Yet in this passage, and even though Socrates has said 'God knows whether it happens to be true' ... — Wayfarer

He also says in this passage "this is how it all seems to me". Why would he say that it seems this way to him if he knows it is this way?

...he nevertheless says 'anyone who is to act intelligently....must have had sight of this.' — Wayfarer

In the Apology he says that no one is wiser than him for he knows he he does not know anything noble and good.(21d) In other words, there is no one who acts intelligently.

Notice 'present in the soul of each person'. — Wayfarer

What is it that is present? It is not, as you say, the "attainment of this insight" or an "innate capacity for enlightenment". It is the capacity to know. Rather than pursuing those things most people desire, the soul turns its attention to the truth of what is noble and good. It does this using reason.

We who have not made the ascent from the cave act intelligently, to the extent we are able, by having our sight set on the good.

Reading it with people who are invested and care must have been such a treat. — dani

You could start a reading group here, or less formally, post questions and comments as you read. You will get a lot of different answers which will lead to further discussion and disagreement.

A word of advice. Find a good translation. It really makes a difference. This one is pretty good and is available free: https://www.platonicfoundation.org/ . Alan Bloom's translation and interpretive essay is very good.

I read it slowly a book at a time, frequently going back and rereading sections in order to trace lines of argument and make connections. I raised questions and challenges and addressed them to the text as if I was talking to Socrates.

I do not know how it might have been if I read it on my own, but I read it in class and some of us were very taken with it and continued discussing it together.

Each time I read it I find something new.

I think she is on the right track in not treating philosophy as the activity of disembodied minds, but it does not seem to occur to her that being unmarried does not mean being celibate.

She is not an astute reader of Plato. One of the main reasons he wrote dialogues was to point to the importance of temperament. Women are to play an equal role as guardians in the Republic. They were to do gymnastics (naked exercise) right alongside of the men.

Midgley misses Descartes' rhetorical strategy. How could he call the authority of the Catholic Church into question without suffering the consequences? He does it by calling everything into question, except God, and takes on the appearance of a champion of the Church and its teachings. He did not infer the existence of other people. He did not write and publish as the result of inferring their existence.

when Wittgenstein states that "the variable name 'x' is the proper sign for the pseudo-concept object (T. 4.1272)." - he is simply saying something about the essence of symbolic representation in formal logic. — Sam26

He is saying something about conceptual notation, but it is important to understand why formal concepts are represented as variables and proper concepts are not.

The concept of an object, as Wittgenstein envisions it, is not real in the sense that it lacks empirical content or logical significance within his analysis. — Sam26

I agree that it lacks empirical content, but it does have logical significance. Objects make up the substance of the world and play an essential role in the logical structure of the world.

Strangely, he refers to objects as pseudo-concepts, and at the same time, they form the building blocks of atomic facts. Maybe it's a pseudo-concept because no concept can capture their essence. I'm not sure. — Sam26

Note what else he regards as pseuo-concepts:

‘complex’, ‘fact’, ‘function’, ‘number’, etc.(4.1272)

In a proposition a proper concept tells us what is the case. "The book is on the table", but "The object is on the object" is nonsense.

I must point out that you don't have to understand all of this to understand Wittgenstein's basic ideas in the Tractatus. — Sam26

I don't think anyone understands all of it. I regard it more as an activity of thinking through interpretation rather than an examination of a set of doctrines (4.112). Despite what he says in the preface, I don't think the truth of the thoughts communicated are unassailable or definitive. Or that he has found, on all essential points, the final solution of the problems. Nor do I think that the problems he addresses are the extent of the problems of philosophy.

I think some clarification regarding the term 'object' might be helpful. At first I was puzzled because he used 'object' to refer both the simple and compound objects. 'Object' is what he calls a "formal" or "pseudo-concept". (4.126 - 4.1272)

Formal or pseudo-concepts are expressed in conceptual notion by a "variable name" such as 'x' Particular objects such as tables and chairs and books, however, are concepts proper. The distinction between formal and proper concepts is not made along the lines of simple or complex, but between what has been identified or specified and what has not. Analogously the formal concept 'number' can refer to any or every number, but 'six' or 'eleven' is not a formal concept. The former is expressed by the variable name 'x' and the the latter by the sign '6' or '11'.

In a proposition the variable 'x' is not a "name" in the ordinary sense of the term. The simplest sentences are not made up of variable names. But Wittgenstein's investigation is logical or conceptual not empirical. In a complete empirical investigation objects would not have variable names. The simple objects would be identified and distinguished in the simplest propositions as particulars with particular rather than variable names.

I look and see a fact in the world such as "the apple is on the table". As no-one else can see into my mind, in that telepathy is not a thing. I can only picture facts to myself. — RussellA

The proposition "the apple is on the table" is a picture of the apple on the table.

But who knows what these logical relations are. These logical relations cannot be determined by the picture alone. — RussellA

The logical relation of the model to the car? It is a representation, a picture, of it. If I don't know what it it represents I may not know it from seeing the red piece of wood, but I might not know that even a life-sized model with an actual red car of the same make and model represents the accident.

Within the same picture can be innumerable logical relations. — RussellA

Yes, and it is possible that some picture can represent all of them.

Objects such as chairs, tables and books are not Tractarian objects. These are objects in ordinary language. and the Tractatus is not dealing with ordinary language. — RussellA

They are not the objects that make up the substance of the world. They are, however, objects talked about in the Tractatus. The pseudo-concept 'object' covers both.

3.1431 "The essence of a propositional sign is very clearly seen if we imagine one composed of spatial objects (such as tables, chairs, and books) instead of written signs.

The key word is "imagine". Wittgenstein is using an analogy. He is not saying that tables, chairs and books are Tractarian objects. — RussellA

The key words are "propositional sign", that is, the variable 'x'.

the Formal Concept establishes the relations between its parts, "x" and "number". — RussellA

'x' is the "name" of the formal concept 'number'.

if "number" is a pseudo-concept then "x" must also be a pseudo concept. — RussellA

The variable name 'x' is not a concept.

The same [as applies to 'object] applies to the words ‘complex’, ‘fact’, ‘function’, ‘number’, etc.
They all signify formal concepts, and are represented in conceptual notation by variables ...

'x' or some other variable is how formal or pseudo-concepts such as 'object' and 'number' are represented in a proposition.

If we were only picturing facts to ourselves, then we are using a Private Language — RussellA

First, we do not only picture facts to ourselves. Second, even if we did that would not be a private language unless no one else could understand it and what is pictured is something no one else could be aware of.

Even if we were picturing facts to ourselves, we would have to make the conscious choice whether i) the red in the model is picturing the red in the world or ii) the wood in the model is picturing red in the world. — RussellA

The picture that comes to mind need not be the result of conscious choice. With regard to the model of the accident the color of the car has no bearing on what is being depicted. What a picture represents is a logical relation:

A picture presents a situation in logical space, the existence and non-existence of states of affairs.
(2.11) — Fooloso4

They are pseudo-concepts because they are simples.
2.02 "Objects are simple" — RussellA

'Object' is a pseudo-concept but not all objects are simple objects. Spatial objects such as a chairs tables, and books ( 3.1431) are not simple objects.

On the one hand the propositional variable "x is a number" signifies a formal concept and on the other hand the variable x signifies a pseudo-concept object. Therefore, a formal concept cannot be a pseudo-concept. — RussellA

'x' is the variable name for the pseudo concept 'number'. (4.1272) Substituting "a number" for 'x' gives us: "Number is a number" which is nonsense. The variable name 'x' cannot be used for both the pseudo-concept 'number' and 'a number'.

From the picture itself, we cannot know. We need someone to come along and tell us which is the case i) or ii), and if that happens, this destroys the Picture Theory, which is meant to stand alone. — RussellA

That depends on the medium of representation, whether what is being pictured is intended to communicate something to someone else, and what it is that is being represented.

We picture facts to ourselves.

(2.1)

A picture presents a situation in logical space, the existence and non-existence of states
of affairs.

(2.11)

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.

(2.15)

Yes a red toy car can picture a real red car, but the flaw in the Picture Theory is the statement "had to be stipulated", which has to happen outside the Picture Theory. — RussellA

I don't see the problem. A proposition is a picture. A picture that makes use of both a visual and a propositional representation is still a picture.

Why cannot it be the case that wood pictures a truck, metal pictures a bicycle and marble pictures a car? — RussellA

It can. If the picture is intended to show the relative positions of a truck, a bicycle, and a car involved in an accident then a piece of wood. a piece of metal, and a marble can represent the situation. We make use of such pictures all the time.

There is no necessity that a red piece of wood pictures a red car, and yet the Picture Theory depends on this unspoken necessity, which seems to me to be a fundamental flaw in the Picture Theory. — RussellA

Just as the car does not become the bicycle, it is necessary that whatever it is the represents the car in the picture does not become something else.

There are two kinds of objects, concepts proper and pseudo-concepts. — RussellA

'Object' is a pseudo-concept. A particular object is not.

So one cannot say, for example, ‘There are objects’, as one might say, ‘There are books’.

(4.1272)

In our ordinary world, something that falls under a concept proper can also be a concept proper. — RussellA

Right, but the issue is whether something that falls under a pseudo-concept is a pseudo-concept.

I jumped in because too often Aristotle is viewed through the eyes of Aquinas. I think this is a mistake.What Aristotle leaves open and unanswered Aquinas answers theologically. To put it differently, they are on opposite sides of the ancient quarrel between philosophers and poets.

... the Aristotelian concept of essence (which Thomas inherits) ... — Relativist

The term essence (essentia) was a Latin invention used to translate Aristotle's Greek ousia. Cicero is credited with inventing the term, from the Latin esse, to be. It means "what it is to be". To complicate matters, ousia is often translated as 'substance', a term whose meaning is not co-extensive with ousia. Ousia refers to some particular being, Socrates or Plato.

The guiding question of Aristotle's Metaphysics is the question of 'being qua being", that is, what it is for something to be the thing that it is. What is it, for example, that distinguishes man from other beings. And, what it is distinguishes Socrates from other men. The puzzle is laid out in Plato's Phaedo. Each attempted solution proves to be problematic.

Those who desire answers and assurances will take part to be the whole. In the Phaedo in the double sense of the soul not as a part but as the whole and the stories and not the arguments as the whole. In re Aristotle's Metaphysics, the problem of prime movers is taken to be not the problem but the answer.

The Tractatus mentions three kinds of concepts: formal concept, concept proper and pseudo-concept. — RussellA

Formal concepts are pseudo-concepts.

Objects are pseudo concepts because they exist in the world and make up the substance of the world. — RussellA

'Object' is a pseudo-concept because it says nothing about what is the case, not because it makes up the substance of the world.

The number 3 is a sign that signifies a number. Numbers are formal concepts. Therefore, the number 3 is a sign that signifies a formal concept — RussellA

'3' signifies the value of the concept number. A particular number falls under the concept number in a way analogous to 'table' falling under the concept 'object'. That does not mean that 'table' is a pseudo-concept.

Mathematical equations are pseudo-proposiitons , but this does not mean the equation is a concept, either proper or formal. 1+1=2 is not concept, it is a calculation.

Mathematics is a logical method.
The propositions of mathematics are equations, and therefore pseudo-propositions.

(6.2)

What falls under a formal concept is not another formal concept.

When something falls under a formal concept as one of its objects, this cannot be expressed by means of a proposition. Instead it is shown in the very sign for this object. (A name shows that it signifies an object, a sign for a number that it signifies a number, etc.)

(4.126)

The sign '3' signifies a number, not the concept 'number'. '3' falls under the formal concept number. If '3' was a formal concept then every number would be a formal concept. In that case we would have the formal concept 'number' and the formal concepts '1', '2', '3' .... and so on.

Every variable is the sign for a formal concept.
For every variable represents a constant form that all its values possess, and this can be regarded as a formal property of those values.

(4.1271)

'Number' is the constant form. 1, 100, and 1,000 are variables that have as a formal property this formal concept.

Why do you think that particular numbers, such as the number 1, are not formal concepts? — RussellA

See the statement I put in bold:

A formal concept is given immediately any object falling under it is given. It is not possible, therefore, to introduce as primitive ideas objects belonging to a formal concept and the formal concept itself. So it is impossible, for example, to introduce as primitive ideas both the concept of a function and specific functions, as Russell does; or the concept of a number and particular numbers.

(4.12721)

If I say: "There are a number of horses" that is expressed by the variable x. This does not tell us how many horses. If, however, I say: "There are three horses" then the number of horses is not expressed as the variable 'x', which could mean any number of horses, but as '3'.The logical structure of the proposition is the same, but in this case I am not talking about the formal concept 'number'.

See 4.12721. The concept of a number is a formal concept. Particular numbers are not. They fall under the concept of a number.

You're close, but this isn't quite right, I don't believe.

In the function: "T(x)", both "T()" and "x" show that to each corresponds a different formal concept. — 013zen

If, as Russell stipulates, x is a book, then there are no formal concepts in "T(x)". I don't know what () on the table means.

Wittgenstein is doing propositional analysis not coding.

This is to say, that there is a formal concept associated with it, but "x" is not itself a formal concept, nor does it name a formal concept — 013zen

The first part is correct. The second part needs clarification. Formal concepts are represented in conceptual notion by variables. (4.1272)

For example, if an apple was a logical object in logical space, it would have the necessary properties such as weight, colour and taste. — RussellA

.

The properties of objects in logical space are formal, internal, necessary properties. Weight, color and
taste are not necessary properties. 'Fact' is a formal concept. The facts in logical space are about the formal, logical structure of of the world. Facts in physical space are accidental, contingent. They are made possible by the necessary, logical structure of the world.

There are proper concepts such as "grass" and formal concepts such as the variable "x". — RussellA

'x' is not a formal concept. It is the name used to refer to the formal concept.

I'm suggesting that in the expression "grass is green" is true iff grass is green, objects such as grass are not referring to actual objects, which are divisible, but must be referring to logical objects, which can be indivisible, and are simples. — RussellA

The name "grass" as it occurs in a proposition refers to an actual complex object. I think what you are getting at is along the lines of what I said above:

As part of a propositional analysis apples and tables can function as simples. Whether they do does not depend on their being possible, but on whether further analysis is needed in order for the proposition to make sense, that is, to know what is the case if it is true. — Fooloso4

Book is not a formal concept.
— Fooloso4

I agree. The variable x is the formal concept, not the book. — RussellA

It is because a book is not a formal concept that Wittgenstein does not refer to it by a variable name. The variable is a name not a concept.

I agree that the expression "logical objects" may be read in two ways. It can be referring to either 1) objects that are logical or 2) logic can be an object. — RussellA

An unhappy apple is an illogical proposition not an illogical object. An apple on the table or inside the sun is not a combination of objects it is a relation of the objects apple and table (on) or apple and sun (in).

As concepts can be simples, the concept "grass" could be a simple, and as words such as "grass" logically picture an object such as grass existing in a logical space, this suggests that objects such as grass are also simples. — RussellA

I don't know if you are attempting to interpret the Tractatus or argue against it. He makes a distinction between proper concepts such as grass and formal concepts such as 'simple object'.

At 4.126 Wittgenstein introduces the term "formal concepts".
— Fooloso4

In the function T (x), where T is on a table, the function T (x) is true if the variable x satisfies the function T (x). For example, T (x) is true if the variable x is a book.

As I understand it, the variable x is what Wittgenstein is defining as a formal concept. — RussellA

Book is not a formal concept. In a proposition it does not have both the name 'book' and the variable name for a formal concept 'x'.

The answer to the title question is - yes ... and no.

If we wish to understand the thought processes of the Islamic State or the Taliban, we need only read the Old Testament. — alan1000

If we wish to understand how the Hebrew Bible ("Old Testament" is itself of a misconception) answers the question, we should look at the duel aspects of the tree of knowledge (good and bad) and God's blessings which are also curses (child birth, for example).

Here is an informative article from The New Statesman that overturns some common notions about Christianity. As to whether its influence has been good: on plus side the article sites the origin of the idea of equal dignity. On the negative, the destruction of Rome.

At 4.126 Wittgenstein introduces the term "formal concepts". He distinguishes formal concepts from concepts proper.‘Book’ is a proper concept. It makes sense to ask where the book is. The answer “on the table” makes sense. It does not make sense to ask where the object is or to get the answer “the object is on the object”. ‘Object’ and other formal concepts are “pseudo-concepts”.Other examples he gives are: ‘complex’,‘fact’, ‘function’, ‘number’. (4.1272)

Logical objects in logical space puts a limit on what is possible — RussellA

There are no ‘logical objects’ (4.441)

Objects such as apples and tables as logical objects are possible and therefore simples. — RussellA

As part of a propositional analysis apples and tables can function as simples. Whether they do does not depend on their being possible, but on whether further analysis is needed in order for the proposition to make sense, that is, to know what is the case if it is true. If the proposition is about seeds or legs then apples and tables are not simples, but if the proposition is "The apple is on the table" no further analysis might be necessary.

What conclusions were drawn from the evidence in the 2016 election? How much more reliable is the evidence today?

What do the statistics show about the health of someone Biden's age, who is fit and active, versus someone Trump's age who drives his ft ass around in a golf cart and shuns vegetables in favor of Big Macs?

Whether it does combine depends on whether or not the atomic fact obtains. — Sam26

Are you saying that somehow the fact plays some role in whether or not x and y do combine? Or that if and when they combine the result is a fact?

"...there is no object that we can imagine excluded from the possibility of combining with others (T. 2.0121)." — Sam26

I take him to be saying that combining with others is what it is to be an object, and that there is no object that cannot combine with any other object.

Trump’s candidacy is not official until the Nominating Convention in July in Milwaukee. — Wayfarer

The Republican National Committee has been taken over by Trump. Party Chairman Michael Whatley was picked by Trump. Trump's daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, will serve as the co-chair and was elected by unanimous vote.

If there has been nothing so far that has distanced the party from Trump I don't know what would. His trials are being treated as an asset. Us against everyone including the whole judicial system that they are claiming has treated him unfairly.

so a step back. — Sam26

Your step back is a step forward. We are in agreement.

... arranged to form any possible fact (state of affairs). — Sam26

As you go on to say, objects contain the possibility of arranging into facts, but as stated it might be taken to mean that something arranges them. Objects arrange themselves. Facts are the result of such arrangements.

Objects by themselves are mere potentiality ... — Sam26

What do you mean "by themselves"? If they are mere potentiality what actualizes them?

Unlike you, just because I have a philosopher in my name, doesn't mean I'm a blind adherent. — schopenhauer1

I am not a blind adherent of Wittgenstein's or anyone else. I disagree with much of what he says about philosophy in both his earlier and later works. I don't buy into his concept of objects, but I don't have to accept it as true in order to attempt to understand it. I like the interpretive challenge.

Who definitively knows this? — schopenhauer1

No one.

Why must it be an object and not a unified whole? — schopenhauer1

An object is a unified whole.

What he is saying is that in order for atomic facts be about something ... — schopenhauer1

A fact is what is the case, a state of affairs. "The book is on the shelf" is a fact. It is not about anything other than the book being on the shelf.

Where does he say that an atomic fact is about something?

Whether or not they are right about there being logically simple entities is another question entirely, — 013zen

I was going to say the same thing.

So there are metaphysical claims- objects, substance, states of affairs (arrangements of objects)

There are epistemological claims- facts, atomic facts, true and false propositions. — schopenhauer1

The problem is not that Wittgenstein muddles things, you do.

A state of affairs is a fact.

without the reader doing the heavy-lifting — schopenhauer1

Given that the stated goal of the text is to draw the limits of thought or its expression in language, the need to think in order to understand the text is in service of that goal.

as Banno pointed out, his major point is right at the top:
The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
— 1.1 — schopenhauer1

The facts are contingent. Objects are necessary. Facts are changeable. Objects are unchangeable. Wittgenstein's concern is not with the facts of the world but with what underlies both the possibility of facts and the possibility of propositions. With what underlies and connects them.

That is to say, Wittgenstein is using circular reasoning, and "double-dipping" his idea of logical structure (picture) in covertly hiding his idea of atomic facts in the idea of objects. — schopenhauer1

Logical structure underlies both the facts of the world and propositions. Atomic facts are objects in configuration. And this is what you go on to say.

"Objects being arranged" allows for ----> States of Affairs. — schopenhauer1

Objects are not being arranged. They arrange themselves.

Is it "States of Affairs" of the World, or is it Atomic Facts of the World? — schopenhauer1

What is the case—a fact—is the existence of states of affairs.

(2)

One is a "realism" whereby the world exists independently of facts, and the other is an idealism of sorts whereby the world is simply the logical coherence of the world. — schopenhauer1

Both are wrong. No facts no world. Logic deals with possibilities and necessities.

That is to say, objects are given short-shrift. — schopenhauer1

To the contrary:

Objects contain the possibility of all situations.

(2.014)

To me it's just a place holder for "go pound sand and don't look behind the curtain cause I just want to move forward with my argument and not go further into those pesky philosophical metaphysical things". — schopenhauer1

Metaphysics deals with the arche, the source or origin of things and what is first or primary. His view, like all others, is speculative. It takes as its principles the existence of simples as primary. These objects have within themselves the ability to combine to form more complex objects and states of affairs. The order of the universe is thus bottom up.

He doesn't define them other than they exist and facts are about them. — schopenhauer1

He says:

Objects make up the substance of the world.

(2.021)

Objects are just what constitute the unalterable form of the world.

(2.023)

A definition occurs within a proposition. Elementary propositions consist of names. (4.22) A name means an object. (3.203) We cannot use a proposition to define a name because the proposition is a nexus, a concatenation, of names. (4.22) We cannot then define an object beyond defining its role as the substance of facts. As the substance of the world.

In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein was trying to avoid a pure Coherentism, where one proposition gets its meaning from another proposition etc, by ultimately founding propositions on states of affairs that exist in a world outside these propositions. — RussellA

It is the substance of the world not the facts in the world that prevents this:

If the world had no substance, then whether a proposition had sense would depend on whether another proposition was true.

(2.0211)

4.122 is saying that propositions cannot describe properties and relations, but can only show them. This is the difference between what is said and what is shown. — RussellA

Your claim was that about his removal of relations and properties from his ontology. If ontology is about what exists, and properties and relations are shown, then even if they cannot be described they exist.

The Tractatus is not about universal concepts describing a world, but about particular propositions (which are particular thoughts) showing particular states of affairs. — RussellA

The first part is true. The second part is false.

A picture is a model of reality.

(2.12)

He is not interested in the particular state of affairs that are modeled, but the possibility that is can be modeled.

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.

(2.15)

Pictorial form is the possibility that things are related to one another in the same way as
the elements of the picture.

(2.151)

Facts set out the configuration of objects. — Banno

They do not. You have got it backwards. The objects are self-determining. The facts are the result of their combining as they do.

There is nothing much that can be said about objects per se; — Banno

He says quite a few things about them:

Objects make up the substance of the world. (2.021)
— Fooloso4

It is obvious that an imagined world, however different it may be from the real one, must have something—a form—in common with it.

(2.022)

Objects are just what constitute this unalterable form.

(2.023)

The substance is what subsists independently of what is the case.

(2.024)

It is form and content.

(2.025)

There must be objects, if the world is to have unalterable form.

(2.026)

Objects, the unalterable, and the subsistent are one and the same.

(2.027)

Objects are what is unalterable and subsistent; their configuration is what is changing
and unstable.

(2.0271)

It has also to be understood that the Argument for Substance is rejected in PI. — Banno

You might think it gives you reason to dismiss it without understanding it, that is on you. There is to this day plenty of attention being paid to the Tractatus and the problem of objects.

Objects make up the substance of the world.

Do you agree? If so what do you think this means?

Objects are necessary. Facts are contingent.

Do you agree? If so what do you think this means?

His definition is like one in computer programming it seems — schopenhauer1

It is not. An object is not a logical marker or a name.

As I mentioned in a prior post:

Logic as the term is used in the Tractatus, is not primarily a human activity. Logic is not propositional. Propositions are logical. Logic deals with what is necessary rather than contingent. — Fooloso4

You mine [might?] as well just start with atomic facts.. — schopenhauer1

Facts are contingent. It is not necessary that these elementary facts and not others exist. Objects are the answer to your question "whence facts"

Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror image of the world. Logic is transcendental.

(6.13)

Logic is transcendental in the Kantian sense of a condition for the possibility of a world. A world is made possible by the formal properties and relations of its objects and the structural properties and relations of facts. (4.122) Objects have within them the possibility of combining into states of affairs. ( 2.0121) Logic is a mirror image of the world in that their structure is the same, but it is the reverse in that logic determines only what is possible, and the world determines which of those possibilities is actually the case.

The facts in logical space are the world.

(1.13)

Logical space is the space of what is possible and impossible. The facts of the world are a subset of what is possible.

Just as we are quite unable to imagine spatial objects outside space or temporal objects outside time, so too there is no object that we can imagine excluded from the possibility of combining with others.

If I can imagine objects combined in states of affairs, I cannot imagine them excluded from
the possibility of such combinations.

(2.0121)

The formal or internal property of an object is the possibility of combining with other objects.

In logic nothing is accidental: if a thing can occur in a state of affairs, the possibility of the
state of affairs must be written into the thing itself.

(2.012)

With regard to their possibilities both a ‘thing’ and an ‘object’ have them as part of their logical properties. What this means for things in the world is that what is possible and impossible is fixed and determined. States of affairs are independent of each other (2.061). They do not determine what is necessary or possible. What is possible is determined by things themselves, whether they be simple objects or complex. To say what is possible and impossible, however, cannot be determined unless objects are known, and to know them requires being able to identify them.

However, one feature of the Tractatus is Wittgenstein's removal of relations and properties from his ontology. — RussellA

He doesn't.

In a certain sense we can talk about formal properties of objects and states of affairs, or, in the case of facts, about structural properties: and in the same sense about formal relations and structural relations.
(Instead of ‘structural property’ I also say ‘internal property’; instead of ‘structural relation’, ‘internal relation’.
I introduce these expressions in order to indicate the source of the confusion between
internal relations and relations proper (external relations), which is very widespread among philosophers.)
It is impossible, however, to assert by means of propositions that such internal properties and relations obtain: rather, this makes itself manifest in the propositions that represent the relevant states of affairs and are concerned with the relevant objects.

For the Tractatus, objects combine as particulars not as universals. — RussellA

Do objects count as particulars? If a particular is something that can only exist in one place at one time then objects are not particulars. Every object in the world is composed of simple objects. These simple objects are in this sense universal. They exist independently of whether or not they are instantiated.

There are, however, problems with classifying them as universals too. I think it best to not try and shoehorn them into on or the other of these problematic categories.