Show me that I'm wrong. — Banno

Wittgenstein says my questions are meaningless, as you have. They make sense to me, maybe for psychological reasons but not because of semantical mistakes. Wittgenstein read Plato but not Aristotle. Everyone back then knew of the scholastic subtleties. Finally, Russell started this "it's language problem" phenomena is response to Hegel — Gregory

So... you are making this up as you go?

What exactly? Who's now playing a word game?

Russell was a Hegelian in his youth, but chose to be a doubtful atomist latter

Well, I didn't say anything about relations of ideas.

My point was that Wittgenstein saw the world of facts as Hume did: that's the point of his analogy with the paper with black and white dots, or a net cast over the world with each hole being an individual 'unit' (I forget what the proposition numbers are).

I honestly think the Tractatus takes on the Humean assumptions uncritically, so it is not a challenge to them, unless by accident.

The PI as opposed to the Tractatus might be a rejection of many things. I don't know if it has to do with Hume's fork, because Wittgenstein didn't know much about the history of phil., so probably didn't know where he got his original ideas from coherently enough to 'reject' them.

The PI is mostly a rejection of the idea that you can derive how language is by seeing how it would have to be given your philosophical prejudices. Instead, you can look at how people talk. The fact that philosophy is a confusion of language seems to just follow from that, since you can just look and see that phil's are confused and don't know what they're talking about. Phil's assume they make sense in virtue of philosophical prejudices too: we have to be making sense, because...

Wittgenstein 's syllogism

1) we initially use language to describe the world

2) we still use the same language tools

3) so we can only speak of the world

It's a faulty argument. There is such a thing as more mature thoughts about abstracts things. Doesn't the Tractatus itself speak of the mystical? Why can't we speak more of it? Why take all poetry out of philosophy? If you don't understand a philosophers thoughts, how can you dismiss it based on language?

I honestly think the Tractatus takes on the Humean assumptions uncritically, — Snakes Alive

Perhaps, although I doubt that Wittgenstein had more than a passing acquaintance with Hume. @Sam26 would know.

There may be a profound difference between Hume's observed facts and Wittgenstein's elleentry propositions - as I understand them, they need not be mere observations.

Whence this syllogism? Did you make it up?

Because it seems to me to be quite wrong.

Banno quit making things up. :joke:

Basing it on all that's been said so far about Wittgenstein's sleight of hand. Follow the conversation

I guess I should get busy and post a little more.

Basing it on all that's been said so far about Wittgenstein's sleight of hand. — Gregory

...and not on your own reading of, say, the Tractatus or the PI; or on a reputable secondary or tertiary text. Just on Sam's few introductory notes.

So you cannot actually back up your claims about Wittgenstein.

Yes please. We need to get back on track.

I don't care to read more of Wittgenstein for now. He said philosophy is word games and claims language proves it. A ridiculous position to hold. Are you a fly or a human?

Post 8

In previous posts I talked about names being the simplest component of elementary propositions, and that names referred to objects, and objects make up atomic facts. The question came up about how we could make sense of a proposition if there were no corresponding objects, and thus, no corresponding facts. According to the Tractatus a proposition pictures reality, so if we are to understand a proposition that refers to unicorns, it is because the proposition displays a picture, and that picture either matches up with reality or it does not. If it correctly mirrors reality, then it is true, if it does not mirror reality, then it is false. So, to understand the sense of a proposition it is a matter of picturing the proposition, and this occurs quite apart from there being a corresponding facts in reality.

A picture or proposition presents a fact from a position outside of it, or separate from the fact it is displaying. Just as a picture of the White House presents the White House from a position outside it, or quite separate from reality or the state-of-affairs. Any picture either accurately or inaccurately presents a certain state of affairs (T. 2.1). And as we keep repeating, propositions are pictures according to the Tractatus. For example, consider any painting that displays a picture, the picture may or may not actually match up with a corresponding state of affairs (shown in the picture), and yet whether it does has no bearing on whether we understand the picture.

"The fact that the elements of a picture are related to one another in a determinate way represents that things are related to one another in the same way. Let us call this connexion of its elements the structure of the picture, and let us call the possibility of this structure the pictorial form of the picture (T. 2.15)."

The pictorial form is the form a picture shares with a fact. The form of the picture has to do with the arrangement of the elements in the picture. "What a picture must have in common with reality, in order to be able to depict it--correctly or incorrectly--in the way it does, is its pictorial form. A picture can depict any reality whose form it has. A spacial picture can depict anything spacial, a coloured one anything coloured, etc. A picture cannot, however, depict its pictorial form: it displays it (T. 2.17 - 2.172)."

There is a shared logic between the picture and the fact (T. 2.18).

How does a proposition correspond with reality? "Pictorial form is the possibility that things are related to one another in the same way as the elements of the picture.

"That is how a picture is attached to reality; it reaches right out to it.

"It is laid against reality like a measure (T. 2.151-2.1512)."

Each person, truck, bridge, house in the picture represents those things in the world.

So how do we tell if a proposition is true or false? We must compare it with reality (T. 2.223).

The sense of a picture is the arrangement of the things in the picture, which supposedly correspond to the arrangement of things in the world (T. 2.221).

The way one verifies the correctness of a proposition is by inspecting the proposition to see if it indeed reflects reality (T. 2.223).

According to Wittgenstein a thought is a logical picture (Wittgenstein does not believe that we can think illogically), it uses the form of logic to represent a fact (T. 3 and 3.03).

"In a proposition a thought finds an expression that can be perceived by the senses (T. 3.1)." So the logical picture is made by logical units, such as, visual marks or auditory marks.

Therefore, a proposition says that 'a' is in a certain relation to 'b', i.e., 'aRb'. For instance, Sam is standing next to Jane.

If propositions can only picture facts in the world, then it would seem to make sense that propositions of metaphysics, which go beyond the world of facts, can't picture anything. There is nothing for the proposition to picture. Right?

In the Notebooks Wittgenstein says the following: "In the proposition a world is as it were put together experimentally (Nb, p. 7)." This idea apparently occurred to Wittgenstein when he observed or read about a model of a car accident that was used in a Paris court of law, that is, they used dolls and other objects to represent the facts of the case. The model was a picture of reality; and so it is with the proposition, it is a model of reality as we imagine or picture it (T. 4.01).

Before I end this post, I just want to say that I believe that many of our propositions are pictures of reality, but again, this is not the only way propositions state the facts. Many people think Wittgenstein repudiated this idea, but I think he merely was saying that language does more than this. Just as language does more than use the ostensive definition model.

Outside the world cannot be pictured but neither can Wittgenstein's arguments. So his views are circular

Post 9

As we've said the other central idea presented in the Tractatus is the truth-function theory. It goes hand-in-hand with the picture theory. "A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions (T. 5)." Therefore, if you are given all elementary propositions, then you can construct every possible proposition, which fixes their limits (T. 4.51). My understanding is that this sets the limit of language, or sets a limit to what can be said.

A full appreciation of this thesis requires an understanding of truth-functional logic. It suffices for our purpose to point out merely that a compound proposition, compounded of the propositions P1, P2,....,Pn, is a truth-functional compound of P1, P2,..., Pn if and only if its truth or falsity is uniquely determined by the truth or falsity (the truth-values) of P1,..., Pn. In other words, the truth-value of a compound proposition is completely determined by the truth-values of its components--once the truth-values of is components are given, the truth-value of the compound proposition can be calculated. Wittgenstein claims that all propositions are related to elementary propositions truth-functionally (K.T. Fann, p. 17).

Therefore, what follows is this: "If all true elementary propositions are given, the result is a complete description of the world. The world is completely described by giving all elementary propositions, and adding which of them are true and which false (T. 4.26)."

Okay that should be enough for now.

:grin:

Before I end this post, I just want to say that I believe that many of our propositions are pictures of reality, but again, this is not the only way propositions state the facts. Many people think Wittgenstein repudiated this idea, but I think he merely was saying that language does more than this. Just as language does more than use the ostensive definition model. — Sam26

...and it was the realisation of this incompleteness that led to PI? That sounds not unreasonable. Perhaps that is what is nascent in .

Perhaps that is what is nascent in ↪Gregory. — Banno

Perhaps.

I agree he probably didn't know much of anything about Hume.

The Humean nature of the facts has to do with their lack of dependence on each other, not with their observational nature. People in England have seen things that way for a long time – arguably, they still do.

The first rule of Tractatus Club is 'Do not talk about Tractatus Club' — unenlightened

Outside the world cannot be pictured but neither can Wittgenstein's arguments. So his views are circular — Gregory

Which he declared himself.

Later, though, he found a way of not talking about Tractatus Club that demonstrates the rule without stating it. A roundabout method that is like a circle, but more active.

huh, pretty quiet today this thread, considering yesterday's orgy. :yum:

Post 10 (Final post of summary, as incomplete as it is.)

To conclude this basic summary of the Tractatus is to conclude that philosophy is not one of the natural sciences. Philosophy is above or below the natural sciences, but not beside them (T. 4.111). This follows from 4.11, "The totality of true propositions is the whole of natural science." This conclusion is was arrived at long before the publication of the Tractatus in 1918. It goes back to 1913 in his Notes on Logic given to Russell.

Wittgenstein is saying that philosophy gives us no truths. "Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. [It] is not a body of doctrine but an activity (T. 4.112)."

Even in the Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein is still aiming at the logical clarification of thoughts. Albeit, a different logical method is used. His later method in the PI isn't as rigid as that of the Tractatus, but is more flexible, which is more in conformity with how language works.

"Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries (T. 4.112).

"Philosophy settles controversies about the limits of natural science (T. 4.113).

"It must set limits to what can be thought; and, in doing so, to what cannot be thought. It must set limits to what cannot be thought by working outwards to what cannot be thought (T. 4.114).

"It will signify what cannot be said, by presenting clearly what can be said (T. 4.115)."

Understanding what Wittgenstein is doing should clarify what he means in 6.54, i.e., he has shown us what cannot be said, by setting a limit to language, so, you can throw away the ladder that reaches beyond the world of sense into the world of the senseless, and even further into the realm of nonsense.

For Wittgenstein the only facts are the facts in the world, there are no metaphysical facts for language to grasp hold of. If someone tries to say something metaphysical, you would show him using Wittgenstein's picture theory and his truth-function theory that he has not managed to say anything; they've gone beyond the boundaries of the world, beyond the boundaries of language. This is why Wittgenstein says, "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence (T. 7)."

Someone might be interested in this, not really on topic but as you seem to have finished -ish...

http://www.truthandpower.com/blog/blog/the-darkness-of-this-time-wittgensteins-pessimism/?fbclid=IwAR2-T0toc2eNNeKrLl6XD21I25kQC8ZvWFQsrdhXCzH-h0uoV2uz54j9IqY

So can we conclude that Wittgenstein's description, or definition of "the world" is unacceptable, and "the world" as we know it is quite different from this?

So can we conclude that Wittgenstein's description, or definition of "the world" is unacceptable, and "the world" as we know it is quite different from this? — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't find his idea of the world a problem, but his ideas of how language connects to the world. Moreover, his idea that there is a limit to language, this idea is not only a part of the Tractatus, but also the PI.

If the entirety of "the world", is what we can represent, or picture with statements or propositions, then how are we to relate to all that we cannot make statements or proposition about? This would be the unknown for example, we can't make statements about the unknown because it is unknown. Do we not normally include unknown reality as part of 'the world"?