether it is fundamental. And I see the ethical determinations as being fundamental. You, on the other hand, see the will fundamental no matter what. So I guess we are both right and wrong, depending on how one looks at it. But I think for Kant, the will is inseparable from ethical determinations and actions both, they are somehow intertwined, I mean if you separate them, then you end up with something that is not Kant.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, you are right.
Quoting Fooloso4
I didn't articulate it because I thought we were on the same page, apparently not.
Quoting Fooloso4
This depends on how one defines/formulates ethics. For example, if ethics is defined to be "the will to do good", then the question above whether "the will is fundamental in ethics" is obviously ridiculous and absurd. It's like someone would come with a good disposition and ask: "come here fellas and let us ponder upon this question, no bias, no strings attached, to find out whether blue is truly a colour". And the others would say, of course: "what the heck are you talking about? how can blue not be a colour? the colour blue is obviously a colour! what sort of question is this? are you stupid or something??!". But if ethics, as Wittgenstein says in the lecture, is defined to be the general enquiry into what is good (taken from Moore), or the enquiry into what is valuable, or what is really important, or the enquiry into the meaning of life, or into what makes life worth living, or into the right way of living, then the will may in fact not be fundamental, or be trivial or even redundant.
[quote=W]Now I am going to use the term Ethics in a slightly wider sense, in a sense in fact which includes what I believe to be the most essential part of what is generally called Aesthetics.[/quote]
If Aesthetics is the inquiry into what is beautiful, then we can define Ethics similarly as the inquiry into what is a beautiful life, making thus Ethics part of Aesthetics, defining it in terms of beauty that is, and then there would only be beauty to investigate to get a glimpse of them both.
Quoting Fooloso4
Well maybe I wasn't clear, it doesn't matter anyway. But I think that just as you misunderstood me here, you also misunderstood what W was trying to say in the Tractatus, in propositions 6.42 to 6.43: it is not his own opinions on ethics that he is presenting there, but those of conventional ethics, as they have been traditionally discussed. Basically I see that he is trying to put everything where it belongs: traditional ethics as the "will to do good" does not belong to philosophy but to psychology, this is an insinuation to Kant who discusses the will quite a bit. Also proposition 4.1121:
[quote=W]4.1121 Psychology is no nearer related to philosophy, than is any other natural science.
The theory of knowledge is the philosophy of psychology.
Does not my study of sign-language correspond to the study of thought processes which philosophers held to be so essential to the philosophy of logic? Only they got entangled for the most part in unessential psychological investigations, and there is an analogous danger for my method.[/quote]
These unessential psychological investigations point to Kant and his categorical imperative, Kant is not doing philosophy there but psychology.
[quote=W]6.423 Of the will as the bearer of the ethical we cannot speak. And the will as a phenomenon is only of interest to psychology.[/quote]
Philosophy cannot speak of ethics where the will is present, but psychology can. And if we formulate ethics such as we could philosophically speak of it, then it will not do for us what we always tried to make it do, just like the soul (This shows that there is no such thing as the soul—the subject, etc.—as it is conceived in contemporary superficial psychology. A composite soul would not be a soul any longer):
[quote=W]6.4312 The temporal immortality of the soul of man, that is to say, its
eternal survival also after death, is not only in no way guaranteed,
but this assumption in the first place will not do for us
what we always tried to make it do. Is a riddle solved by the
fact that I survive for ever? Is this eternal life not as enigmatic
as our present one? The solution of the riddle of life in space
and time lies outside space and time.[/quote]
On the other hand, he finds that solipsism does actually belong to philosophy, because it has sense: "The I in solipsism shrinks to an extensionless point and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it. There is therefore really a sense in which in philosophy we can talk of a non-psychological I". Which is why solipsism occupied him for the rest of his life.
Scepticism, however, does not have any sense at all, and is therefore excluded from philosophical investigations:
[quote=W]6.51 Scepticism is not irrefutable, but palpably senseless, if it would
doubt where a question cannot be asked.
For doubt can only exist where there is a question; a question
only where there is an answer, and this only where something
can be said.[/quote]
--------
This is more or less it, what goes where. I wish I were in a better mood and state to express myself clearer, but I am pretty much tired, surely there is a lot I forgot and neglected to mention to tie things up. But life, if it could be expressed into a proposition, it would most probably be a funny one.
My question to you was:
Quoting Fooloso4
Ethics is not a theory of ethics, just as music is not a theory of music. The failure to make that distinction results in a failure to understand what Wittgenstein means by ethics. The comparison with music was deliberate because in the Tractatus he links ethics/aesthetics. Someone who has never heard music will not come to understand it via a theory of music.
Quoting Pussycat
Yes, but not in the way you claimed. You asked:
Quoting Pussycat
This followed your claim:
Quoting Pussycat
The will is fundamental for all ethics in so far as we intend to do what is right or good. When we ask how that is to be accomplished Kant and Wittgenstein part ways. Kant thinks there is a moral science, Wittgenstein rejects this. That does not make it "100% percent Kant".
Quoting Pussycat
So, which is it? Is the will fundamental or not? The basis of your confusion seems to be, once again, the failure to distinguish between ethics and a theory of ethics.
Quoting Pussycat
This should be seen in light of the saying/showing distinction. What answers the inquiry is not something that can be said but something that becomes manifest, something experienced. It is not a matter of defining one in terms of the other. It is not a matter of defining it at all.
Quoting Pussycat
Are you claiming that when he says:
6.42:
So too it is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics.
Propositions can express nothing that is higher.
6.421:
It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words.
Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the
same.)
that this is ethics as it has traditionally been discussed? Where? By whom?
And where does the conventional opinion say:
6.43
If the good or bad exercise of the will does alter the world, it can alter only the limits of the
world, not the facts—not what can be expressed by means of language.
In short the effect must be that it becomes an altogether different world. It must, so to
speak, wax and wane as a whole.
The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.
On the contrary, it is the conventional view that says ethical action has an affect in the world.
If this is not Wittgenstein's view then what is his view?
Quoting Pussycat
The moral law for Kant was not grounded in psychology and did not appeal to psychology. It is determined a priori by reason.
Quoting Pussycat
Philosophy, according to Wittgenstein, sets the boundaries of what can be thought and said. Ethics is on the side of that boundary that cannot be said or thought. Ethics is transcendental. It is not about theories or propositions or formulations, but rather the life of the "happy man"; life as he knows it via his own experience of the good exercise of his will.
Quoting Pussycat
As late as "On Certainty" skepticism remained central to his investigations. We need to distinguish between two forms of skepticism: 1) knowledge of ignorance and human limits, 2) radical doubt. Wittgenstein accepts the first and rejects the second.
Yes, which I translated to "is the will fundamental in all ethical theories?". Your disagreement is with theory? Or with fundamental? I guess with the first. But I lost you there, what do you mean by ethics is not a theory of ethics? We have something, say X, and to be able to understand it and say a few things about it, we build a theory of X around it. How does this lead to misunderstanding? And when W says something about the musical score in the Tractatus, he does so to link the musical form to the pictorial form, and go from there to the logical form that governs everything in the world. I don't think that this has anything to do with ethics or aesthetics per se.
Quoting Fooloso4
Well yes, I exaggerated a *bit*, it's true.
Quoting Fooloso4
It's whatever one chooses I guess. I just copied here what W says in the lecture:
[quote=W]Now instead of saying "Ethics is the enquiry into what is good" I could have said Ethics is the enquiry into what is valuable, or, into what is really important, or I could have said Ethics is the enquiry into the meaning of life, or into what makes life worth living, or into the right way of living. I believe if you look at all these phrases you will get a rough idea as to what it is that Ethics is concerned with.[/quote]
Quoting Fooloso4
There it is again this talk of "experience"... I think that the main reason you misunderstand the Tractatus is because you are primarily concerned with ethics. The saying/showing distinction in the Tractatus has to do with the logical form: this form is the one that cannot be talked about, but only shown. For example, according to W, we cannot say what time is, but only show it.
Quoting Fooloso4
"Transcendental" is so Kant, isn't it?
But I was referring to the part you so cleverly omitted:
This I say is the traditional view of ethics, that reward coincides with something acceptable and happiness, which also coincides with good willing, in contrast to punishment and something unacceptable and bad willing.
The conclusion for Wittgenstein, as I see it, is this: if ethics is something that can be expressed in language, then it will not do for us what we always tried to make it do, but will become quite another. On the other hand, if ethics cannot be expressed in language, then we should remain silent about ethical matters. Thus, you can't have it both ways, one must choose between these two ifs. You can't have your cake, and eat it too.
Quoting Fooloso4
I am certain that for Kant it appeared so, but according to Wittgenstein, the categorical imperative is purely psychological.
Quoting Fooloso4
Surely for Wittgenstein, ethics cannot be expressed in language, in this we agree. However I don't see anywhere in the Tractatus him saying that ethics is about "the life of the "happy man"; life as he knows it via his own experience of the good exercise of his will". This is just you, speculating.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes right, this form of scepticism that doubts where a question cannot be asked.
You translated what into the question of whether the will is fundamental to all ethical theories? It should be clear that Wittgenstein did not have an ethical theory.
Quoting Pussycat
You certainly did!
Quoting Pussycat
A theory is not the thing it is a theory of. A theory of music is not music, it is about music. There can be no theory of ethics for Wittgenstein because ethics is transcendental.
Quoting Pussycat
The X in question is ethics. Ethics is not a state of affairs, that is, a matter of fact. Propositions that have a sense are limited to matters of fact. This is basic to Wittgenstein. An understanding of ethics is experiential.
Quoting Pussycat
A theory of music has to do with its form. It is not the form of music that is aesthetic, it is the sound, the experience, how one is moved.
Quoting Pussycat
Wittgenstein did not "choose" first one and then the other.
Quoting Pussycat
Taking something out of context can misrepresent it. Here is how he ends the lecture:
The lecture is consonant with the Tractatus. The will is fundamental. An inquiry into what is good or valuable or the meaning of life is not something that yields a propositional answer. That is why he appeals to experience.
Quoting Pussycat
Yes.
Quoting Pussycat
I assume you cannot see the irony of this! Ethics is of central importance to the Tractatus. That you cannot see this is a serious blind spot.
Quoting Pussycat
It is a term that Kant used, and Wittgenstein follows his use of the term. The key is that they do not identify the same things as transcendental. I discussed this in an earlier post.
Quoting Pussycat
He does accept the notion of reward and punishment. Only it is not to be found in anything in the world. As you quoted:
Quoting Pussycat
And this is why he says:
Seeing the world rightly, this is not something he was trying to say, it is what he was trying to show.
Quoting Pussycat
You really should check the text before saying such things:
6.43
I quoted this passage and discussed this in an earlier post. In addition, I added statements from the Notebooks.
Lets just say that the Notebook was never written or that it was unavailable to us, and we only had the Tractatus. Do you think that from the statement above only, we can infer that W linked the world of the happy man to the good exercise of the will, whereas the world of the unhappy man to its bad exercise, and all this to ethics?
The quote is from the Tractatus:
Yes ok. So? Why do you see good willing to be a characteristic of the happy man, and bad willing that of an unhappy man? Because they are placed in the same order afterwards? If he wrote:
"The world of the unhappy man is a different one from that of the happy man",
would you have said that the good exercise of the will is that of the unhappy man, and bad willing that of the happy man?
I don't see the connection, in fact, I don't think they are related at all, in that happiness does not have anything to do with the will, as it is stated above, I am saying that the two statements are unconnected.
The numbering system in the Tractatus is not ornamental. The remark about the world of the happy man is not some offhand remark unrelated to the statement in which it occurs. It follows from the prior related statements.
According to 6.41 value is not found in the world. This is followed by 6.42 which states that there can be no ethical propositions because propositions cannot express anything higher. Ethics is transcendental (6.421). This is followed by 6.422 which states there must be ethical rewards and punishments, and that they reside in the action itself. 6.423 states that it is impossible to speak about the will in so far as it is the subject of ethical attributes. This is because the will is not a thing in the world. Rather than attributes of the will it is the actions or exercise of the will that is at issue, but it cannot change what happens in the world, it changes the world as a whole (6.43).
This last comment must be understood in light of the claim that the world is my world. It is my world that changes with my actions. But it cannot be anything in my world that changes, and whatever that change is it must be rewarding if I exercise my will in ways that are good and a punishment if I do not. If the reward is of value that value is not something that can be found in the world. My world becomes a different world dependent upon my ethical actions. Happiness is the reward for good actions and unhappiness for bad actions.
Yes of course, the numbering is not ornamental in the Tractatus. But if we want to take things from the beginning, chapter 6 begins with :"The general form of truth-function is: [...]. This is the general form of proposition". And then 6.4 states: "All propositions are of equal value". What relation do you think the general form of truth-function has with 6.4?
Quoting Fooloso4
But in 6.422 he says that the consequences of an action are irrelevant. And that the reward and punishment must lie in the action itself, they must thus be intrinsic to the action, in and of itself, with no recourse to experience, to what happens in the world outside of us I mean, as a result of this action. Thus, willing anything, IF it changes anything (the if here is not to be taken lightly), it won't change the external world, the macrocosm, but only our world, the microcosm, how we see and value things. But value does not exist in the external world, the world of logic that can be expressed in language, therefore, IF it exists anywhere, it must lie on the outside, or inside our microcosm. All this however, is purely psychological, since believing, willing, judging etc something does not necessarily make it so, which is the foundation for all psychology. And thus the Tractatus has explained how value judgements are possible. Finally, it is evident from the above that the will resides in our microcosm, being part of our psychology, so anyone, like Kant, that speaks about the will is doing psychology and not philosophy or logic. However, because "logic fills the world", it mixes with our soul and psyche somehow - the microcosm, and it is not a happy coincidence that the word itself "psycho-logical", bears a logical part, but language has managed to preserve and show this mixture, as well as distinction. And it is for this reason that philosophers have more than often confused logic and rationality with their own psychology.
And I think that 6.43 was purposely numbered so by Wittgenstein, being in equal section under 6.4 (All propositions are of equal value) and not under 6.42 (as in 6.424 for example) where he discusses ethics, in order to show that what is contained there (the will and feelings of happiness and unhappiness) pertains to psychology, mostly, and not ethics.
At least this is what I believe about the Tractatus.
The answer is:
Ethics has nothing to do with truth-functions, for propositions can express nothing higher.
Quoting Pussycat
Wittgenstein says:
5.641
Thus there really is a sense in which philosophy can talk about the self in a nonpsychological way.
What brings the self into philosophy is the fact that ‘the world is my world’.
The philosophical self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit of the world — not a part of it.
And:
6.423
And the will as a phenomenon is of interest only to psychology.
Quoting Pussycat
He has done no such thing. There is no talk of value judgment in the Tractatus. It is a matter of seeing of what makes itself manifest (6.522).
Quoting Pussycat
Where does he say that logic mixes with the soul? Once again you have missed an essential element of the Tractatus, the "I" or self or soul is not in the world, it stands outside it.
Quoting Pussycat
The term psychological does not mean that there is a logical part of the psyche. Logic is derivative of the Greek "logos", which meant originally to gather together, and thus to give an account, to speak or say. Psychology is the logos of the psyche.
Quoting Pussycat
The reason it is not "6.424" is because it is not a continuation of 6.423, which says that it is impossible to speak about the will in so far as it is the subject of ethical attributes. The subject is still ethics. Ethics is not about attributes of the will. It is about the exercise of the will. How we choose to act and the rewards or punishment that follow.
So if ethics has nothing to do with truth-functions, does this mean that no truth comes out of ethics?
Quoting Fooloso4
I didn't say that there was talk of value judgement in the Tractatus, but only an explanation how these are possible. How is it that people value one thing over another, for example a piece of music, some ideology, some human characteristic, different beliefs etc.
Quoting Fooloso4
Well yes, he doesn't, but seeing that you get ahead of yourself, I took the liberty to improvise as well, I mean why should there be only you that has that privilege?
Quoting Fooloso4
So psychology is the logos of the psyche, not the logic of the psyche?
Quoting Fooloso4
By what you are reasoning here, you say why it is not a continuation of 6.423, but you don't actually say why or how it is a continuation of 6.42, where ethical propositions are discussed. But let us take propositions 6.4x from 6.43 and below. We have:
6.43 If good or bad willing ... (let us not repeat ourselves)
6.44 Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.
6.45 The contemplation of the world sub specie aeterni is its contemplation as a limited whole. The feeling of the world as a limited whole is the mystical feeling.
Do you think that in 6.44 and 6.45, the subject is still ethics? And if so, how is ethics connected with these propositions?
No propositional truths.
Quoting Pussycat
He provides no such explanation, and if he did wouldn't he have to discuss it, that is, talk about value judgments? You miss the point. It is not about value judgments but the experience of value.
Quoting Pussycat
First of all, I am not ahead of myself. I have followed the Tractatus. In a few places I cited his other writings. There is nothing else in addition to these points that I have said that cannot be found in the Tractatus. Second, your claim about mixing logic and soul is contrary to the Tractatus. If you like you can assert the "privilege" of saying things that are contrary to the text but you should be aware and make note of the fact that they are.
Quoting Pussycat
'ologies' are the talk about or examination of or study of the subject matter. Biology is not the logic of life, it is the study of life. Psychology is not the logic of the psyche, it is the study of the psyche.
Quoting Pussycat
Actually, I did. 6.42 explains why there can be no propositions of ethics. This is, however, not the last word on ethics. Ethics is about what we do, that is, the exercise of the will and the pursuant rewards and punishments. In other words - not this (6.42) but this (6.43). But this is not the final word either.
Quoting Pussycat
Yes.
Quoting Pussycat
Ethics and aesthetics are the same (6.421) 6.44 and 6.45 refer to aesthetic experience, meaning and value.
But since there can be no propositions of ethics he is not pointing to ethical facts or what is the case with regard to ethics, but rather to what can be seen from a vantage point that is outside of logic and propositions and facts:
What sort of truths then? Truths that cannot be expressed in language? Is this what you say? Personal truths? What exactly?
Quoting Fooloso4
Basically my questions and let's say assertions have to do with the fact that I don't understand what you mean by these experiences, the experience of value. But I think that you are using the word 'experience' in a different context as the one that is conventionally used, I mean, how to say, the every day experience, or like a physicist would use it when he conducts his experiments. Do you think that this experience of value is of the same form of everyday experience? Somewhat related, or entirely different?
Quoting Fooloso4
I did it to myself in my first comment, and then in the second I publicly acknowledged it. I am just following on Wittgenstein's footsteps here that he carved for us but without us, I think, when he said:
Some trial and error, so to speak. As long as thoughts are expressed. But if one gets it at the end, it wouldn't matter what happened in the past, would it now?
Quoting Fooloso4
So you are saying that logic plays no role at all in biology or psychology? Cause this is what I am getting at, the logical forms found in those.
Quoting Fooloso4
Again, per my question as to these experiences.
We have been over this. Experiential. A proposition does not tell me if I am happy or in pain.
Quoting Pussycat
It would not be the everyday experience of the unhappy person. For most people I would think it would be a matter of degree. To delight in being alive is something that many of us have experienced at some time. The sense of the word as mystical is less common.
Quoting Pussycat
I am talking about the etymology and meaning of the terms. The term biology does not mean that logic is mixed with life. The term psychology does not mean that logic is mixed with psyche. More to the point,
Wittgenstein marks the limits of logic and world and the "I" is not within those limits. They are separate and distinct, not mixed.
Quoting Pussycat
Again, are you asking me to put into words what Wittgenstein says cannot be put into words? The problem can be seen, as I pointed out, with mundane experiences such as the taste of vanilla ice cream. This is an experience that most of us can relate to. In the Investigations he talks a great deal about the experience of pain. When someone says that they are in pain we know what they mean. But the experience of the mystical is not one we can so easily understand since it is not a common experience.
In the Lecture on Ethics he gives examples from his own experience: wonder, feeling absolutely safe, seeing the world as a miracle. He also says:
... It is the paradox that an experience, a fact, should seem to have supernatural value.'
And:
... no description that I can think of would do to describe what I mean by absolute value ...
The experience is a fact, but what it is the experience of, what he calls absolute value, is not itself an experience.
Ah so experiential truths, like the truth of what vanilla ice cream tastes like (mundane), the truth of me having a toothache, the truth of feeling safe and in accordance with the world, the truth of seeing/feeling the world as mystical or a miracle, the truth of being happy. And you are saying that these experiential truths cannot be expressed in language and propositions, thus we cannot communicate them, at least not in the ordinary sense, but only show them (this be the only - if any at all - way of communication), they make themselves manifest. Right?
Quoting Fooloso4
But what is logic, according to Wittgenstein? Or the logical form? When I say that logic mixes with X, I mean to say that the logical form is inherent in that X, that X has a logical structure. So biological forms have a logical structure. And I say that this is also the case for the psyche, giving birth to psychology.
Quoting Fooloso4
I was asking so that I could understand what you mean. But if you think that what I am asking cannot be put into words, but only shown, then I guess that your efforts should have been better focused on the latter, the showing. For example, in one of my previous comments to you, I used the word privilege ironically, this was evident to you, and to anyone following the discussion I think, pretty obvious. And it was evident to me that you realized it, putting it in quotes and all. Because "privilege", as used in that context, is not identical to the "privilege" that is commonly ascribed to, let's say, a king, but nevertheless has some relation to it. What happened there? A combination or mixture of forms, logical forms I mean: the logical form of privilege proper was mixed with irony, irony's logical form, and this was made manifest, it showed itself, irony showed herself. And then you decided, on your own merit, not to further fuel the so-called quarrel, but somehow quiesce it. This also was made manifest, this silencing. But had you acted differently, then we might have seen what it is for something to wax, only to wane at a later time, as it was done before. So all these forms, logical forms, of waxing, waning, quiescing were made manifest, here, as is the case, apparently, in every discussion. But one cannot talk about these forms in hope that he will represent them in his speech or language, but only show them.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, it would seem or appear so, but you know what they say, appearances can be deceiving.
Once again you miss the point. I cannot show you what the mystical is, you have to experience it for yourself. This is all part of the distinction between the world and my world, what can be said and what can only be seen or experienced solus ipse.
Quoting Pussycat
I have no idea what you are trying to get at. I see no indication that you were using the word ironically. What I saw was you falsely accusing me of getting ahead of myself and improvising, and using that as your defense for ignoring what the text actually says and making unfounded claims. The rest of the paragraph might be your idea of improvising, but it is meaningless. It is like someone who does not understand the music getting up at a jam session and making noise, with no regard to the form or melody of the song.
Quoting Pussycat
This was a direct quote from the lecture. Are you saying that Wittgenstein was deceived in believing that certain experiences have supernatural value? Or are you still accusing me of not understanding him?
Accuse is a bit harsh for a choice of words, but yes, I am saying that you don't understand him. "should seem to have" is not the same as "has", I wonder how and why you don't see that.
Wallows, this is your thread, your discussion, started 9 months ago with so much promise.
What happened ?
Given recent exchanges, it seems that the aim has changed to a matter of whim for anyone who wants to join in. Questions apparently to be answered by a nebulous 'we'. There is no group as such. No leader taking responsibility.
It is unfortunate that there is little to no acknowledgement of interventions by e.g. Luke who pointed out an error in your understanding of Wittgenstein. Instead of showing any degree of comprehension, you deployed your customary strategy of deflection by question. Or, elsewhere, the use of special pleading of being 'slow'. Even when patience has been bestowed, there is little indication of follow-up understanding.
Clearly, this discussion can go on and on. After all, the title includes the word 'Ongoing'.
However, there are limits to time, energy and patience supplied so far by Fooloso4, to name but one along the way. He has worked systematically and also dealt with false allegations and more with an unbelievable generosity of spirit.
The poster Pussycat has repeatedly challenged him. Fair enough. However, each time he provides the answer it is ignored, there is a move to something else. It is not clear whethet his careful responses are getting through or whether there is a better understanding of the text.
After all that is what is important, no ?
The latest offering by Pussycat takes the discussion to a new low.
Is it now about improvising as you go...?
A serious text discussion now reframed as The Never-ending Witterings of Wallows and Co.
Fooloso4 chooses his words carefully; it is not harsh to use the word 'accusing'. For that is what it is.
It is a continuation of your personal false allegations you made about him previously.
That much is clear.
Also clear is that you are right. The phrase 'should seem to have' is not the same as 'has'.
Fooloso4 in his understanding of Wittgenstein would probably point out that the reason why Wittgenstein said: "should seem to have" is because that refers to how things are to Wittgenstein.
If Wittgensteun used "has" he would be making a factual claim, and he rejects factual claims about ethics.
At least that is what I have gleaned so far. From listening...to Fooloso4.
Of course, I stand ready to be corrected...as always.
Yup. Your patience must be wearing thin. All this din.
It has.
Quoting Amity
This is the crux of the matter. Thank you. Quoting Amity
That is correct. This is a basic Tractarian distinction. One that I have repeatedly pointed to only to have it ignored and the same mistake repeated.
I am grateful that at least one person has been following this thread and perhaps gained some insight. If there are others who have questions or comments I would be glad to respond. But as things stand right now it is pointless for me to continue.
Sorry, my mind has been preoccupied with some dumb shit. Personally, I've been enjoying the dialogue between Pussycat and Fooloso4. I'm not an expert on Wittgenstein, and anyone who claims that they are, are likely full of shit. So, I don't know what issues I should intervene.
I'll try and keep a more watchful eye out for the sake of this thread.
I must admit though, that my interest in philosophy has been lackluster as of late. Ehh.
no shit Einstein! hahah
down in the deathly hallows
there's a man that wallows
oh what a pity to be
in a pit most shallow
I say spit boy!
and never swallow
Nope, wrong again. And well, no matter how many times a mistake is repeated, it still remains a mistake won't you all agree now? The only thing that a repetition shows is that someone is stuck in time, sounding like a broken record, like a needle stuck in a groove, as the expression goes.
Here Wittgenstein says that Ethics is supernatural, he doesn't say that "Ethics seems to be supernatural", so there goes the argument about the factual claim. And of course, sceptical like he is, unlike others - not to name them, adds "if it is anything", I mean the guy is not even sure that ethics exists, or if it is anything at all, like a ghost or an apparition or something.
Understood. Dealing with real life issues takes priority over any philosophy forum input.
However, sometimes - as you know - forums can be a positive distraction, and way to connect with people who share same interest or fascination.
Other times, we need to get out of our own way !
Clearly the dialogue between Pussycat and Fooloso4 has been of benefit. Thanks to both. It has drawn out their respective enthusiasm and interpretation of this text. However, there has also been a straining of patience as described above.
We are all here to learn or share philosophical understandings; it is good when we can acknowledge both similarities and differences, don't you think ?
Life is difficult enough at times. And this is where being good to yourself comes in.
If reading a philosophy text or two ain't doing it for you, then use your own best way of thinking to try and lighten the load.
Sticking labels like failed Stoic or Cynic, misanthropist, on your head - how helpful is that ?
Please don't feel you have to 'watch out for the sake of the thread'. That's minor. But perhaps it might help not to have it as an Ongoing project. Rather have a timely conclusion ? That way it is less of a burden ?
Philosophy isn't just for Christmas. Or an academic term. Or about arguing the toss about what some old or dead white guy said, or didn't say. It's a way of life which at its best helps in thinking clearly and putting things into perspective. At least, those are my thoughts this morning.
Thanks to you, and others, for providing some inspiration and humour along the way.
I do appreciate Fooloso4's interpretation of the unsaid in the Tractatus, which is hard to find in any textbook. The ethical, mystical, and mysterious. It's good stuff all around.
Cheers.
I am not surprised that this is hard to find in textbooks, but there are ample secondary sources that support this view. This was not always the case for those who could not see past the influence of Positivism, Russell, and others, but no credible contemporary interpretation can ignore the central importance of the ethical and mystical for the Tractatus.
[quote=6.521]
Is not this the reason why men to whom after long doubting the sense of life became clear, could not then say wherein this sense consisted?
[/quote]
Once they transcend it, or go beyond it, its senselessness will become clear.
[quote=6.54]
My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.[/quote]
But getting rid of excess baggage is not as easy as it sounds, and one has to occupy oneself considerably with the subject matter in order to do that, for example walking away like the guys in the Vienna circle did, is not an option. And what a peculiar and special deed would that be, if to get rid of something heavy, one had to carry it through thick and thin, only to throw it away at the end. The Tractatus describes that deed.
But I think that Wittgenstein did not think so only of ethics, but of everything that cannot be expressed in language, ethics only being a small part of it. That is one interpretation at least, but surely there are more, as the bibliography suggests, I mean if one would do some research on the Tractatus, he would find plenty of different views, it is not at all clear.
And yet at the penultimate rung of the latter at 6.421 he says that ethics is transcendental. How do you explain this?
What one sees when the world is seen aright is not simply that propositions about what cannot be put into words are senseless but that the world is mystical.
6.522:
There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical.
What is inexpressible would be nonsense if one attempted to express it. This does not mean that the mystical or the ethical does not exist. It does, it shows itself. What is senseless is not the ethical but rather propositions about the ethical.
Quoting Pussycat
If one would do some research he would find that the same is true with the work of any philosopher. While there may be no final and definitive interpretation there are interpretations that are more plausible than others. The best interpretations make connections between each of the parts and sheds light on the whole.
He gives no meaning to "transcendental", so anyone can explain it how he sees fit. One can take Kant's meaning of transcendental, for which by the way there are different interpretations and debates. Another can say that transcendental is something that can be transcended, or gone beyond, for whatever that means. Another that transcendental is itself nonsensical and cannot be put in words etc.
What is the meaning he gives to "transcendental"? What does this sign represent in the proposition "ethics are transcendental"? Is it a metaphysical concept to begin with?
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, the world is mystical, like we didn't know.
Quoting Fooloso4
It doesn't mean it exists either. Or that the ethical that has been transcended has anything to do with what is obtained at the end of this transcendence, it might be something completely different.
So he says that the mystical shows itself, not the ethical. But then again, someone may say that whatever is inexpressible shows itself, and as long as the ethical is inexpressible, then also the ethical, which is the mystical, shows itself. Go figure. But this all too funny I think. :grin:
So in other words you don't know what it means and think you can define it in any way you see fit. Is this an example of your “improvising”? It is nothing more than a dodge, an attempt to sidestep the incompatibility of your interpretation with the text.
The term has a specific meaning and anyone familiar the term does not need to be given a meaning by Wittgenstein. It means the a priori condition of the possibility of experience through representation (See Critique of Pure Reason, "Transcendental Deduction of the Categories"). Disagreement is not about the meaning of the term itself. Thus logic is transcendental because it allows us to picture the world. Ethics is transcendental because it allows us to experience the moral/aesthetic meaning and value of the world, to see it as mystical.
Quoting Pussycat
Wittgenstein does not say and it does not follow from anything he does say that the ethical has been transcended. It is just the opposite, the ethical transcends the facts of the world. (6.41)
Quoting Pussycat
Wittgenstein connects the mystical and ethical/aesthetic via linked statements about the world, its limits, and what is experienced beyond those limits. The sense of the world and its value is not to be found in the world (6.41) It is because the sense and value of the world cannot be found in the world that there can be no ethical propositions (6.42). The good and bad exercise of the will and the experience of the world as a whole of the happy and unhappy man (6.43) The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time (6.4312). God does not reveal himself in the world (6.432). The facts all contribute only to setting the problem, not to its solution (6.4321) The existence of the world is mystical (6.44). Viewing it sub specie aeterni and feeling it as a limited whole is mystical (6.45)
“Ethics does not treat of the world. Ethics must be a condition of the world, like logic.” (NB, 24.7.16)
But when he writes that: "he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly". This surmount, climb through, on and over these (nonsensical and ethical) propositions, isn't that transcendence?
I mean, can't we rewrite the above as: "he who understands me finally recognizes the ethical propositions as senseless, when he has transcended them", without changing the meaning?
He has made it clear that ethics is not about propositions and so the transcendence of propositions is not the transcendence of ethics. It is only when such propositions are surmounted that one can see the world aright. It is the ethical that is the transcendental condition that makes this experience possible.
Do you mean ethics in the sense of rules or standards of proper conduct? If so, Wittgenstein says nothing about this. The closest he gets in the comment in the Notebooks about conscience quoted in an earlier post:
No, I meant ethics as the transcendental: if it was employed as a means to see the world aright, then what is its use after this?
Quoting Fooloso4
I think he uses this as a simile like he says so in the lecture: when someone is happy then he says and feels as if he is with God or in heaven, where being with God and heaven mean something pleasant. The same holds for the ethical rewards - reward must be something acceptable. Equivalently, when someone is unhappy then he says and feels as if he is with the Devil or in hell, where the Devil and hell mean something unpleasant - punishment be something unacceptable. Or doing the will of God, so to speak, he means it also as a simile for when he is happy and in accordance with his own conscience, not that he is actually doing God's will.
It is not like sightseeing. It is not a once and done experience.
Quoting Pussycat
It is an attempt to put into words what cannot be put into words. When he says "ultimate value", however, it suggests something much more profound and important than something pleasant. When he says that he is "so to speak" in agreement with the will of God, again I think he means something far more profound and significant than something pleasant. When he says that his conscience is the voice of God, he is not stating a matter of fact. To attempt to ascribe a more specific meaning to it is antithetical to the Tractatus.
haha, well done Fooloso4, you have a sense of humour after all!
Quoting Fooloso4
The word "meaning" can have different meanings. We use it differently when we say "the meaning of a chair is something that we use to sit on", when we say that "this object has a special meaning for us", and when we inquire into the meaning of life. The word-sign may be the same, but it has a different form, so it means something else in each case. So in the case of "ultimate or absolute value", I think he means the source of all value, the transcedental ethics, or God so to speak, but not the actual value, since no such ultimate value can be ascribed or described, and the source is not the same as what emanates from it.
I mean, a normal person I think would have said that the murder was quite unethical and immoral, and denote the murderer as unethical and immoral too. But not Wittgenstein, he only sees facts.
In any case, I think we can safely say where Wittgenstein places all ethical propositions, somewhere next to the lifeline. :grin:
It is not that he cannot see the immorality of the act, it is that the immorality does not reside in the facts themselves.
The act is a fact. Part of the problem is that murder is defined as wrongful killing, but if it were an act that took place in war or in self-defense a factual description of the act would not change. Some might claim that war is immoral so the act of killing would be immoral. Some might even claim that killing in self-defense is immoral. Where in a description of the facts do we find the fact that the act is or is not immoral? If it were a fact shouldn't we be able to agree on that in the same way we agree that one person was hit in the head with a rock by another on a Tuesday afternoon? Propositions with a sense picture or represent what is the case, some state of affairs. Disagreement over the morality of the act is not an agreement or disagreement over the facts but over our assessment of the facts.
So let us conclude this if you like. First of all, I think your reading of the Tractatus sees the transcedental ethics as providing the condition for meaning and value both: without ethics, there would be no value, and no meaning either; ie the condition for meaning and value is the same. Is that what you are saying?
And as to happiness, do you think that Wittgenstein is saying that whoever surmounts these ethical propositions and sees the world aright, will be happy? Because if so, then how do you explain the fact that he led a most unhappy life himself?
Thank you, Fooloso and Pussycat.
Meow!
We need to make a distinction between meaning as Sinn or sense and meaning as significant or of value.
Quoting Pussycat
Happiness is said to be a reward for the good exercise of the will (6.43)
Alright, can you bring an example that clearly shows this distinction?
Quoting Fooloso4
So if that is the case, combined with the fact that W. was not happy in his life, we can safely infer that he did not exercise his will in a good way, and thus he was not rewarded, right?
Woof!
Compare:
with:
The same distinction in use can be found with Bedeutung. In English we also use the term 'meaning' in different ways.
Quoting Pussycat
If Wittgenstein was correct in claiming that happiness is the reward for the good exercise of the will and it was true that he was not happy, then that seems to be a correct conclusion. If you read Monk's biography and well as comments made by Wittgenstein in Culture and Value and elsewhere it is clear that he sometimes is critical of his actions. See also his comments about confession.
So you are saying that 'sense' in 4.022/4.031 and 'sense' in 6.41 mean different things? But yes, because I cannot see how the "sense of the world" would represent some situation. So in 6.41, value is meant as "sense"? And in that sense, does he see value and meaning as essentially the same? Is this why you said to me previously:
Quoting Fooloso4
I mean to express the position that: if one discards ethics as the condition for value, then one has to discard meaning as well. That is, the world cannot have a meaning, one's life cannot have a meaning, but be utterly meaningless, if one does not accept at least some value coming from the ethical.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, I remember reading it some years ago, but diagonally like they say, some excerpts only. Wittgenstein said he wasn't happy, in several occasions, but in any case this is evident. Nowadays, he would have been diagnosed with some mental illness, for sure, bipolar disorder, manic depression, OCD most probably.
Now number 2 relates to happyness, if, again for W and the Tractatus, it coincides with "good willing", which coincides with doing God's will, for whatever that means, and seeing the world aright, in which case I think we may call this particular interpretation of the Tractatus as the "stairway-to-heaven" interpretation, with the rungs of the ladder referring to this stairway.
Quoting Fooloso4
Something that someone just knows but cannot put into words? I am asking, because it looked like a sermon to me, and I wouldn't take Wittgenstein to be a preacher.
Yes. We went over this.
Quoting Pussycat
Wittgenstein was deeply concerned with religious and moral matters. But here you are quoting me regarding things known that cannot be put into words. That is not a sermon by Wittgenstein.
Well for one I very much doubt that all the above are things that one knows. I said previously what I think W. meant by the world of the happy man, and in the case of religious experience: that one speaks in similes, relating happiness to God or some divine providence, but this is not to be taken literally; and as we do not have words for God or the divine, similarly we do not have words for this happy experience. But as you said we went over this. So you agree that it was your own sermon?
But I think you are claiming the same for the Tractatus and for Wittgenstein as Father Copleston did, in his debate with Russell I linked to before. In there he writes:
http://www.scandalon.co.uk/philosophy/cosmological_radio.htm
C: ... Well, perhaps I might say a word about religious experience, and then we can go on to moral experience. I don't regard religious experience as a strict proof of the existence of God, so the character of the discussion changes somewhat, but I think it's true to say that the best explanation of it is the existence of God. By religious experience I don't mean simply feeling good. I mean a loving, but unclear, awareness of some object which irresistibly seems to the experiencer as something transcending the self, something transcending all the normal objects of experience, something which cannot be pictured (huh, it's not a picture) or conceptualized, but of the reality of which doubt is impossible (what one knows)-- at least during the experience. I should claim that cannot be explained adequately and without residue, simply subjectively. The actual basic experience at any rate is most easily explained on the hypotheses that there is actually some objective cause of that experience.
and
C: ... I'm speaking strictly of mystical experience proper, and I certainly don't include, by the way, what are called visions. I mean simply the experience, and I quite admit it's indefinable, of the transcendent object or of what seems to be a transcendent object. I remember Julian Huxley in some lecture saying that religious experience, or mystical experience, is as much a real experience as falling in love or appreciating poetry and art. Well, I believe that when we appreciate poetry and art we appreciate definite poems or a definite work of art. If we fall in love, well, we fall in love with somebody and not with nobody....
Just as Copleston says that the objective/transcendent object and cause of religious/mystical experience is God, so you say that for Wittgenstein, the condition for these kind of mystical experiences is the ethical. Which is also the condition for beauty - poetry and art, right? And that this is what Wittgenstein was getting at in the Tractatus, well at least in these two pages of his book?
If they are not part of your experience then they are not things you know via experience.
Quoting Pussycat
You can call it my own sermon if you like, but they are all things that Wittgenstein says, all things that were referenced. As to why you think calling it a sermon serves any purpose, I will leave to you. And as to why you drag Copleston into this I will also leave to you.
Quoting Pussycat
It is not a proposition. It tells us nothing about anything in the world.
Quoting Pussycat
Wittgenstein would not agree. He does not regard God as an object, objective/transcendent or otherwise.
Right, leave everything to me then! :) If it looks like a sermon, acts like one, then it is what it is. Copleston was dragged because I think he expresses the same views as yours regarding the ethical part of the Tractatus. I put in bold the parts that I find relevant.
Quoting Fooloso4
Whether God is that transcendent/objective object or otherwise, he (Copleston) certainly attributes religious/mystical experience to God, one way or another. Whereas, in your reading of the Tractatus, this mystical/ethical/religious experience is attributed to ethics. But then again, you seem to link ethics to God as in the sermon above, so essentially, these two different views are the same.
And if black and white are both colors then black and white are the same.
Of course not, but rather if black and white are colours, then they must have something in common, they must share a connection, so they are essentially the same, although different. In tractarian terms, their form is the same, but their content is different.
The form of all propositions is the same. The form of all relations between objects is the same. Just because we say things about both houses and cows does not mean that houses and cows are the same.
Quoting Pussycat
As you quote, Copleston's:
This is at odds with Wittgenstein. There is no objective cause of that experience, no state of affairs, no facts that cause such an experience. The ethical, according to W. has nothing to do with what happens in the world. He denies the possibility of ethical propositions (6.42). And yet Copleston speaks as if what he says represents facts of the world. You treat Wittgenstein as if he were saying the same thing that Copleston is, as if he were talking about some facts that must be the objective cause of ethical/aesthetic/religious experience.
Wittgenstein warns against the rabbit hole that Copleston goes down when he treats such questions as if they were propositional, as it they refer to some objective cause that he hypothesizes must exist that he can attribute them to. You do the same when you talk about the mystical/ethical/religious experience as if they are attributed to ethics.
Yes, in the Tractatus it was put forward that all propositions have the same form, however this was abandoned later on. Anyway, what both houses and cows have in common, according to the Tractatus, is the pictorial/representational form, and so they can be depicted, we can form pictures of them, portray them in language. But we cannot make a picture of the pictorial form itself, and thus we cannot talk about it in the same way, or maybe at all, as we do with what this form represents, which was a common error made by philosophers.
Extend this to the whole realm of the ethical and maybe then you will catch on and the misguided questioning will end.
Can't do that, since the ethical is treated differently: ethical propositions are not like factual propositions where we can talk about the facts but cannot depict their form. But rather they are alltogether senseless, in form and content both. Maybe this is where you are confused.
Yes, because there is something about them that bugs me.
In factual propositions, facts can be represented - their content, but not the representational form. In ethical propositions, nothing can be represented.
I can extend something that is in analogy with something else. But here, factual propositions are not in analogy with ethical propositions, so I cannot extend, sorry. What I can do though, is similes. For which Wittgenstein says in the Lecture, if you remember, that once the simile goes away, then you are left with nonsense.
There are three kinds of propositions in the Tractatus: elementary, logical and ethical. They do not have the same form, in fact I think that ethical propositions are formless. But later on, Wittgenstein was forced to abandon elementary propositions, I guess this had an impact on the ethical as well.
All propositions are factual propositions.
Quoting Pussycat
There are no ethical propositions. Once again:
Quoting Pussycat
There is only one kind of proposition. Elementary propositions are logical propositions.
Quoting Pussycat
All propositions have the same form - logical form. It is not that ethical propositions are formless, it is that statements about ethics are not propositions.
What he refers to as 'propositions' here are not strictly speaking propositions at all. They are senseless statements. Statements that do not represent any state of affairs.
Quoting Pussycat
He abandoned them because he abandoned the idea of simple objects and thus the connection of names that are elementary propositions. It has nothing to do with ethics.
Yes, this is the conclusion, but we start our investigation assuming there are.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes I suppose you could say that. Why can you not say that ethical propositions are not propositions because they lack form?
Quoting Fooloso4
What about logical propositions such as the modus ponens? Does it represent a state of affairs?
That may be your assumption but it is not an assumption that informs any part of the Tractatus.
Quoting Pussycat
It is not simply lacking form but lacking logical form, which means they do not say anything about what is the case.
Quoting Pussycat
I don't think it is just my assumption. I mean, in our time and in Wittgenstein's time, there is a vast amount of ethical propositions before me and him, so in order to examine them, we need to take them at face value, what these ethical propositions purport themselves to be, regardless what you, me or anybody else think of them. But anyway, little does it matter.
Quoting Fooloso4
So there, you agree that they lack form or logical form?
So are propositions of logic indeed propositions, or something else? Do they have the same form as elementary propositions?
Wittgenstein rejects that assumption. If you reach the end of the Tractatus and still hold to that assumption then you have not understood the text.
Quoting Pussycat
If you have read what I have been saying with due care and attention that is not a question you would ask. I made this point explicit when I discussed the relevant passages. It is not a question of form but of logical form. They do not lack the form that governs sentence structure, that is, they are, in the ordinary sense, grammatically correct. They are not, however, based on names for objects in the world.
Quoting Pussycat
Quoting Fooloso4
You are so nice! :) You should have been a teacher or something similar, if you are not already, that is. But your approach to discourse resembles very much that of Wittgenstein's - I would say it is of the same form, logical or otherwise - at least in his early years, where he would beat the shit out of people, literally or metaphorically; Like he wrote to Russell at some point: "It distresses me that you did not understand the rule dealing with signs in my last letter because it bores me beyond words to explain it. If you thought about it for a bit you could discover it for yourself! I beg you to think about these matters for yourself: it is intolerable for me to repeat a written explanation which even the first time I gave only with the utmost repugnance".
One could say that this would be somewhat justified, if criticism was just, or the will good, but I don't think this is the case here.
You set the adversarial tone several months ago.
Quoting Pussycat
Kongzi (Confucius) said:
You have been struggling to find where my interpretation goes wrong and/or where Wittgenstein's does, but the only things that you have pointed to is where you have gone wrong.
Socrates spoke differently to different people depending on their needs.
Lin Chi hit them with his stick ... out of kindness.
You seem to be unaware of the extent of my patience, even after it has been pointed out by another member.
I'm thinking of buying this book, let me know what you think about it:
https://www.amazon.com/Wittgensteins-Tractatus-Critical-Exposition-Thought/dp/0631060707#customerReviews
I really can't say. I do not know the author or anything other than the title of the book and one positive review.
If you like to collect books that's one thing, but if your interest is in reading then there are, in my opinion, better sources, some of them free.
I've read PMS Hacker, and some others. The book I linked is very critical and technical, unlike others I've come across. What book would you recommend?
I have not read this work but I have read both editors and can strongly recommend them:
http://the-eye.eu/public/WorldTracker.org/Sociology/Philosophy%20-%20The%20Cambridge%20Companion%20Series/The%20Cambridge%20Companion%20to%20Wittgenstein.pdf
Ludwig Wittgenstein occupies a unique place in twentieth-century philosophy and he is for that reason difficult to subsume under the usual philosophical categories. What makes it difficult is first of all the unconventional cast of his mind, the radical nature of his philosophical proposals, and the experimental form he gave to their expression. The difficulty is magnified because he came to philosophy under complex conditions which make it plausible for some interpreters to connect him with Frege, Russell, and Moore, with the Vienna Circle, Oxford Language Philosophy, and the analytic tradition in philosophy as a whole, while others bring him together with Schopenhauer or Kierkegaard, with Derrida, Zen Buddhism, or avant-garde art. Add to this a culturally resonant background, an atypical life (at least for a modern philosopher), and a forceful yet troubled personality and the difficulty is complete. To some, he may appear primarily as a technical philosopher, but to others, he will be first and foremost an intriguing biographical subject, a cultural icon, or an exemplary figure in the intellectual life of the century.1 Our fascination with Wittgenstein is, so it seems, a function of our bewilderment over who he really is and what his work stands for.
I like.
An insightful, succinct, overview. One could write a book on several different things he touched on.
A delicacy!
Is this what I've been struggling to do? Because I was under the impression this whole time that we were working as a team, trying to figure out the text. Never crossed my mind that we were playing crossbows and catapults, with myself in the role of the attacker and you the defender. Are you in for teamwork or do you prefer going solo?
I will let the record speak for itself.
Quoting Pussycat
What teamwork? What part of the heavy lifting did you contribute when I went through the text?
How you say, it's the bollocks man! :yum:
Yes I did, I am no angel myself. Nevertheless, I gave you the benefit of the doubt, if you remember, whereas you did not. A lot has changed since, and it seems that the tables have turned. But I don't want any benefits, just to be treated fairly. I used to take your judgement seriously, but now it saddens me that I cannot do that anymore, since I believe it has been compromised by empathy towards my person. Unfair!
Quoting Fooloso4
Well let it, because statements like this one: "the only things that you have pointed to is where you have gone wrong", don't seem to do that, but rather speak on behalf of the record, or otherwise manipulate it.
Quoting Fooloso4
On several occasions I tried to help you make your points clearer, either by paraphrasing them myself through my own eyes, or with my questions. On others, not so much. But I feel that you haven't given me this chance for my own contributions at all.
Quoting Fooloso4
Ah yes, Amity, she fell sick of our bickering, and eventually left. To which I responded that she should look at it from my perspective as well. I mean, I certainly appreciate your efforts, as well as of others here, or elsewhere, regarding these so important existential matters, but what about me, what about my efforts, my patience, my world? Just because it hasn't been pointed out, it doesn't mean that they are non-existent, or otherwise worthless and meaningless. In any case, Wittgenstein said that all propositions carry the same value, as they cannot express anything higher.
Bickering-schmickering.
Still at it after all these years ?
Quoting Pussycat
'If not for you
Babe, I couldn't even find the door
I couldn't even see the floor
I'd be sad and blue, if not for you...
- George Wittgenstein
Yes, I am sorry for wronging you, but you were right that sometimes it was a bit of both. Anyway, I don't think that in order to understand these things, the transcendent or transcendental, how is it that they are called or whatever the hell they mean, I doubt that one can or should go about them alone, this is where I think all these great minds like Wittgenstein erred, and why. Wittgenstein most probably realized this at some point, but with noone in sight to accompany him, designed all these games in his Investigations, to be played by everyone, we are playful beings after all, like cats and dogs.
Amity! Why did you change Harrison's name to Wittgenstein??? Got me fooled there for a moment.. :smile:
Transcendent means to go beyond. Transcendental, following Kant, means the conditions for the possibility of experience, or more generally, the conditions that make something possible. The conditions that make experience possible, according to Kant, are found in the structure of the mind, the a priori categories of the understanding. For Wittgenstein, however, logic as a transcendental condition is not a condition of the mind or understanding. It is the structure of the world and of language, inherent in the simple objects of the world and their names. In what sense ethics is a transcendental condition is more difficult to see. It is clear that, according to Wittgenstein, it transcends the logical limits of the world, and thus the facts of the world. It has nothing to do with the necessity of logic or the accidents of the facts of the world. The transcendental condition of ethics lies in the freedom of the human will and willing in accord with God's will.
Wittgenstein asks:
What do I know about God and the purpose of life?
From all the above, I understand that Wittgenstein equates or rather links the meaning of life to God (the meaning of life/world, we can call God), and good willing with being in accord with/doing God's will. No judgement intended, but isn't this what theologians have been arguing for centuries?
Yes, in some form or other.
Wittgenstein emphasized the will of God. He understands this as something inexplicable. We cannot say why God wills as he does. There is a link here with the contingency of the world and the idea that things could be other than they are.
And as long as the will cannot be transformed into actions - because these actions would then be facts, which would mean that they could be described by language, something that Wittgenstein deems impossible (for ethical facts to be part of the world) - then we reach the conclusion that God's will cannot ever be shown in the world, one way or another.
But W. talks about the meaning of the world, only it is not to be found in the world. (6.41) The world and God are not the same.
Quoting Pussycat
One can do what one wills, but your are right, he actions would be facts. Wittgenstein says though that it is not a matter of the consequences of the act in the world. He places the value of the action in the act itself. (6.422)
Quoting Pussycat
Right, because what happens in the world is a matter of accident. God's will is not a matter of what happens in the world. He says:
He goes on to say:
It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists. (6.44)
So if God's will is not concerned or connected with happenings in the world, and since whatever happens in the world is just something contingent and accidental that could also be otherwise, what does really concern this will, where is it focused?
As far as I can see, on the existence of the world. His view is in this sense similar to Deism. But given his silence on such matters and his mysticism I would not go so far as to posit a theory.
Edit:
The comparison with Deism was meant with regard to being hands off. For Deism God is a being. I don't think W. would say that.
(I'm back, wow time flies, I didn't realise that 2 weeks have passed!)
But what about the aforementioned act, what could that be, if it is not connected with the facts of the world, and if consequences do not matter? I mean, one can save or take lives, help the poor, the rich or noone at all but oneself, be good to one's parents or ill-mannered, etc, whatever one does, God's will has nothing to do with it, since God's will is not concerned with happenings, whatever happens in the world, this is just something contingent that could also be otherwise, no matter what our will is - if it is, so called, good or bad.
But if it is such that God is connected with meaning, then I think that the act would have to be that of giving meaning to one's life, to find purpose, to make one's life meaningful, to make it worth and mean something, whatever that may be, and what happens afterwards, as a consequence of this act, this is not related to God's will in any case. And furthermore, a meaning-giving act is something most godly, holy and divine (good willing) that brings about happiness - a hallowing, whereas a meaning-removing act something most ungodly and unholy (bad willing) that brings about unhappiness - a wallowing. Such that the value of the action is in the act itself, like you said, the act being a meaning-creating one, in contrast to a meaning-destructive one, both acting on the ethical plane, and not on the facts of the world. Who would support the notion of a meaningless God anyway? So it would appear that Wittgenstein is telling us that it is God's will to give ourselves a purpose in life, but not specifying which.
Do you think that we can infer all this much from the text?
I think he is saying that the purpose is to be found in what is higher, when one sees the world aright from the perspective sub specie aeterni.
.
Yes, a wallowing of sorts... But, there's something to be said about wallowing, coming from a professional wallower. In that to wallow is to appreciate and prioritize or value what one does already have. The act of endowing meaning onto the world is in some sense solipsistic and egotistical. As if the ant or pig, which we step on or eat, didn't have a personal life of its own, which it might as well have.
Wallowing was a poor choice of wording, as it generally does not convey what I was trying to say. I thought twice about putting it here, but at the end it seemed to me a good idea, since it rhymes with hallowing, and, well, because of you. But to make things right, lets just say that there are two wallowing principles, the weak and the strong. The weak is the one you describe above, where there is some sense of value, albeit a peculiar one. While in the strong, both meaning and value are absent, the world for the strong wallower is completely void of these two, one's existence is utterly meaningless and pointless, a nihilistic worldview. This feeling and willing I say above that is ungodly and unholy.
What do you mean by that, God is not a realist?
No, God is a solipsist. He/She/It literally cannot doubt. God cannot doubt. I can provide an epistemic proof that for any solipsist, epistemically they cannot doubt.
I laid out my reasoning here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/290567
As to the question about solipsism and pure realism, I recall his assertion of transcendental solipsism explained by P.M.S Hacker:
What the solipsist means, and is correct in thinking, is that the world and life are one, that man is the microcosm, that I am my world. These equations... express a doctrine which I shall call Transcendental Solipsism. They involve a belief in the transcendental ideality of time. ... Wittgenstein thought that his transcendental idealist doctrines, though profoundly important, are literally inexpressible.
— Hacker, Insight and Illusion, op cit., n. 3, pp. 99-100.
So, it is the inexpressible and ineffible that we are confronted here with.
More on the topic:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/2614/on-solipsism/p1
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/4076/transcendental-solipsism/p1
We have encountered in this thread the notion of solipsism, and it being in agreement with pure realism. How do you understand this @Fooloso4 and @Pussycat?
Thanks.
Yes, solipsism is not an incoherent view in my opinion. The limits of my language are the limits of my world.
Yes, if the "limits of my language are the limits of my world", then solipsism seems inescapable. Have you watched the series "Legion"?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5114356/
But we can still have certainty in the knowledge of mathematics and science according to logical positivists.
This movement has died but it is nevertheless an intrepretion of tractatus.
The limits of the world are anything other than these two, as they go into the the region beyond logic and language, such as ethics and metaphysics.
But this is only possible if we regard objects as something we experience.
Wittgenstein glad you could join us! I thought you were dead. Now you can settle all our disputes.
I would like to read some poetry, as I did back then when the Viena Circle troubled me, and misunderstood all l had said or perhaps what l had not said.
Some have perhaps made too much of this and others too little:
Tractatus is really austere and it is truly a work of art like a sculpture, Wittgenstein left the crystallized part and when l first read Tractatus, I was baffled and only after Knowing that Ramsey and Russell had difficulties understanding it.It had to be the work of a genius and l was comforted.
Btw, Wittgenstein tries to solve Russell's paradox in the middle of tractatus, he tries to say instead of writing f(f(x)) we should write F(u) : u =f(x) , and if l am not wrong his reasoning is similar to Russell's theory of types in that the argument which the function y=f(x) can take cannot be of same order as the function, so in order to have an argument of first order, we need a function of higher order y'=F(u).But I certainly believe he did not approve Russell's solution and he cannot repeat the same thing, I must have missed something.
Quoting Wittgenstein
Knowledge of mathematics and science have been somewhat shaken lately.
Quoting Wittgenstein
It cannot be a complete interpretation though, since it leaves many things discussed in the Tractatus uninterpreted.
Quoting Wittgenstein
which two you mean?
Quoting Wittgenstein
Say what?
No wonder Wittgenstein was suicidal.
My goodness, you tried to tear me into pieces.
Since we are talking about earlier Wittgenstein, this was before Godel came with his incompleteness theorem which by the way, Wittgenstein rejected even in the latter days.He couldn't have meant that when he wrote back then but you can take his wordings differently to get the accurate interpretation.What I meant by certainty was a relative certainty in science compared to absolute uncertainty in ethics,metaphysics ( these 2 ).If you look at Wittgensteins mathematical philosophy, he considered them to be tautologies which do not belong to this world.
Tbh, it was a complete intrepretation but it had flaws too.
There are countless ways to read the Tractatus, I dont think any viewpoint is totally wrong.There are flaws and advantages.Can you explain how it is incomplete.
On the last point, the tractatus talks of states of affairs which are essentially all the possible combinations of objects, and the possibility is written in the objects themselves.We get the picture theory from it and in my opinion, the picture theory favours taking objects as tangible things for lack of better word.He describes somewhere that we cannot think of a geometrical object without space to further elucidate his picture theory.
How old are you btw, it seems you are older than me.
If you want to know about my last statement you can check this out.
http://wab.uib.no/agora/tools/alws/collection-6-issue-1-article-32.annotate
Best regards.
Yes, well, sorry, I like to dissect to see what's inside, don't take it personally! :)
Quoting Wittgenstein
I remember reading about Wittgenstein's efforts to understand Godel and his incompleteness theorem, Wittgenstein used, as usual, a dialectical approach, like a child, and wrote his thoughts in his notebook. After seeing this, Godel exclaimed: "Has Wittgenstein lost his mind?!" :D But I don't think that we should see Wittgenstein's remarks neither as an affirmation nor as a rejection of the theorem.
Quoting Wittgenstein
You know, "absolute" and "relative" do not make much sense. But there is surely a difference between scientific and ethical matters. Current situation in mathematics is that to prove stuff, a mathematician must make clear what system and what axioms are going to be employed. A theorem that is proved in one system, might be disproved or be not provable in another, and I think that most mathematicians have stopped trying to conform maths to reality, seeing their science as a game, sui generis. Whereas in physics, we are at a standstill, with all these tens or hundres of interpretations of quantum mechanics flying around, each giving its own view of how things stand, the physical reality I mean. So pretty uncertain there, not to mention the uncertainty principle. Now, ethics is something else, I doubt that we can even use "certain" or "uncertain" to describe it. And I don't think that Wittgenstein used the term "tautologies" for ethics and metaphysics, but for propositions of logic.
Quoting Wittgenstein
I think that the logical positivists paid no attention to the last few pages of the Tractatus, treating them as mere nonsense, as if they outright discarded it. Which is why I said "uninterpreted", but yes of course, you can say "misinterpreted" as well. So either "complete (and flawed)" or "incomplete", logically it makes no difference anyway, the difference is only a psychological one, it is what it is, like they say.
Quoting Wittgenstein
I will take these two propositions from the Tractatus:
2.01 An atomic fact is a combination of objects (entities, things).
2.0251 Space, time and colour (colouredness) are forms of objects.
So objects are entities, things. And if their form is space, time and colour, something pretty abstract that is, then we can only imagine what objects really are. Not anything tangible anyway.
Also:
2.021 Objects form the substance of the world. Therefore they cannot be compound.
2.0231 The substance of the world can only determine a form and not any material properties. For these are first presented by the propositions—first formed by the configuration of the objects.
Substance, which is related to objects, does not have any material properties. Which is where logical positivists I think got it wrong, assuming that objects are something like elementary particles, with elementary propositions describing how these particles are and behave.
So I see that Wittgenstein took tractarian objects as an auxilliary hypothesis, like those used in philosophy of science, dark matter, for example: "we don't know what/how they are, but we are certain that they exist, we hope that future examination will give us more insight into these". But of course Wittgenstein was forced later to drop all talk about elementary propositions, and objects too, I suppose. (a picture held us captive)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#In_philosophy_of_science
Quoting Wittgenstein
I will tell you, since you ask, but let us see first if you can guess my age?
Quoting Wittgenstein
Thanks, I read it, I tried to find what your opinion is on these simple objects, but I can't say that I have.
Quoting Wallows
Hey Wallows, in regard to these, have you watched the series "Hannibal"?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2243973/
No, but I'll give it a whirl. Looks cool.
:cool:
If l can recall Wittgensteins remarks
My humble take on this is, what is wittgenstein saying by using the word true, is he equating provable with true.He tried in the following quotations to dismantle the incompleteness theorem.
He clearly states the proposition "P is not provable has to be given up ".
I don't think mathematicians have to conform to anything besides their own system of axioms and wittgenstein was strictly.I see this as a great merit and clearly ethics or metaphysics do not have such groundwork to support/prove their proposition.There is certainty in a system, it would be absurd to compare two "games" with different rules.Bertrand Russell wrote somewhere that all the worlds must conform and be according to mathematical truths, but the project failed as mathematics wasn't what they thought it was.
( even Kant made this mistake when he did not consider non euclidean geometry ).
Auxiliary hypothesis can mean two things, either he was not clear in what they meant or rather it didn't matter what they referred to.Either way, it creates problems as we go further on reading tractatus.They are central to tractatus and the picture theory.
They did but could not make anything out of it, those propositions were central to wittgenstein refuting his earlier philosophy.I think wittgenstein was trying to show the inexpressible but he was forced to express it in the end, which led to confusion.He even referred to it as a ladder which must be discarded.
Well let's not exaggerate the number of interpretations to a hundred, the standard one is clearly copanhagen one, but l believe physicists are clearly not impressed with philosophy these days sadly and they would rather not discuss what wave function refers to in the real world but simply its function,uses,applications in the mathematical framework of quantum physics.Uncertainity principle can be applied to real life examples such as electrons but they are deeply rooted in mathematics.I am against scientism and do not believe it can describe the world completely.
Infact wittgenstein was really critical of it and he suggested that natural laws and the physical phenomenon are not synonymous and we can imagine a different set of system, which have different set of natural laws and each describe the world with the same accuracy.
When I quoted science and mathematics, I wanted to demonstrate that, these fields have sorted themselves out as correction was possible but ethics and metaphysics cannot be sorted out, their problems are merely nonsense and they do not need an answer as the problems vanish once we understand the confusion.
That there are simple objects he takes to be evident, a priori. Just what those objects are, however, he never says. It is the configuration of objects that determine material properties, that is to say, tangible properties. The the ability to picture facts is based on the transcendental logical scaffolding that underlies both the facts and our ability to picture them. It is not necessary to know the objects only their configuration.
I have to disagree, he does mention what objects are in the tractatus.
The question remains that are the names universals or particulars ?
Can you clarify on pictorial form ?
How can we know a pictorial form since it is outside the representational form, are there rules in which object combine to form a proposition ?
There is also another important question, I hope you will give it a little attention, Can two proposition be different yet be logically equivalent.Consides this below
~p implies q and ~p implies q" , does that make q and q" logically equivalent, although they maybe different proposition.
Final question, How would you describe the picture of a contradiction, consider a proposition p having a pictorial form.Can we picture or imagine a singular ~p ?
What if we have a system of 100 propositions and we negate all of them, what does that leave for us to picture ?
I think that he was just trying to clarify what the concept of "proof" really is, and what does it do. Wasn't it in this section that he wrote that squaring the circle with just using only compass and straightedge was proved impossible, or do I remember incorrectly? And that this proof stopped people from further trying? So, if I remember correctly, he said that proof ends all further attempts, this is what proof actually does to you. And my take is that he was afraid that, once people accepted Godel's theorem, taking it as a proven fact, they would stop further inquiry into the matter. oof!
Continuing from what I wrote before, let us take the concept of proof and treat it as a tractarian object. We have a name for it, called "proof", in english, in other languages it is called otherwise. But however it is called, the meaning is the same - the object (proof) is the name's meaning. What is its pictorial form, how do we know it, and how does it combine with other objects to form propositions?
I have to disagree, he does mention what objects are in the tractatus.[/quote]
He does not identify anything as a simple. He never names a simple object. He never analyzes a word to determine what the simples are that it is composed of.
Quoting Wittgenstein
Objects do not combine to form propositions, words do. Words are a combination of simple names but again Wittgenstein never names them.
3.334 The rules of logical syntax must go without saying, once we know how each individual sign signifies.
Quoting Wittgenstein
Does this answer your question?:
Quoting Wittgenstein
Consider this proposition, "The cat is sitting on the table", can you point out the accidental and the essential feature.
What are the particular ways of producing propositional sign ? according to ramsey, propositional sign are actually sentences but they express the essence/quality of the words of which they are composed of.
Now to take on "the essential" since it enables proposition to express something common to all proposition which express the same sense, what part of proposition can be termed as essential, you have quoted him but l think the ambiguity here is really confusing.I don't think we can understand wittgenstein unless we apply his philosophy on practical examples to see his theory of proposition becoming alive and clear.
I have a made a distinction between two different types of contradiction.If we consider a world(system), where we have 100 possible propositions, how does negating one of them lead to no possible situation.Is still allows us to 99 other possible situations.
What are the rules of logical syntax ?
He never names the simple object but since he was influenced by Russell who treats objects as names, we can say that his silence was for allowing different Interpretations.Names are used in propositions but names must refer to something in the world, otherwise they would be meaningless, hence names are the meaning of objects.
Cat and table do not name simple objects. The names are accidental. The signs are accidental. We might say: Die Katze sitzt auf dem Tisch.
Putting a cat on a table would express the sense of the proposition.
Quoting Wittgenstein
I am sorry but I do not understand what you are saying. What are the two different types of contradiction? Negation is not a contradiction. A contradiction cannot be negated.
Quoting Wittgenstein
We cannot have an illogical thought (3.03). Any thought already complies with logical syntax. It is not as if there is a set of rules that we can either comply or not comply with. We either say something that has sense or is nonsense. Logic takes care of itself.
Quoting Wittgenstein
He never names simple objects simply because he can't. This was at the basis of his criticism of the Tractatus in PI.
I can see them being accidental in the sense that we could easily replace cat and table with dog and chair respectively.However this depends on how does one define accidental or essential in a system.Their placeholders must be there in the proposition," x is sitting on y", in this general proposition, x and y are essential as all they denote all the possible substitutents. We can also argue in a certain world, only cats can sit on table ( it is not hard to imagine ), would that make them essential.
To give a better example, consider this "electrons are negatively charged and are found in the atom " are the electrons an essential feature in this sentence in this world.I believe that it is not possible to distinguish essential and accidental feature, it is all relative to the the frame of reference.
Actually it was a miscommunication, sorry for messing it up, l actually wanted to ask you if we can can call a proposition which negates all of the proposition in the system except itself to be a picture of the reality.
It is interesting to note the feature which a contradiction and a negation share in this special case, ( a contradiction says nothing so we cannot picture a reality while a total negation also leaves nothing to picture reality, it is close to Russell's paradox.) The proof by contradiction and proof by negation are also similar.I disagree that a contradiction cannot be negated, suppose L is a contradiction then ~L would be a tautology.
How will that sit with incompleteness theorem since we have something that Is not provable in a system and there are other controversial axiom of choice,axiom of infinity in logic which cause trouble.I agree that we can not think illogically but sometimes illogical proposition can appear even in a rigorous system.Logic needs to be taken care of sometimes.
Well, I will look up to that, does it mean that naming simple object causes a lose of generality.
Well squaring the circle was proved to be an impossible feat by proving pi was transcendental.Wittgenstein was a an advocate of math being our creation, we cannot say what can or not be done in mathematics or in another case, he found fermet's last theorem, as not falling in mathematical realm as it was essentially saying
a^x +b^x=c^x, there is no set of numbers (a,b,c ) which satisfy the equation for x>2.He did not believe this statement to be decidable, hence you are right in saying he thought they discouraged people from looking on but the key point was he did not consider them to be mathematical propositions.
Well it is clear a proof consist of more than one proposition, is it simple, I dont think so.Further can we l dont think wittgenstein says object and proposition are same, let alone a set of proposition and an object.I could be wrong though.
But that would not be a picture of the facts. Dogs are not cats and chairs are not tables. It is not the case that a dog is on the chair.
Quoting Wittgenstein
Do you mean: all propositions except this one are false? Sure, why not. First, that proposition might be false despite the claim that it is true, and in that case the truth or falsity of other propositions remains unchanged. Second, within a specified domain I see no problem with saying that every proposition in that domain except this one is false - all p's are not-p and all not-p are p.
Quoting Wittgenstein
No, it simply changes the truth value of the propositions.
Quoting Wittgenstein
L and ~L would be a contradiction. L and L would be a tautology.
Quoting Wittgenstein
I don't know enough about the incompleteness theorem to comment.
Quoting Wittgenstein
It is not a matter of proof within a system. An illogical proposition is nonsense.
Quoting Wittgenstein
Is the problem with logic or with a formal system of logic? Wittgenstein says that logic is transcendental (6.13) - it is the condition for the possibility of the facts of the world and language. I think Wittgenstein regards set theory, along with mathematics, to be an invention, a construct. Any problems that arise within it are inherent in construct not in the logical scaffolding.
Quoting Wittgenstein
I am not sure what you mean. On one hand you have simple objects and on the other names of those objects. The configuration of objects form the things of this world, the facts - cats and dogs and tables. The configuration of simple names form the words that name such things as cats and dogs and tables.
I am talking about proof's form in general, a proof of something. For example, a mathematical proof like Fermat's theorem, proof about who the murderer is, proof that your wife is cheating you, whether it is raining etc. Proof can be combined with these, but it cannot combine with, lets say, what the best colour is. If you wanted to picture "proof", as a concept, how would you do it? Or if you wanted to explain it to someone ignorant, what would you tell him?
It will be a different fact but the proposition will have a sense.Since you disagree with that reason for cats,table being accidental feature.How do you determine an accidental feature and how do you determine an essential feature ?
It does change the truth value of proposition.There are some problems with negation, consider the proposition
" there is a shape which is both circle and square" , its negation is true ( correspondance to reality shows) but can you say the shape which we are talking about exists in reality.Is its picture possible.It isn't.However the negation is true.I hope l have shown that a proposition can have sense and be true yet have no corresponding picture in reality.You can claim it is not logical but since l haven't used the term "square circle", but used the term shape which is logical.I can be wrong.
Wittgenstein regards math as a method of logic, so if we were to take it by face value, it would mean a formal system of logic ( like maths ) has the problem.I think your point of view is closer to being correct to what wittgenstein had in mind but l would wonder where the boundary lies between formal system of logic and logic, and how would logic allow the systems to have a logical fault in their construction.
Thanks for going at detail length on names,objects.If l understand you correctly.
Simple names are left untouched in tractatus, their configuration forms words which name object.
"The configuration of objects form the things of this world, the facts - cats and dogs and tables."
Is "cat" a picture of reality- a fact.However wittgenstein claims states of affairs ( facts) are the combination of objects.So would the proposition " the cat is sitting on a table " be a complex proposition?
[quote] “I want you to realize that when I speak of a fact I do not mean a particular existing thing, such as Socrates or the rain or the sun. Socrates himself does not render any statement true or false. What I call a fact is the sort of thing that is expressed by a whole sentence, not by a single name like ‘Socrates.’ . . .We express a fact, for example, when we say that a certain thing has a certain
property, or that it has a certain relation to another thing; but the thing which has the property or the relation is not what I call a ‘fact.”’ (‘Logical atomism’,41, my emphasis) [\quote]~Russell
So do words like cats,dogs represent a fact, or did wittgenstein believe in that ?
If you want to treat prove as an object, but l don't think wittgenstein would allow it. Wittgenstein describe objects combining with each other as in chains, he kept silent on the relations between them. Objects exist independent of each other and maybe we can determine which objects cannot be combined when we see that the proposition lacks sense. How would l picture a proof, that is a tough question, l can think of its logical form but the picture would not be possible in certain cases.Wittgenstein does not consider mathematical propositions to be a part of reality, so we cannot picture them.A proof about the wife cheating her husband can be pictured easily ( I will leave that to your imagination ) . If proof were a simple object, l would give you a definite answer.I dont think a proof is an object, when like a shirt is not a an object, it is a combination of different things, hence not simple.
If you are using "and" as /\, the logical operator then yes but that was not my point.What l was trying to say was if L is a contradiction, then in classical logic ,~L would be a tautology.
Is wittgenstein simply saying that in f(x) and f(f(x)) the outer f perform different function in both of them and does he imply that a proposition cannot take another proposition of the same ( logical ) order as its argument. So to avoid confusion we can write F(u) where u=f(x) , to clear up that F and f are different propositional functions.
You are not negating a proposition. It is not a proposition. A shape which is both circle and square does not represent a possible situation in logical space. It is not a picture that can be true or false, hence it is not a picture that can be negated. We do not have to compare it to reality to determine whether it is true of false. We can determine that it is false a priori.
An aside: spin a square from its center and the shape you see is a circle.
Quoting Wittgenstein
All propositions are complex. They are combinations of names. It does seem odd to say that "cat" is a proposition. But objects are unalterable (2.0271) and cats are not. Cats are complexes and can be divided into parts that can be named. Wittgenstein at that time thought that the division could not go on ad infinitum. There must be a terminus, some indivisible simple objects.
Quoting Wittgenstein
The proposition will have a sense but not the same sense. "It's raining" has a sense but the sense has nothing to do with cats and dogs, unless it is raining cats and dogs.
I answered the question about accidental and essential features in an earlier post.
Quoting Wittgenstein
There are probably others here more competent to give you an answer about this. Or, I am sure that a search will yield results.
Sure as hell Wittgenstein wouldn't allow it, at least the early one, but I am not so certain about the late, I think he would allow any kind of game.
It is because you said:
Quoting Wittgenstein
Well, I gave you just that, I think, why won't you take it? But if you want to be loyal to the Tractatus, like Fooloso4 does, who is loyal in general, then what sort of examples can we give? I don't think the Tractatus, carried out strictly, leaves much room for play. Loyal or renegade, what say you?
Nah, I'm joking, I just want to publish some old thoughts of mine, lest they are thrown out in the bin. :gasp: I will augment them with recent developments, with the hope that someone may want to discuss.
Hm, they seem to be scattered here and there, where should I begin??
This seems appropriate.
"simplex sigillum veri" is latin for "simplicity is the sign of truth". Or "Keep it simple, stupid", or KISS as acronym, a principle that was also adopted by the blokes in the American Navy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle
A minimalist approach, that is, an economy consisting of a small number of principles or concepts that everyone can understand.
Of course, Occam's razor first comes to mind here, but this also goes back to Aristotle and Aristotelianism, even before that, perhaps Parmenides. As the AI puts it:
"Aristotle believed that circular motion should be favored for celestial bodies, such as planets and stars, because he thought it represented the most perfect and divine form of motion. In Aristotle's cosmology, the Earth was at the center of the universe, and he proposed a series of concentric spheres to explain the motion of celestial bodies.
Circular motion, according to Aristotle, was considered perfect and unchanging. He associated it with the divine and eternal nature, contrasting it with linear motion, which was associated with the mundane and imperfect nature of the Earth. Aristotle believed that the heavens, being perfect and unchanging, must move in a perfect and unchanging manner, which he thought was circular motion."
And so it seems that the early Wittgenstein, on the basis of his elementary propositions, was caught up by the same "divine" notion of simplicity, symmetry, unity and sphericity as the very early philosophers. Later, he changed his mind by saying "Just think of the equations of physics—how tremendously complex their structure is. Elementary propositions, too, will have this degree of complexity".
Me too, I find the concept of symmetry and unity very enticing, but this I think is due more to a psychological nature and inclination rather than anything else, this KISS principle. Simple things, sealed with a kiss, like the song goes.
Here, he connects the thought with the logical picture.
Therefore, from the above, it may become apparent how Wittgenstein defines the logical, logic: anything we can think of, anything that is conceivable. If, for example, we can think of a flying unicorn, then this flying unicorn is logical, being an image [3, 3.001]. If, however, this image we formed with our mind, with our thought, is true - meaning it corresponds to reality - then we say that this image is a part of the world, not just an image, but an image of the world [3.01]. Anything we can think of is logical because in our thought lies the possibility of what we are thinking, regardless of whether it is simultaneously true; there is, according to Wittgenstein, a dimension between the possible and the true: for anything we have the ability to form an image, that is a logical possibility, part of the logic of the world [3.02], while the truth of this image is something else, unrelated to logic (which he discusses later). [Although not so unrelated in the end, since the image was formed through logic].
Therefore, we cannot think of anything illogical because then we would have to think illogically [3.03]. Consequently, what we call "illogical" does not exist; everything is logical, as possibilities of our thought. And a "non-logical" or "illogical" world is something we cannot even conceive. So the propositions of Tractatus 3.03 and 3.031, "It was once said that God can create everything except what would be contrary to the laws of logic. We could not say, therefore, what an 'illogical' world would look like," are essentially tautologies, as he will later say that all logical propositions are, propositions of logic. Why is it a tautology? Because he says that anything that appears logical to us is also logical. And that even God, as we imagine Him, would have to submit to the laws of logic, as they appear to us.
But there is also a problem when we say that something - a proposition - is a tautology because from this tautological proposition, no information can be extracted about the world. So, if all possible logical propositions are indeed tautologies, this tells us nothing about what is logical, what logic is, and how it is defined. If, for example, in response to the question "what is logical?" the answer is "everything is logical" - since we cannot think illogically - then what conclusion can one draw about logic? No conclusion can be drawn, except one: that logic cannot be defined through logic itself, and if we want, for some reason [why?], to find out what it is, then we must turn elsewhere, to other means.
Anyway, the Tractatus does not directly deal with the definition of logic, although it makes some useful observations about it; nor does it talk about what is true. Instead, it provides the theory needed for one to be able to properly understand what is being said to them, as well as what they themselves are saying, when they speak clearly, and when they make mistakes, whether they are in or out of tune, like with music. I think that what he's saying is equivalent to music theory, but now applied to the theory of language/logic. Challenging things, for sure, but perhaps with a little help from our friends, we can make some progress.
What would you think if I sang out of tune,
Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song,
And I'll try not to sing out of key.
However, the fact that we can think of something does not necessarily mean that this something is true; therefore, a comparison between the image we formed with our thought and reality will be needed to determine its truth. The possibility of what we are thinking falls under logic [3.02, 3.03].
Perhaps this will help: https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/tractatus/
From this, it appears how Wittgenstein understood the relationship between logic and language: anything that is said or can be said is automatically logical; the essence of language is logic, or rather, language is intertwined and imbued with logic. And then we have to conclude that to understand logic, one simply needs to look at language, its history, and its evolution, like linguists do. The work becomes much easier because instead of dealing with abstract and purely logical concepts of content and form, which often are not getting anywhere, one can do just as well with something specific: by examining the rules of language, syntactical and grammatical, and seeing how language unfolds, develops, and evolves throughout history, the results of this investigation will simultaneously be results of an examination of the logic of the world, its essence. The role and purpose of linguists are often downplayed or sidelined, but it seems to me that they are doing just that.
Whatever language is to logic, coordinates/points/shapes are to geometry/space: language develops within logical space, just as various shapes develop within geometric space. And just as there can be no shape without geometric space, there cannot be a linguistic shape without logical space. However, there can be a linguistic shape that contradicts the laws of nature, such as all the heroes in comic books: there, the description of heroes adheres to the laws of logic - how could it be otherwise if everything is logical - so we can understand them without further clarification, given that we are logical beings. However, their powers surpass the laws of physics, as we know them at least; they are supernatural. Yet, the supernatural nature of the thing does not abolish the logic of the shapes in comics. Therefore, the flying unicorn is something logical but supernatural. Here also what was previously said about linguists, can be said about comic book artists.Their creations are essentially a work on the logic that governs the world. They are Logicomix.
https://archive.org/details/g.-e.-m.-anscombe-an-introduction-to-wittgenstein-s-tractatus
Thought, as the logical image of events defined earlier, contains only the possibility for that thought to be true. According to Wittgenstein's system, a fact can be either right or wrong, true or false; there is no middle ground, the principle of bivalence holds. Thus, thought, by itself, cannot determine the truth of its events. Within logical space, everything appears - and is - logical; everything exists as possibilities in logical space. What thought knows is that something will either be correct or incorrect, true or false. If thought wants to see which of these possibilities holds true, it needs to leave logical space and go to some other space, the space of geometry or of natural science. There, it will discover what happens in relation to the new space it finds itself in. The object of comparison is already in these new spaces. In the case of geometry, it could be a coordinate system or coordinates, while in the case of physics, it could be the various physical laws presupposing the physical system, such as the law of energy conservation.
In summary, the hierarchy of these spaces, as presented by Wittgenstein, is as follows:
a. Logical space, logical image, logic, science of logic
b. Geometric space, geometric image/shape, geometry, mathematics/geometry
c. Physical space, physical image, physics, physical sciences
The lower spaces contain the forms of the higher ones: geometric space includes logical forms/possibilities, while physical space includes both geometric and logical forms. Altogether, they exist under the dominant and primary sphere of logic, the all-encompassing logic.
Below, we see inspector Gadget doing his thing, perfectly logical, albeit somewhat paradoxical, in his attempt to apprehend his counterpart, Dr. Claw, and his organization, MAD.
But also, the consciousness of someone with, say, a vivid imagination, who ponders all imaginable possibilities, it is in logical space where it floats. Similarly, individuals on the autism spectrum, for whom it is said that they have an inability to focus on something specific, their minds may well constanlty contemplate logical space, unable to do anything else, overwhelmed by information.
From all of the above, it seems that in the realm of logic, there is an unrestricted freedom of movement, or at least much greater than in any other space. This freedom is constrained and restrained, like (in) a funnel, the opposite of the Big Bang, as we move "down" to the other two spaces, while the mouth and end of the funnel can be considered as physical reality. Because many of the things that logic encompasses, ie whatever we can think of, do not exist in the natural world, just as many of the things described by geometry about the nature of space do not. However, logic, much like geometry, can examine everything, all possible states of affairs, without commitments and limitations, as long as it is bound only by itself, which doesn't tell us much, or rather, absolutely nothing.
And so, if anything conceivable is logical, anything we can think of, then the illogical has no place in our world; since we cannot think of anything illogical, but if we can conceive it, it automatically becomes logical. With such a broad definition of logic, no person is illogical, ever. But then, what about all those people that are confined, or not, to institutions, that seem to have lost their minds? Are they illogical? By our previous analysis, certainly not.
If we were to make an assumption in accordance with the above, we would say that their problem is not the lack or absence of logical thinking, but rather an abundance, or rather an overabundance of it: they are overly logical. Similar problems are faced by individuals with autism. Just as an autistic person absorbs a huge volume of information from the natural environment without being able to process it adequately to be what we call functional, similarly, someone labeled as "crazy" absorbs a massive amount of information from the realm of logic but cannot correlate that information received there to things and situations seen and felt in the realm of nature. Thus, they are not functional either, but rather constantly confused. Essentially, the confusion arises from the movement of thought as it moves between logical-geometric-physical space. But not only confusion, but all other feelings and emotions, such as fear and security, joy and sorrow, hate and love, interest and indifference, etc., can be explained in the same way. For example, when faced with the unlimited choices and possibilities as mentioned in the case of someone considered "crazy," they may feel fear at the prospect of this boundless freedom, a fear at some existential level, from which other things arise, such as a kind of mania. Therefore, we could say that they are not ultimately becoming illogical, but rather they are thoroughly logical, although I do not know how much this would help them. Laughter might also arise from the mixture of different logical forms among themselves or with natural forms, the result of which appears funny as they blend together. Art and music effectively does the same for us sane people, however under (some) control, because they both have the ability to move our thoughts to anything that can be conceived, along old or new paths, offering e-motions, thereby expanding our world.
Now, the mechanism or mechanisms behind all this, do not fall under, and are neither the scope of the science of logic, to find and expose them, but rather of other sciences. For instance, psychology will talk about how what is called the human psyche is influenced when thought moves from one object to another, what happens within us, what is the psychological relationship between what we say, what we think, and what we mean, why and how various psychological compulsions are created, etc. Or a biologist/pharmacist will search to find the materialistic mechanism/organ in the human body that makes people think, sometimes more or less logically, constructing substances and drugs to address problems. Such inquiries do not concern the logician, at least not in its pure form. For this reason, Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus, did not delve into psychology, biology, or the theory of evolution because he wanted to insist and remain in a purely logical analysis of phenomena, considering it rather the most important, and that anything else follows this or can be reduced to it, as if it doesn't make much sense to explore secondary issues. In his later work, Philosophical Investigations, however, he leads the reader to the same or different ideas through a psychological experiment conducted there. The therapeutic character, both of his early and later work, has been highlighted many times, by many thinkers, because, as they say, many of the problems that humans have, are ultimately dissolved, with his method, into being pseudo-problems. Through philosophy and the critique of language, as he uses them, functioning as therapy, a kind of speech therapy.
Or for a more instrumental version
I feel that the logician wants to put herself in the eye of the dragon. But what is the dragon, really?
Anyway! Maybe it goes to show the effects of being out of tune.
This is like the Gordian Knot, that Alexander the Great thought untiable, and so he just cut through it with his sword, problem solved. Same is with philosophical problems. Just as some may not see Alexander as truely untying the knot, just the same many may feel that the problem was not really solved.
Also, since I brought up names, can anyone tell me what a simple word, such as "cat" is? Is it an atomic fact or a name, because on the one hand its definition seems to consist of other signs thus is not a primitive sign, and on the other hand "cat" alone doesn't seem to mean anything.
Thanks a lot.