A Newbie Questions about Wittgensteins Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Ive begun to read Wittgensteins Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and am having a problem with some opening statements.
W: 1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
Q: What is meant by facts? Isnt a fact something which is true? And isnt truth a property of propositions? So, the world consists of all true propositions? If so, then world doesnt refer to the physical universe but to the collection of true propositions about the physical universe.
W: 2.01 An atomic fact is a combination of objects (entities, things).
Q: Hm. Objects and things suggest material objects in the physical universe. But a material object cannot literally be a part of a proposition and therefore cannot be part of a fact. A proposition can refer to objects. My dog has fleas. But the physical object, the dog, is not literally part of the proposition. Propositions only contains thoughts, not physical objects.
W: 2.001 It is essential to a thing that it can be a constituent part of an atomic fact.
Q: Wouldnt it be more accurate to say 2.001 It is essential to a thing that [the idea of the thing but not the thing itself] can be a constituent part of an atomic fact? If facts are propositions, and propositions can only contain thoughts, then the amended statement is more accurate.
But if Wittgenstein meant 2.001 as written, then Im confused. When Wittgenstein uses the word world does he mean 1) only facts about the world, or 2) a mixture of facts about the world and things, states of affairs, in the world?
Wikipedia has the following:
[b]Main theses
There are seven main propositions in the text. These are:
1. The world is everything that is the case.
2. What is the case (a fact) is the existence of states of affairs.
3. A logical picture of facts is a thought.
4. A thought is a proposition with a sense.
5. A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions. (An elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself.)[/b]
There seems to be an equivocation on the word fact. Does fact refer to the state of affairs that my dog has fleas? (i.e., the physical object, dog, has living upon it other physical objects, fleas.) Or does fact refer to the true proposition, the true sentence, which states that my dog has fleas?
3. A logical picture of facts is a thought seems to imply that facts and thoughts differ, that a thought is mental and a fact is a state of affairs (i.e., the physical object, dog, has living upon it other physical objects, fleas.) But this would imply The world is the totality of things, of states of affairs, not facts which contradicts 1.1.
W: 1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
Q: What is meant by facts? Isnt a fact something which is true? And isnt truth a property of propositions? So, the world consists of all true propositions? If so, then world doesnt refer to the physical universe but to the collection of true propositions about the physical universe.
W: 2.01 An atomic fact is a combination of objects (entities, things).
Q: Hm. Objects and things suggest material objects in the physical universe. But a material object cannot literally be a part of a proposition and therefore cannot be part of a fact. A proposition can refer to objects. My dog has fleas. But the physical object, the dog, is not literally part of the proposition. Propositions only contains thoughts, not physical objects.
W: 2.001 It is essential to a thing that it can be a constituent part of an atomic fact.
Q: Wouldnt it be more accurate to say 2.001 It is essential to a thing that [the idea of the thing but not the thing itself] can be a constituent part of an atomic fact? If facts are propositions, and propositions can only contain thoughts, then the amended statement is more accurate.
But if Wittgenstein meant 2.001 as written, then Im confused. When Wittgenstein uses the word world does he mean 1) only facts about the world, or 2) a mixture of facts about the world and things, states of affairs, in the world?
Wikipedia has the following:
[b]Main theses
There are seven main propositions in the text. These are:
1. The world is everything that is the case.
2. What is the case (a fact) is the existence of states of affairs.
3. A logical picture of facts is a thought.
4. A thought is a proposition with a sense.
5. A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions. (An elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself.)[/b]
There seems to be an equivocation on the word fact. Does fact refer to the state of affairs that my dog has fleas? (i.e., the physical object, dog, has living upon it other physical objects, fleas.) Or does fact refer to the true proposition, the true sentence, which states that my dog has fleas?
3. A logical picture of facts is a thought seems to imply that facts and thoughts differ, that a thought is mental and a fact is a state of affairs (i.e., the physical object, dog, has living upon it other physical objects, fleas.) But this would imply The world is the totality of things, of states of affairs, not facts which contradicts 1.1.
Comments (432)
In everyday usage, sure. But W seems clear enough here that he means "combinations of things". As opposed to individual things, and as opposed to any sentences or pictures describing or depicting them. Truth-makers not truth-bearers.
Quoting Art48
Only if you can't resist applying "fact" either to truth-bearers or to individual things. But no contradiction so far in the text.
Cool thread :clap:
I can tell you how I understand the text, others will differ. It is a complex piece, so it is best to have a secondary source handy to explain the overall picture, and to expect disagreement. Also, keep reading, since the explanations often follow in the detail. I sometimes think of the book as being written in reverse polish notation, avoiding parentheses but necessitating that the reader keep track of the scope of each operand. So one does not see what Witti is doing with a remark until one reads the remarks that follow it. The result is an argument that is understood only after reading the whole.
The spark notes are more use than Wikipedia: https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/tractatus/summary/
The world does not consist of individuals such as that tree, you, and the number 19 bus. It consists of facts about those individuals: the tree is three metres tall, you posted a thread, and the bus is late.
In the logic developed by Frege, individuals are usually represented by lower-case letters starting with a so: a,b,c...; and predicates by lower case letters starting at f; so f(...), g(...)... So that the fact "a is f" is written f(a). Wittgenstein is setting up "world" to mean the set of such facts. (This is somewhat at odds with how 'world' is used in more recent logics, but the field developed quite a bit since then).
This becomes clearer when he starts to talk about "logical space". Logical space is like all the well-formed formulae; the world is what the true well-formed formulae set out; that is, the facts.
So the bus might not have been late, the tree might have been 4m instead of 3m; these possibilities exist in logical space. The world consists of the possibilities that are true. These, we call facts.
"Object" includes but is not limited to material objects, nor phenomenal observations. It's never explicitly defined, because in a sense what they are is ineffable. I take this to be one of the issues with the Tractatus, not resolved until the discussion of "simples" in the Investigations - where what counts as an object depends on what one is doing.
And so that's the next point; keep in mind that a large part of the Tractatus was significantly revises in Witti's later writing, so he may well have agreed with the criticisms you are levelling at the text. He wrote the Investigations to be read alongside the Tractatus.
"My dog has fleas" is a sentence, and not a fact.
That my dog has fleas is a fact.
That the sentence "my dog has fleas" is true is also a fact.
Now interestingly, "my dog has fleas" and "the sentence 'my dog had fleas' is true" will both be true under exactly the same circumstances: if my dog has fleas.
This is the T sentence:
So "My dog has fleas" and "the sentence 'my dog had fleas' is true" represent the very same fact.
Does fact refer to the state of affairs that my dog has fleas? Yes.
Does fact refer to the true proposition, the true sentence, which states that my dog has fleas? Yes.
In a lot of usage, sure.
But W seems clear enough here, in the text in question, that he would say no, he means "combinations of things". Their manners of combination, if you like. The ways they are, and inter-relate.
As opposed to individual things, such as flea-ridden dogs, and true sentences. And as opposed to any sentences or pictures truly describing or depicting the things, which are of course themselves individual things. Such as, "my dog has fleas" (a sentence thing happening to describe a flea-ridden dog thing) or " 'my dog has fleas' is true" (a sentence thing happening to describe a true sentence thing). These are all things, not facts, according to the text in question.
If not these, then what? What are facts in the Tractatus? Well, specifically: they are what people tend to mean by "truth-maker" when they oppose that term to "truth-bearer". They tend to think there must be an abstract thing corresponding to the whole true sentence (truth-bearer) just as there is (typically) an individual thing named by a noun in the sentence. It's my impression, anyway, that this is what those people tend to mean, and that they follow Russell and early W in conceiving of an abstract counterpart to the whole truth-bearer. Not just a dog that has fleas, but an abstract referent of "that the dog has fleas". Not just a thing, but a fact.
Of course, plenty of philosophers of language, later W included, would rather do without the abstract counterpart. But the text in question is clearly doing with.
I'll take a shot at this: Reality (the world), what is it? Facts, the totality of facts. It feels important to distinguish facts from knowledge - we, knowledge-hungry beings, are dispensable to the extent that reality doesn't need us (nay to idealism) but...facts seem soooo lonely; they, in a certain sense, need us just as a man needs a woman and vice versa, notwithstanding homosexuality and bachelors/spinsters.
Following Wittgenstein's line of thinking, if "my dog has fleas" obtains in the world, then my dog has fleas is a fact.
Even if "my dog has fleas" doesn't obtain in the world, it is still a possibility, and therefore exists in a logical space.
As the world consists of logical possibilities, and as the world is a totality of facts, does this mean that even though "my dog has fleas" doesn't obtain in the world, because it is a possibility, it is still a fact ?
As he wrote in 3. "A logical picture of facts is a thought", this allows us to think of facts that may or may not obtain in the world, such as unicorns and their habitats.
On the other hand, Wittgenstein's move from objects in traditional philosophy to facts, where it is not the object that is important but the relationship it is in, does raise other problems.
I have to say that I was never much impressed with the Tractatus. The very first proposition, that the world is everything that is the case is fine, but immediately starts going into facts.
Facts are interpretations based on human perceptions and perspectives and, more importantly, are a product of a certain mode of experience one where were looking at the world in an entirely different way than we are in our average state of habit. Who gives a damn about facts when youre late for work or in love?
So much time spent on facts. Just more of the analytic tradition which wants to ultimately reduce everything to logic and mathematics (its the influence of science). Not relevant, and not even that interesting. Useful in developing computers, I suppose.
In the Tractatus Wittgenstein attempts to construct the world beginning with what is simple or elemental. Corresponding to simple objects are simple names. Wittgenstein never identifies any simple object or name, but assumes they must exist as constitutive elements of the world.
Logic underlies the compounding of simple objects and names. It is this logical structure that makes possible saying anything about the world. Propositions are true if what they say is what is the case. That the word is a totality of facts not things means that it is not the simple objects or things that make up the world but rather their combinations. The most rudimentary combinations are "atomic facts". Atomic facts combine to form complexes.
He uses the term "world" to mean the totality of these complexes. He also talks about "my world", the world as it is for me. But the "I" is not part of the world in the same way as the eye sees but is not what is seen.
Depends on what you mean by "proposition". Propositions can be ink marks on a piece of paper, or vibrating air molecules when speaking.
Quoting bongo fury
I don't get this distinction between everyday, ordinary usage and some other usage. Usage depends on context. Why should we consider a philosophical context any different than any other context? The idea of ordinary usage takes into account these various contexts. What is ordinary about the usage is that it is ordinary to use the terms that way in those contexts. Any unordinary usage would be a misuse of terms in that context. When we agree on new uses for a term we are essentially creating a new context with which we use the term.
Perhaps you mean,
Quoting Banno
Quoting RussellA
Perhaps you mean,
Quoting RussellA
(in the sense of true sentence).
Or perhaps you mean,
Quoting RussellA
I don't claim you won't find plenty of similar mishandling of quotation marks in my posts. But the topic here is whether we need to care.
If you only knew how much this sentence characterizes the state of modern humanity.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Sure. Cherry-picking cases of past usage that help to sell our new theory.
Quoting bongo fury
So, a proposition is broken down into elementary propositions and names. Facts are broken down into atomic facts and objects. Think of elementary propositions as pictures of reality, if they are true (this is Wittgenstein's picture theory of meaning), or if the elementary proposition is false, then the picture doesn't represent anything in reality. In other words, a false proposition is a picture with a form, but the form has no instance in reality. Think of a painting, a painting has a form, whether it matches something in reality or not. The form of the picture, is the arrangement of things (houses, trees, valleys, etc.) in the picture. If the arrangement of things in the picture correctly picture reality, then it is a true picture of reality.
Only true propositions connect via names to objects. However, don't think of names and objects in the ordinary sense. Names and objects as used in the Tractatus are simples. They are the smallest component parts of propositions and facts, respectively (Wittgenstein never gives e.g.'s of either of these, but he believes that logic dictates their existence). The elementary proposition, which is composed of names, asserts the existence of some state-of-affairs, or some fact. Only propositions can be true or false, depending on whether they reflect facts or don't reflect facts. There is no such thing as a true or false fact, only true or false propositions. So, again, whether a proposition is true or false depends on whether it correctly pictures a fact. "A proposition is a picture of reality. A proposition is a model of reality as we imagine it (T. 4.01."
When thinking of a fact, an analogy might help. For example, think of a chess board and the pieces as the world, then think of the arrangement of the pieces (facts in logical space) on the board, as the facts in the world (the facts of the game). If you correctly describe the game, then you are describing some arrangement of the pieces on the board. I.e., the language you use correctly (if true) or incorrectly (if false) is supposed to picture the facts (arrangement of pieces) of the game.
The world consists of facts (T. 1.13, 2.04). However, the totality of true propositions describes the world, i.e., describes the facts of the world.
Hopefully this partly answers some of your questions.
Good Luck,
Sam
It seems like his "theory" (as described here) is a kind of truism rather than a truth. It makes sense that propositions can be true or false based on whether it is describing "facts of the world". The problem to me is that he never really provides how to find "facts of the world" which is the hard part. It is either taken as self-evident or something that cannot be stated.
Facts are all around us. It's not difficult to find facts. There are many facts that haven't been discovered, but his aim is very specific.
I think this is best illustrated if you give an example. What would a non-early Wittgenstein thinker make an error of and how would Wittgenstein respond to that?
Language is limited to facts of the world.. What are those facts? You can't just say "Well, they are all around us". WHAT are the facts? He mentions objects, for example.. Can that be the missing content here? Simple objects, etc.. A fact must be what is "true" of an object?
In other words, you can go around the merry-go-round with states of affairs, objects, and facts and propositions describing them, but I think there is a lot of nothing there.. Ironic, since he is trying to say that about "other" philosophy.
"And objects"?
I'd taken it that the world in the Tractatus is all that is the case, not a collection of simples. That is, the difference between Russell's and Wittgenstein's logical atomism is that for Russell the simples are particulars (objects), while for Wittgenstein the simples are states of affairs. So Russell had taken the individuals in Frege's logic to be the basic building blocks, while Wittgenstein took stats of affairs as the building blocks. So whereas for Russell it was enough to list individuals, properties and logical connectives, for Wittgenstein the objects and their associated properties form a thought, and hence a picture; object and property are not to be considered independently.
But this is perhaps too esoteric for this thread.
Good to see your involvement.
Well, no. Language can say lots of things that are not facts. I don't have a dog, for example, but I can use "My dog has fleas" in my posts.
The facts are those propositions which happen to be true.
No, not in the text in question.
Quoting Sam26
Yes.
Quoting bongo fury
So facts are not true propositions? That "the dog has flees" is true, is not a fact?
In the text in question, indeed not. They are what true propositions picture.
Quoting Banno
The situation you there picture may be a fact. (For W in the text in question.) But the picture itself - the sentence - i.e. " 'the dog has fleas' is true" is merely a proposition. Just as is "the dog has fleas". (For W in the text in question.)
In everyday usage, sure. But W seems clear enough here that he means "combinations of things". As opposed to individual things, and as opposed to any sentences or pictures describing or depicting them. Truth-makers not truth-bearers.
That the dog has fleas is a fact.
"The dog has fleas" is a sentence.
That "The dog has fleas" is true is a fact.
"'The dog has fleas' is true" is a sentence.
That "'The dog has fleas' is true" is true is a fact.
""'The dog has fleas' is true" is true" is a sentence...
...and so on.
Sure.
"Combination of objects". Objects need not be (material) things. The exact use of "name" and "object" is contentious.
That's because "p" is true IFF p. They have the same truth value, and hence set out the same state of affairs.
Quoting Janus
And so a true proposition is a fact.
Logical space contains all possible propositions, true and false. The world is those propositions in logical space which are true; the word is all that is the case; the world is the facts. These three sentences say the same thing.
I don't think either you, nor would disagree with this.
Yes, for Wittgenstein, "The world is all that is the case (T. 1)," that's true. However, he breaks the fact into parts, viz., atomic facts, and atomic facts are broken into objects. "Objects [which are simples] make up the substance of the world (T. 2.021)." These simple objects, which he gives no examples of, are the simplest building blocks of atomic facts. The correlate is the proposition, the elementary proposition, and the name (the name is also a simple). "In an atomic fact objects fit into one another like the links of a chain (T. 2.03)."
Malcolm once asked Wittgenstein if he ever decided upon anything as an example of an object, but his reply was that it wasn't his job as a logician to decide whether this thing or that was a simple or complex. He said it was an empirical matter. Wittgenstein understood this problem when he was writing the Notebooks, "Our difficulty was that we kept on speaking of simple objects and were unable to mention a single one (p. 68 The Notebooks)." The way the proposition reached out to reality is through the name, which corresponded to the object. Wittgenstein was driven by this logic, i.e., there must be these simples in both elementary propositions (names) and atomic facts (objects). "Objects make up the substance of the world. That is why they cannot be composite (T. 2.021)." Later he thought this was just silly, but he stuck with his logic and created the Tractatus. Remember the traditional way philosophers thought of meaning, it's the object it denotes. Wittgenstein stuck with tradition and created the logic to support this view.
Russell completely misunderstood the Tractatus. In fact, most who read the Tractatus misunderstood it, most notably the Vienna Circle who thought that Wittgenstein held their views of the metaphysical.
I'm sure this won't help much, but maybe.
Quoting Banno
True propositions mirror or picture facts, they are not facts in themselves. This is explained in W. picture theory of meaning.
Why does "on certainty" receive little to no mention? I found it fascinating?
That is, the world is the totality of states of affairs, not of things. A state of affairs is a combination of things.
"States of affairs" and "things" both refer to physical reality. Wittgenstein also states:
Quoting Art48
The Ogden translation uses "atomic facts" where the Pears and McGuinness translation uses "states of affairs". "Atomic facts" aka "states of affairs" refers to physical reality.
Actually it does, yes, since reducing everything to computers including the human mind and the human being to a machine is a pretty good characterization of modern humanity.
I can't get past this
Does this suggest that any given case can be a world unto itself? Or that there are numerous/infinite worlds?
(Edit: the term "item" seems to come out of nowhere.)
That's true for my part, at least, I don't disagree with anything there.
They weren't cherry-picking past usage. Read your sentence again. They were re-purposing words, which are scribbles and utterances, for new usages, just like we re-purposed bumps to use as words as braille, and arm and hand movements as sign-language.
Negative Facts
I observe the world and notice "the apple is not red"
From Tractatus:
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)
2.1 We make ourselves pictures of facts
2.202 The picture represents a possible state of affairs in logical space
3 The logical picture of the facts is the thought
4.023 A proposition is a description of a fact
Given the proposition "the apple is not red", there are several possible states of affairs in logical space, for example, the apple is green, the apple is brown, the apple is yellow, etc.
Because the particular state of affairs, the apple is not red, obtains, we have the fact that the apple is not red.
As the apple is not red, the proposition "the apple is not red" is true.
Bertrand Russell argued that there must be negative facts, such as the apple is not red, meaning that negative propositions are true, such as "the apple is not red".
However, Wittgenstein rejected negative facts, and argued that negative propositions describe reality. However, the apple does have a colour, for example green. This means that, if negative propositions exist, the apple can be described as being in several states of affairs obtaining contemporaneously. For example, the apple is not yellow, the apple is not brown, the apple is not red, etc. For each of these obtaining states of affairs will be a fact.
IE, the consequence of Wittgenstein's negative proposition describing reality will be a single situation being describable by several obtaining contemporaneous states of affairs each with its own fact.
The point is that, in the terminology of the text in question,
That the dog has fleas is a fact and not a sentence.
"The dog has fleas" is a sentence and not a fact.
That "The dog has fleas" is true is a fact and not a sentence.
"'The dog has fleas' is true" is a sentence and not a fact.
That "'The dog has fleas' is true" is true is a fact and not a sentence.
""'The dog has fleas' is true" is true" is a sentence...
Hence (but not otherwise),
Quoting bongo fury
Quoting Banno
Sure, but irrelevant thus far, for W in the text in question:
Quoting W
Quoting Sam26
Thanks Banno.
The first part is correct. The world is not a collection of simples. The second part, simples are states of affairs, is incorrect. It is the relation of objects that determine a state of affairs. Simple objects contain within themselves the possibilities of combination. It is by combination that facts are produced.
Quoting Banno
A state of affairs is the configuration of the building blocks, that is, at its most elemental state the simple objects, which combine to form more complex states of affairs.
Quoting Banno
W's picture theory of meaning is that a particular one of the facts or structural features of a truth-bearer is isomorphic to (is a diagram of) its truth-making counterpart.
This means that the truth-bearer is of interest as, or as the location of, a fact, not just as a thing. E.g. as the fact that its "a" character is in a certain spatial relation on the page to a "b" character. (3.1432.) Not just as the individual thing, the written or printed sentence token, in which that fact occurs.
(Or, in this case, the relevant syntactic fact might be a certain spatial relation between the "dog" and "fleas" tokens.)
The subtlety of the distinction leads W to declare, with some emphasis,
Notice though that this is very far from equating a truth-bearing proposition (or even the propositional sign the fact of whose structure is crucial for the picturing relationship) with the truth-making fact that it thus pictures.
...
Yep, my mistake.. I meant something more like "True propositions are limited to either all the atomic facts (actual states of affairs) of the world" The actual world is what is limited to all facts about the world", or something like that. In other words, prepositions that do not contain all the facts (or possible facts) about the world, are not true in some way. But my point was that this seems like a truism.. What ARE the facts of the world is more important and he provides none of that. You may say that is not what he is after.. but I guess I am critiquing that he is not after much.. It is a system, but kind of a lame-duck "So what" system (to me at least). The system would be more interesting if he provided for an actual way of obtaining the facts.. Everything else mentioned is like common sense that is simply defined more rigorously.
By the way, I think people might overlook his radical metaphysics here.. He seems to think everything in "the world" (that is real) are objects arranged in various ways. He completely obliterates this in his Philosophical Investigations, and creates a sort of agnostic nominalism that do not obtain to "facts" or "objects" but rather "use" and "family resemblances". So to me, he goes from one lame-duck uninteresting theory to another. Perhaps I just don't have much patience for philosophy of language, but it just seems like common sense ways of looking at things (but with no examples in the Logico-Tractatus even, though more examples in demonstrating his theory in Philosophical Investigations). The minor differences he is trying to show between himself and Frege and Russell and the Vienna Circle (if those be some of the major people he is trying to convince), are just again, minor and middling to me- like an uninteresting internal family squabble. Yes I get the backlash about appeals to authority on his great importance and influence, but just how I see it.. Maybe that would change, but so far hasn't changed.
I think the biggest thing people get out of it is his idea of senselessness of the logic form by itself, and the idea of nonsense for things that have no referent. For anyone where references to an object in the world are important for maintaining some kind of "concreteness", this theory seems to have a kind of obviousness to it; it just doesn't seem that interesting. It's like when someone says a pretty commonly held thing in a way as if it was profound. I don't know.. I can't place what it is.
His idea that one cannot really say anything of "sense" when it comes to ethics, values, and aesthetics, is something that cannot be discussed, is to me, not radical but simply the formal version of the common man's idea of "Well, that's just your opinion, man".
Anyways, he doesn't really prove much with his picture theory or his nominal family resemblance theory. And I understand that he is not interested in trying to prove more than what he thinks are "limits" and the wrongness he thinks in trying to do any real metaphysics or ethical expressions when using language to explain them.. But that just makes me think he is saying blah about blah. It's like a piece of computer code falling in love with its own limitation as simply a function that rearranges the binary code in such a way. This truly is the most uninteresting of uninteresting minutia.. and goes back to what I said about @Xtrix comment when I said:
Quoting schopenhauer1
The emphasis that agency is not given is what I understood by the separation. As a theory of language, do we learn it as starting with units or are they resolved into focus over time?
I figure it is a fair question that requires it being asked for its own sake, if you will.
Sure, objects are simples. But...
The question here is on of exegesis, not ontology.
What is the difference between Russell's and Wittgenstein's logical atomism?
For Russell, the atoms are objects and predicates, and logical operators, a direct rendering of Frege's syntax.
For Wittgenstein, the atoms are relations between objects.
Otherwise, what is the point of 3.1432, which features so prominently in Russell's Introduction?
Quoting Banno
The question this seems to beg is whether there any relation-less predicates, and whether relations are any different than logical operations. Of course logical operations are not logical operators, but the connection there would seem to tie in to the idea that facts are both states of affairs and the true propositions that represent those states of affairs.
:yawn:
:wink: It should be clear that anything said here will be contentious. Speaking vaguely, the answer must be "yes", but the picture theory intervenes here. It's more that for a sentence to have a sense (meaning) is for it to have a truth-value. "The logical structure of the picture, whether in thought or in language, is isomorphic with the logical structure of the state of affairs which it pictures."
So a sentence like, 'Jesus died for our sins' is presumably a sentence with no truth value.
There's a world, and a picture of the world set out by a collection of propositions. A proposition in the set can be reduced, by logical analysis, to a point where it cannot be further analysed. At this point one will have a perfect logical language that sets out how things are by setting out the relationships between objects.
Is that a correspondence theory of truth? Yes.
Yes.
Well, it might be better to say that it does not even have the capacity to have a truth value - it cannot have a sense. It doesn't say anything.
Such things are not to be said, but shown. The error of the logical positivists was to think that such nonsense utterances were hence devalued; but for Wittgenstein they were the very way one lives one's life, and so of the greatest value; but to be treated in silence and shown by what one does.
This is an aspect of his philosophy that remains constant into the Investigations.
whereas th idea of simples being treated in other posts does not survive into his later work.
(This is part of what @schopenhauer1 has misunderstood, as he posts at length about how uninteresting this stuff is.)
That's a tantalizing notion. What do you think lies at the heart of the distinction between the logical positivist's approach and Wittgenstein's? 'Shown by what one does' reminds me of virtue ethics.
How's that?
Quoting Janus
I think that's the point I made in regard to the OP.
Quoting Sam26
Sam's clearer rendering may help. Perhaps, that the dog has fleas is a fact, that "the dog has fleas" is true is a picture of that fact. I'd perhaps been reading too much Davidson into the Tractatus.
It kind of torpedoes the whole idea of philosophy as dialectic, doesn't it?
There are sometimes comparisons made between Wittgenstein and Zen Buddhism, particularly Wittgenstein's metaphor of his work as a ladder which is discarded when it's served its purpose. But where the two differ is that Zen Buddhism is grounded in a spiritual and philosophical tradition, whereas Wittgenstein was situated in the halls of academia, where there was no similar milieu.
The net result is that, whilst it's all well and good to gesture towards 'action not words', Wittgenstein often becomes a wet blanket to throw over the suggestion of anything whatever that is profound in philosophy.
Maybe that's why some of his immediate successors converted to Roman Catholicism.
Pretty much that the Logical Positivists took on the logical analysis of the Tractatus, using it as a scimitar to slash away vast areas of philosophical humbug, only to find that they had by that act rid themselves of what is most important - what to do.
So during the second war Wittgenstein left Cambridge to work as a hospital orderly.
Because of a love of wet blankets? They are adept at putting out fires.
Anscombe's conversion preceded her meeting Wittgenstein. Others were in the main already converts.
I was thinking along the lines of relations, insofar as they are actual and not merely conceptions, as logical operations ("logic" there pertaining to the logical possibility which constrains what relations can obtain), and the symbols via which we conceive them as logical operators. Again, the distinction between states of affairs and our representations of them.
As did I.
I surmise that the rejection of the Tractatus' simples, of logical atoms, sits behind On Certainty. The certainties in the Tractatus are tautologies.
Quoting Janus
Are you puzzling over what logical operators correspond to in states of affairs?
Not really. it seems to me that they correspond to actual (which I'm saying are also logical) relations.
I think it depends on how you conceive philosophy. I understand W mostly from secondary sources and a couple of courses at Uni; I've dipped into, but never systemically studied, or read cover to cover either the Tractatus or the PI. I have read On Certainty, but that was nearly 20 years ago. In any case, as I understand W, he doesn't at all denigrate religion or religious faith or ideas; his claim is that metaphysical knowledge is not possible, but that does not rule out metaphysical ideas, and their possible affective power. Such are often the inspirations for literature, music and works of art.
To my way of thinking this is similar to a part of Kant's project; to establish the limits of knowledge, although W would put it as establishing the limits of what can be said. It also bears similarity to Heidegger's destruction of "onto-theology", which I take to be a critique of the tendency to objectify, reify, ideas as real entities. Heidegger also, though, had great regard for poetry in particular. Whitehead's "fallacy of misplaced concreteness" also springs to mind.
It seems there are common threads in Post-Kantianism, Logical Positivism and phenomenology, and other modern philosophical streams; an odd one out being Hegel and his followers, insofar as they tried to reincorporate intellectual intuition and absolutize it in the dialectical movement of Spirit..
That's my take, for what it's worth; I acknowledge I could be way off, being no scholar, and I'm very happy to be corrected by anyone who knows the subject better than I do.
I know there is a difference, as you do, because Wittgenstein challenges both Russell and Frege's views. You're right, it's a matter of exegesis, and there is a lot of disagreement over the details. I know that Wittgenstein had a different view of logic, and a different view of propositions, but I'd have to do some reading to review the material. This goes into much more depth than my little mind is prepared to go right now. People are having a hard enough time just trying to understand what W. meant by object and name, among other things.
I think he moves from a correspondence to a coherence view in Investigations. However, all of these terms are like counting angels on a pin for me. I'll engage, but why.. I don't know. I guess this language game is just one I don't play very much :wink: so I'll give it a go. But I'll go ahead and do a neologism (but not a private language thing) and say it's like "fuzzy coherence". Words rely on the uses with other words and the contexts of the uses, but they can never be defined perfectly once the context is known. It is always rough boundaries, not rigid ones for definitions.
Did W know what he meant :lol: Maybe he built himself a nice private language :rofl:
Well, I don't think that right. But we might do better than exchange mere opinions. But your comments so far lead me to believe that you are, as kinder teachers are want to say of a recalcitrant child, , "unavailable for learning".
Indeed that is just your opinion. Show me the error of my ways.. I honestly don't care if it's coherence theory or not.. There was a "resemblance" there.. you can say something like coherence is the complete opposite of Wittgenstein because of X, Y, Z.. something with all propositions must be true or whatnot.. I was just throwing an idea out there that struck me at the time. Sometimes I play speed chess, so made a move to further that thought..
Anyways, besides things like language game, private language, family resemblances, etc. Is there any real content in Wittgenstein? Not really. He had an aversion to theory, so we really can't say he supported much other than language is imprecise and based on how words are used in a particular context. All of which by the way, are pretty common sensical.. It's like he was sucked into Logical positivism and then rejected it and found somehow this rejection as profound when most people are already there in their everyday thinking of language. It's like telling me shit that I already know. I gave you a much more elaborate version of what I thought above that you gave not much of a response to. Not agreeing with the profoundness of the conclusions shouldn't be grounds for hating on ole schopy.
My initial post:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/717045
Sam's post is in agreement with what I had posted prior to him.
Quoting Banno
The German is:
The Pears/McGuinness translation:
is more accurate. There is no term that in the German that corresponds to atomic facts. It is the Sachverhalten, the states of affairs, the facts that are relations between objects.
Quoting Banno
The statement that follows clarifies this:
'R' is not the name of the relation between 'a' and 'b'. What that relation is is determined by 'a' and 'b'. Simple objects contain within themselves the possibilities of their combinations.
Now I don't see what it is you are contending in this regard.
Did you get the chance to review Russell's comments in the introduction? What do you take to be the difference between Russel's and Witti's accounts?
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things
1.13 The facts in logical space are the world
1.2 The world divides into facts
2 What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts
2.01 - An atomic fact is a combination of objects (entities, things).
2.0121 - 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
2.021 - Objects form the substance of the world
Do external relations exist in a mind-independent world
Wittgenstein's "facts" depend on the reality of external relations in a mind-independent world. If external relations don't exist in a mind-independent world, neither can Wittgenstein's "facts".
The proposition "the tree is 3m tall" exists in the mind.
If external relations do exist, it could be a fact that there is a 3m tall tree existing in a mind-independent world, thereby allowing the expression "the tree is 3m tall" is true iff the tree is 3m tall.
If external relations don't exist, the proposition "3m tall tree" still exists in the mind, as well as the thought that the tree is 3m tall. The expression "the 3m tall tree" is true iff the tree is 3m tall is then analytic rather than synthetic.
I have never come across a persuasive argument that external relations do ontologically exist in a mind-independent world, and am persuaded, in particular, by F H Bradley's regress argument against external relations.
IE, for me, the main argument against Wittgenstein's theory of "facts" is the fact that they cannot exist in a mind-independent world in which external relations don't exist.
Did he specify or imply mind independence?
I don't think relations "reside" somewhere. They're properties, aren't they? The apple's property of redness doesn't have a location. If the apple is red, that's a fact. It's a true proposition. It's an abstract object.
Abstract objects are not residents of time and space. They don't move or age.
"Atomic facts" and "atomic propositions" are Russell's terminology. Wittgenstein did not use this terminology. He refers to "elementary propositions" "Elementarsätze". An elementary proposition is a combination of simple or elemental names.
Wittgenstein never names the names in elementary propositions. They are assumed a priori. Further, although he states the form of elementary propositions he never identifies an elementary proposition. 'a' stands in relation to 'b', but without identifying 'a' and 'b' we cannot say what the relation is between names or elementary objects.
And yet:
Quoting Banno
In his introduction Russell says:
Socrates is not an uncompounded fact. 'Socrates' is not the name of a simple or elemental object and cannot be part of an elementary proposition. Russell's atomism maintains no such distinction between Wittgenstein's elementary propositions about unnamed names of simples and propositions about complex things such as Socrates.
Wittgenstein distinguishes between facts and propositions which are representations of facts.
Quoting RussellA
The proposition, a statement about the height of the tree is true if and only if the tree is 3m tall. There is no measure 3m tall in a "mind independent world', but the height of the tree is not dependent on our measuring it. It may, for example, block the sunlight from trees that are not as tall. The statement "the tree is 3m tall" depends on the use of a standard of measurement, which is not mind independent, and what is measured, the tree, which is as it is independent of the mind.
You might argue that there are no trees or anything else independent of the mind. Certainly there no propositions independent of the mind, but whether this tree blocks the sunlight from shorter trees is not dependent on the mind.
Did he really? That's odd.
Although a picture, that is, a representation or proposition is itself a fact, he makes a distinction between the representation and what is represented. A fact, the existence of a state of affairs shares the logical structure that enables propositions about a state of affairs, but the state of affairs depicted is not the same fact as the depiction.
Pictures are not the reality, the facts, they represent. There are false picture. They do not correctly represent the facts.
A proposition is not generally considered to be a representation. I'm glad to see that he didn't use that word.
It is a common mistake to fail to see when a philosopher, and not just Wittgenstein, is using terms in a unique way.
That causes a lot of confusion.
Why they do this is an interesting question. To begin to answer it requires looking at specific examples, but this does not yield a single answer that applies to all cases. In some cases it has more to do with language than with deliberate intention. The meaning of words change over time and pick up meanings that were not in use at the time of writing. But I think that in other cases it is deliberate. A philosopher may have a unique way of thinking that is reflected in a unique use of terms. There may also be a rhetorical intention. Begin with what seems familiar. I don't think we should disregard the possibility that the reader is being deliberately misled. Nietzsche, with his disdain for "the idle reader" comes to mind, or something is being hidden from the reader. Wittgenstein is aware of the need for this:
Interesting post, a different direction. For exegetic purposes, Russell, and hence Wittgenstein, where reacting against Bradley. I think you may have hit on the core problem of the Tractatus, but coming at it, as it where, from behind. I suggest the solution is found, again, in Philosophical Investigations §201, that there is a way of understanding a rule that is not found in expressing or analysing the rule but in implementing it, in the doing, in the use.
But there is a lot of material between Bradley's argument and the Investigations.
2.0121 is worth looking at, too, especially in reply to @Fooloso4. In the Tractatus, objects are only understood in terms of their relations to each other; we talk about, and hence understand, objects only indirectly via their relations. Fooloso4 seems to disagree with this, but that runs against the text of the Tractatus.
Maybe I need more coffee.
@Fooloso4. This sounds incredibly arrogant. :joke:
Do you (agreeing with W) mean,
Quoting Fooloso4
?
And then do you (agreeing with W) mean,
Quoting Fooloso4
? Although that doesn't fit with the following sentence, so do you (agreeing with W if you say so, not sure I follow) mean,
Quoting Fooloso4
?
The classic example is the fate of Socrates. As a result Plato and Aristotle had to be much more circumspect in order to protect themselves and their work, but also because philosophy posed a threat to the city. Certain things had to be hidden in their writings. For Descartes and Spinoza there was the example of what happened to Galileo. Descartes took as his own Ovid's motto: "He who lived well hid himself well". Spinoza's signet ring was engraved "caute". Wittgenstein witnessed how often his students misunderstood him. He thought it better to hide certain things to avoid misleading them. It was only those who are "like minded" who would have the key to unlock the rooms he kept hidden.
He used the term 'name' in a way that is different from the way we ordinarily use it. Names referred to the simple or elementary objects. What they are, he never said. The relation between these objects is not another object and do a relation is not a name. 'a' and 'b' are not names either but refer to any simple object. An elementary proposition is a picture of the relation between the objects. What that relation is is shown by the proposition.
He later abandoned this line of thought.
Yes, I disagree to the extent that if elementary objects are not identified, that is, known, we cannot say what their relations are. It is clear that they stand in relation to each other, but just what those relations are is left unsaid and cannot be said unless we know what the simple objects are.
This does run against the text of the Tractatus, but, as you know, Wittgenstein came to reject the text.
What I disagreed with is:
Quoting Banno
The simples are not states of affairs, they form states of affairs.
Wittgenstein is the Elon Musk of philosophy, pushing the iterative process in order to go fast. Accepting setbacks and failures, but driven by the aspirational goal of discovering new and important philosophic insights.
Relations are not of necessity properties
I can say "there is a relation between my pen and the Eiffel Tower", but this does not mean the relation between my pen and the Eiffel Tower is a property.
I can say "the apple has the property red". A property needs relations, but a property is not of necessity a relation.
Properties cannot exist without relations existing, but relations can exist without properties existing.
In a mind-independent world, what are properties ?
A Realist about Universals believes that Universals can be present at various distinct locations in space at the same time while particulars are restricted to one location at a time. For example, a tomato and a strawberry are two particulars that exemplify the universal redness.
A concrete thing, such as a rock, exists inside time and space, is causal and is contingent (in that it may or may not exist). An abstract thing exists outside time and space, is not causal and is necessary (in that mathematical truths are necessary)
As regards a mind-independent world, if relations don't exist, then neither do Universals. As I have never come across a persuasive argument that external relations do exist, my belief is that Universals don't exist.
As regards a mind-independent world, as I have never come across a persuasive argument that it is possible for things to exist outside of time and space, my belief is that Abstracts don't exist.
Terminology
In the mind is the proposition "the apple is red" and the thought that the apple is red. In the world is the (believed) fact that the apple is red.
The proposition "the apple is red" both represents and corresponds with the thought that the apple is red, but is not isomorphic.
The thought in the mind that the apple is red corresponds to, is isomorphic with and represents the (believed) fact in the world that the apple is red.
2.18 What every picture, of whatever form, must have in common with reality in order to be able to represent it at allrightly or falselyis the logical form, that is, the form of reality.
Logical form includes representation, correspondence and isomorphism.
The expression ("The apple is red" is true iff the apple is red) is about knowledge in the mind, not (believed) facts in the world.
Light hits an apple, most of the light is absorbed, and light of a wavelength of 700nm is reflected back to the observer. We perceive light of a wavelength of 700nm as red.
We say the apple has the property of redness, but what we mean is that the apple reflects red light. If we looked at the reflection of a person in a mirror, we would not say that the mirror is that person. Similarly, if we looked at the reflection of red light from an apple, we should not say that the apple is red. When we say the apple is red or the apple has the property redness, the expressions "the apple is red" and "the apple has the property of redness" are metaphors.
In the expression "The apple is red" is true iff the apple is red, the clause the apple is red does not exist as a (believed) fact in the world but only as a thought in the mind, in that the (believed) fact in the world is that the apple reflects light of 700nm. The expression links the proposition "the apple is red" with the thought that the apple is red, both only existing in the mind. The expression does not link the proposition "the apple is red" with the (believed) fact in the world that the apple reflects light of 700nm.
IE, the expression does not link the mind with a mind-independent world, but does link one part of the mind to another part of the mind, propositions to thoughts.
From 6.3 onwards he discusses Newtonian mechanics and physical laws, and includes in 6.373: "The world is independent of my will."
I don't think Newton is necessarily incompatible with some types of idealism.
Quoting RussellA
If the world is an abstract object, it would be independent of my will and mind, but still not a physical thing.
Ok. And you prefer single inverted commas, but the reader infers, from your use of the word "term", that you use these single marks as quote marks. We aren't sure why you decline to clarify with doubles, when invited, but never mind.
Quoting Fooloso4
If you mean, names were for W those symbols that referred to simple or elementary objects, that doesn't sound any different to ordinary usage of "name" in logic.
Quoting Fooloso4
Also standard. Interesting, of course, if W is keen to be asked the further question.
Quoting Fooloso4
Do you mean,
Quoting Fooloso4
? Or,
Quoting Fooloso4
? Or both?
Quoting Fooloso4
Do you mean,
Quoting Fooloso4
... any two particular names, according to context?
Or do you mean, "a" and "b" are two particular symbols with no fixed denotation?
Or something else?
A relation is an attribution to multiple objects. A property is attributed to one object. Relations and properties are kindred things, but not exactly the same. A property can be a "limiting case" of a relation per the SEP article on properties. In other words, if your pen is to the left of the Eiffel Tower, this is a property of your pen. It implies a property of the Eiffel Tower (that it's to the right of your pen) and what we're doing is working within a relation.
Relations, like properties, are constituents of propositions. The ontology should just follow whatever you think of propositions. Do you agree?
Wittgenstein wrote 6.373 The world is independent of my will.
It is said that an abstract object such as a number exists outside of time and space and is not a physical thing, whereas a concrete object such as a tree exists in time and space and is a physical thing.
Realism
Within Realism, the world may be independent of my will and mind-independent.
Idealism
There are different types of Idealism.
For example, in Berkeley Idealism, there is a world of time, space and trees, not physical, and which only exists in the mind, and continues to exist even when not observed as exists in the mind of god.
Berkeley's world is not an abstract world. Berkeley rejected the concept of an abstract. While he admits that he can abstract, for instance, the smell of a rose without thinking of the rose itself, Berkeley wants to maintain that it is impossible to conceive "any sensible thing or object distinct from the sensation or perception of it".
Within Berkeley's Idealism the world may be independent of my will yet not mind-independent.
Was Wittgenstein an Idealist or a Realist
IE, within both Realism and Idealism, the world can be independent of my will. It depends on Wittgenstein's approach to Idealism and Realism.
For example, there is an article elaborating on Wittgensteins anti-sceptical ideas, and based on On Certainty argues for his refutation of Idealism.
Yet there is another article that argues Wittgenstein was neither a Realist nor an Antirealist.
It seems that Wittgenstein conceived philosophy to be an activity rather than a belief.
There are different sorts of anti-realism. Ontological anti-realists reject the debate regarding idealism and physicalism as valuable or resolvable. Maybe we would classify Wittgenstein as an ontological anti-realist.
https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/punctuation/rules-for-using-single-quotation-marks.html
Quoting bongo fury
In general, logic uses proper names. Wittgenstein specifies how he is using the term in the Tractatus:
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting bongo fury
The parenthetical remark does not appear in what is quoted. Square brackets [ ] should be used. They should also be used when adding words to a quote: [sign] objects. Wittgenstein distinguishes between a sign and an object. There are no "sign objects".
A relation cannot be named because a relation is not a object. A relation can, however, be given a sign 'R'.
Quoting bongo fury
The full sentence is:
Quoting Fooloso4
'a' and 'b' are variables.
Sure, but also they can be 'scare' quotes:
Quoting Fooloso4
So in a thread about distinguishing word from object, requests for clarification might be expected.
Quoting Fooloso4
Haha, fair do's.
Quoting Fooloso4
But there are sign-objects by other names, e.g. "the picture's elements", "a propositional sign [...] composed of spatial objects", "elements of the propositional sign", "simple signs", etc.
Quoting Fooloso4
I expect this could be a right reading. But I'd like to know whether this means, for you or for W, that
Quoting bongo fury
As I understand it, as they are used here those symbols denote any two elemental objects. There may be conventions that I am not aware of, but I assume 'x' and 'y' or something else could have been used instea.
My turn to ask a question: do bongos infuriate you or do you play the bongos furiously or something else?
I wish... I had a pair of bongos.
Quoting Fooloso4
Any two, or any two that are related in the fashion specified (by "R")?
What I am after is the difference between the logical atomism of Russell and the logical atomism of Wittgenstein.
Again, I had understood the for Russell, at least in Principles of Mathematics, the indivisibles were certain individuals and properties. These were given names and predicates, and then a logical edifice built on those.
I had understood that for Wittgenstein, the basic logical unit was the relation, aRb, and that a and b could be understood only in terms of their relations, and so rather than building from a and b and their predicates, Wittgenstein built the logical edifice from aRb.
However, on consideration, the theory of descriptions in On Denoting is much closer to Wittgenstein's system. Also, Moore and Russell's objected to Bradley's argument that the notion of relations between individuals led to a vicious regression () on the grounds that Bradley had assumed that all propositions were of subject-predicate form - Bradley was making use of Aristotelian logic rather than the new-fangled logic of Frege.
Hence my understanding of Russell's position was wrong; Russell's view must be much closer to Wittgenstein's than I had supposed.
So the difference between the logical atomism of Russell and the logical atomism of Wittgenstein is not as I had supposed, but in the way they understand the relations that are for both of them, central to the construction of the logical edifice.
So thank you for your part in forcing me to reconsider Russell's views. But now I have to reconcile this rejection of idealism with Kripke's undermining of the theory of descriptions. This might explain how Kripke could entertain antirealism.
It may be worth pointing out again that this is an exercise in exegesis, since it seems to me that Davidson's use of T-sentences shows that a true proposition is a fact. They have the very same truth conditions - what more could you want? And also that the later Wittgenstein showed how Bradley's regress argument fails because relations can be shown as well as expressed. This is a course explanation, but I think the detail will hold up. The end result is that the difference between idealism and realism consists in the selection between a bi-valued and a many-valued grammar, and hence the dissipation of that particular bifurcation in ontology.
What fun!
std::cout << "Hello World!";
return 0;
}
This is your view, and not exegetic. Ok.
Speaking exegetically, the theory of descriptions and the Tractatus both hold that the elementary objects are "identified" by their relations, and hence knowing what the simple object is consists in knowing their relations.
Are we now on the same page here?
I have not read enough Kripke or Davidson to say anything that would not demonstrate my ignorance.
On the table is a cup with on. handle. The realist and the idealist agree that "the cup has one handle" is true.
In the cupboard is another cup. The realist says "The cup has one handle" is true. The idealist says "the cup has one handle" does not have a truth value.
The difference between these two is their choice of grammar.
How do you explain the absence of even a single example of an elementary object or name or proposition? Or did he identify any elementary objects or their relations?
It depends on what one from an exegesis. Some may regard the fact that elementary objects, names, and propositions are assumed a priori is satisfactory for understanding the text, but others might think the inability to identify them a significant problem that calls the truth and meaning of the text into question. After all, he does say:
One can give an exegesis of the picture the text presents without raising the question of whether it is true or false, but if the exegesis includes the question of the truth of what is presented then it is not beside the point.
Someone else has finally come full circle to my original critique. Its this that is missing and makes it (at least on the face if it as far as I can see) not that interesting and lame duck, amongst other things.
There is a reality made of objects and their relation (bald assertion).
And we know Wittgenstein himself found this problematic, too, since it led to the discussion of simples in PI.
The idea in the Early Wittgenstein is that we recognise elementary objects when we see them. This turned to the idea that we choose whatever elementary objects we wish to treat as simples, in accord with what we are doing. See PI §48.
So refer to Kant's transcendentalism? What is a philosophy that has no account of itself and starts in the middle and then says, "This doesn't matter"? This one does, I know. But then your language game isn't the same one I'm playing when I ask "What is a philosophy that..". It just wants you to accept it and that to me is just assertion.
At the end of the day, it is simply an internal minor squabble between Witty and Russell (and Frege). I don't see it as a major theory. The aphoristic type prose also doesn't lend itself to clear interpretation. It's like the Nietzsche of analytic philosophy.
Quoting Banno
But this is the stuff of philosophy proper, not to be glossed over. His argument ONLY works if you believe the ontological framework. If anyone else just "started" and didn't explain why they started there, they would be called out. I don't see why he should get a pass.
I can predict a sort of response whereby you mention that he was demonstrating his own values whereby philosophy cannot speak of things that can't be pictured.. But BECAUSE it is the very basis for which the picture theory "hangs" (get what I did there).. it MUST be discussed otherwise, Witty garners himself right by way of never having to prove anything outside of what he himself is claiming. How convenient that works.. "I make a claim, but it would be 'nonsense' to refute its very basis". Again, real convenient.
But he does not state any elementary propositions either.
Quoting Banno
Which is a rejection of the ontology (objects), epistemology (analysis), and metaphysics (logical structure) of the Tractatus, as well as the idea that there is a final analysis.
Quoting Banno
This passage mentions Plato's Theaetetus, but does not make the connection explicit. The subject of the dialogue is knowledge.
He goes on to give an example:
Note that Socrates does not present this as his own view. See the first sentence. Words are not derived from the combination of letters of the alphabet. He goes on to show how problematic such an analysis is.
As you point out, what we treat as simple depends on what we are doing. In §60 he considers an analysis of a broom:
But if we are making or repairing brooms the broomstick and brush might be thought of as two things rather than one. The brush then might be regarded as one thing or a combination of bristles. At the atomic level (the choice of terms is deliberate) the broomstick, the brush, and the bristles are all composites. In the final analysis what serves as a final analysis depends on what we are doing. It may be, however, that there is no final analysis. An atom was once thought of as simple, indivisible, but we now know that what we call an atom is not an atom it its original sense. Whether or not there is something or things that are simple and indivisible remains an open question. It may be an a priori mythology.
Fuck no.
How many more times will you post to explain how uninteresting this all is? :wink:
There is a philosophical trap in explanation.
Look up a word in the dictionary to find its meaning. You get more words. Look up the meaning of those words. You get more words. Since the dictionary is finite, and since word is defined in terms of other words, the definitions must be circular. We do not get to the meaning of a word by setting out its definition using other words, because we would then never step outside that circularity. We can get to the meaning of words by using them.
Explaining a rule suffers a similar circularity. We can state the rule in ever more detail, finding ourselves in a circle or a regress. But there is a way of understanding a rule that is seen in implementing it, not in analysing it.
This is only superficially "starting in the middle".
And this is perhaps why Wittgenstein said he had entertained and exhausted what was interesting in schopenhauer.
That's it.
:lol:
Realism:
"The realist wishes to claim that apart from the mundane sort of empirical dependence of objects and their properties familiar to us from everyday life, there is no further (philosophically interesting) sense in which everyday objects and their properties can be said to be dependent on anyones linguistic practices, conceptual schemes, or whatever." --SEP
Wittgenstein wasn't a realist, then.
Fine and dandy, but now we are mixing up our language games. Are we going to explain early Witty by way of later Witty or are we going to take early Witty at face value when it was written?
In the Tractatus objects and their relations are independent of the mind. The logical structure that underlies language is also independent of the mind. Whether or not a proposition is true is determined by comparing it with reality. But:
Ok, I wanted to make sure I was playing by the rules of this language game.
Quoting Banno
So in Tractatus, Witt explains (pretty commonsensically) that true propositions about the world are ones where only facts of the world are stated. Facts are actual states of affairs of objects and their relations to other objects. If you want to make a picayunish point about how I'm using facts and states of affairs, be my guest, but now we are getting to pedantic-ville and not my point. My point is, behind all of these Zarathustrian-stated assumptions is a metaphysics of the world as objects. It is this claim that I am saying that reveals something about his philosophical conception. The Tractatus falls apart if the world is not objects and their relations. Atomic facts are simply "turtles all the way down", as what is truly being pictured is nowhere to be found (empty set, error, not even on the scene). Why? Because to prove this claim, something other than mere stating of asserted propositions must be accomplished (which is all he is doing).
So thus far we have this as what is the case with Tractatus:
1. Witty is making propositions.
2. His propositions rely on claims outside of the propositions (objects- presumably somewhere in space and time).
2a, Therefore, his claim (of objects) must be demonstrated beyond referencing the mere propositions themselves that entail the very claim being posited.
3. A claim that is beyond the propositions that entail them must be demonstrated.
3a. What counts as being demonstrated can be a number of things including scientific explanation through experimentation or results of empirical studies, arguments that show X, Y, Z about a feature of reality that cannot be disproven easily, etc. etc.
3b. Witty provides none of these for the basis of his propositions (objects).
3c. Therefore, Witty fails to prove the very claims that are the basis of his propositions. He has not done the legwork for a foundation of his claims that are necessary because of 2- his very propositions rely on claims outside of the propositions.
How does this work then? I compare a proposition to the state of a world that is limited by my language.
This actually sounds like empirical idealism. It's not Berkeley, but it's similar. And this is indeed a kind of realism (per the SEP article on idealism).
How would logic pervade the world? Because it pervades language, it pervades the world?
This is heavily idealistic, isn't it?
For a Direct Realist and Idealist, the ontology of the external world would follow from their propositions. For the Indirect Realist, it wouldn't.
What in the world are objects, properties and relations
In my mind, I could have thoughts about things and thoughts about propositions. For example, I could name the object comprising my pen and the Eiffel Tower a "peffel". The "peffel" has the property of being extended in space, with the pen at one end and the Eiffel Tower at the other. The proposition "the peffel is north of Lyon" describes a relation.
The question is, is there an external world, and if there is, do these objects exist in it. Assuming there is an external world, an important question would be, do relations exist within it. Because, if relations don't exist in the external world, then neither do properties, and neither do objects such as peffels, Eiffel Towers, trees, apples and tables.
Wittgenstein
1 The world is everything that is the case.
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things
2.01 An atomic fact is a combination of objects (entities, things)
4.123 A property is internal if it is unthinkable that the object does not possess it
As regards Wittgenstein's Tractatus, the word "world" can be read as being either inside or outside the mind of the observer. As Wittgenstein states that the world is everything that is the case as a fact, as knowledge, and not a justified belief, and as our only knowledge is within the mind, I read Wittgenstein's world as also being in the mind of the observer.
The Tractatus therefore does not address the question of whether relations exist outside the mind. For Wittgenstein, "the peffel is north of Lyon" is a proposition in the mind with the same logical form as the fact in a world existing in the mind that the peffel is north of Lyon.
Bertrand Russell
As regards Bertrand Russell, I read Russell as a believer in Realism, a believer in the existence of a world outside the observer's mind, in the existence of a mind-independent world and where relations do exist. Therefore, his thoughts on relations in the world are relevant to the current topic. For Russell, atomic facts exist in a world independent of minds, and where mathematical and logical truths such as 2 + 2 = 4 - must be unconditionally true. For Russell "the peffel is north of Lyon" is an atomic proposition in the mind that corresponds with the atomic fact in the world that the peffel is north of Lyon.
Internal and external relations
As regards an internal relation, a given property, such as being a house, entails another property, such as being a place for living. As regards an external relation, the property being a house is external to the property being a mode of transport
FH Bradley
Famously, Bradley brought a vicious regress argument against external relations. In his original version of 1893, Bradley presented a dilemma to show that external relations are unintelligible: either a relation R is nothing to the things a and b it relates, in which case it cannot relate them. Or, it is something to them, in which case R must be related to them.
Bertrand Russell's counter-argument
However, in the journal Mind 1910-1911, Bertrand Russell argued against Bradley's Regress Argument, rejecting internal relations in favour of external relations. He argued that what distinguishes a complex from a mere aggregate is that relation in a unified complex relates whereas a relation in an aggregate does not relate, and is just a member of the aggregate.
Bradley's response
Bradley found Russell's reply unsatisfactory, asking Russell to elaborate further of the difference between an aggregate of entities and a unity of those entities. However, Russell did not feel that there was anything more to be said in that the difference between relating and non-relating relations is a primitive which cannot be further explained.
Bertrand Russell's The Problems of Philosophy 1912
Russell wrote: "Consider such a proposition as "Edinburgh is north London." Here we have a relation between two places, and it seems plain that the relation subsists independently of our knowledge of it. When we come to know that Edinburgh is north of London, we come to know something which has to do only with Edinburgh and London: we do not cause the truth of the proposition by coming to know it, on the contrary we merely apprehend a fact which was there before we knew it. This conclusion, however, is met by the difficulty that the relation "north of" does not seem to exist in the same sense in which Edinburgh and London exist. If we ask "Where and when does this relation exist?" the answer must be "Nowhere and nowhen." There is no place or time where we can find the relation "north of." It does not exist in Edinburgh any more than in London, for it relates the two and is neutral as between them. Nor can we say that it exists at any particular time. Now everything that can be apprehended by the senses or by introspection exists at some particular time. Hence the relation "north of" is radically different from such things. It is neither in space nor in time, neither material nor mental; yet it is something."
The problem with Russell's explanation
Russell wrote that the relation subsists rather than exists, is neither in space nor in time, neither material nor mental; yet it is something.
Subsist means to have timeless or abstract existence, as a number, relation, etc. To say that relations exist outside of time and space is no more an explanation that saying that they have magical powers.
Does Bradley's argument fail by logic
@Banno pointed out the belief that Bradley's argument fails because he used Aristotlean rather then Fregean logic. However, Bradley's debate with Russell in 1910 to 1911 was more than 30 years after Frege's breakthrough Begriffsschrift, eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete Formelsprache des reinen Denkens of 1879, which Bradley must have been aware of as it marked a turning point in the history of logic, using the ideas of functions and variables.
Aristotle's subject-predicate was limited by the propositions all S is P, all S is not P, some S is P and some S is not P, whilst Frege borrowed from Boole and de Morgan the idea that propositions can be considered as variables that can have the values true or false. It could be argued that Bradley's regress argument - either a relation R is nothing to the things a and b it relates, in which case it cannot relate them. Or, it is something to them, in which case R must be related to them - is more Fregian than Aristotlean.
Relations problem with limiting the number of possible objects
If relations exist, the "peffel" is a complex object being a composite of the simple objects "pen" and "Eiffel Tower". These simple objects become complex objects when their individual parts are related. But the pen is also legitimately in relation with the Empire States Building, another complex object that can be named. In fact, as the pen is in relation with every other object existing in the Universe, each of these complex objects may also be named. But in addition, each atom in the pen is also in relation with every other atom in the universe, each of these complex objects may also be named.
For example, given four objects A, B, C and D, there are 14 possible complex objects, each of which can be named, for example the complex object ABD. If relations exist, then starting with 4 real things, we end up with 14 real things.
The question for relations is, if relations exist, where did these 10 new things come from.
Relations problem with information
Given the pen, for example, where exactly is the information that the pen is in a relation with the Eiffel Tower, or the Empire States Building, or even a particular rock in the Andromeda Galaxy. Can any investigation of the pen ever reveal this information. Can any investigation of the space between the pen and a particular rock in the Andromeda Galaxy ever reveal that there is a pen at one end an a rock at the other. Can an investigation of the rock in the Andromeda Galaxy ever reveal this information.
The question for relations is where exactly is the relation, if it doesn't exist in either each thing it relates or the space between the things it relates.
Relations problem with time
Are relations instantaneous, or is time required for the establishment of a relation between two objects spatially separated, for example, the pen and the rock in the Andromeda Galaxy. If the relation is instantaneous, how does this fit in with our scientific knowledge to date that noting can travel faster than the speed of light. If the establishment of a relation between two objects is limited by the speed of light, by what mechanism does the information travel between the two objects.
Are there "relatons" still to be discovered by the Large Hadron Collider ?
Conclusion
There are practical issues if relations do exist outside the mind of an observer, and until answered, the belief that relations do exist cannot be fully justified.
The proposition "The cat is on the mat" is true if the cat is on the mat. The limits of my language play no role here. The problem Wittgenstein is pointing to does not occur in the world, but only at the limits of the world.
Quoting Tate
The structure of the world is logical. It is what makes language possible. That is, propositions about how things are in the world, the propositions of science. They are not dependent on a subject.
Quoting Tate
Note that he calls it "pure realism" (5.64) This continues:
The logical relationships within the world are not the only relationships. There is also a relationship between the I and the world, matters of ethics and aesthetics.
The limits refer to what can be said, propositions about things in the world, and what stands outside those limits. Statements about ethics and aesthetics are senseless in that they do not point to what what is the case. They are not statements of fact. But this does not mean that they are meaningless in the sense of having no significance for us.
What problem?
Quoting Fooloso4
Berkeley's idealism is a kind is realism. The SEP calls it ontological idealism to distinguish it from epistemological idealism.
Quoting Fooloso4
Not according to the quote you provided:
The problem you raised about limits:
Quoting Tate
Quoting Tate
The metaphysical subject is not found in the world. It is not a relation between things in the world, but, rather, between the self and "my world".
The standard perspective is that relations are attributions. As I said, they're similar to properties. Properties are predicates. The linking verb "to be" associates objects and properties, and this association gives rise to propositions.
Now you can go neutral monism and say that propositions are states of affairs, and that the world and language have some sort of sympathy with one another.
Or there are alternatives.
Ok. That doesn't comply with the quote you gave though. Plus for some reason you have brought up the T schema.
The use of the word "subject" and the way he uses the word "world" sounds like he's riffing on Schopenhauer, especially of the third book of WWR. That's why I'm intrigued to learn more. I've never had any interest in the Tractacus before. :grin:
Likewise saying that numbers exist outside of time and space (which just means they're not the kind of thing that ages or moves) doesn't explain anything. Nevertheless, number don't age, and are still independent of any particular mind.
How so? No single quote can capture the whole of the steps of his interrelated argument.
Quoting Tate
Do you mean this?
Quoting Fooloso4
To compare a proposition with reality means that reality is not a mental construct. The facts, what is the case, is not a matter of how we conceive things to be.
Ha! I called it!
"Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was first published in German in 1921 and then translatedby C.K. Ogden (and F. P. Ramsey)and published in English in 1922. It was later re-translated by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness. Coming out of Wittgensteins Notes on Logic (1913), Notes Dictated to G. E. Moore (1914), his Notebooks, written in 191416, and further correspondence with Russell, Moore, and Keynes, and showing Schopenhauerian and other cultural influences,". -- SEP on Wittgenstein
So your argument is, if the Tractatus is wrong, then it is wrong.
Sure.
As for your points 1-3, you are making exactly the point made in the tractatus, that names cannot be specified, that words and explanations must come to an end, that the ladder must be thrown away.
You are agreeing with Wittgenstein.
And this is the point Wittgenstein returns to in his discussion of rule-following in PI, around §201.
I'm not going to let you get away that easily :wink:.
Quoting Banno
The Tractatus is wrong if it fails to prove the very foundation it stands on. It never even set out to do that. It's more that he never proves himself right, as he skips the foundation, assumes it, and goes from there. And if you're going to rebut with the whole
Quoting schopenhauer1
I will answer again:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting Banno
Names cannot be specified? What do you mean about that? He specified that atomic facts are objects.
I make a claim:
Reality is the Will.
You say, "Prove it!"
I say, "Words can never get to what the foundation is, so don't worry about it. Let's discuss the conclusions that might arise if we take this very foundational claim as a basis.".
No, if that's the case, why should I take his claim as true? Why can't I see the world as really "Will and representation"? Why can't I believe the world is some sort of variety of processes that cannot be individually defined like a point in space-time?
I am not a fan of taking a really good post and ignoring most of its contents to then state somewhat vague things like:
Quoting Banno
Can you attach any of that to my actual points? If it's too much then so be it. A conversation has to have two willing participants otherwise one person is doing most of the legwork. I can see why you like Wittgenstein if that's the case :razz:
I'm not the best to advise. I use the obvious sources, such as the SEP and IEP, but I never tell anyone I also use Wikipedia.
Quoting Tate
SEP -Arthur Schopenhauer
Kant posited as knowledge a mind-independent object that is beyond all human experience. Schopenhauer concurs with his teacher Schulze that hypothesizing a thing-in-itself as the cause of our sensations cannot be legitimate knowledge. Schopenhauer therefore denies that our sensations have an external cause in the sense that we can know there is some epistemologically inaccessible object the thing-in-itself that exists independently of our sensations and is the cause of them.
A source that shall not be named - The World as Will and Representation
Schopenhauer argues that the world humans experience around them - the world of objects in space and time and related in causal waysexists solely as "representation" (Vorstellung) dependent on a cognizing subject, - not as a world that can be considered to exist in itself (i.e., independently of how it appears to the subject's mind). - One's knowledge of objects is thus knowledge of mere phenomena rather than things-in-themselves.
In the Tractatus, I don't believe that Wittgenstein's meaning of the term "world" is made explicit and remains ambiguous. The "world" may be read as something existing outside the mind, but I read it as something existing inside the mind. However, in a sense, whether Wittgenstein's world exists inside or outside the mind is not relevant to his main thesis that 2.12 "The picture is a model of reality". Once the concept that the picture is a model of reality has been made, the subsequent question of does reality exist inside or outside the mind can then be tackled.
In a sense, progress is most effective as an iterative process.
Quoting Tate
One could say that numbers weren't born one million years ago before there were minds to observe them. 2,000 years ago, Aristotle could not accept one as a number. Today, we have complex numbers, irrational numbers, etc. Numbers do change, do age.
What we know as numbers depend on their existence because of language, and humans have a language that is fundamentally the same between different peoples. Therefore, it is true that numbers are independent of any particular mind, but are not independent of all those minds sharing a fundamentally common language.
At first glance it looks like W is justifying correspondence theory by saying the world is linguistic in form. If the backdrop is Schopenhauerian, W's cosmology is pretty astonishing. I'm still looking for a good source. Gordon Baker?
Yet he mentions none of them, not even a See Russell. See Schopenhauer. See Kant for the foundations of what I mean by object. Objects are just assumed. Not even an IFF objects are the basis for the world..Why are you doing more work than him at his own argument?
He does not say that the world is linguistic in form. He says that the world is LOGICAL in form. It is this logical form that makes it possible for language to REPRESENT things in the world.
I'm going off the SEP article right now. I'm reading the text as well. I'm actually going to get a collection of essays on the multiple interpretations. I'm just curious because I picked up the Schopenhauerian backdrop just from a few sentences out of the Tractacus, so I'm curious to know what he has to say.
I mean, the SEP says the Tractacus was influenced by Schopenhauer. It also says that contemporary scholarship rejects the sharp divide between the Tractacus and the PI.
Interesting stuff.
He doesn't make any explicit connections, so again, why are you doing more legwork than himself? Schopenhauer's writing is clear and ties his thinking to all sorts of other sources explicitly, right there, in the text.
Does his failure to prove the assumption that there are elemental building blocks mean that it is wrong?
Quoting Fermilab
The larger problem is not the ontological assumptions but the linguistic ones, that is, the elemental names that name the elemental objects and combine to form propositions. More precisely, the ontological is the linguistic - what is said and thought about what is. When all is said and done, what stands outside the limits of what can be said, what shows itself experientially remains. The problems of life, the aesthetic and ethical.
What specifically are you talking about?
Quoting Fooloso4
It means it is a sort of lame-duck theory. If he is trying to explain something about the world, then he better be prepared to explain the very foundation of his edifice.
I'm going to also answer with what I said to Banno earlier:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Right, that's what he is trying to claim, but his claim rests on a sort of existence that takes for granted "objects" and with it allusions like "scientific conceptions", but none of that is discussed. It would be prone to attack (which I would probably do on it), but it is worse than that.. He doesn't even posit anything. He just starts with this assumptions and hopes you fall for it.. Again, I will point you back to here:
[quote="schopenhauer1;718317"]But this is the stuff of philosophy proper, not to be glossed over. His argument ONLY works if you believe the ontological framework. If anyone else just "started" and didn't explain why they started there, they would be called out. I don't see why he should get a pass.
No that's not how that works Witty.. You POSITED something of the WORLD (objects)...
This is how the SEP puts it:
"The logical structure of the picture, whether in thought or in language, is isomorphic with the logical structure of the state of affairs which it pictures."
The isomorphic part is what's astonishing.
We are in agreement regarding his a priori assumptions. The idea of something fundamental, however, is as old as western philosophy itself. It persists in modern science. That is not to say it is correct, but do we know it is incorrect? What are the alternatives?
Im not against the idea of something fundamental but rather that Witty isnt doing anything to defend his claim. Just assuming it with no further explanation. Objects, next. Isnt enough. Not in philosophy when making claims about the works.
Objects aren't fundamental in the Tractacus. States of affairs are. Any object has inherent properties of relatability: it can relate in logical ways to other objects.
Why are there objects and relations without justification? He is exempt because he said something about nonsense? See my above quote used several times.
There can be no states of affairs without the objects that combine to create those states of affairs:
Facts are truths about the world and abso-f**cking-lutely that's all there is to the world. I don't see anything fancy/weird going on! :chin:
In the absence of a cogent argument against simples does this need to be defended? Can simples be denied without also denying complexes?
So we can make ontological claims without defense in philosophy now? Yes, any ontological claim can be denied and not just taken as fact. That is what needs to be defended.
But the world is made of facts, as opposed to being made of objects.
Per the SEP:
"Starting with a seeming metaphysics, Wittgenstein sees the world as consisting of facts (1), rather than the traditional, atomistic conception of a world made up of objects."
The world is not linguistic in form.
Public language and private experience
When looking at the public objects such as post box, a sunset, a strawberry, a tomato, I notice that I have a common private subjective experience X.
Also, when looking at the same public objects, I notice that alongside them is the public word object "red".
I link my private subjective experience X with the public word object "red".
Similarly, someone else will link their private subjective experience Z with the public word object "red".
I can have a sensible discussion with the other person about the public word object "red", even though my private subjective experience X may be different to their private subjective experience Z.
The public word object "red" is part of a language common between me and someone else.
For Wittgenstein, Language doesn't represent reality, it mirrors it
4.121 Propositions cannot represent the logical form: this mirrors itself in the propositions. That which mirrors itself in language, language cannot represent. That which expresses itself in language, we cannot express by language. The propositions show the logical form of reality. They exhibit it.
For Wittgenstein, language contains irreducible "atomic propositions" that picture reality, mirror the world, because they both have the same structure, the same logical form. Language doesn't represent reality (it cannot be said), it mirrors it (it must be shown).
The term "logical form" itself was introduced by Bertrand Russell in 1914.
Argument = All humans are mortal - Socrates is human - therefore, Socrates is mortal.
Logical form of argument = All H are M - S is H - therefore, S is M.
Proposition = Socrates is mortal
Logical form = S is M
S represents Socrates
Private experiences and public objects
When looking at a public object such as a red postbox, I notice that I have the private subjective experience of X associated with the public object red and the private subjective experience of Y associated with the public object postbox.
When looking at the public object red, I notice alongside is the public word object "red", and when looking at the public object postbox, I notice alongside is the public word object "postbox".
My private subjective experiences X and Y show the logical form of reality, ie, the public objects red and postbox. My private subjective experiences X and Y are represented by the public word objects "red" and "postbox".
In other words, the proposition "the postbox is red" represents my private subjective experiences X and Y, and X and Y show the logical form of reality, ie, the public objects red and postbox
Conclusion
It is not as Wittgenstein said that propositions show the logical form of reality, rather propositions represent private subjective experiences, and it is these private subjective experiences that show the logical form of reality.
The problem, as I see it, is not the claim that there are simples but naming them. If we cannot name them we cannot give an analysis of elementary propositions. The following is then nonsense:
4.22 An elementary proposition consists of names. It is a nexus, a concatenation, of names.
What does he or you mean by we cannot name them. What is it mean to name in this game?
I would say rather, if we cannot demonstrate them, we cannot
Per the Tractacus, states of affairs are isomorphic with thoughts and propositions. Thought is linguistic for Wittgenstein.
A major challenge to correspondence is explaining how exactly a true proposition "corresponds" to reality.
Wittgenstein just lays it out there that the world corresponds to true propositions because they have the same form.
This is not Kant. There is no a priori knowledge. It's all just a world put together with the same logic that is the backbone of language.
Facts are composite. What is composite cannot be fundamental. The possibilities of objects occuring in states of affairs is in the objects themselves (2.0121)
Quoting Tate
You left out the next sentence:
It is not just a collection of objects, but the combination of objects that make up the facts. The possibility of such combinations is in the objects themselves. This was discussed above: Here
I didn't say otherwise. ?
He does not claim that we cannot name them, but he does not name them. He claims that they are the elements of elementary propositions, but without naming them there can be no elementary propositions.
Even the statement "There are objects" is nonsense.
:smirk:
Even the claim of objects unnamed is a claim to be justified. I keep having to repeat this quote:
Quoting schopenhauer1
You need to read the SEP article. Wittgenstein knew that his picture theory was literal nonsense, which means he knew it doesn't correspond to anything in the world.
You have to read the whole thing to get it. This book is a demonstration of philosophical nonsense. For a purpose.
You said:
Quoting Tate
States of affairs are not opposed to objects, they are objects in actual as opposed to possible states of affairs. The possibility to combine to form states of affairs is in the objects themselves. But not all possibilities are what is actually the case.
Your prior claim:
Quoting Tate
There are no states of affairs without objects. If the states of affairs are dependent then they cannot be fundamental.
Ok. But this debate seems inconsequential once you get the punchline.
It's all nonsense. :blush:
And what does this mean? Hint: do not assume it means what you think it does based on how it is used elsewhere.
Per the SEP:
"It becomes clear that the notions used by the Tractatusthe logical-philosophical notionsdo not belong to the world and hence cannot be used to express anything meaningful. Since language, thought, and the world, are all isomorphic, any attempt to say in logic (i.e., in language) this and this there is in the world, that there is not is doomed to be a failure, since it would mean that logic has got outside the limits of the world, i.e. of itself. That is to say, the Tractatus has gone over its own limits, and stands in danger of being nonsensical.
The solution to this tension is found in Wittgensteins final remarks,"
Wittgenstein emphasized that the ProTractacus contains the essence of the whole book: that when we try to define the limits of thought, we discover that we can't get there from here. Philosophy in general requires a vantage point that we don't have.
As he said, you probably need to have thought of this yourself prior to reading the Tractacus in order to get it.
I think it was his genuine theory and he didnt want to contradict himself so had to claim it as nonsense. I dont think he wrote it to show what nonsense looks like. There is a difference.
Wittgenstein uses the terms 'Sinn' in two different ways. What is "meaningful", as used in the SEP article, is what has a referent in the world. But what cannot be said is meaningful in the sense of being important or significant for us.
In a now famous letter to von Ficker he says:
Because one must first climb the ladder before throwing it away, the propositions should not simply be dismissed by someone who has not climbed the rungs. After all, he would not have written it if it is just to be disregarded by a novice reader.
Quoting Tate
In a remark to Drury:
I am reminded of something William Buckley once said:
I climbed it. I got it. It's not really that complicated.
That is the point, though.
When he says the logic of the world is sympathetic to the logic of language, your response should be: how does he know that?
So its one long troll?
I dont think he was that deliberate about it. I think its more like its all nonsense but this is the most accurate of nonsense (in other words not really nonsense like the others are nonsense).
Scholars have been debating the meaning of the text ever since it was published, but you read an article in the SEP and went from:
Quoting Tate
to declaring you have climbed the latter in a few hours.
To quote you:
Quoting Tate
You don't even know enough to know that you do not know. From the SEP article you are relying on:
The interpretive difficulties remain. But you have it all figured out.
Have you noticed the thread on the elephant in the room? Quoting Jackson
Jackson wrongly attributed the phrase to Aristotle, and seems to have misunderstood the use of the aphorism. But this quote on the notion of truth is apt to our discussion here. Or we might consider Ryle's example of a new student shown the faulty buildings, library, Chancellery and so on, asking "but where is the University?"
I suppose there is an attitude to philosophy, from at least Descartes, that insists on a derivation from some foundation, from first principles. I've tried to show you that this is problematic, using the examples of finding a meaning in the dictionary and following a rule. Each of these leads to a regress or circularity. This is the case with any search for an ultimate foundation - the foundation must itself rest on something. Since we do understand meaning and do follow rules, there must be a way to avoid the circularity or regress.
The Tractatus begins to show how this can be done.
Or consider:
Looking in the Tractatus for a proof of "the very foundation it stands on" is like looking for the university among the buildings, or demanding proof of the elephant that is immediately before you.
Sometimes folk don't even see the ladder.
That is correct. I read the text as well.
Not exactly. He's making fun of Schopenhauer in some respects: the stuff about the subject being the limit of the world.
You should be laughing at the end. It's awesome.
Of course for Wittgenstein, if we construe the grammar of sensation as object and designation, then the object - the "private subjective experience"-drops out or consideration.
I've not been able to get a clear idea of this argument. Can you set it out?
It seems to me to draw on an odd notion of relations.
Perhaps a new thread?
The "beetle" plays an important role in the language game
Wittgenstein in Tractatus proposed that thought is language
4 "The thought is the significant proposition".
If it is true as Wittgenstein proposes that thought is language, the thought of the private subjective experience the postbox is red is also the proposition "the postbox is red". In which case, the statement (propositions represent private subjective experiences, and it is these private subjective experiences that show the logical form of reality) is equivalent to the statement (propositions show the logical form of reality).
The question is, is Wittgenstein correct in proposing that thought is language.
Thought existed before language
There are two main theories as to how language evolved, either i) as an evolutionary adaptation or ii) a by-product of evolution and not a specific adaptation. As feathers were an evolutionary adaptation helping to keep the birds warm, once evolved, they could be used for flight. Thereby, a by-product of evolution rather than a specific adaptation.
Similarly for language, the development of language is relatively recent, between 30,000 and 1000,000 years ago. As the first animals emerged about 750 million years ago, this suggests that language is a by-product of evolution rather than an evolutionary adaptation.
It therefore seems sensible to propose that language is a by-product of evolution and uses pre-existing thoughts.
The relationship between propositions and thoughts
The proposition "the postbox is red" is linked to my thought that the postbox is red. But my private subjective thought of the colour red cannot be described in words to someone else, in that I cannot describe the private subjective experience of the colour red to someone born blind. My private subjective thought that it is unethical to kill spiders can be justified but not described to someone else.
All propositions are linked to thoughts, but not all thoughts are linked to propositions.
Representationalism and Isomorphism
In a computer, a picture of a house may be labelled "house", but it does not follow that the word "house" is isomorphic with the picture of the house. The word "house" represents the picture house. Similarly, in the mind, the word "red" is not isomorphic with our thought of red. The word "red" represents the thought red.
The word "red" represents the thought red, and the thought red is isomorphic with red in the world.
Description and acquaintance
The proposition "Rembrandt is a painter" is a description of Rembrandt as a painter. By seeing a picture of a Rembrandt painting, which is isomorphic with the person Rembrandt, we gain an acquaintance with Rembrandt. Similarly, the proposition "the postbox is red" only describes a state of affairs, and without giving us a picture of the state of affairs, it doesn't allow us to become acquainted with the red postbox.
Words describe whilst pictures give us acquaintance.
Conclusion
If Wittgenstein was correct that thought is language, the statement "language represents thoughts and thoughts are isomorphic with reality" can be reduced to "language is isomorphic with reality".
However. I have argued that whilst language may represent some thoughts, all thoughts are isomorphic with reality. In such a case, the expanded statement "language represents some thoughts and all thoughts are isomorphic with reality" cannot be reduced to "language is isomorphic with reality".
IE, Wittgenstein is incorrect in para 4.01 that "The proposition is a picture of reality", rather, "the proposition represents some thoughts, where all thoughts are isomorphic with reality".
A diagram may show the correspondence between language and thought.
Public language and private thoughts
Person A when observing the world has the private subjective experience X. They link their private subjective experience X with the public word object "red". Person B when observing the world has the private subjective experience Y. They link their private subjective experience Y with the public word object "red"
Persons A and B can sensibly discuss the public object red, even though Person A's subjective experience X may be different to Person B's subjective experience Y.
Wittgenstein's "world"
1. The world is everything that is the case
3.03 We cannot think anything unlogical, for otherwise we should have to think unlogically.
The Tractatus may be read that Wittgenstein's "world" exists in the mind of whoever is doing the thinking.
Wittgenstein's "beetle"
Para 293 Philosophical Investigations - Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box................... The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all.........for the box might even be empty.
The private subjective experience X is a fact, is knowledge, for person A, and the private subjective experience Y is a fact, is knowledge, for person B.
Without these facts, this knowledge of X and Y, Persons A and B would not be able to engage in any language game using the public word object "red".
"The postbox is red" is true iff the postbox is red
As X may or may not be the same as Y, it follows that for each observer there will be one truth, although each observer may have a different truth.
From the preface:
A thought is expressed in language. This does not mean that a thought is language. The expression, language, is not what is expressed, the thought.
I think so.
Quoting Tate
Critique of Pure Reason - A239 - "We can only cognize objects that we can, in principle, intuit. Consequently, we can only cognize objects in space and time, appearances. We cannot cognize things in themselves."
No system can function without some degree of an innate, a priori, pre-existing structure. I can see the colour red because I have the innate ability to see red. I cannot see the colour ultraviolet because I don't have the innate ability to see ultraviolet. A kettle functions as a kettle because it has a particular structure. A kettle cannot function as a toaster.
Without an innate, a priori, pre-existing ability to know something, we could never make sense of the world.
What do you make of this? Where does language enter the picture?
Right, but then why take it seriously? If he intended for you to take it seriously then his nonsense is supposed to be genuine nonsense. Since its ALL nonsense, why not go full hog and justify his ontology with a metaphysics akin to Kant or Schopenhauer? Why start by ASSUMING objects?
In other words, you (he) cannot squirm out of liability of defending his claim simply by calling it nonsense if you (he) wants to discuss it as if it has some truth-value. Otherwise, why discuss it? Are you saying, it's like discussing a fiction or poetry? If so, why aren't you analyzing other fiction poetry? Clearly you think there is something philosophically appealing about this that separates it out from other "fictions".
And I think I do understand the connection with Schopenhauer's understanding of the world as representation and if he was doing so, he should explicitly try to do so.. Schopenhauer himself did so with his ideas of the Fourfold Root of the Principles of Sufficient Reason.. basically laying out in detailed terms how it is that the world of phenomenon is rooted in this fourfold root and thus limited to that. I think that Witt should have been more explicit if he was doing that connection though, but instead he starts off with "objects" a kind of middling ontology with no basis other than if one looks up the vague connection with Russel's idea of objects.. which then presupposes more than is necessary on the reader in a philosophical work. Certainly, I don't think he thought of his own writings as a prank. He wanted it to be taken seriously and as philosophy, not as a shaggy dog writing piece that leads you nowhere.
I guess the metaphysics he presents would be compatible with Kant. It would be compatible with some kind of mystical view.
Does it matter though? In the context of the whole book?
Yes. I'm not sure why Wittgenstein bugs you. If you're a Schopenhauer/Tolstoy/Kierkegaard fan, it seems to me you'd at least be curious about what's going on with the Tractacus.
Haha, so eluding my whole point. If what he is writing is nonsense, then why not write nonsense on metaphysics.. It's all nonsense. If because it ties to "objects" is nonsense.. Then let's explain the metaphysics further. Why no reference to what he is trying to refer to here?
You can read it. If you don't like it, fine. If you think his message is mystical, fine. If you think he was a materialist, fine.
I'm going to turn my back on you and read poetry.
W's use of "thought" reminds me of how teachers in the UK tell 3rd-graders to recognise a complete sentence: as one that expresses "a complete thought". I.e. what it reminds me of is how to use but immediately get past the psychology, and to work with language and logic instead.
Like the teacher, he probably didn't mean "thoughts" to refer to identifiable brain events that correspond or fail to correspond to propositions. It was more a matter of putting the reference of symbols in the perfectly realistic context of our deliberate efforts to make sense of them.
Quoting RussellA
Does W say "acquaintance"? Or is this you critiquing him?
And do you not think that W claims that the proposition "Rembrandt is a painter" is isomorphic to the fact of Rembrandt being a painter?
This notion of a "private, subjective experience" permeates your writing.
It is not used in the Tractatus.
For the purposes of exegesis,
Quoting RussellA
Doesn't look right, since we have, as you note,
My bolding. It's not a link, but an equivalence.
So you are not here setting out the tractatus in its own terms, but imposing that view on the text. You are not showing an internal inconsistency, but saying it is incompatible with another, external view.
For my part I don't think the notion of a private, subjective proposition is coherent, because a proposition is a piece of language and language is inherently public.
But that's another argument. Language is not moving information from one head to another.
In summary, you have not argued for an internal inconsistency in the Tractatus. You have argued that the Tractatus is inconsistent with another picture of language and mind, one with which I would take issue.
So does your argument hold? has already provided one critique: any thought can be put into propositional form. We can extend this to a definition such that if it cannot be expressed as a proposition it does not count as a thought. It might be a sensation, a feeling, an intuition, but not yet a thought.
You say Quoting RussellA
But that is not correct. Red and the thought of red are different things. If red is the thought of red then when you and I talk about the red sunset you would be talking about your thought-of-red and I about my thought-of-red, and so quite literally we would not be talking about different things. But I put it to you that we would be talking about the very same sunset and hence that the word "red" has a public and not a private use.
Indeed the notion of "the thought of red" is unclear. The red of the sunset the post box and the sports car are not the same. Which of these is "the thought of red"? Isn't it rather that we simply use the same word for a variety of different things? We do this in other case, why should it not just be that we use the word in this way? Why, indeed, must there be a something to which "red" refers? Not all words are nouns.
You say Quoting RussellA But it is not clear here what "isomorphic" is doing here. It can't mean that all thoughts are true; "the post box is blue" is not isomorphic in that way with red post boxes. Yet the components, "is blue' and "the postbox", while they might be part of a thought, do not form a thought, a proposition, until brought together.
Would you care to address Bradley's regress? As i said, I do not understand the argument. Since you rely on it, perhaps you might explain it.
I wonder, are you following this conversation? Are you still reading the Tractatus?
I do get that you are mixing PI and Tractatus in your analysis, but is it appropriate to use later Witt here to give exegesis on Tractatus when he did not have that in mind yet when writing Tract? I am not saying you are wrong (that he did not mean that red was a thought), but he didn't mean yet that it was about the use of the word. That part is being smuggled in from later Witt.
I'm at pains to seperate the bits; Witti said that the PI ought be read in conjunction with the Tractatus; problems with the tractatus are addressed in the PI by the author of the tractatus; so, yes.
I guess I'm trying to understand this game. Are we trying to understand early Witt's ideas (good, bad, or ugly) QUA early Witt, or understand his ideas as they were critiqued by later Witt? I'm not sure, but I think Tate, Foolso4, and Bongo Fury are working on the game of early Witt qua early Witt.
He doesn't. Objects are demanded by the nature of language.
Yes. :wink:
.'The nature of his new philosophy is heralded as anti-systematic through and through, yet still conducive to genuine philosophical understanding of traditional problems. In more recent scholarship, this division has been questioned: some interpreters have claimed a certain unity between all stages of his thought, while others talk of a more nuanced division, adding stages such as the middle Wittgenstein and the post-later Wittgenstein.'. --SEP
So are you making his argument for him? Where is this stated? Oh, right see.. "Where one cannot speak one must be silent.."
It's implicitly (it seems to me) a take from Russell's conception of logical atomism where he at least explains it further as something deriving from sense data, and I guess linking it to a broader empirical tradition.
I don't mind that he says "objects".. There are plenty of philosophies that use "objects" as their starting point and metaphysics, it's just the fact that it is not explained as to why objects.. You seem to have to "read into it" which is prone to bias and error on the reader's part (if he even had a reason to use objects other than he got it from a prior philosopher he worked with like Russell).
Hence,
And facts are broken into states of affairs that are broken into objects and their relations to other objects.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Not an apt wording. Atomic facts are not constituted from things; rather things are constituted by their relations to each other.
That tree has leaves. I say this pointing to a tree that has leaves. Would you count this as an example of a true proposition because it mirrors a true state of affairs (state of affairs that obtains aka a fact)?
In this case the tree has leaves is the true state of affairs that the proposition is mirroring.
This seems to contradict 2.01 and 2.011.
From the Spark note:
This in contrast to Quoting schopenhauer1
Does that sentence count for a true state of affairs? The tree has leaves.
True, in that Wittgenstein is using the word "thought" - 4.116 "Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly". The problem with Wittgenstein's "thought" is that he has redefined it as a proposition, which is not common usage. I was trying to get the word back into ordinary language, reinforcing the distinction between the public and the private, between the subjective and the objective, and between the unthinking experience rather than cognitive intellect.
The public use of the word "red" and my private experience of the colour red. A subjective fact or truth would be that I like apples, whilst an objective subjective fact or truth would be that the apple is a fruit. My visceral rather than intellectual response.
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Quoting Banno
True, in that the Tractatus writes: 4 "A thought is a proposition with a sense", whilst I wrote " A thought is linked with a proposition". I am probably muddling up my exegesis with my critique.
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Quoting Banno
I agree that language can only evolve within a group of people, and so is inherently public.
However, if language isn't about moving information from my head into the Barista's head, then what is language for.
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Quoting Banno
This is a bit circular, along the lines of known unknowns.
As I can only communicate using language, I can only communicate thoughts that I can put into propositional form, in that I cannot communicate using language thoughts that I cannot put into propositional form.
So , it is true that any thought that can be put into propositional form can be put into propositional form.
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Quoting Banno
When I look at a red sunset, I am looking at a wavelength of 700nm. Inside my head, I may have the private subjective experience of a particular colour. No-one apart from myself will ever know what particular colour I am experiencing, it may, for example, be the colour green. Similarly for yourself, you may be experiencing the colour yellow.
We both publicly agree that the colour experienced by whoever observes it shall be named "red". The word "red" has a public and not a private use.
It is true that we may be both talking about the same thing, the "red" light emitted from the sunset, but we may not be thinking of the same thing. I may be thinking of the green sunset and you may be thinking of the yellow sunset.
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Quoting Banno
I can see different wavelengths and still have the feeling of seeing the same colour. For example, I can see a sunset with a wavelength of 650nm and say to you that it is red. I can see a postbox with a wavelength of 700nm and say to you that it is also red.
There are two aspects, the public aspect, where red is defined as a wavelength between 625 and 750nm, and the private aspect, the actual colour that I experience in my mind, which could be green for me and yellow for you.
As a noun, we can say that the sunset is red, and as an adjective, we can say that there is a red sunset.
We use the word "red" for a wavelength of 650nm, and we use the word "red" for a wavelength of 700nm. The wavelengths 650nm and 700nm are different, yet we use the same word "red".
Object A has the wavelength property of 650nm and the colour property of red. Object B has the wavelength property of 700nm and the colour property of red. Objects A and B have different wavelengths but the same colour. Objects A and B are not the same, in that their wavelength are different, and so in that sense are different objects.
However, the word "red" can refer to different objects, as long as they have the same property of redness. The word is referring to the property of the object, not the object which may have a set of properties.
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Quoting Banno
4 The thought is the significant proposition
4.023 A proposition is the description of a fact
2.0272 The configuration of the objects forms the atomic fact
4.25 - If the elementary proposition is true, the atomic fact exists; if it is false the atomic fact does not exist
For Wittgenstein, a thought is a proposition, a proposition is a description of a fact, and facts are combinations of objects. Wittgenstein within Tractatus is defining thought as a proposition, "the postbox is red".
However, in common usage, I can think of a thing, such as a postbox, independently of any proposition that it may be within.
Yes, one should be aware to separate the exegesis from the critique.
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Quoting Banno
I will try. That will be my next immediate project, though I will be hard pressed to clarify in a post a debate that started in 1893, involved Bertrand Russell and still continues.
I like Kyle Banicks' 12 minute video British Idealism with FH Bradley that sets the scene.
Wittgenstein wrote in his Notebooks 1914-16: "Now it is becoming clear why I thought that thinking and language were the same. For thinking is a kind of language."
His Tractatus was completed 1918.
Kant's belief was Scientific Realism rather than mysticism.
I wasn't saying Kant was a mystic. I was saying that the metaphysics Wittgenstein offers would be compatible with a lot of different ontologies. He's also interpreted as promoting mysticism.
The Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard connection makes that seem fairly likely.
But Schopenhauer didn't mind (actually most of his writing was about) going into the noumena/thing-in-itself (i.e. Will), the epistemological limitations of the phenomena, and the like. All things Witt avoids to be super cautious he's not violating his own theory.
Reading Schopenhauer left me pondering the limits of the intellect, at how some intellectual avenues seem to be dead ends. This is a theme I'm picking back up in the Tractacus.
What makes them dead ends? Circular reasoning may follow...
Whence the tree? Whence the leaves? Whence the verb "has"?
Clearly properties don't seem to exist on their own in Witt but as something kind of inhered in the object. Or so I read it.. So certain objects will bring possibilities that are inherent in that object, some of which get actualized. If we considered other objects and THEIR relations (to this object), then it would not be atomic but complex, and no longer be a simple.
The statement continues:
Thinking is a kind of language because it is a logical picture of the proposition. This kind of language, however, need not be a language of words.
The thought, the book is on the table, might occur as a picture in the mind. Without words. And can be expressed that way by a photograph or drawing.
The thought that the situation is tense or dangerous or comical can be expressed in music.
A picturial or musical language means that the claim that thinking is a kind of language is not the same as the claim that we think in words. Thinking is not silent speaking. A thought is not uttering something silently.
"Only propositions have sense; only in the nexus of a proposition does a name have meaning."
It's called the context principle. As opposed to Russell, who thought that private contact with an object gives its name a meaning, TLP 3.3 is saying that only in use does the name have meaning. Why? Because the name has to have a fixed use to have a fixed meaning.
This view is from the 1960s. In the 1980s, interpreters began to say that what fixes the use of a name is not language use, but rather the object itself. In the 1980s, prominent interpreters saw "uncritical realism" in the Tractacus, agreeing among themselves that Wittgenstein probably didn't understand what he was writing. :chin:
1960s:. mystical readings
1980s:. metaphysical readings, some insisting on realism
1990s: the "resolute reading", no mysticism, no metaphysics, no theory of meaning, no theory period, and nonsense means nonsense (as opposed to some technical jargon). The 1990s interpretation is the one I immediately assumed, and apparently the SEP pretty much does as well.
Is this nonsense? What does that mean? Is it not true that the world is all that is the case?
Toward the end of the Tractatus he says:
Is this nonsense? Is it nonsense to say that there are propositions of natural science? Is it nonsense to demonstrate to someone that he has failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his proposition? Does this mean that he has successfully given a meaning to these signs? If it is nonsense to say that philosophy has nothing to do with natural science, why does he say this? To what end?
Why do those who support a resolute reading spend so much time and effort reading, interpreting , and arguing over interpretations of Wittgenstein? What do the hope to gain from obsessing over nonsense?
And in the middle:
4.112
Is this nonsense? Does this mean that philosophy is a body or doctrine and/or not an activity?
He continues:
Is this a philosophical proposition? What about 1? Is this proposition not philosophical proposition? Certainly it is not a scientific proposition. If it is nonsense is it not true or can something be both true and nonsense?
Nonsense? Are there then questions that cannot be answered?
But:
Is it then false that the riddle does not exist? Does all this "nonsense" point to the fact that there are legitimate philosophical questions and problems?
This has often been put in the form of a question: Why is there something rather than nothing? Some ask this question is hopes of an answer, but others as an expression of wonder.
Is it nonsense that there are things that cannot be put into words? Nonsense that these things make themselves manifest? Nonsense that they are mystical?
Preface:
Is the whole sense of the book that it is nonsense? Is it nonsense to say that what we cannot talk about must be passed over is nonsense? If this proposition is nonsense, does this mean that what cannot be put into words should not be passed over in silence?
Who are you directing this question toward? Wittgenstein? Us? Yourself?
Those who support a resolute reading.
Oh. There's another interpretation after that. If I understand it correctly, it says that the Tractacus can be taken as a demonstration.
No one climbs a philosophical ladder thinking that it's nonsense. There is firmness to it to the extent that there's logic behind it.
It's only at a certain point that one glimpses the trajectory.
I get the resolute interpretation because my own first impression was that it's a joke. I'm moving on from that, though. I think I'm going to get McGinn's book.
In the Tractatus, a name is the thing it denotes. So one cannot say the meaning of a name. One can only show it, by pointing, or by using the name in a sentence.
The picture shows itself to be true when held up to the world. On cannot state how it is that the picture is true.
He removes the various ambiguities for his own purposes. Can't you be seen as forcing the "distinction between the public and the private", with which Wittgenstein was much to say? If our aim is exegesis, then the question os not how you use "thought", but how he uses it.
That a thought can be put into propositional form serves to keep the argument clear. Saying "I don't use it like that " has no bearing on the argument in the Tractatus.
Cheers. A point at which we meet.
Quoting RussellA
In this case, language is for ordering coffee. What information is transferred - a thought, a nod, a grunt, some moneys - is irrelevant. It's the caffein that counts.
Don't look to the information transferred, look to the use.
Yes. But not everything in one's mind is a thought, not everything can be put into proposition form.
Those things can be shown.
SO it would be mistaken to read Wittgenstein as here placing limits on what minds can do.
It's a troubling topic, it seems.
What you look at a sunset, you are emphatically not looking at a wavelength of light.
To do that would require some considerable laboratory equipment, and even then one could debate wether one is seeing a wavelength of light or some numbers on a screen.
Your eye is presumably being impacted by light of around 700nm, as well as other frequencies. But that is not seeing.
Further, you can see red when your eye is not being impacted by light of around 700nm, in various illusions or delusions.
Seeing red is not seeing light of around 700nm. After all, folk could see red long before they knew what frequency it is.
Now I do not think you will disagree with this. it's just me being overly pedantic, after all.
Quoting RussellA
What is it that is private here?
You and I both see the red Ferrari. You say you also have a "private subjective experience", and "No-one apart from myself will ever know what particular colour I am experiencing" - but that's not right. I know you are "experiencing red". You do not see a green Ferrari."...the actual colour that I experience in my mind, which could be green for me and yellow for you" is incoherent.
Why not just say that seeing a red Ferrari is a public experience?
Quoting RussellA
We use "red" as a noun, therefore there must be something to which "red" refers. A bit of reflection might convince you that this argument is invalid. "Santa clause" is a name, therefore Santa exists...
"But there must be something common to all the things that are red..." Well, yes - that they are called "red". Beyond that, the word garners any meaning it has from buying the green sports car rather than the red one, talking of the red sunset, not the pink one...the use to which it is put.
"But there is more to it than that" Of course there is. But nothing that can be said. It's shown. The private, subjective experience drops out in the process.
Do you think of a postbox without any proposition? Or do you imagine it, picture it, envisage it, dream it, project it...
What Wittgenstein is doing might simply be differentiating between these other, non-propositional mental activities, and having a thought. After all, can you put your imaginings, your pictures, your dreams, into word without giving them further thought?
Can you show them? But isn't that what Witti is saying?
My contribution is that so far as aI understand it, this seems an accurate account:
So I'm not so pleased with it.
How do you mean incoherent? Because of a homunculean regress? Or because inescapably private? Or somehow else?
Or is "incoherent" not the criticism? "Fantastical", maybe?
Quoting Banno
But does it distinguish, simply, between literal, declarative statements and other kinds of symbol use (words, music or pictures), as it does for Goodman?
Or does it, for W or you, have to do with the isomorphism business? (I often wonder.)
Quoting Banno
Is this a typo? If not, then oh dear.
The phrase "public experience" strikes me as an incoherent concept, at least in terms of subjective experiences.
Wittgenstein would probably say instead that the "private subjective experience" drops out of consideration as irrelevant; what is of grammatical relevance are only our appropriate/correct uses - or our behavioural responses to uses - of the word "red". If I order the Ferrari online, all that matters is that the one delivered to me is the same colour as the one shown in the picture you posted. It doesn't matter if the Ferrari seller and I (or anyone else) have a different "private subjective experience" wrt the colour in the picture; it only matters that we both have the same grammatical behaviour towards that colour and both call it "red". You do not know that I am "experiencing red" - at least not in the same way that you do. But our subjective experiences of seeing a colour needn't be the same in order to use colour words correctly anyway. Even a blind or colour-blind person can learn to use the word "red".
Yeah, so drop the "in terms of private experience"...
And that's the answer to .
Who has a public experience? Wouldnt that imply that everyone has the same experience?
2.0272 The configuration of the objects forms the atomic fact
4 The thought is the significant proposition
4.023 A proposition is the description of a fact
4.1252 Similarly the series of propositions "aRb"..............
Bertrand Russell - If we say Plato loves Socrates, the word loves which occurs between the word Plato and the word Socrates establishes a certain relation between these two words.............3.1432: We must not say, the complex sign aRb says that a stands in a certain relation R to b; but we must say, that a stands in a certain relation to b says that aRb
Agree, Wittgenstein is defining "thought" as where meaning resides. If I walked into a room and said "dog", I would be treated as eccentric. If I walked into the room and said "My dog has fleas", everyone would appreciate the meaning of what I had said.
My comment was very broad brush, so I wouldn't be surprised to have chapter and verse thrown against it. But the only line there that I can see addressing my comment is
Quoting RussellA
But I'm suggesting that, like the grade school teacher, W wants to talk in technical terms (worthy of a diagram) about the propositions and their reference, not so much about thoughts as such: as items in their own right.
Why wouldn't you think that we can't talk about subjective sensations? We do it all the time. Moreover, we understand, for example, what people are talking about when they describe a beautiful sunset. We also understand when someone tells us the orange juice is sweet, which describes their subjective experience. There is common agreement, generally, about our subjective experiences. Everything speaks in favor of people seeing the same colors, tasting the bitterness of dark chocolate, feeling the hardness of a table, etc. I don't see how this runs up against the limits of language, unless I've misunderstood your point. It's not as though the concept needs some inner thing to latch onto, it just a use that latches onto our "form of life." Our inner experiences get their life through the way we interact linguistically or conceptually.
I would say that everything speaks in favor of common inner experiences, and generally nothing against it. Moreover, isn't this how "we know" that are inner subjective experiences are the same. If they weren't the same experiences, I believe the conceptual public use would break down.
But he gives no examples of using simple names.
He struggles with this in the Notebooks 1914-16:
Epistemic twist on the usual, humdrum, senses & their extension based definition of reality. Knowledge is perhaps the only real stuff the world is made of. @Gnomon's information-based EnFormAction thesis come's to mind (the world as information - from head to toe in a manner of speaking).
I recall vaguely that Wittgenstein subscribed to the correspondence theory of truth. What conclusions follow? Hard to say, hard to say.
But as Wittgenstein is identifying thought as proposition, in talking about propositions, he is also talking about thoughts.
Music is a language is metaphorical - feelings and thoughts
We talk about the language of music, but this is a metaphor, in that music is like language, not that music is language. Music is like language in that there is a relationship between the individual parts.
When I hear a single note, this is not music. Music is the relationship between notes. We get meaning from the relationship between things. A single note has no meaning. There is only meaning in a combination of notes.
When I hear music, in the first instance, I have a feeling, which I may or may not think about. Feeling is an emotional state, whereas thinking requires judgement, reasoning and intellect.
Feeling is about a single thing, I feel pain when touching a hot radiator. It is the nature of thought that it is propositional. On perceiving the colour red, I cannot have the single thought "red". The thought must be about something, such as "this is red", "red is an attractive colour", etc. Feelings are singular, thoughts are propositional. Thinking is feeling plus a proposition.
In the first instance, music is feeling. We may think about these feelings, and in thinking about them, we express our thoughts in propositional form. Language is thoughts expressed in propositional form. It is not that the music is language, rather, our feelings about about the music may be expressed as thoughts in language.
In the TLP, language can be used to talk about the world. The world is whatever happens to be the case. If the proposition that I saw a red truck is true, then it's a picture of (an aspect) of the world. No problem.
We enter into nonsense anytime we ask about stuff that is not "in' this world, or that requires a vantage point beyond it. Asking whether there is such a thing as subjective experience is in that category.
Also, announcing that there is such a thing as subjective experience is nonsense.
Plus what I just said is nonsense.
This seems at odds with the rest of your post. If this is true, then I don't understand why you would also say:
Quoting Sam26
If our concepts do not need "some inner thing to latch onto", then why would our "conceptual public use" break down without "some inner thing to latch onto"? It need not be that:
Quoting Sam26
Because it's not as though these concepts (i.e. the same colours, bitterness, hardness) need some inner thing to latch onto.
I take Wittgenstein to be genuine in saying:
Loosely (indirectly, residually) of course, but he (like the grade school teacher) isn't heading towards your kind of diagram, in which thoughts or any other mental units combine or map as discrete units (in the manner of word or picture tokens). Is my point.
He's getting out of the head, into the language.
It doesn't latch onto the inner thing in terms of meaning, which isn't to deny that there is some relationship between the inner and the outer public manifestation. There is a correlation or relationship between our inner experiences and how we use the words, and this, it seems to me, would be severed, or would break down publicly. The disconnect would eventually show up in our uses of the concept.
I believe we do know with a high degree of certainty that people have the same inner experiences, which is based on the public use of the concepts. The assumption, which has no standing, as far as I can tell, is that we can't know, and this seems wrong to me. Maybe we don't know with absolute certainty, but we know, again, with a high degree certainty.
Not sure if that clears it up.
Broad has a rejectionist approach, challenging Bradley' scepticism about relations' ability to relate their relata. Broad argues that it is the job of relations to relate. But how exactly do relations relate. To simply say that it is the job of relations to relate is circular and unsatisfactory.
Relation is being used in two ways, Russell's Pluralism, whereby there is a relation existent in the world that is able to give a unity to separate entities, and Bradley's Monism, whereby the only relation between an aggregate of entities is in the mind.
A tree requires a relation between its trunk and branches. The Solar System requires a relation between the Sun and Earth. Relations exist universally within the Universe, such that there is a relation between a rock on Earth and a rock in Alpha Centauri.
What exactly are unifying relations. Are they abstract in nature, as some say that numbers are. It is easy to say that they exist outside of time and space, as it is easy to say that ghosts exist, but has such a claim ever been justified using reasoned argument. Bertrand Russell may describe relations as subsisting, but this goes back to having an abstract existence. Could it be similar to the Higgs boson, giving mass to matter. Are there fundamental particles named "relations" relating matter still to be discovered by the Large Hadron Collider.
For Broad to suggest that those sceptical of relations think of the relation between a rock on Earth and a rock on Alpha Centauri as a piece of string gluing them together is setting up a Straw Man argument, putting a ridiculous idea in the mind of their debating opponent and then quite sensibly demolishing it.
The existence of elementary particles and elementary forces is scientifically well established, and events in the Universe can sensibly be explained using them, whether the birth of Solar Systems or an apple falling under gravity to the Earth.
Gravitational forces between the apple and Earth are scientifically understood, and the behaviour of the system can be explained without the need for any unifying relation. The introduction of a unifying relation would result in an over-determination, ie, where a single-observed effect is determined by multiple causes, any one of which alone would be sufficient to account for the effect.
Given the choice between i) Broad's world in which relations exist but are neither needed nor explained and ii) Bradley's world where relations don't exist, it seems the more sensible to choose ii).
I could be persuaded otherwise if some scientific method was proposed whereby unifying relations could be located, measured and described. To say that they exist outside of time and space introduces mysticism and is an inadequate explanation.
There would be no public language if there were no private thoughts.
Username checks out.
I agree that you know that I am experiencing the public object emitting 700nm labelled "red"
You believe that I am experiencing in my mind the colour red, but you can never know, as it is not possible to know what is in someone else's mind.
As you can never know, I may in fact be experiencing the colour green, unlikely, but possible.
I could ask.
Interesting theory.
I think it more accurate to say that the language of music is like a language of words. Both are languages but not the same language.
In the Notebooks he says:
What does he say that leads you to the conclusion that this "certain sense" is a metaphorical sense? Or is this just your assumption?
Music has a grammar, a logical structure.
In several places Wittgenstein refers to the language of music.
The right tempo is also important to understanding Wittgenstein's sentences:
Quoting RussellA
Understanding a musical theme is not simply having a feeling.
The broader issue, however, is the relation between thought and language. The earlier examples cited, such as this from the Tractatus:
show that propositions need not be linguist, that is, a proposition need not be thought or expressed in terms of words.
If it "doesn't latch onto the inner thing in terms of meaning", then why would the disconnect "eventually show up in our uses of the concept". Meaning is use.
My original response to your previous post, before I edited it, was going to be that you seem to be arguing that Wittgenstein's beetle is both necessary and unnecessary to language use. Wittgenstein tells us that it drops out of consideration as irrelevant; that it cancels out, whatever it is; that the box might even be empty; and that the thing in the box doesn't belong to the language-game at all.
In your favour, I note that Wittgenstein states:
However, having sensations might be considered as not necessarily a part of language use, and Wittgenstein spends much more of the book telling us how language use is not a private affair. For example:
It appears to me that Wittgenstein is saying that language takes its meaning entirely from behaviour, from use, and only from a third-person, external standpoint. Pain and other sensations do not refer directly to the private feelings but to the public expression of those feelings; to how you (and others) act when experiencing those sensations. Therefore, that is what a sensation is; what the word "sensation" can only refer to: its public expression.
And if that is the case - if language is entirely behavioural/external - then we cannot talk about sensations in terms of private subjective experiences or qualia or any of that. This is where we run up against the limits of language, and where Daniel Dennett is correct that qualia cannot possibly be private, ineffable, intrinsic and immediately apprehensible by consciousness. On the other hand, it seems as though we can talk about sensations and feelings directly in terms of the private subjective experiences and the sensations themselves, and not only in terms of their expression, because that is what we are doing now - or at least trying to do! In that case, Wittgenstein would be wrong about language or grammar being entirely behavioural/external.
Tactatus 4 "The thought is the significant proposition"
Language and music
I agree with the gist of what you are saying. Perhaps I am quibbling about definitions.
Language is defined as human communication, using words in a structured way. Words are defined as a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing. Understanding requires thoughts, and thoughts are propositional, in that propositions are relations between parts, aRb.
I sense the colour of red, I sense the sound of a crackle, I sense the pain of heat. These individual sensations are feelings. They can only be connected by a thought. Feelings are different to thoughts. Feelings are not propositional, thoughts are propositional.
We can gain both feelings and thoughts from music, but the individual notes and combinations of notes in music express feelings not thoughts. I can subsequently think about the music, but these thoughts are external to the music, not an intrinsic part of the music. Meaning can only be expressed in a proposition, such as "the apple is on the table". Thoughts express meaning and music expresses feelings. As music is not propositional, music cannot express meaning. I can say that music means a lot to me, but any such meaning is extrinsic to the music, in that I can have the thought that I enjoy the emotion I find in some music.
Language is about transmitting thoughts, and thoughts is where meaning resides. Music is about transmitting feelings. I agree that music is like language, but to say "music is language" is a metaphor.
Are feelings to thoughts as words are to propositions (and things are to facts)?
(For you?)
Just trying to square this with,
Quoting RussellA
Admittedly, I didn't make it clear what the point of my post was.
For Wittgenstein, a thought is not a single thing, a simples, but rather involves a relationship between entities.
2.01 "An atomic fact is a combination of entities"
4 "The thought is the significant proposition"
4.012 "It is obvious that we receive a proposition of the form aRb as a picture"
4.023 "A proposition is a description of a fact"
In my post, I was trying to make the same point, that thoughts are not single things, such as feelings, but involve relationships between things.
So, yes?
A proposition is a relationship between words. My belief is that a thought is a relationship between feelings. So yes, as far as I know.
I wonder what role does awareness play here. Is awareness a feeling or thought? In being aware of your feelings and thoughts are you feeling your feelings and/or thinking your thoughts?
Well I did specify:
Quoting bongo fury
So, yes.
Good. I didn't misunderstand.
But that line of thinking was leading me to expect,
Quoting RussellA
That's the kind of reason I (and I claimed also W) counseled dispensing with mental entities.
I was going along with it (entities included) out of interest, while I thought I could follow. Awareness too, and I'm out of here.
In the TLP, he cautions against making claims of that kind (that's the overall message of the TLP, anyway).
Russell did believe that direct experience grounds the meanings of words.
What is?
That metaphysical claims are nonsense.
Never mind then. Back to words and music.
In great music, as with great painting, the notes, or brush marks, combine into a single aesthetic experience, which is a feeling rather than a thought.
As well, in a great novel, the words may also combine into a single aesthetic experience, which is a feeling, and is over and above the thoughts contained within its propositions.
That depends on how you look at it, as W points out in the case of sentence tokens:
Curious that you want to downplay the relational/factual/structural aspect of the artwork and stress the whole, er, feeling, while W is keen to use musical and pictorial structure to explain propositional structure.
My concern here is understanding Wittgenstein. It seems clear to me from the many references that he did regard music as a kind of language. Addressing the question of whether he is right or wrong is best asked once we are clear what it is he is saying.
Quoting RussellA
See "Metaphors We Live By", George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.
Wittgenstein came to see that language is more that just a logical relation between words.
Quoting RussellA
As he points out, a proposition need not be stated in words. Instead of saying "the apple is on the table" I can put an apple on a table. (3.1431)
Quoting RussellA
Translating sinnvolle as significant is not wrong, but can be misleading if we are not clear what significant means in this context. It means to signify, to have a sense:
A thought represents a state of affairs, for example, "the apple is on the table". But this representation must also be logical. Thoughts refer to states of affairs and can do so because they have a common logical structure.
But this is a picture Wittgenstein comes to reject:
According to Normal Malcolm, it was the following event that led to this:
Added:
In editing this some things were inadvertently deleted.
3.1 P/M In a proposition a thought finds an expression that can be perceived by the senses.
This is another way in which:
The proposition can be perceived by the senses. When a thought is expressed it can be perceived by others. They can know what I am thinking.
A limit cannot be drawn to thought (Preface) because we cannot think illogical thoughts:
We cannot think illogically but we can say things that are illogical. Here we see the difference between thinking and saying.
If we dispense with mental entities then what is left?
Depends on the claim. Maybe the issue is saying that you can claim any metaphysical position. Seems that you can only ponder or hypothesize metaphysical positions. A claim would change it from being metaphysical to scientific, no? Are scientific claims nonsense? Why?
If they're about things in the world, they're fine. It's mainly philosophy that tries to comment on the world from a vantage point external to it.
So does science. Science and Philosophy are about things. Is the idea of multiple universes and dark matter in the domain of philosophy or science? Are they mental entities as bongo put it, or something else?
The difference seems to be in the amount of observable evidence there is and its predictive power.
If evidence and predictive power are not mental entities then what are they? Are they something in the world?
The "world" here is all that is the case.
Language, art, music, etc.
https://monoskop.org/images/1/1b/Goodman_Nelson_Languages_of_Art.pdf
3.143 - "For in a printed proposition, for example, no essential difference is apparent between a propositional sign and a word. (That is what made it possible for Frege to call a proposition a composite name.)"
The Eiffel tower is in Paris, is 330m in height and is made of wrought iron. I can replace "I saw the 330m tall wrought-iron structure in Paris" by "I saw the Eiffel Tower". Is this what Wittgenstein is referring to ?
Quoting bongo fury
By definition, what makes an artwork rather than a craftwork is that an artwork has an aesthetic. An aesthetic is a unity between its parts, rather than just being an aggregation of parts loosely related.
Quoting bongo fury
4.023 A proposition is a description of a fact
2.0272 The configuration of the objects forms the atomic fact
Notebooks - Musical themes are in a certain sense propositions. [40]
Music, some music at least, makes us want to call it a language; but some music or course doesn't. (CV 62)
4.001 The totality of propositions is the language
The proposition is a combination of words, music is a combination of notes, so there is a similarity in this sense. I agree that Wittgenstein used music to explain propositions, but did he say that music uses propositions, that propositions are used in music as well as language ?
The proposition "the apple is green" describes a fact in the world that the apple is green, but what fact in the world does a combination of musical notes describe ?
First, I don't know about you. but for me, "meaning as use" has it's limitations. It seems rather obvious that not all "uses" of a word, equate to meaning. Obviously people use words incorrectly all the time. However, "use" is the best way to determine meaning, generally. Use must be seen within the context of a form of life, and it's within these forms of life that we are able to say that "your use" is incorrect. I say this as a point of clarity for others reading this, not necessarily as a point of disagreement. My guess is that you would agree with this.
To answer your question, I'm not sure I have a clear idea of how this would happen, it's more of an intuition. I was thinking that if people see different colors from what I see, then this would come out in the detailed uses of what we mean, for example, by red. So, as we get into the different shadings of red, and make detailed comparisons with other color samples, the idea that you're seeing yellow instead of red would seem to break down at some point. We would begin to recognize in our various uses that we're not seeing the same color or colors. If, on the other hand, there is no way to tell if you're seeing yellow instead of red, then the whole point is moot. Whatever's happening in the mind would fall away as as so much chaff, but I suspect this is incorrect.
Quoting Luke
Ya, my argument can be seen in this way, but how this plays out is complex. Moreover, I disagree with some of Wittgenstein's notions. It seems to me that if you remove what's going on in the mind, then your left with nothing. I don't think Wittgenstein goes this far, even though his beetle in the box seems to remove the thing as having any great import. Much of this, obviously, has to do with how certain passages are interpreted. And, I suspect we'll never arrive at a consensus.
Quoting Luke
Yes, I agree.
Quoting Luke
I definitely disagree with Wittgenstein's notion of a limit to language, at least in part. He basically still believes, as he did in the Tractatus, that there is a limit to language. If there is a limit, I suspect that it's not as limiting as he thinks it is. The fact that we can talk about some of these subjective experiences, as we're doing, seems to point at something problematic with Wittgenstein's limit. I'm sure that much of my disagreement has to do with my view on consciousness/minds.
How are language, art and music NOT mental entities? Dont you mean ink marks, paint blotches and oscillating air molecules? It seems that those would be the non-mental entities and language, art and music would be the mental intenties as that is what certain ink marks, paint blotches and oscillating air molecules are arbitrarily interpreted as being. Arbitrary interpretations are mental entities.
For instance, how do we non-korean-speaking people know that Korean is a language? It just looks like scribbles and strange sounds being made by some people to us. How can you explain the difference in how different people interpret different scribbles and utterances if not by referring to mental entities?
It seems to me that if Witt were alive today he'd contradict himself again just as his Investigations contradicted his Tractus. One could argue that philosophy is simply language use and if language use is a game then philosophy has been relegated to a game of Scribbles (not Scrabble). It does seem that way when reading many of the posts on this forum. I'm more interested in what you're referring to with scribbles, or what is the case in the world. If that isn't how you're using your scribbles, then you're really saying anything useful.
Yes.
Quoting Sam26
It wouldn't make any difference if our visual impressions of red were different, as long as we both called it [whatever colour it looked to each of us] "red". The whole point is moot, meaning that there's nothing that we can say about it. That's what happens when you run up against the limits of language.
Quoting Sam26
Wittgenstein doesn't want to "remove what's going on in the mind", except that whatever is inner and private is not where language gets its meaning. That's what I take him to mean when I say that sensation terms can only refer to the behavioural expression of those sensations and not to the sensations themselves. For example (my emphasis):
Quoting Sam26
Ah but we're "only doing philosophy" and perhaps metaphysically, so we are not using words as they are used "in the language in which they are at home. What we [philosophers should] do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use." (PI 116)
The structure facts, definitely. The top being 330m from the bottom. The iron molecules being roughly 40 times as numerous as the carbon, thank you Wikipedia. These are like the spatial arrangement of the "tables, chairs and books" (3.1431) or of the "a" and the "b" in "aRb" (3.1432).
The tower's being in Paris: not sure, good question. Or two questions: if its being in Paris is its relation to a different structure (Paris), then may a proposition analogously derive its sense (it's potential interpretation as a diagram) from its relations to other propositions? I'm guessing no, because atomism. Or, if its being in Paris is a unary relation, i.e. a property, then how might an isomorphism (between this tower fact and some other fact) obtain? (Does W somewhere discuss the redness of the rose in something like this respect?)
The definite description aspect, I doubt the relevance. Or rather, I've no idea.
Quoting RussellA
Ok, but then, still curious that you would downplay the very relations, tight as you like, by which unity of your required sort is achieved.
Quoting RussellA
Convention?
Thought has a transcendental logical structure. You cannot think illogically (3.03) The relations of simple objects share this logical structure. The movement of tectonic plates is accidental.
Metaphysical claims are nonsense but:
The metaphysical self is not part of the world (5.633), and so claims about it are meaningless (Bedeutung). That is, it does not signify or represent anything in the world. But what is outside the limits of the world is what is, for Wittgenstein, meaningful in the sense of being most important. It is like the relation between the eye and what it sees. The eye sees but is not something seen. It is outside the visual field (5.6331).
This is straight Schopenhauer.
FH Bradley argued against the existence of relations in the world
Wittgenstein's Picture Theory of Language requires relations in the world
4.461 The proposition shows what it says
4.023 A proposition is a description of a fact
4.012 It is obvious that we receive a proposition of the form aRb as a picture
The main theme in the Tractatus is that the sole purpose of language is to mirror reality, showing reality rather than saying what reality is. We cannot say with language what is common between language and the world, rather, it must be shown, because any language we use will also rely on the same relationship, meaning that we cannot step out of language using language itself. For Wittgenstein, propositions refer to relationships of objects in the world, sharing a logical form with reality. Logical form of language can only be shown, but not spoken about.
As Wittgenstein assumes the existence of facts, he is also assuming the existence of relations in the world. I know relations exist in my mind, in that I know the relation "the apple is green". If relations do exist in the mind, but don't exist in the world, then propositions cannot share the same logical form with reality, meaning that there is no foundation to Wittgenstein's Picture Theory of Language.
The world in the Tractatus may exist in the mind of whoever is doing the thinking
It is my belief that the Tractatus can be read such that the "world" exists in the mind of whoever is doing the thinking, meaning that the Picture Theory is relating one part of the mind to another part of the mind, rather than the mind to the world.
Forces don't establish relations
Science accepts a world of fundamental particles and fundamental forces. Taking a particular example, if relations exist in the world there is a relation between a particular rock on the Earth and a particular rock on Alpha Centauri. The rock on Earth may be hit by a photon emitted by the rock on Alpha Centauri. Whether the photon came from a rock on Alpha Centauri or elsewhere in the Universe makes no difference to the effect it has on the rock on the Earth. There is no information within the photon as to its source. Any changes to the rock on Earth is due to the photon and not its source. The relation between the rock on Earth and the rock on Alpha Centauri is irrelevant to any changes occuring to the rock on Earth.
I am not saying that I know that relations don't exist in the world, rather, that as relations have no affect on physical changes that may occur in the world, they serve no useful purpose in our world ontology.
Leibniz's Regress Argument of 1676
Leibniz pre-dated Bradley's Regress argument. He wrote: "Suppose, for example, that there is a relation between a and b, and call it c; then, consider a new relation between a and c: call it d, and so forth to the infinite. It seems that we do not have to say that all these relations are a kind of true and real ideas. Perhaps they are only mere intelligible things, which may be produced, i.e., that are or will be produced."
Bradley's questioning the nature of properties
The nature of an object's properties is problematic. Bradley starts with the example of a lump of sugar. He notes that there appears to be such a thing as a lump of sugar and this thing appears to have qualities such as whiteness, sweetness, and hardness. But, asks Bradley, what is this thing that bears properties? On the one hand, he thinks it is odd to assume that there is something to the lump of sugar beside its several qualities, thus implying that postulating a property-less bearer of properties is incoherent. On the other hand, he notes that the lump cannot merely be its qualities either, since the latter must somehow be united.
For Bradley, unity or coexistence of qualities presupposes relations, which is why he questioned our concept of relations.
Bradley's Regress Argument
Bradleys original formulation of the regress arguments can be found in his book Appearance and Reality (1893). Bradleys worry seems to be that if relations are conceived of as independent from the terms that they relate, they themselves will become just like the terms that need relating and this way they will lose their relating power.
He wrote in 1893: "Let us abstain from making the relation an attribute of the related, and let us make it more or less independent. There is a relation C, in which A and B stand; and it appears with both of them. But here again we have made no progress. The relation C has been admitted different from A and B, and no longer is predicated of them. Something, however, seems to be said of this relation C, and said again, of A and B. And this something is not to be the ascription of one to the other. If so, it would appear to be another relation D, in which C, on one side, and, on the other side, A and B stand. But such a makeshift leads at once to the infinite process."
Conclusion
Whether relations exist in the world or not has significant implications. If relations don't exist in the world, objects such as apples don't exist, properties such as greenness don't exist. These things only exist in the mind. The fact that thought requires relations does not presuppose that a world of elementary particles and forces also needs relations.
As relations in the world, even if they existed, make no changes to the physical world, they may be removed from our world ontology.
What is often overlooked is what I have bolded:
In terms of the Tractatus meaning (Bedeutung) is the thing that is referred to in a proposition. Logic is the transcendental condition that makes this possible.
In the Investigations reference is problematic when it comes to such things as sensation. If I am in pain I am not referring to some public thing that can be pointed to for others to see or experience. But this does not mean:
Quoting Luke
I can be in pain whether I express it or not. If there is a tribe in which no one feels pain, to be told that I am in pain is meaningless. It does not refer to anything they have any acquaintance with. But if I tell you I am in pain, you know what I mean. It does, in that sense, refer to something. Sometimes we need to stop doing philosophy. If a child tells you they are in pain the appropriate response is not to point out the ways in which this is philosophically problematic. We may ask where it hurts and respond accordingly.
Right, I wasn't suggesting that W. was dogmatic about the connection between meaning and use. In fact, meaning can be associated with an object also in the PI.
Quoting Fooloso4
In the Tractatus meaning is associated with the object, i.e., the name in the proposition is directly connected with the object in a fact. It sounds like you're saying that meaning is found in the proposition, but that can't be the case. The proposition gets its meaning by reflecting or mirroring the fact, which is W.'s picture theory of meaning.
Quoting Fooloso4
We know, for the most part, when someone is in pain (having the sensation of pain) because of their very public cries, screams, moans, and other bodily or linguistic acts. There is a difference between the inner experience and the outward manifestation.
I quoted the text in order to support what you said.
quote="Sam26;720827"]It sounds like you're saying that meaning is found in the proposition ...[/quote]
If that is what it sounds line then I failed to express what I was saying clearly. The meaning is not found in the proposition but in what the proposition points to. That is:
Quoting Fooloso4
The thing a proposition refers to is not itself.
Quoting Sam26
I agree. What I was objecting to is this:
Quoting Luke
Pain and other sensations do not refer to anything. The expression of those sensations refer to the sensations, which can be expressed in various ways. The problem is that referring to what my own sensations is not like referring to something public. I cannot point to it. But if no one felt pain what we might consider pain behavior would not be considered pain behavior. The experience of pain itself enters the picture.
The accidental only makes sense in light of the determined or predicted. Saying that something is accidental implies that there is a way things are supposed to be but something unintended happened that made things different. Accidents only come about when something was predicted to happen but didn't. If you dont make a prediction then there can be no accidents.
No. It means that the way things are is not by necessity.
Not an entity, that's the thing. A linguistic regularity. A pattern.
"Accident" is not a synonym of unnecessary. "Accident" is not the correct term to convey what you actually mean. So it is necessary to use the appropriate terms if your goal is to communicate your ideas efficiently. It would also seem necessary to learn a language before you can use it. If those are necessary causes for communication to happen then why wouldn't other relations in the world not be causal in the same way? What's so special about language use when language use is simply another process in the world?
Entities are patterns of properties.
It is not what I mean, it is what Wittgenstein said. In an earlier response to you I quoted the following from the Tractatus:
Quoting Fooloso4
Obviously it happened. It is not, however, necessary that this would happen thought. His notebooks might never have been published. It is not necessary that I quoted him or that I discuss him or post on this forum or that forum exist.
"Wanting to share" is, as you say, something I wanted to do. It is a choice not a necessity.
I don't see how you could have shared it if you didn't want to, or intend to.
What about:
"The world is determined by the facts, and by these being all the
facts.
For the totality of facts determines both what is the case, and
also all that is not the case"
It appears that the world is necessarily determined by all the facts.
It's strange to say that all the facts determine what is both the case and not the case. What is not the case can only exist in a mind as imaginary. Imaginings and lies are what are not the case. All facts determine only what is the case. The totality of facts could only determine what isn't the case when minds evolved to imagine and lie.
I wonder if you are familiar with What the Tortoise Said to Achilles?
The argument there proceeds as follows.
We have
(A) Things that are equal to the same are equal to each other.
(B) The two sides of this Triangle are things that are equal to the same.
(Z) The two sides of this Triangle are equal to each other.
You, I and Achilles will suppose that if A and B are true, one must accept Z.
But the Tortoise has a different idea. He doesn't yet accept Z. He doesn't accept:
(C) If A and B are true, Z must be true.
And challenges Achilles and us to force his agreement. He points out that (C) is a hypothetical, and hence that before he accepts (C) we must first show him that if A, B and C are true, he must accept Z:
(D) If A,B and C are true, Z must be true
...and so it begins.
Now I think the Tortoise makes an interesting point, but that there is something very important that is missing from his thinking.
Now I think we might cast Bradley in the place of the Tortoise. What The Tortoise wants to do with modus ponens Bradley would have us do with relations.
And I think the answer is the same: there is a way of understanding an inference that cannot be set out in a deduction, but is instead performed in implementing the inference. Understanding modus ponens involves making that move from A and B to Z in the face of the infinite regress.
And understanding relations involves making the move to aRb without putting in place the relations between a and R and b and R.
At a stretch. Ok. If mental entities include linguistic conventions, then no one counseled dispensing with them.
Wanting to does not mean I have to. Intending to does not mean I would necessarily end up doing what I intend to do.
Quoting Harry Hindu
That is logically necessary, but:
Quoting Harry Hindu
What is not the case exists in the logical space of what is possible. Logic is transcendental. It makes possible not only states of affairs but the possibility to think of states of affairs. We cannot think illogically:
The puzzle of the Tortoise and Achilles is what the Tractatus is trying to solve
4.1212 " What can be shown, cannot be said"
4.461 "Propositions show what they say"
As Bertrand Russell wrote: "This is perhaps the most fundamental thesis of Mr. Wittgensteins theory. That which has to be in common between the sentence and the fact cannot, he contends, be itself in turn said in language. It can, in his phraseology, only be shown, not said, for whatever we may say will still need to have the same structure."
The puzzle of the Tortoise and Achilles points out the main theme in Tractatus, in that what can be shown cannot be said. As you wrote "before he accepts (C) we must first show him that if A, B and C are true, he must accept Z", meaning that before the Tortoise accepts (if A is true and if B is true then Z is true) he must be shown that (if A is true and if B is true then Z is true).
In other words, before the Tortoise accepts what he is told to be true, the Tortoise must be shown that it is true.
Knowledge by description and acquaintance
This takes us back to Bertrand Russell's distinction between knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance. In his paper On Denoting 1918, whereas knowledge by description is something like ordinary propositional knowledge (e.g. "I know that snow is white"), knowledge by acquaintance is familiarity with a person, place, or thing, typically obtained through perceptual experience, such as "I know Sam". According to Bertrand Russell's classic account of acquaintance, knowledge by acquaintance is a direct causal interaction between a person and some object that the person is perceiving.
Wittgenstein studied philosophy under Russell at Cambridge in 1912 and 1913, and Wittgenstein's Picture Theory, completed 6 years later in in 1918, is a development of knowledge by acquaintance.
Language needs acquaintance with the world
As you wrote: "Look up a word in the dictionary to find its meaning. You get more words. Look up the meaning of those words. You get more words. Since the dictionary is finite, and since word is defined in terms of other words, the definitions must be circular". So language only as description is problematic. It may be coherent, but sooner or later, in order for it to be intelligible it needs some fixity with the world it is attempting to describe. It needs some correspondence with the world, it needs some direct acquaintance with the world.
Someone may tell me the colour of an object is "nyekundu", but until they physically point it out to me, I can never know what they mean.
Language needs more than acquaintance, it also needs description
A language based on knowledge by acquaintance only would be too limiting, in that I only know of the 1969 moon landing by description, as I was not personally there. A language of knowledge by description must be founded on a language of knowledge by acquaintance. Knowledge by description is imagining new combinations of things one already knows by acquaintance. I already know by acquaintance the moon, a rocket, and one object falling onto another object. I can imagine a new combination (a rocket) + (one object falling onto another) + (the moon). As an aside, knowledge by description is not knowledge of the world, as the combination exists only in my mind. If I said "I know about the 1969 moon landing", what is mean is "I believe there was a 1969 moon landing".
To be more terminologically accurate, there is knowledge by acquaintance and belief by description.
Relations are, in Kant's words, "a priori intuition"
Bertrand Russell wrote: That the world is my world appears in the fact that the boundaries of language (the only language I understand) indicate the boundaries of my world.
5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
5.61 Logic fills the world: the limits of the world are also its limits, We cannot say in logic: This and this there is in the world, that there is not. For that would apparently presuppose that we exclude certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case since otherwise logic must get outside the limits of the world: that is, if it could consider these limits from the other side also.
Relations exist in the mind, in that I know the apple is green. I would argue that a belief in relations is an innate part of the structure of the brain, in the same way that Kant described time and space as a priori intuitions. We cannot observe the world independently of those beliefs that are inherent within the structure of the brain. A kettle can only do what a kettle can do. The brain can only do what the brain can do.
Whether relations exist in the world or not , we have a visceral belief in their existence as they are, in Kant's words, a priori pure intuition.
Relations in the world can only be said, not shown
Consider a table consisting of a table top and table legs. There are two kinds of relations, i)
the physical relation between spatially separated masses in the world and ii) the relation between the table legs and table top we perceive in our minds.
As regards the first kind of relation, consider an object above the Earth. The force between the object and Earth may be expressed as GmM/r2.. There is a relationship between the two masses as well as a spatial relationship between them. These relationships may be called The Laws of Nature, and exist. As Laws of Nature, they can only be inferred, as Hume noted, by constant conjunction, in that they can be said but not shown.
As regards the second kind of relation, the relation we perceive is independent of relations within the Laws of Nature. Even if ontological relations did exist in the world, such relations make no contribution to physical changes within the world. As they have no effect on the world, we can remove them from our world ontology. As they cannot be shown, they can only be talked about.
Conclusion
Achilles tells the Tortoise that "the apple is green", but the Tortoise won't accept this, as "the apple is green" means no more than "the apple is green".
Wittgenstein provides a solution is his Tractatus, pointing out that there is a distinction between what can be said and what can be shown. The Picture Theory in Tractatus is explaining language as knowledge by acquaintance, where propositions show the facts because they have the same logical form, such that "the apple is green" is true iff the apple is green.
For Bradley, it is insufficient to say that "relation C relates table top A to table legs B", it needs to be shown. The problem being that as relation C is independent of its relata A and B, a further relation D needs to be shown relating relation C with relata A and B, leading to the conclusion that relations independent of their relata are not possible.
IE, for the Tortoise, saying something is true is insufficient, for Wittgenstein's Tractatus, saying cannot show the truth but showing can and for Bradley, saying that relations are true is insufficient if it cannot be shown that they are true.
My attempt:
Can ignore (A) which is a hypothetical and redundant.
From (B), which is not hypothetical:
Let side one of the Triangle have length a
Let side two of the Triangle have length b
There is a length c that is equal in length to side one of the Triangle
Length c is also equal in length to side two of the Triangle
Therefore c = a and c = b
From which it follows that a = b
If a = b then (Z) follows.
The solution may be easier if shown rather than said.
Quoting RussellA
Almost. The temptation here is to downplay the importance of what cannot be said. From a letter to Russell,
Wittgenstein did not think that Russell had grasped what he was up to.
While Wittgenstein's distinction between saying and showing is doubtless related to Russell's knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description, Wittgenstein's distinction is far broader, stepping outside what might be considered knowledge. Russell's "knowledge by acquaintance" remain propositional, but Wittgenstein's notion of what can be shown is not propositional - that's rather the point.
The Tortoise is attempting to put into propositional terms the act of accepting modus ponens, and so gets itself into a regress. It mistakes what can only be displayed for what can be put into propositional form.
You proceed by replacing Wittgenstein's argument with Russell's. But they are not the same.
I've been unable to understand why Kant was brought into the proceedings. Wittgenstein's account of logic is far clearer Kant's a priori intuitions. Poor old Kant was working with a very primitive formalisation of logic, while Russell and Wittgenstein have the advantage of Frege's work. For them there is no need for a fraught appeal to intuition.
Relations in the Tractatus are of the form aRb; they set out states of affairs. Sure, the relation is mental, but the state of affairs is not. The use of "mental" here is also fraught with confusion and not found in the Tractatus. Better, perhaps, to see the state of affairs as part of the world and the relation as part of the picture.
So relations can be said. That's what "aRb" is.
That a given relation does or does not set out some state of affairs is shown, not said.
Quoting RussellA
Well, no. For Bradley, the relation between a and Rb, and between aR and b, must be said. That's where he demands that we say what can only be shown.
Again, Bradley was working with a logic scarcely better than that used by Kant. He treats relations as if they were individuals. This is a grammatical error that cannot be reproduced in predicate logic. Individuals are distinct from predicates. The individuals are given by a,b,c... and predicates by f,g,h... and have an entirely distinct grammatical place. One may write f(a,b) for the relation f between a and b, but there is no well-formed way to replace "a" with "f", or "g". Bradley's argument cannot be given a reasonable parsing in first order logic.
...and hence the very notion of that you "experiencing in my mind the colour red" is senseless.
But that's more Investigations than Tractatus.
But what would it mean that you wouldn't necessarily end up doing what you intended if not that there was some other necessary condition that prevented you from doing it? If there were no other conditions preventing you from doing it, wouldn't you be doing it? If not, then you never intended to do it in the first place. Do any of your posts appear on this screen without you having intended to post them?
Quoting Fooloso4
How would you know what is possible if everything that is the case is an accident? What is not the case isn't necessarily possible. What is not the case is just as much probable as improbable, because you have no evidence to support the probability nor improbability. There is no evidence for what is not the case. So if what you mean by "logical space" is "imaginary" then I guess we agree.
Quoting bongo fury
Not at all. You recognize entities, like your pet or your friend, by their pattern of properties - patterns of sensory properties - their color, shape, the sound of their voice, the feel of their touch, their smell, etc., just as you are able to distinguish between coffee and water, but the pattern of color, smell, taste, etc.
My question was simply what is left if we can dispense with mental entities, and you've ended up showing that we cannot dispense with mental entities. Linguistic conventions are patterns of scribbles and sounds - mental entities.
I might have a better offer. I might forget. I might change my mind and conclude that I am wasting my time.
I take your point, and that almost completely clarifies my confusion here - thanks. However, according to W:
This indicates that pain itself is "a Something about which nothing could be said". Therefore, nothing could be said about "pain" itself. What do you make of this inability? Can it be dispelled by a "radical break with the idea" that language must be used to describe or to convey thoughts (about pain)?
Are ontological relations in a mind-independent world individuals
Terminology
In modern usage, an internal relation is not an ontological addition, such that the cherry is the same shade of red as the strawberry. An external relation is an ontological addition, such that the cherry is 1m distance from the strawberry.
Relations in logic
Grammar, first-order logic and predicates are mental things, part of mathematical and linguistic language. The relation (r) between a rock on Earth (a) and a rock on Alpha Centauri (b) may be expressed as
r (a,b), where r is a relation, not an individual.
Relations in a mind-independent world
However, Bradley is questioning the nature of relations in a mind-independent world. What exactly are relations ? Can they be individuals ? In a mind-independent world, if relations are independent of their relata, Bradley proposes that this leads into an infinite regress, which suggests that relations cannot be independent of their relata. If relations are grounded in their relata, then this is the modern usage of internal relations, and which presents no ontological addition.
Either way, Bradley is proposing that ontological relations don't exist in a mind-independent world.
Russell's Theory of Descriptions may be more suitable than Frege's First-Order Logic
However, if Bradley was being expressed using logic, perhaps RTD would be more suitable than Frege's First Order Logic, as it does not depend on the subject-predicate form. For First Order Logic, there is a relation between a and b. For RTD, there is something, a relation, that relates to a and relates to b, in which case the relation is an individual.
A relation relating leads back into Bradley's problem of infinite regression.
Two questions about the ontological existence of relations in a mind-independent world
We know that relations exist in the mind, as we talk about ghosts, unicorns, governments, ethics, the sweet smell of success, the tree swaying in the wind, tables, apples, etc. Science tells us that a world of elementary particles and forces, a world of gravity, the photo-electric effect, volcanos, rain, etc are explainable by the Laws of Nature.
Q1: If relations exist in a mind-independent world, how can the mere fact of a relation between a rock on Earth and a rock on Alpha Centauri cause changes to either ?
Q2: If relations don't cause changes in the world, then why do we think that relations exist in the world ?
I think Wittgenstein is still working to disentangle the confusion of the Tractarian logic. When he says pain in not "a Something" ,I take this to mean it is not a thing or object existing in the world that is represented in thought or propositions.
But this picture of language does not originate with the Tractatus. He begins the Investigations by quoting Augustine and says:
But the remaining kinds of words do not take care of themselves when this picture holds us captive.
The purpose of the statement: "I am in pain" is not to convey the thought that I am in pain. The sentence does not have the same logical/grammatical form as sentences about things.
Which was my point that there would be other necessary, non-accidental conditions that led to different conditions. You're proving my point, not yours.
You're confusing what was, is, or will be the case with your ignorance of what was, is, or will be the case.
Since this is a thread on Wittgenstein, we need to be clear as to what he is saying about necessity and accident.
Your own view seems to be along the lines that whatever happens happens by necessity. This is something he rejected:
He is not simply denying that we can know what will happen, but that it is necessary that this rather than that will happen. If that rather then this it is not because the latter is the necessary outcome rather than the former.
Good luck with that. It's like trying to be clear on what the authors of the Bible are saying. I'm not really rejecting anything Witt is talking about. I'm taking issue with his improper use of language.
Quoting Fooloso4
For what reason? And by giving a reason you end up proving my point that reasons are necessary to accept or reject any assertion of what the case is. Logical necessity is just as much a part of the world as any other causal relation.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yet all you did was infer that you'd either submit your posts or not based on what conditions existed prior to submitting your post or not. The same can be said of Witt having written his books. Witt disproves his own assertions by writing his books for others to read. Did he not infer that others would read his book only after he wrote it? Did he think that others could read his book if he never wrote it? Seems like you and Witt believe that others can read Witts book if he never wrote it.
Yet he is asserting a belief in the causal nexus of reasons and conclusions. Again the relationship between reasons and conclusions are as much a part of the world as any other causal relation. Everything is process, relations, or information. In this sense, there is no difference between reasons and conclusions (logical necessity) and any other causal relation. By rejecting one you reject all the other relations. By accepting one causal relation and rejecting all others youd be exhibiting a form of favoritism. There would be no reasons for any conclusions. As a matter of fact reasons are based on observations of what is the case and their conclusions are inferred based on prior observations. So I don't see how you could have any reasons to infer some conclusion if you didn't make any observation.
No one is saying that we can predict everything, or that knowledge has a monopoly of truth, or is even related to truth. Every event is unique, but that does not mean that they arent similar, or else we wouldn't be able to make any predictions at all. Also our predictions are tied to our goals. Much of the time, any prediction we have is tied to the goal at hand which isn't always necessary to know everything to make a successful prediction.
Russell's theory of descriptions uses Frege's first order logic.
For the purposes of the Tractatus, the states of affairs, the facts, constituted the world, while relations form a picture of the world. That this or that relation is in the world is displayed, shown.
Recall that the notion of a mind-independent world is not found in the Tractatus.
Hence relations do not cause changes to the facts. Relations are in the picture of the world, not in the facts. The relations form the picture of the facts.
Doesn't this contradict what you said earlier, that the sensation of pain "enters the picture"?
Quoting Fooloso4
Are you saying that "pain" is or is not a noun? You appeared earlier to be saying that "pain" is a noun - a thing or object existing in the world, which does "enter the picture" of propositions. You now appear to be saying instead that "pain" is one of "the remaining kinds of words".
Quoting Fooloso4
Right, the statement "I am in pain" is not an expression of a thought or a description of pain, but is an expression of pain; a pain-behaviour. As he notes at 244, making statements such as "I am in pain" are a substitute/replacement for more primitive, natural expressions of pain, such as crying.
But if the word "pain" is used (in this way) as an expression of pain, then this indicates that the word "pain" refers to the expression; to the pain-behaviour. If the meaning of the word is how the word is used, and if the word "pain" is used (in this way) as an expression of pain, then the word "pain" (when used in this way) means the expression of pain.
Analogously, the word "red" doesn't refer to a colour that any individual sees, but to the relevant behaviours associated with correct use(s) of the word "red". It is these relevant/correct behaviours that we learn when we learn the language. The sensation is "not a Something, but not a Nothing either"; "if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of object and name, the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant."
Many scholars recognize the value of hermeneutics.
Quoting Harry Hindu
You mistake what you take the terms 'accident' and 'necessity' to mean for what the terms mean in their various uses.
Quoting Harry Hindu
You assume there must be some reason why things happen as they do. Wittgenstein rejected this assumption. So do I. The issue is not as settled as you assume. This is not the thread to discuss it but see, for example: Sean Carroll:s On Determinism
Quoting Harry Hindu
Once again you want to stipulate the meaning of terms. Logical necessity has a very specific meaning in the Tractatus, and what it says is not what you claim.
Quoting Harry Hindu
The conditions may be there but those conditions might support both A and B or A and N, all of which may be possible under those conditions.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Nonsense! That is not what he asserts. Read the book. Then we can discuss it.
.
For Wittgenstein, is there a mind-independent world ?
I follow that " the notion of a mind-independent world is not found in the Tractatus", yet he does refer to things we would expect to be in a mind-independent world, for example:
4.014 The gramophone record, the musical thought, the score, the waves of sound, all stand to one another in that pictorial internal relation, which holds between language and the world...............(like the two youths, their two horses and their lilies in the story.........)
6.3432 We must not forget that the description of the world by mechanics is always quite general
6.373 The world is independent of my will
Although Wittgenstein may not refer to a mind-independent world, I read that the existence of a mind-independent world is assumed.
Does the "world" in the Tractatus exist in the mind or is it mind-independent ?
3 The logical picture of the facts is the thought
In a mind-independent world, there are two possibilities as regards the existence of relations.
Possibility One: If relations don't exist, then facts don't exist. Therefore, as the logical picture in the mind cannot be a logical picture of facts in the world ( although it can be a representation of facts in the world), it can only be a logical picture of facts in the mind. In this case, the "world" must be read as existing in the mind.
Possibility Two: If relations do exist, then facts exist. Therefore, the picture in the mind can be a logical picture of facts in the world. It can also be a logical picture of facts in the mind. In this case, the "world" may be read as either existing in the mind or existing as mind-independent.
IE, one's reading of whether the "world" in the Tractatus exists in the mind or is mind-independent depends on one's opinion as to the existence or not of relations in a mind-independent world.
Logic is the transcendent condition for both objects and their representation. In so far as the facts of the world include our representations, the world is not independent of the mind.
But see the shift from the world to my world in his discussion of solipsism, the will, and the "metaphysical ''I".
Although:
Quoting RussellA
when he says:
he is referring to my world, the world as it is for me, the world of the metaphysical I.
As to the exercise of the will:
Quoting RussellA
But, as I explained before, relations are part of the picture, not of the world. The world consists of facts. It therefore does not consist of relations.
I don't think this is correct.
The way in which the objects combine is the relation one stands to another.
A fact is not just a collection of objects but objects standing in a determine relation to one another.
Well I disagree.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yep. The picture shows these relations. that's the point.
Look at the context, at the mis-view @RussellA expresses.
Admittedly, I havent been paying close attention, but are you assuming that if external relations exist then they must be individuals? Isnt that a category error?
Yes, the picture shows the relation. My point is that there is a relation that is pictured, that is, the relation are not just part of the picture. The possibility for objects to be in relation is a necessary condition for facts.
Quoting Banno
Sorry, I jumped in in response to the quoted statement. I too admit I have not been paying close attention to the exchange.
Sure, the relation shows the state of affairs, and in that way steps beyond what is said.
The remark being replied to is:
Quoting RussellA
The purpose here is to move beyond seeing the Tractatus in terms of idealism and empiricism. The world is all that is the case. The picture is of the world, and hence in an important sense distinct from it. Thinking of the world as either mind-dependent or mind-independent will not allow one to see that the picture shows the world.
Insofar as some true relation aRb pictures the world, it is not a part of the world in the way RussellA is asking...
That being said, I also do not wish to rule out antirealist readings of the Tractatus.
Quoting Banno
Only in a warped sense. "Distict" and "of" are relations, so it seems that relations are primary and the world and pictures are part of a relation. If pictures only show relations, then what are you showing when you use the scribble, "facts", if not that facts are relations too? The attraction to Witt's ideas are similar to the attraction to the Bible or Koran's ideas - in that they show that humans are distinct from nature, hence in an important sense "special".
Do you mean
?
Just trying to follow.
Quoting Banno
Yes. Fact = state of affairs = relation.
A proposition, for W, is any such entity (by whatever of those names) which is used in a language to (if true) show (be a diagram of) another.
and is it a fact that the relation shows the state of affairs, and as such is part of the world and not distinct from it?
I originally included these when writing my post but decided to eliminate them before posting because I wanted to stress the fact that these relations exist between things and not just the picture.
2.031 and 2.15 both refer to "determinate relations".
All I've been doing is trying to follow your interpretation of Witt. You have been unable to make a sensible case of your own interpretation. It's not how I take the terms, but how most people take the terms:
accident
?k?s?-d?nt, -d?nt?
noun
An unexpected and undesirable event, especially one resulting in damage or harm.
An unforeseen event that is not the result of intention or has no apparent cause.
An instance of involuntary urination or defecation.
necessary
n?s??-s?r??
adjective
Needed or required: synonym: indispensable.
Unavoidably determined by prior conditions or circumstances; inevitable.
Logically inevitable.
It is you that are taking the terms to mean something other than their various uses, so it is incumbent upon you and Witt to lay out the way you're using the terms when not using them the way most people use them.
Quoting Fooloso4
Then you should be finding value in many different interpretations. Once you start declaring some interpretation right or wrong, you prove my point that what makes some interpretation necessarily right or wrong is what is the case prior to interpreting it. You keep making the same mistake and when I point it out, you ignore it.
Quoting Fooloso4
No. I was asking for what reason do you reject that there is a reason why things happen as they do. The reason why I accept the idea that there are reasons things happen as they do is by experience, like right now, when I'm typing this post my fingers are tapping the keyboard and scribbles appear on the screen. Look at all the letters on this screen and each one was typed prior to it appearing on the screen. That is a lot of potential for accidents, yet we all are able to type each letter in the correct sequence to form a word, sentence and paragraph without much of a problem. If what you are saying is the case, then one would expect that this page would be filled with blank posts, random scribbles, etc. but it isn't. Why?
Quoting Fooloso4It is you and Witt that want to stipulate the meaning of terms too. The problem appears to be that we don't want to agree on the usage of the terms, so there ends up being no communication. I cannot picture your meaning if we are not agreeing on their usage. That is what I've been trying to do - just to find out where we differ in our usage and what you are actually saying if you don't mean "accident" and "necessity" in the same way most people do. You are free to use other words if they capture the meaning of what you are trying to convey. Use them.
Quoting Fooloso4Using the term, "possible" just shows that you are confusing what is the case with our ignorance of what is the case. How would you know what is possible if not by referring to what the prior conditions are?
Quoting Fooloso4
I have and it makes as much sense as the Bible does. It is open to personal interpretation, so anyone's interpretations is just as good as anyone else's. I prefer a good science book on language. Steve Pinker is a much better read than Witt.
Sure, I just thought that 2.15 (and 2.151) might better demonstrate that Wittgenstein held relations to be a part of both the picture and the world; otherwise, they could not share a pictorial form.
So humans and their relations do not change the world as a result of those relations? Then I guess racism is not something that can change the facts of discrimination, nor could the relations Trump showed ever have changed the outcome of the election so there was never any reason to worry or waste time and taxpayer dollars with a committee to investigate what Trump showed and how it might cause a change in the facts.
If facts are not relations then how did anyone come to understand that the world is composed of facts, or even what a fact is, if we can only show relations with pictures and words?
I don't know exactly which other squabble you're alluding to, but bear in mind that when someone opposes "world" to "language" they often mean the less encopassing "fact" and "proposition" respectively.
This doesn't explain the nature of the opposition or distinction. What does it even mean to say that the world is the totality of facts and not of things, if not that the world is a relation of facts? If facts don't stand in relation to other facts, then each fact would be separate from the world and not be part of the totality that is the world in the same way that the world is distinct from language. Language use requires a medium and that medium is the world.
What is a fact? Saying that a fact is what is the case or a state of affairs isn't saying anything about the nature of what a fact is. What is the case, and what is the state of affairs if not events, or relations between things?
It seems to be a vague use of terms. It's more meaningful to think of the world as the totality of information with information being the relation between causes and their effects. So the world is the totality of causes and their effects and their relation is a fact.
You want to participate in a discussion of Wittgenstein but refuse to read what he said. Read him and see if my interpretation follows from what he said, and then you might have a better chance of following my interpretation.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Common usage also includes:
Quoting Harry Hindu
What is the case prior to interpreting a text, is the text itself. The irony is that you have declared my interpretation wrong without even looking at the text itself. In addition, you declare Wittgenstein wrong based on claims of what he said that you pulled out of who knows where.
Quoting Harry Hindu
See Aristotle on chance. See Ecclesiastes and Job on the expectation of reasons why.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yes, Wite-Out was a much used product. It is still sold but not used as much since we can easily fix typos with a word processor.
Quoting Harry Hindu
The prior conditions are, according to the Tractatus, transcendental.
.
Yes, both. He has other fish to fry with the saying/showing distinction, but it is not clear to me where Banno stands when he says:
Quoting Banno
An external relation is a relation that is external to the terms or things it relates, and is not grounded in its relata. For example a cherry and a strawberry are 3m apart. Some philosophers believe that if external relations did exist they would be ontological additions. An internal relation is grounded in its relata. For example, a cherry and a strawberry may both be the same shade of red. Some philosophers believe that internal relations are not ontological additions because they can be reduced to intrinsic properties.
As regards FH Bradley, what he calls "real" relations are grounded in their relata, and are what would be called in modern usage internal relations, and therefore not ontological additions. Those relations not grounded in their relata, and are what would be called in modern usage external relations would be ontological additions. It is these external relations that Bradley argues cannot exist, as their existence would lead to an infinite regress, in that this external relation would need another relation to relate it to its relata.
Therefore, if relations grounded in their relata are internal relations, and not ontological additions, then relations not grounded in their relata are external relations, are individuals, and would be ontological additions.
No. I have read what he said, as well as what you are saying. I am then going on to ask questions about what both you and he said and you are unable to be consistent with your explanation, or refuse to address the points I am making. I have even asked you twice (now is my third) what reason do you reject that there is a reason why things happen as they do, and you haven't answered. When you are inconsistent and intellectually dishonest then that is my reason to not trust your interpretation. These are not "gotcha" questions. These are questions that I am asking to better understand your interpretation. Contradictions and hypocrisy leads to more confusion, not a better understanding of what Witt, or you said.
Quoting Fooloso4
How is that any different than how I've been using it, or the definition I provided here:
Quoting Harry Hindu
I have pointed out several times now that in trying to show that we cannot predict some outcome, you provide different reasons as to why there would be a different outcome, thereby defeating your own argument. If we understand this particular definition the same way, then we would both realize that there would not be a reason for anything - that reasons would be meaningless. The problem is that I don't think you are thinking about the implications of what you and Witt are saying. You just say them and expect others to sit in awe of what you said. It seems that you have emotionally invested yourself in the things Witt has said, and that Witt (and by association you) can never be wrong about anything.
Quoting Fooloso4
I pulled it out of the dictionary.
I haven't declared anything wrong - just incoherent.
For you to read some text, the text has to already be available, no? - meaning someone had to write it down, right?
Quoting Fooloso4
You're still missing (or ignoring) the point and committing the same error that undermines your own argument. Here you have just provided reasons as to why we use White-Out, why it's not used as much now, etc. Not to mention that you ignore all the times we don't need to use White-Out, or the backspace key on the keyboard. My point was that every case was an accident, then there would be no consistency between typing a letter on the keyboard and seeing the letter you typed. The fact that the right letter appears on the screen MOST (99%) of the time poses a problem to your position.
You accuse me of being intellectually dishonest and yet expect me to help you understand what you clearly do not.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Here is what you said, emphasis added:
Quoting Harry Hindu
I am not going to point out the ways in which this differs from what you say now.
Quoting Harry Hindu
And in return I asked you why you think they do. I know of no argument that would settle the matter. Reason alone is not decisive in deciding what side we favor.
Let me ask you a few related questions:
Do you think that things could have turned out differently?
Is there some necessity that things can only turn out as they do?
Can the same conditions support different outcomes?
No.
Quoting bongo fury
Facts and states of affairs are much the same. Relations, not so much. Nor are "proposition" and "relation" interchangeable. Further, propositional signs are distinct from propositions (3.12)
Have a look a 3.1 and thereafter. What you call a "scribble" may be what Wittgenstein calls a "propositional sign".
Quoting Harry Hindu
Harry, despite this sentence being marks on a screen, you are aware that it is addressed to you. How is that?
I'm unclear on your point with regards to the Tractatus. Why are you raising the issue of Bradley and external relations? Is it for historical interest; to demonstrate Wittgenstein's agreement with Bradley?
Quoting RussellA
I don't see how C can be independent (external) of A or B when it is the relation between A and B; what relates A to B.
I believe this is addressed by Wittgenstein at 3.1432. The right way to think of a relation is that "a stands to b in a certain relation" (my emphasis).
I don't see Wittgenstein as arguing for external relations. I take this to be the point of his remarks at (e.g.) 4.122, 4.125 and 4.1251.
What, then? How are we to parse,
Quoting Banno
? Is "aRb" being used or mentioned (in your sentence)?
Quoting Banno
Hence,
Quoting bongo fury
Quoting Banno
I.e. in the isomorphism shown between the fact and a certain relation in the sign.
How to parse it? How do we put it into words?
Semantically. Make sense of it. For example,
Quoting bongo fury
So you want to put into words how a relation pictures the world.
But whereof one cannot speak...
It's not something to be addressed semantically. It's something shown, something one does. Explaining this is what led to Philosophical investigations...
But you know this. So it seems I've missed your point.
No, W does that perfectly well.
Using quote marks in the usual way to clarify between use and mention.
You asked how a relation pictures the world, then presented quotes in support of:
That does not appear to be about what you asked.
Since 3.144 is supporting what I said, I'm nonplussed.
No, I asked what you meant by
Quoting Banno
and offered a reasonable paraphrase consistent with the text in question, where the author / translators / editors used quote marks in the usual way to clarify between use and mention. (Crucial in the context.)
Quoting bongo fury
To which I replied.
As far as I can see, 3.14 and what follows concerns the structure of propositions rather than how they might picture the world.
I remain nonplussed. Your example does not relate to the question you asked of me.
SO perhaps we can go back to the context of what I have sad:
Quoting Banno
Imedaitly before that, in response to RussellA I made the point
Can you clarify, in this context, what you are asking?
What I quoted clearly concerns both, but I'm grateful for reassurance that you appreciate the difference between the two. Notice how W puts quote marks around the a-R-b string when referring to (mentioning) the proposition and/or its associated sign, and deliberately leaves it unadorned when using it (the string) as a proposition to refer to (show, if only hypothetically and generally) the relation itself, i.e. the fact.
I don't see why that is so painful to address.
I need it clarified to see if you are saying something of interest to me (and @RussellA?) about the showing. Yes, W does seem passionate about it, in a way that raises the question whether he would approve of glossing it simply as an "isomorphism". Does he have (perhaps nascent) nominalist scruples about granting the existence of relations as such?
But there doesn't seem much point in such a discussion if you can't bear to clarify between use and mention, using the usual convention of quote marks. Why is that so difficult? (Always.)
What is painful is the lack of clarity as to the topic of this conversation. It's not the distinction between use and mention that is obscure, so much as what you wish to do with it.
If I had been mentioning "aRb" I would have put it in quotes. I am surprised that was not apparent from the context.
Quoting RussellA
You're assuming that there is something called C
That's the question. Is there a something C that relates A to B. What is C ?
Either C is grounded in its relata or it isn't.
If C is grounded in its relata, then C doesn't exist because it is just a property.
If C isn't grounded in its relata, then it is independent of its relata, and is an individual. Bradley presents this as a problem, in that somehow the relation C needs to be related to its relata. This leads to the problem of infinite regress, meaning that C cannot exist.
Either way, C cannot ontologically exist, and if doesn't, cannot be "what relates A to B".
Relations may be the weak point in Wittgenstein's theory of showing
aRb leads into an infinite regress
Russell in his introduction gives an example of aRb: "If we say Plato loves Socrates, the word loves which occurs between the word Plato and the word Socrates establishes a certain relation between these two words, and it is owing to this fact that our sentence is able to assert a relation between the persons named by the words Plato and Socrates.
Wittgenstein introduces First Order Logic in an explanation of aRb
4.1252 Similarly the series of propositions aRb (?x): aRx. xRb
In the case of Plato and Socrates there is something x such that Plato relates to x and x relates to Socrates, where x is "love". X is an individual, is independent of either Plato or Socrates and is an external relation
We can replace x by "relates", and get the situation there is something x such that Plato relates to x and x relates to Socrates. Again we have the situation of a relation relating, which as Bradley pointed out, leads to an infinite regress
3 The logical picture of the facts is the thought
4.121 The propositions show the logical form of reality
4.461 "Propositions show what they say"
As I understand it, the picture is of the world but distinct from the world, the world consists of facts and a thought is a logical picture of the facts. It follows that the thought is the proposition, the logical picture is the propositional sign and the propositional sign has the form aRb.
3.1431 The essential nature of the propositional sign becomes very clear when we imagine it made up of spatial objects (such as tables, chairs, books) instead of written signs. The mutual spatial position of these things then expresses the sense of the proposition.
As aRb requires a relation, aRb is not a fact, but is part of the picture. However, if a was related to b, such that aRb, this would lead to an infinite regress. Therefore, a cannot be related to b. Therefore, propositions cannot show the logical form of reality.
Showing is a problem of inference
But we know that in our thoughts, we do relate object a to b, in that we do perceive an apple on a table. We do have thoughts of relations between objects. However, these relations cannot be shown in a picture using aRb, in that if there was relation between a and b, an infinite regress would follow, Therefore our thought that a is related to b cannot be by showing, but by another mechanism.
Showing is a problem of inference, in that what a picture shows depends on who is doing the observing. I can look at a picture and see a duck, whereas my neighbour may see a rabbit. The problem of inference can be illustrated by the chess game between a Tortoise and Achilles, where Achilles tells the Tortoise that if the Tortoise wins the next game, then Achilles will pay for the Tortoise to go on a holiday in the Seychelles. The Tortoise is obviously and wisely dubious about inferring anything from such a hypothetical offer.
How is the relationship between language and reality to be understood
If showing is inadequate in enabling us to understand the relationship between language and reality because of the problem with inference, then where is the solution.
As an aside, my belief is that the solution may be found in a triumvirate combining Wittgenstein's Tractatus which establishes the gaining of knowledge by acquaintance, Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations which establishes the gaining of belief by description and Kant's a priori intuition which ties both of these together.
I was actually just following your usage.
Quoting RussellA
This is a false dilemma. C does not need to ontologically exist in order to relate A to B. Take an internal relation, for example.
Quoting RussellA
This is raised an an objection to Russell's 'aquaintance' theory of meaning. It's not considered to be a problem for Wittgenstein because he emphasized context-based understanding of propositions. In other words, Wittgenstein won't allow you to understand P just by breaking it down into partial references. You're going to have to be involved in the conversation. "Showing" is something that happens in live language use, which is what he's focusing on in the Tractacus (according to the references I'm reading.)
No. It's more like, I'm accusing you of being intellectually dishonest due to your inconsistency and hypocrisy. Contradictions and hypocrisy do not allow an understanding of your interpretation. You're right. I don't understand an interpretation that is contradictory.
Quoting Fooloso4
I gave an example of what I was saying in using you interpreting Witt's writings requires that Witt wrote something down. If it is necessary that Witt write something down for you to later interpret it then this example is a problem for your interpretation. You seem to be focused on future events that you have no knowledge of (hence my point that you are talking about your ignorance of what is necessary), while I am pointing out that present events (you interpreting Witt's writings) are necessarily dependent on prior events (Witt writing something). So if I have shown that present events are necessarily dependent on specific causes (prior events), then why would it be a different relation between present events and future events?
All you have been able to do is show that there are many possible future events based on current conditions, but you're talking about your ignorance, not what is necessary. Possibilities stem from our ignorance of the conditions between now and a particular future event. You are simply pointing out that we are ignorant of other necessary factors that would lead to a different future event than what we predicted. All you did was point out necessary causes for alternate futures, thereby undermining your own argument.
Quoting Fooloso4Intellectual dishonesty. I provided an answer to why I think they do but you ignored it just like you ignored my question and didn't answer it. If you are unable to answer my question and you are not satisfied with mine, then where does that leave us? To think that you hold the higher ground in this instance when you weren't even able to attempt to answer my question just shows that you are unwilling to be intellectually honest.
Quoting Fooloso4
Only as a result of other necessary conditions, which you seem to agree with because you pointed out other necessary conditions for it to turn out differently.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes. Prior conditions determine subsequent events which you seemed to agree with because you pointed out other necessary conditions for it to turn out differently than was predicted.
Quoting Fooloso4
No, which you seemed to agree with because you never were able to point out an outcome that didn't have a necessary cause. All you did was point out that there could be other outcomes but ignored the fact that for there to be other outcomes there would need to be other necessary causes.
If aRb cannot be shown in a picture of the world because it may lead into an infinite regress, being shown the meaning of "tufaa liko mezani" will equally lead into an infinite regress, in that "Look up a word in the dictionary to find its meaning. You get more words. Look up the meaning of those words. You get more words. Since the dictionary is finite, and since word is defined in terms of other words, the definitions must be circular".
This is what Wittgenstein is objecting to. Objects relate to each other. x is not an object. Plato does not relate to x, he relates to Socrates. a (Plato) R (loves) b Socrates.
There is no infinite regress here because the relation is not a relation to a relation.
Quoting RussellA.
aRb does not require a relation, it is a proposition that points to a relation between a and b. aRb is a fact that is pictured in the proposition.
Quoting RussellA
They can. The apple (a) is on (R) the table (b). The relation between the apple and the table is that one is on they other. You can say it. You can show it.
3.12 The sign through which we express the thought I call the propositional sign. And the proposition is the propositional sign in its projective relation to the world.
How do you get from "the proposition is the propositional sign" to "propositional signs are distinct from propositions"?
What is a proposition without the sign? Where is this projective relation if not part of the totality of the world as a fact?
Quoting Banno
Probably. But then is he saying we think in scribbles and sounds? How is that any different than a language-less entity that thinks in colors, shapes, and sounds? A scribble is a colored shape.
Quoting Banno
Because some of the marks on the screen refer to me and the marks I remember having made earlier.
Yes. Russell's acquaintance theory says that you know what "blue" means from direct acquaintance with it, not from looking it up in a dictionary, so even Russell is immune to that problem.
The issue about love indicates a need for intensional rather than extensional definition. That's what I thought were focusing on
If you apply this to the word, "word", then it makes the whole argument nonsensical.
Words are used for communicating what is the case to someone that lacks the knowledge of what is the case (which could be knowing that it is raining or what some scribble or utterance means)- meaning that words refer to things that are not necessarily other words.
If I am aware that it is raining outside, then me hearing you say it is raining outside would be redundant and not useful. That useless redundancy shows that words do not refer to other words, but what is the case that isn't necessarily another use of words.
If I hear you say it is raining outside, and I don't know what "raining" means, I might look it up in the dictionary. I would find something like this:
Water condensed from atmospheric vapor and falling in drops.
I would only continue to look up words if I didn't already know what they referred to. If I know what "Water condensed from atmospheric vapor and falling in drops" refers to and it's not just another use of scribbles or utterances, then I don't need to look up any more words. I would then know what you are saying is the case, which isn't you using more words, but would be about the weather conditions outside.
Exactly.
It is, rather, the case that your lack of understanding leads you to assume intellectual dishonesty, contradiction, and hypocrisy on my part.
Quoting Harry Hindu
It is tautological that something must be written in order for that writing to be commented on. That is an example of logical necessity. There is no necessity that I would comment. Since it is not by necessity, and the only necessity he recognizes is logical necessity, that I interpret his work is Zufall, "a sort of accident" (2.0121). The German term also means 'chance'. Now if you believe that nothing happens by chance then we have a fundamental disagreement.
Quoting Harry Hindu
If you accept Laplace's demon then it is only by ignorance that we cannot determine a future that is determinate. This, however, is an assumption not an established fact.
If the necessary conditions underlie both A and B, then A is no more or less the necessary outcome than B. It is necessary that I know how to read and write and have a device I can use to respond to you on TPF, but whether or not I do respond and what I will say if I do respond is not determined by necessity.
You obviously do not agree and assume some hidden causal nexus that can only lead to a single outcome that is already determined by conditions that extend back to some state of initial conditions of the universe.
Which is the same as saying that something must be written (cause) for that writing to be commented on (effect). What reason do you have to think that something must be written for it to be commented on? Logical necessity is a type of causal necessity. Certain premises necessarily cause a certain conclusion to be true or false.
Quoting Fooloso4
But you did comment and Witt writing something is ONE of the many causes that led to your commenting. You had to be born, read Witt and become enamored by his writings, create an account on this forum, and intend to comment on it. If none of this happened, would we see your comments on this screen? Wouldn't all of those be necessary for us to see your comments on this screen? If we don't see comments of yours on this screen, then we assume that there was another necessary cause as to why we don't see any more comments of yours on the screen. Either you got bored with the conversation, real-life happened, etc.
Quoting Fooloso4
Now, if what you're saying were the case, then comments of yours would just appear on this screen even though you were never born.
Quoting Fooloso4
As I pointed out, the issue only applies to future events. We don't have this problem in laying out prior causes for present events. As you pointed out, it is logically (causally) necessary that Witt write something for you to comment on it. Why is that? Why are we ignorant of the future effects of present causes but not so with present effects of prior causes?
Quoting Fooloso4
But as we have shown different necessary conditions underlie both A and B. Witt writing something is a necessary condition, as well as all of the other conditions are necessary, for you to comment on it (A). Different necessary conditions would lead to B - you not commenting. Even though Witt wrote something, saying that doesn't necessarily mean you will comment on what he wrote is being disingenuous to the fact that there would be necessary conditions for you not doing so, such as you never being born.
You seem to think that a single distant cause must necessarily determine a single effect in the future. The further back in time you go from some effect, the more causes become necessary for that effect to occur, not just one. If you want to talk about the cause that directly precedes you leaving a comment on this forum, then we'd be pointing to the last step in the process which would be something like the software the forum is running on working correctly in displaying your comment after you clicked the submit button.
Quoting Fooloso4
What is the nexus of logical necessity? What makes it hidden when it comes to causal necessity, but obvious when it comes to logical necessity?
That it is written is a condition for me to comment not a cause that leads necessarily to me commenting.
Quoting Harry Hindu
The conclusion follows from the premises, the premises do not cause a certain conclusion.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I am not commenting because of what my parents did or their parents or what the first human did or because of life itself or that out of which life emerged.
Quoting Harry Hindu
That I was born is by change. The ability to comment is a necessary condition for me to do so, but my being born is not the cause of me commenting.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Right. We can in some grossly inadequate way trace what happened back to other things that happened. That is as far as we can go. That things did happen this way is not the same as claiming they necessarily had to happen this way.
Quoting Harry Hindu
That is not what I pointed out. What I pointed out is that logical necessity is not causal.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Because those causes do not lead to a single necessary outcome. It is only after the fact that we can say what that outcome was. Again, the same conditions might have led to a different outcome. What happens is only one of the possibilities of what might have happened.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Tautologies and contradictions. 4.46-4.461.
It was apparent, on the assumption that you were being deliberate in your use or omission of quote marks, but not on the assumption that you understood and were conveying W's meaning in 3.1432.
So, this,
Quoting Banno
says,
Quoting Banno
?
I don't see why you wouldn't much rather accept,
Quoting bongo fury
This is why you have so much difficulty, Harry. A proposition is distinct from a propositional sign in that a proposition projects out into the world
Quoting Harry Hindu
So you remain stuck at "meaning is reference".
Cheers.
It may have been clearer to you if I had preceded the aRb with "that", but I was writing for @RussellA, who now seems to have lost interest. Cheers.
Quoting RussellA
Previously I pointed out that this argument cannot be parsed in first order logic. In proposing that C relates A to B, Bradley and RussellA are treating predicates as individuals. The difference between a predicate and an individual is clear in Wittgenstein's aRb, which makes use of Frege's logic. Bradley did not have access to Frege's innovations, so was not able to see the error in his analysis of relations.
Amusingly, despite being mistaken overall, the incidental truth in RussellA's analysis is that predicates do not exist, if this is understood as that predicates are not the subjects of quantification. We can write U(x) f(x), ?(x)f(x), but one cannot quantify over f.
RussellA's picture is perhaps a form of Platonism, in which ethereal predicates float around the world, waiting to be trapped by individuals. Holding to such a picture would make understanding the Tractatus impossible.
This is so confused. It implies that no two things can ever be related, and that Plato cannot love Socrates. Of course if a relation requires another relation then it will lead to an infinite regress. But why assume it in the first place?
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting Fooloso4
:up:
Quoting Banno
Yeah, I was thinking the same.
I agree, language needs both description and acquaintance. Neither is sufficient by itself.
The Rosetta Stone couldn't be deciphered without there being something external to it. As Wittgenstein wrote 5.61 Logic fills the world: the limits of the world are also its limits, We cannot say in logic: This and this there is in the world, that there is not. For that would apparently presuppose that we exclude certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case since otherwise logic must get outside the limits of the world: that is, if it could consider these limits from the other side also.
There are two types of relations, those in the mind and those in the mind-independent world.
I agree and believe that relations exist in the mind, but have not been persuaded that relations exist in a mind-independent world.
As regards the ontological existence of relations in a mind-independent world, I have two questions.
Q1: If relations exist in a mind-independent world, how can the mere fact of a relation between a rock on Earth and a rock on Alpha Centauri cause changes to either ?
Q2: If relations don't cause changes in the world, then why do we think that relations exist in the world ?
What is the relation between them?
Quoting RussellA
Why must the existence of relations cause changes in the world?
Not lost interest, but busy as off to Vienna tomorrow for a Schnitzel and Apfelstrudel.
Did Wittgenstein treat relations as objects
In the Preface, Wittgenstein wrote "I will only mention that to the great works of Frege and the writings of my friend Bertrand Russell I owe in large measure the stimulation of my thoughts". In 4.1252 he includes examples of First Order Logic.
Traditionally, relations are internal and classes are considered as universals, but Frege treats relations and universals as objects. For Frege, a property, a special kind of function, is not part of the object possessing it, but forms together with the object a "complete whole", having as constituents the object and property.
The SEP article "Wittgenstein's Logical Atomism" sets out alternate readings to the Tractatus as to whether relations can be considered as objects or not. Anscombe argues that relations are not Tractarian objects, whilst Srenius, Merrill and Hintikka argue that they are.
Wittgenstein refers to Frege directly and includes examples of First Order Logic. As Frege treated relations as objects, this makes it plausible that Wittgenstein also treated relations as objects.
Quoting Banno
Relations
3.1431 The essential nature of the propositional sign becomes very clear when we imagine it made up of spatial objects (such as tables, chairs, books) instead of written signs. The mutual spatial position of these things then expresses the sense of the proposition.
I know there is a world in my mind and I believe there is also a world that is mind-independent. I know relations exist in the world in my mind, and I believe that relations don't exist in a mind-independent world.
Badley argues that a relation C cannot exist as a particular individual in a mind-independent world, to which I agree. It would follow that if a relation cannot exist as a particular in a mind-independent world, then relations as universals cannot either, a position in opposition to Platonism.
Relations cannot exist as universals in a mind-independent world
The question is, is the statement "the relation C is an individual" true or false. The subject "the relation C" is a particular, and the predicate "is an individual" is a universal.
You wrote "predicates do not exist", in the sense that Platonic Forms don't exist and have no ontological existence in a mind-independent world
The statement "the relation C is an individual" may be compared to "the King of France is bald", whereby there is something x - such that x is the King of France (false) - and x is bald, in that there is something x - such that x is the relation C (false) and x is an individual.
Reading of the Tractatus
@Banno "The purpose here is to move beyond seeing the Tractatus in terms of idealism and empiricism. The world is all that is the case. The picture is of the world, and hence in an important sense distinct from it. Thinking of the world as either mind-dependent or mind-independent will not allow one to see that the picture shows the world."
Even though I may believe that relations don't ontologically exist in a mind-independent world, as the Tractatus may be understood independently of idealism and empiricism, my belief need not impact on my reading of the Tractatus.
Exactly, what is it ?
Quoting Luke
Exactly, if relations don't cause changes in the world then how do we know about them ?
Quoting Fooloso4
Intellectual dishonesty and cherry-picking. All of this ignores what I said in the same post you are replying to:
Quoting Harry Hindu
So you are arguing with a straw-man.
Quoting Fooloso4
:rofl: You aren't even aware that you keep contradicting yourself. If causes are not necessary, then what your parents or their parents did or what the first humans did would have no necessary causal relation with your birth, but here you assumed that it does, or else why would you have mentioned these causes (which was not part of my list of causes) if they don't necessarily cause your birth? And you want to lecture me on logical necessity? :brow:
Quoting Fooloso4And if they didn't happen this way then we would find different reasons or causes as to why it happened differently.
Quoting Fooloso4
And you have yet to show an example of the same event that follows different causes. The problem is that every event is unique and so are their causes, but that isn't to say that events and their causes cannot be similar and it is the similarity that allows us to make predictions in the first place.
Quoting Fooloso4
What does it mean to follow, if not to be caused?
Cause:
The producer of an effect, result, or consequence.
The one, such as a person, event, or condition, that is responsible for an action or result.
A basis for an action or response; a reason.
So it sounds like we're saying the same thing, but using different terms.
Quoting Banno
:roll: Did I hit a nerve? So you're saying that Witt is contradicting himself? I wouldn't have so much difficulty if you weren't just pulling your assertions out of your nether regions.
Quoting Banno
You certainly haven't been any help in freeing me from this position because you can't adequately answer questions you should be asking yourself, so you'll remain stuck at "meaning is scribble games".
.
I really can't understand the need assert language as being external or distinct from the world or what it references. We can translate another language because it refers to the same world as the language we're translating to. It's a lame attempt to reject meaning as reference - a causal relation. Meaning is a causal relation. Language-use requires a medium and that medium is the world. Those the decipher languages exist in the world. The ideas that generate language use are in the world. You can't have it both ways. Language can't be part of the world AND external to it.
As part of our evolution, humans learned that causes lead to certain effects (tool-making, harnessing the power of fire, agriculture, etc.). We learned to harness that with language. All we are doing is participating in the same causal relations that are the world. Going from understanding that someone's behavior informs an observer of their inner thoughts to understanding that scribbles can inform a reader of the writer's inner thoughts seems like a logical/natural conclusion to reach. Effects inform us of their causes. The problem is in interpreting those relations as such, but our interpretation is subject to the same causal relations as everything else. How we interpret some observation is dependent upon prior observations.
I have attempted to do two things:
First, explain Wittgenstein's distinction between necessity and accident.
Second, make clear our fundamental differences regarding determinism.
Instead of accepting these differences and moving on you repeat the same things.
You posited the relation to begin with, so you tell me.
Quoting RussellA
Again, it was your presupposition that the existence of relations must cause changes in the world. I'm asking you why that must be.
Relations must cause changes in the world if we are to know about them
If relations ontologically exist in a mind-independent world, they either cause changes in the world or they don't.
I have seen no evidence that changes in the world have been caused by relations between things. I have seen evidence that changes in the world have been caused by forces between things, but forces are a different thing to relations.
Therefore, either relations exist and don't cause changes in the world or relations don't exist.
If relations exist, but don't cause changes in the world, then we cannot know about them, and are unknown unknowns.
I cannot prove that relations don't ontologically exist, although I can justify that they don't. It is up to those who propose the ontological existence of relations to prove that they do exist, or justify that they do.
I could say, as in 3.1432, "a stands in a certain relation to b", but then again I could say "the war was raging, the Evil White Witch led an attack against Aslan, and the Unicorns joined the great battle". Why should either of these two statements be more true than the other ?
All objects exist in relation to others. There are no objects that we can know of that exist in isolation independent of all else.
Quoting RussellA
If there is no relation between objects a and b there can be no force acting between them.
No. You again showed that you are a fool. Stay safe. .
It's good to see you working on this, but have a close look at your argument.
First you assert that Frege treats relations and universals as objects, then say that a property is a special kind of function.
Functions are not objects.
First order logic clearly distinguishes between individuals, designated by a,b,c..., and predicates, designated by f, g, h... That's the point; that predicates, which include relations, are kept distinct from individuals, or objects.
You are correct that there are those who think that relations in the Tractatus are nameable. Notice that Anscombe, Wittgenstein's friend, student, translator and literary executor, disagrees. And even if one adopts that reading, that does not automatically lend support to Bradley's odd argument. To do that you still have to force there to be a second relation between an individual and a relation, a notion that is incongruous with the Tractatus. That is, even if relations can be treated as names, Bradley's argument does not follow. You might well be able to find a paper or two supporting such a view, but they would be controversial, at the least, and certainly a minority opinion.
While you are in the SEP, check out the article on Bradley's Regress. It will give you a better idea of the breadth of disagreement therewith.
Quoting RussellA
There's your basic issue in understanding the Tractatus, since you are trying to work in two worlds while the Tractaus has exactly one - the conjunction of facts.
You are simply disagreeing with the Tractatus. You are not showing it to be inconsistent.
Quoting RussellA
Well, no, since the latter has a parsing in first order logic, while "the relation C is an individual" cannot be parsed. Again, first order logic does not allow quantification over predicates. It only allows quantification over individual variables.
But I find myself repeating points previously made, so unless something new is on offer, thanks for the chat.
It isn't. Logic sets it out clearly. People are confused. Especially those who try to do philosophy without an understanding of logic.
Yep.
Wittgenstein said logic is nonsense.
"2.2 Sense and Nonsense
In the Tractatus Wittgensteins logical construction of a philosophical system has a purposeto find the limits of world, thought, and language; in other words, to distinguish between sense and nonsense. The book will draw a limit to thinking, or rathernot to thinking, but to the expression of thoughts . The limit can only be drawn in language and what lies on the other side of the limit will be simply nonsense (TLP Preface). The conditions for a propositions having sense have been explored and seen to rest on the possibility of representation or picturing. Names must have a bedeutung (reference/meaning), but they can only do so in the context of a proposition which is held together by logical form. It follows that only factual states of affairs which can be pictured can be represented by meaningful propositions. This means that what can be said are only propositions of natural science and leaves out of the realm of sense a daunting number of statements which are made and used in language.
"There are, first, the propositions of logic itself. These do not represent states of affairs, and the logical constants do not stand for objects. My fundamental thought is that the logical constants do not represent. That the logic of the facts cannot be represented (TLP 4.0312)."
-- SEP
Do you disagree with this interpretation?
Where does this occur?
Quoting Tate
Is there some other logic?
It doesn't say anything like that.
The best you might get is that logic is senseless; that it has no meaning but sets out a grammatical structure.
This says propositions of logic are nonsense per the Tractacus. They're tautological. They don't picture states of affairs.
No, it does not. At most it says logic is senseless. Logic shows the structure of propositions, some of which picture the world.
Quoting SEP
Quoting SEP
I think the SEP is saying that, per the Tractacus, propositions of logic are nonsense.
Why so emotional, Banno? I'm not the one contradicting themselves. Are you in love with Witt, too?
Understanding that misuses of language creates philosophical problems goes all the way back to the Greeks. Plato is not only warning us about misusing language in the sense of bad grammar or syntax. Speaking badly also includes saying untruths, telling lies, creating a conflict between speech and reality - between what is said and what is. To misuse language in this sense is to sound a false note in the music of creation - to put yourself out of tune with the way things are.
In his book, "Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power", the German philosopher Josef Pieper observes that we use language for two purposes: to describe reality and to communicate with other people. Each function implies the other. When we describe how things are, we describe them to or for somebody else. And when we communicate with others, we try to tell them something about reality: what else could we talk about?
The liar violates both of these purposes of speech. The liar withholds some part of reality from the listener, preventing them from participating in something by knowing it. Talk that fails to communicate becomes monologue, or worse, manipulation. Those who weave a web of contradictions never say anything at all.
The background for these observations about language and reality is Platos critique of his rivals, the sophists. Sophists were teachers who travelled around ancient Greece, getting rich by claiming to sell wisdom. Of course, what they sold was not wisdom at all, but only skill with words. The sophists sold success: for the right price, they said, you can learn how to use words to gain power and money in the political assembly. You can convince the courts to give you a share of your neighbors property, whether you deserve it or not. Socrates and Plato fought to define philosophy against this brazen quest for success at all costs.
The Greek sophists were the first nihilists, teaching that there is no such thing as truth. Or better: teaching that we can and should speak without regard to truth. The sophist is interested in reality only as a topic for impressive speeches. What you say does not matter; the only important thing is how you say it, which seems to be what many members of this forum think, by the way the write. By severing speech from reality, the sophist makes truth an optional add-in. "I will teach you how to speak well," they might say, "and you can decide whether to speak truths or lies." The difficulty here is that attempting to speak as though reality has no claim on me corrupts my relationships with the world and with other people. It degrades my humanity and damages my soul, as Plato would say.
Much of philosophy relies on deliberate misuse of language. Because literary skill is the rigorous use of language in the pursuit of truth, the habit of literature, of serious reading, is the best defense against believing the half-truths of ideologues and the lies of demagogues. The abusers of language are our modern sophists: unscrupulous marketers, lawyers, politicians, philosophers that believe language is a game, those who push content-free slogans in place of genuine communication about the world.
Sophistical speech always has an ulterior motive: when it does not aim at communicating the truth of something to another person, speech must be directed to some other goal, a goal of the speakers choosing. When it abandons communication, speech becomes manipulation, and the relationship of solidarity between speaker and audience, as co-seekers of truth, is fundamentally compromised.
And didn't he say something about cutting and pasting large chunks of text from the, er, realm of ideas, with cursory changes and no attribution?
(I was enjoying your change of style!)
https://www.emmitsburg.net/archive_list/articles/misc/hhp/language.htm
It is because they do not represent states of affairs that they are without (non) sense. As Banno pointed out:
Quoting Banno
Logical form is the transcendental condition for saying something that does have a sense. The propositions of logic are not "nonsense" in the sense of illogical or a jumble of words and signs. They are logical.
From the preface:
We cannot, according to Wittgenstein, think illogically. It is in the expression of our thoughts that problems can arise.
What is called nonsense in the preface are not the propositions of logic but the attempt to say something that cannot be said.
Near the end of the Tractatus he calls "my propositions", which are not the propositions of logic, "unsinnig".
So how do we reconcile what he claims to be true with his calling these propositions nonsense? This is what we must climb "out through". Out through does not mean to dismiss or disregard as nonsense.
The very sentence you quoted against me agrees with me.
If language is for communication...
English is your second language? I usually do not read your posts. Your view on language, and hence philosophy, is just too simple to be interesting. I don't have @Fooloso4's patience.
Stay safe.
A rhetorical question? or is it for @Tate?
I've got my own view, but don't we all?
For anyone confused by "nonsense"
Nonsense!
It is not a question of whether it has a special meaning, but rather whether it has the meaning you think it does.
There has always been and always will be disagreement over the interpretation, but in my opinion any interpretation that is worth consideration must be plausible. One way in which to test plausibility is to find things in the text that seem to be at odds with the interpretation.
Quoting Tate
We could leave it there. Or we could bring into focus what is fundamental to the disagreement between members.
Yes, Harry Hindu nailed it recently. Meaningful propositions are informative (that's basically what he said).
Propositions of logic aren't informative. They can't be false. They're tautological. The issue is in that general direction.
I completely honor whatever your viewpoint is. I'm sure it's great.
Or contradictory. ( 4.46-4.461) If contradictory then false.
Logic says nothing about the world. That is not in dispute. Logic is used as a aid in examining and correcting our expressions of thought.
Logic is not about the world. Logic is about what we say about the world.