So, another radical approach to Logic in the Tractatus was that it doesn't say anything about the world: logical propositions, or propositions of logic, laws of logic etc, are just tautologies, they don't say anything about what things are, or should be, they don't treat of something real. They just provide the grounds, the scaffolding with the help of which various (non-logical) propositions are built. Logic is transcendental, following Kant's phraseology. Moreover, Wittgenstein says that logic fills the world. And so, there is really no reason to make a list of those logical propositions or explain them to someone, since they already know them, or maybe they don't really know them or are aware of them, but they are nevertheless embodied of them, language itself and its structure is filled with all logic, as in we are children of logic, one cannot speak illogically, no matter how hard they tried. If there is anything that Logic wants, this is clarity, and not to be conflated with people's psychology, what people want it to be for their own reasons, it does not belong to anyone, but is shared by everyone.

Anyways, Wittgenstein believed and said that his work had been grossly misinterpreted. We can find this in various parts:

1. In the prologue made for the PI, that ended up in his notes known to us as "Culture and Value":

This book is written for those who are in sympathy with the spirit in which it is written. This spirit is, I believe, different from that of the prevailing European and American civilization. The spirit of this civilization the expression of which is the industry, architecture, music, of present day fascism & socialism, is a spirit that is alien & uncongenial to the author. This is not a value judgement.

...

Even if it is clear to me then that the disappearance of a culture does not signify the disappearance of human value but simply of certain means of expressing this value, still the fact remains that I contemplate the current of European civilization without sympathy, without understanding its aims if any. So I am really writing for friends who are scattered throughout the corners of the globe. It is all one to me whether the typical western scientist understands or appreciates my work since in any case he does not understand the spirit in which I write.

2. In the prologue of the PI:

Up to a short time ago I had really given up the idea of publishing my work in my lifetime. It used, indeed, to be revived from time to time: mainly because I was obliged to learn that my results (which I had communicated in lectures, typescripts and discussions), variously misunderstood, more or less mangled or watered down, were in circulation. This stung my vanity and I had difficulty in quieting it.

...

I make them public with doubtful feelings. It is not impossible that it should fall to the lot of this work, in its poverty and in the darkness of this time, to bring light into one brain or another—but, of course, it is not likely. I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking. But, if possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of his own. I should have liked to produce a good book. This has not come about, but the time is past in which I could improve it.

3. As reported by Von Wright, student, friend and alleged authority on Wittgenstein:

He was of the opinion ... that his ideas were generally misunderstood and distorted even by those who professed to be his disciples. He doubted he would be better understood in the future. He once said he felt as though he were writing for people who would think in a different way, breathe a different air of life, from that of present-day men.

Therefore, if we believe his sayings, we can say that his song came out completely wrong, due to misinterpretation. Nevertheless he tried to write a good book, with not much success as he admits. But that's okay, maybe one day we'll get rich! :)

Book 3 of Locke's Essay would be a start. — Snakes Alive

Thanks, you finally gave me something, something I could work with I mean. From here:

https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/locke1690book3.pdf

It seems to me that you have greatly misunderstood the Tractatus, which is why you believe Wittgenstein is, and I quote, "just one out of very many philosophers, in a very long tradition, many of whom long before and after him said similar things". Now how the hell to explain this. Hmm, perhaps Russell's introduction would be of some use. I quote:

In order to understand Mr Wittgenstein’s book, it is necessary to realize what is the problem with which he is concerned. In the part of his theory which deals with Symbolism he is concerned with the conditions which would have to be fulfilled by a logically perfect language. There are various problems as regards language. First, there is the problem what actually occurs in our minds when we use language with the intention of meaning something by it; this problem belongs to psychology. Secondly, there is the problem as to what is the relation subsisting between thoughts, words, or sentences, and that which they refer to or mean; this problem belongs to epistemology. Thirdly, there is the problem of using sentences so as to convey truth rather than falsehood; this belongs to the special sciences dealing with the subject-matter of the sentences in question. Fourthly, there is the question: what relation must one fact (such as a sentence) have to another in order to be capable of being a symbol for that other? This last is a logical question, and is the one with which Mr Wittgenstein is concerned. He is concerned with the conditions for accurate Symbolism, i.e. for Symbolism in which a sentence “means” something quite definite. In practice, language is always more or less vague, so that what we assert is never quite precise. Thus, logic has two problems to deal with in regard to Symbolism: (1) the conditions for sense rather than nonsense in combinations of symbols; (2) the conditions for uniqueness of meaning or reference in symbols or combinations of symbols. — Russell

In terms of how Russell laid out these 4 problems regarding language, it should be obvious that Locke, in his essay, was solely concerned with the first 3, while the fourth, the purely logical one, completely eluded him. Somewhere you write: "I think the question of intelligibility is interesting, but how words come to mean things, and what they mean or can mean, is a complicated topic not seriously addressed by the Tractatus". This is it right here! You were expecting something different from the Tractatus, or maybe you mistook his symbolical and logical approach to language to be doing something similar like his predecessors, Locke for example in his essay, or the so-called empiricists. I reckon that all your confusion and misunderstanding stems from this simple fact. The middle chapters of the Tractatus, of which I am certain that they are either of no interest to you, or you don't understand them at all, contain Wittgenstein's ideas regarding language, how you can treat it from the point of view of logic alone, using symbolism. And therefore W., in the Tractatus, has to make an exposition of logic as well. But of course, if someone takes logic to be what was traditionally thought to be, then they will understand completely nothing, if they try to make the new concepts and notions to somehow fit the old ones, because they don't, they don't fit, I mean.

But in general, Wittgenstein saw things differently, his POV was quite weird and unique, and so to say that he somehow fits in the philosophical tradition, is plain silly, he is more likely to be a philosophical freak, le freak, c'est chic. You can see for example his take on the philosophy of mathematics, which Banno is now exploring.

Anyway, just something to note regarding Locke's essay. He writes towards the end, in the chapter titled: "Chapter xi: The remedies of those imperfections and misuses":

2. I would cut a ridiculous figure if I tried to effect a complete reform of the language of my own country, let alone of the languages of the world! To require that men use their words always in the same sense, and only for determined and uniform ideas, would be to think that all men should have the same notions and should talk only of what they have clear and distinct ideas of; and no-one can try to bring that about unless he is vain enough to think he can persuade men to be either very knowing or very silent!. . . . — Locke

This echoes with W's last remark: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent". The difference is, and a great one, that for W., the one who knows keeps silent, and not as Locke puts it, that there are those who know and should/can use language correctly, and the others that don't and misuse it. And of course, for Wittgenstein there are no remedies. But then again, the methodologies of these two thinkers were totally different, and so were their conclusions.

So perhaps you could re-read the Tractatus in a different light.

Philosophy, as it stands, eats of any leftovers that science might throw at it. Thus the king, or rather the queen, is naked, believing to be in the driver's seat, but in reality it plays second fiddle, if any at all. But philosophy and science have been apart for quite some time now, it makes you wonder whether they were even together at some point. They are like married old couples that stick with each other out of habbit or out of fear, or for any reason regardless, other than the one that brought them together in the first place. I believe that it's a shame, really, and that if we want to learn and unlock the secrets that both science and philosophy hold dear and not go around chasing our own tails with guesses in some cold play, we should, like good scientists that we are, go back to the start, something that is extremely difficult of course, but no one ever said it would be easy.



And so, it doesn't reallly matter why all philosophers disagree with each other all the time, since their point or points of disagreement are hetero-determined by something that is not philosophy, science in this case.

Is this the thread where we are dropping shit to philosophers and philosophy? I was getting ready to dump a good one, but somehow lost interest! :blush:

I'm just suggesting that you have an inflated view of his importance, because you're reading too narrowly. He does not 'give us anything,' he is not Jesus Christ. He was just one out of very many philosophers, in a very long tradition, many of whom long before and after him said similar things. — Snakes Alive

Yer suggestions were duly noted, but were subsequently rejected. Reason: insufficient information. Similar is not what I want, I am after same. Everything is the same, if you don't love them. So, Mr. Readmore, do you have anything to offer, other than recopulations of the same that is?

They seem like nice people.

I'm in the middle of WoW I've lost interest in philosophy. :lol: I need a break. People in here take themselves to seriously, including moi. — Sam26

:razz: I am sorry, I didn't know u were in serious business, or else I wouldn't have imposed! But everyone needs a break, once in a while. Maybe you'll come back, like Wittgenstein did. Take care.

I don't remember him saying anything about it. I don't think there is much to it. It seems silly to me. — Sam26

Well maybe it's not, but vital to really understanding the Tractatus. After all, it seems like a combination of epistemology and a proposition that has sense.

The motto, yes. What does Fann say about it? What? Nothing? Why is that, you think?

No, before that, I was talking about the motto.

The page that starts with the title, "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus", and then continues with "DEDICATED".

You left out the first page of the Tractatus, the most important part.

Then why does Wittgenstein talk about pictures? — Metaphysician Undercover

I dunno why, I guess this was his way.

Ah, you make me search now. Wasn't it you that said those things:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/394275

I think this survives in the way 'western civilization' in general seems to simply value talking, even to no end.There is some bizarre idea that no matter what is being discussed, and no matter to what end, discussion is a kind of good in of itself. We're always 'having conversations,' and 'democracy' is sacrosanct even beyond any material benefits it might provide or fail to provide.

And so Wittgenstein says that talking about certain things, philosophical things, just won't do, due to the nature of talking, the nature of language. What to tell you, I would think that you, apart from everyone else, would embrace it, or relate to it, or at least take it seriously, or otherwise see it critically. But obviously you didn't do any of these things, but you outright ridicule and discard it. I dunno, but I think that there is something wrong here.

I mean, he gives what you want, isn't it, why you won't just take it?

I am not sure, but most probably you are thinking of a state-of-affairs as a snapsnot of the world, like for example a picture/snapshot we capture with our phones, something static that is, some picture where time is stopped. This was shown by Zeno to be problematic, most ptobably this concept has helped us to evolve in someway, but here we are talking about something else. But I doubt that Wittgenstein thought of a state-of-affairs like this. A tractarian state-of-affairs could be a horse running from A to B. Think of the tractarian world of what everything happens in the world.

Right! The question here is whether you are into dialogue, if you even know what this means, or into monologuing. I can tell ya, polyloguing is the best!

No I am talking about the work to be 'agreeable' to the reader. — A Seagull

Ah to a particular reader you mean? And not to all readers? This would be easier, I guess.

Let me just say here that while one can see the objects of the Tractatus and their forms, either as the fixed platonic forms or ideas in which every object partakes on the one hand, or the "potential" forms of Aristotle that are transformed into "actuality" or at least more "potentiality" on the other, the important difference and discrepancy with these thinkers is that Wittgenstein changes philosophy's focus from those forms, from the "objects", to their combination into situations of objects, the so-called state-of-affairs.

Every object is non-existent, it does not exist outside the states in which it can be found. So it doesn't make sense to talk about the objects themselves, but about all the possible formations and combinations between them. So when a single object is given, along with it are given ALL the other objects with which the first meets. Of course, when all objects are given, then all possible states-of-affairs are given, and then the world is fully described. But in order to know that we have the complete description of the world, we must also know that we have been given all objects. In other words, even if we could somehow get to the full description of the world, we would still not know that we had done so, and continue to look for other objects and states-of-affairs, if we did not know that we had them all.

But a good analogy, I think it is with computer programming, if anyone has dealt with it, like I have, I think programmers will understand it better. In object-oriented programming languages, we are dealing with objects and their properties. If we are given some objects, then we can combine them to make a program. But object-oriented programming language tells us nothing about the programs we can make - what they are. The analogy is as follows: the objects of the Tractatus correspond to the objects of the programming language, and the states of affairs correspond to the programs that can be made.

The old philosophy of Plato and Aristotle is, so to speak, object-oriented, while the new philosophy of Wittgenstein ... is program-oriented. What we need to know about the description of the world is not the objects themselves, but in what situations they can appear. In comparison with computers, "knowing" the objects of the programming language means that we know ALL the programs that can be made with these objects.

This is why it is sometimes said that W. breaks with the deep-rooted philosophical tradition, since he shifts it from objects to states-of-affairs or situations. Philosophy becomes fact-oriented, from object-oriented. Fact-oriented philosophy.

Thanks, I guess! It's nice to see that one's efforts are not completely worthless, and the same should go for everyone here.

I don't think the tractarian 'state of affairs' describes a static state, as you put it. I think it is in fact quite the opposite, well no, badly said, because this implies one or the other, a static and/or a dynamic state. Basically it isn't concerned at all with this distinction, or with change, but with what is pictured, and so you can have a state-of-affairs that pictures a running horse, or another with a still life.

Just because in Tractatus Wittgenstein claims " that is the case" does not mean that it is the case for anyone else. Internal self-consistency is not sufficient reason for others to accept it, it also requires the work to fit in with their own model of the world. — A Seagull

To be agreeable to everyone you mean? This is never the case, as it seems. After all, a friend to all is a friend to none.

I am sorry, Gregory, for leaving your questions posed to me unanswered.

And what is this logic of language that makes metaphysics meaingless? I havent seen any particular examples. — Gregory

Metaphysics, for Wittgenstein, is not meaningless, but senseless, it doesn't make sense.

What's a truth that the philosophy of language can prove? — Gregory

For Wittgenstein, philosophy of language, all philosophy basically, is unable to prove anything, any truth. This is because the medium used to do philosophy, language, is ill-suited for proof-making in the philosophical world. But this doesn't necessarily mean that certain "metaphysical truths" do not exist or that they are meaningless, but just that language is inappropriate to talk about and describe these truths, it is the mystical, as Wittgenstein would put it.

Regarding the connection of Wittgenstein to Hume, I dunno, let's see what the internets are saying. I will just do a search "Wittgenstein on Hume", and see where that leads to.

First article reads "The Naturalistic Epistemology of Hume and Wittgenstein":

Wittgenstein never read Hume and nowhere is it evident that Hume had any influence on Wittgenstein’s works. Perhaps the only influence Hume had on Wittgenstein is simply being a philosopher of a certain tradition that Wittgenstein primarily sought to question. Wittgenstein like Hume, however, is committed the view that human knowledge, philosophical or otherwise, is ultimately grounded in natural facts about human beings.

Second one, "Skeptical Arguments in Hume and Wittgenstein":

It’s hard to think of two philosophers more distant than David Hume and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein himself is supposed to have said that he ‘couldn’t bear’ to read Hume. It’s easy to see why: in Philosophical Investigations (PI) (Wittgenstein 1968) Wittgenstein ‘trashes’ Hume’s basic tenets. Hume’s thesis that every word expresses an ‘idea’ derived from an ‘impression’ is more noxious to Wittgenstein than Augustine’s idea (quoted at the beginning of PI) that every word is a name. For Hume’s doctrine makes every word a name of a private object, and every language a private language. Also, Wittgenstein has no truck with any absolute notion of a simple idea (a mistaken notion which he traces to Plato’s Theaetetus), yet Hume made ‘simple ideas’ the basis of all knowledge.

And a third, third time's the charm, like the say, "Hume and Wittgenstein":

It is well known that Wittgenstein’s reading of the philosophical classics was patchy. He left unread a large part of the literature which most philosophers would regard as essential to a knowledge of their subject. Wittgenstein gave an interesting reason for his non-reading of Hume. He said that he could not sit down and read Hume, because he knew far too much about the subject of Hume’s writings to find this anything but a torture. In a recent commentary, Peter Hacker has taken this to show that ‘Wittgenstein seems to have despised Hume’. Hume, he adds, ‘made almost every epistemological and metaphysical mistake Wittgenstein could think of’.

And so, it doesn't seem that Wittgenstein is, in essence, "a humean in disguise", but then again, we could be wrong. Nevertheless, it is interesting and somehow odd that W's friend and - most probably - lover, to whom he devoted the Tractatus, David Pinsent, was a descendant of the philosopher David Hume. Did they discuss Hume's philosophy together, is this how Wittgenstein became acquainted with Pinsent's great-great-great grandpa's work? Who knows, it wouldn't make a good bedtime conversation, I don't think!

The point is that Wittgenstein's early view of language is not based on observation of how language actually works, but on how it must work if the presuppositions he has hold. You basically just recapitulated that very thought process to me in your post. — Snakes Alive

And you just recapitulated that Wittgenstein was prejudiced. So? Where does this leave us? But regarding prejudice, you don't say something new, cause, truly, one way or the other, every human is prejudiced, or even if they are not, others may make this claim of them. I would agree with you, if you weren't using it to belittle the Tractatus.

In any case, Wittgenstein goes into great lengths to show what language and logic are, it is a work on logic after all, amongst other things. Chapters 4-6 are mainly devoted to this. And so the claim that Wittgenstein just presupposed what logic and language are, would mean that he made everything in the Tractatus, and especially in the aforementioned chapters, to fit with this presupposition, which of course might be true, but we need to examine it closely in order to be sure, or else it is an empty claim.

Then read more! Consider: the reason you don't know what I mean is the same reason you take the Tractatus to be so original: ignorance of the history of philosophy. If you knew what the empiricists had said for example, you'd never think that the tactic of treating philosophers' statements as meaningless rather than wrong, due to them misunderstanding how language works, was original to Wittgenstein.

In general, we tend to think great figures are more original than they are, because we read them in isolation. Once we read more widely, this illusion disappears. — Snakes Alive

I remember that some years ago, I made the connection between what Wittgenstein was saying in the Tractatus, and previous thinkers before him like Hume, Kant, Plato and others. Hume, with his is-ought problem and the fact/value distinction, Kant with his antinomies, and Plato/Socrates with his problem of definitions, but for sure there are others as well I am not aware of. Everything seemed to me to be the same, or very similar at least. However, I doubt that these thinkers placed the real problem on language and its misunderstanding, well maybe except Plato, and if they did, they did so polemically, as in to show and prove that their 'adversaries' misunderstood language, and that they themselves were able to understand it properly and use it effectively.

But Wittgenstein in the Tractatus doesn't say this, he says that language is completely ineffective in addressing certain problems - all those not in the natural sciences. That there is nothing really wrong with language, but that it is not suitable for doing philosophy as people thought it would, like having a hex key for unscrewing a slotted screw, the bloody thing just won't do. Or trying to swim in a sea of cement, there is nothing wrong with cement or with swimming, but you cannot do this as advertised. This, I think, is the "misunderstanding of language" he meant. Philosophers misunderstood language/they didn't understand the logic of language, because they took language to be something that was not. In fact, they didn't understand a lot of things, logic for one, then they misunderstood language, and thus their "logic of language" was completely off. Wittgenstein is not here to teach philosophers or people how to think logically, because this is something that everybody does, there is no such thing as "illogical thinking". He just wants to show the correct way to philosophize, as well as what logic really is, the limits of language, and of course he most famously insists on quietism.

Now, can you tell me what all this has to do with thinkers before him, who of his predecessors and where in their work, said this same thing?

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

The Wittgensteinian notion of how language works comes from the idea of the world being composed of a Humean mosaic of atomic facts, and the idea that the purpose of language is to say true or false things under certain conditions. — Snakes Alive

I have no idea of what you mean by 'humean mosaic of atomic facts', but in any case, yes, W's purpose of language I believe it is "to say true or false things under certain conditions". Like if I say "I went to the supermarket and bought myself a beer, then went back home and drank it", this would be a perfect example of how language is used, and one could hold me in check on whether I was saying something true or false, by making a picture of what I was saying and comparing this to the actual, for example if there were cameras everywhere, even in my own appartment, to corroborate my story.

It follows from this that for a sentence to have sense is just to carve exactly the set of atomic facts to which it corresponds against those to which it doesn't. — Snakes

The sentence, "I went to the supermarket and bought myself a beer, then went back home and drank it", has perfect sense no matter what, because it points to facts in the world, but it can be either true or false, false if for example I got myself some milk, or if I went to the theater instead, or if I put the beer in the fridge and not drank it (not gonna happen). But maybe you are saying something else.

The rest of the Tractatus, past the mystical and transcendental stuff, just falls out of that. You can see it as not an account of what language is, but what it would have to be if this picture were right. So Witt. has comments about how everything in natural language must be in order in this way, even though we can't tell how it is and empirically it doesn't look that way. The prejudices are guiding the account of language, not vice-versa. — Snakes

The Tractatus, in my eyes, is just saying that language mirrors facts in the world, that it is/was designed to do this, and nothing more. I don't think that W. says what language is supposed to be, he just makes this observation, whether he is right or wrong. And, based on this, he goes on to talk about the abuse of language when people, philosophers mainly, use it wrongfully. But then again, we can discuss.

Russell said at some point that what they were trying to do was to break with the idealism of the time. Most probably he meant what we now call "continental philosophy". Analytic philosophy, as it came to be, is a critique and reaction to that, I think. And the Tractatus heralds this attack on what philosophers up to that time were doing, by heavily criticizing their very bone and tool they were using to convey their ideas, what else, language that is. I mean, analytic philosophers wouldn't meet the continentals in their own battlefield, contesting whether they were right or wrong, e.g. on the matter of free will or ethics or metaphysics, but by showing that their project was futile from the beginning, because they didn't understand the logic of language, they didn't even know what they were saying. And this, I think, is what makes the Tractatus so innovative.

When a person makes what are supposed to be truth statements about the world, then later admits that those statements are really "senseless", then I think we can conclude that the person has come to the realization that those truth statements are really not truthful at all, and therefore wrong. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, I believe it is so, but only if there is nothing else but true/false, right/wrong. However if there are other things in-between or elsewhere, then it is a different matter, which I believe is what W. was getting at.

I think that the idea of knowing when to be silent is good – it's just that here it's too obviously tied to present theoretical prejudices. — Snakes Alive

What prejudices? What do you mean?

Not so. If other kinds of claims can be assigned truth values on some other grounds than empiricism, then they can be manipulated through truth-functional logic just the same. The logic doesn’t care what the truth values mean or where they come from. — Pfhorrest

I meant what I said from Wittgenstein's perspective at the time of writing the Tractatus, I am not putting forward any ideas of my own. And I think that W's truth-tables and truth-grounds concern the propositions that make sense only, that point as arrows to somewhere in the world, to the facts, those things that we can have a picture of. For everything else, I don't think he would use truth-functional logic.

So, in all, is there something you praise the Tractatus for?

The Tractatus is a lot like any other work – the technical development that was lying around at the time was taken for a key to the universe. This time, it was the truth-functional propositional calculus.

Seen in retrospect it's a profoundly silly thing, but then I guess most things are. — Snakes Alive

Yes, but this - the truth-functional propositional calculus as you put it, applies only to matters of fact and the natural sciences, not to everything.

It seems to me that much of what W says, or at least the gist of it, is correct when limited specifically to descriptive propositions, words being used to indicate something about how the world is; but, as you rightly point out, words can also be used to do a lot more than that, they can mean things other than “the world is such-and-such way”. Talk about what words mean, like this message or the Tractacus itself, falls outside that limited scope of describing the world, but still clearly has nother kind of meaning. — Pfhorrest

You are correct, I think, the Tractatus conveys a meaning but with it being senseless. "sense", in the Tractatus has to do with the facts, descriptive propositions like you say, on "how" the world is, the propositions of natural science. All the propositions in the Tractatus are senseless, huh, in that sense.

Right, when you get to the end of the book, Wittgenstein admits that it's all wrong, and advises you to throw it all away. He basically says I've given you a demonstration of the wrong approach, now move along and find the right approach. But when you see from the very beginning, that it's all wrong, as Sam26 says, "Wittgenstein holds to the traditional view at this point in his life, that names refer to objects.", it makes a very boring read. — Metaphysician Undercover

He doesn't admit that it's all wrong, he says it is 'senseless', which is a different thing than 'wrong'. Philosophical propositions, as well as "elucidating" propositions referring to the nonsensicality of those, are neither right or wrong, they are just senseless: they don't make sense as language is normally supposed to do. But they do convey meaning. In the Tractatus, there is a difference between meaning and sense, really hard to tell, and besides, it's all lost in translation. Bedeutung und Sinn. Sense and Meaning, or otherwise. I mean, in english, sense and meaning may be taken to be the same, but in the Tractatus, they are most definitely not. See also "Über Sinn und Bedeutung" by Frege. Wittgenstein sort of responds to Frege with the Tractatus, there is a reference to him therein. In order to understand the Tractatus better, we should see it in its historical reference.

When you "demonstrate to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions", you presumably do so using language. That does not seem to be a use of language for natural science, though. Is it therefore an abuse of language to show someone they are abusing language? — Pfhorrest

For sure. Which is why W. immediately after writes:

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.

Remember I'm talking mainly about the Tractatus, and it's clear if you read what he said about that book, that he believed he solved all the major problems of philosophy. It's in the Tractatus that Wittgenstein puts forward his theory of truth-functions, which I'll be talking more about as we go along. — Sam26

Yes, he believed he had solved them at the time, but how, is the question. He says so at 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. — w

The truth-functions have to do with the propositions of natural science, not with philosophy or metaphysics. Philosophy/metaphysics shouldn't, cannot have any propositions at all, language is solely used for the natural sciences. Using language to say something philosophical or metaphysical is an abuse of language, you understand?

Because you said that he solved all philosophical problems by analyzing propositions via their truth-functions. Philosophical propositions, pertaining to philosophical problems, and according to him, do not have a truth-function, they are neither true or false, right or wrong, but nonsensical, and so the best one can do with them, is to get rid of them. For example, the critique of pure reason by Kant, is a fine example of a nonsensical book.

The logic in the Tractatus contains an exactness that is disposed of in the PI (at least for the most part). It’s this exactness, I believe, that leads Wittgenstein to believe that he has solved all the philosophical problems (in the T.) in one fell swoop. How has he solved all the philosophical problems? Well, if as Wittgenstein supposes one can analyze all propositions via their truth-functions (more on this later), and these line up with facts in the world, then we can determine what’s true and what’s false based on Wittgenstein’s a priori analysis. This is probably why Russell thought that Wittgenstein was creating a logically perfect language. — Sam26

I think that the way he solved all the philosophical problems was by showing, or at least hoping to show at a later time, that these problems were not in fact problems, but pseudo-problems, arising from bad and mis-understanding of language. Just like he says somewhere regarding the problem of the left-right hand posed by Kant, that this is not a philosophical problem, but a purely geometrical/mathematical one: it can be "solved" by transforming the coordinates in 4-d space. And so his method is not one of "solution", but of "dissolution", just like Alexander the Great did with the gordian knot. The knot was entangled in an unorthodox way, the only way to untie it or "solve" it, was to employ an equally unorthodox method, pertinent to its nature, cut it through.