One can do what one wills, but your are right, he actions would be facts. Wittgenstein says though that it is not a matter of the consequences of the act in the world. He places the value of the action in the act itself. (6.422) — Fooloso4

(I'm back, wow time flies, I didn't realise that 2 weeks have passed!)

But what about the aforementioned act, what could that be, if it is not connected with the facts of the world, and if consequences do not matter? I mean, one can save or take lives, help the poor, the rich or noone at all but oneself, be good to one's parents or ill-mannered, etc, whatever one does, God's will has nothing to do with it, since God's will is not concerned with happenings, whatever happens in the world, this is just something contingent that could also be otherwise, no matter what our will is - if it is, so called, good or bad.

But if it is such that God is connected with meaning, then I think that the act would have to be that of giving meaning to one's life, to find purpose, to make one's life meaningful, to make it worth and mean something, whatever that may be, and what happens afterwards, as a consequence of this act, this is not related to God's will in any case. And furthermore, a meaning-giving act is something most godly, holy and divine (good willing) that brings about happiness - a hallowing, whereas a meaning-removing act something most ungodly and unholy (bad willing) that brings about unhappiness - a wallowing. Such that the value of the action is in the act itself, like you said, the act being a meaning-creating one, in contrast to a meaning-destructive one, both acting on the ethical plane, and not on the facts of the world. Who would support the notion of a meaningless God anyway? So it would appear that Wittgenstein is telling us that it is God's will to give ourselves a purpose in life, but not specifying which.

Do you think that we can infer all this much from the text?

So if God's will is not concerned or connected with happenings in the world, and since whatever happens in the world is just something contingent and accidental that could also be otherwise, what does really concern this will, where is it focused?

So in other words, for Wittgenstein, without God, there is no meaning, there cannot be one, the world is meaningless without God. No God = no meaning, there is God = there is meaning, as simple as that.

And as long as the will cannot be transformed into actions - because these actions would then be facts, which would mean that they could be described by language, something that Wittgenstein deems impossible (for ethical facts to be part of the world) - then we reach the conclusion that God's will cannot ever be shown in the world, one way or another.

From all the above, I understand that Wittgenstein equates or rather links the meaning of life to God (the meaning of life/world, we can call God), and good willing with being in accord with/doing God's will. No judgement intended, but isn't this what theologians have been arguing for centuries?

Amity! Why did you change Harrison's name to Wittgenstein??? Got me fooled there for a moment.. :smile:

Yes, I am sorry for wronging you, but you were right that sometimes it was a bit of both. Anyway, I don't think that in order to understand these things, the transcendent or transcendental, how is it that they are called or whatever the hell they mean, I doubt that one can or should go about them alone, this is where I think all these great minds like Wittgenstein erred, and why. Wittgenstein most probably realized this at some point, but with noone in sight to accompany him, designed all these games in his Investigations, to be played by everyone, we are playful beings after all, like cats and dogs.

You set the adversarial tone several months ago. — Fooloso4

Yes I did, I am no angel myself. Nevertheless, I gave you the benefit of the doubt, if you remember, whereas you did not. A lot has changed since, and it seems that the tables have turned. But I don't want any benefits, just to be treated fairly. I used to take your judgement seriously, but now it saddens me that I cannot do that anymore, since I believe it has been compromised by empathy towards my person. Unfair!

I will let the record speak for itself. — Fooloso4

Well let it, because statements like this one: "the only things that you have pointed to is where you have gone wrong", don't seem to do that, but rather speak on behalf of the record, or otherwise manipulate it.

What teamwork? What part of the heavy lifting did you contribute when I went through the text? — Fooloso4

On several occasions I tried to help you make your points clearer, either by paraphrasing them myself through my own eyes, or with my questions. On others, not so much. But I feel that you haven't given me this chance for my own contributions at all.

You seem to be unaware of the extent of my patience, even after it has been pointed out by another member. — Fooloso4

Ah yes, Amity, she fell sick of our bickering, and eventually left. To which I responded that she should look at it from my perspective as well. I mean, I certainly appreciate your efforts, as well as of others here, or elsewhere, regarding these so important existential matters, but what about me, what about my efforts, my patience, my world? Just because it hasn't been pointed out, it doesn't mean that they are non-existent, or otherwise worthless and meaningless. In any case, Wittgenstein said that all propositions carry the same value, as they cannot express anything higher.

How you say, it's the bollocks man! :yum:

You have been struggling to find where my interpretation goes wrong and/or where Wittgenstein's does, but the only things that you have pointed to is where you have gone wrong. — Fooloso4

Is this what I've been struggling to do? Because I was under the impression this whole time that we were working as a team, trying to figure out the text. Never crossed my mind that we were playing crossbows and catapults, with myself in the role of the attacker and you the defender. Are you in for teamwork or do you prefer going solo?

Well, it is such a common thing that discussions regarding ethics lead to the most violent of clashes, that would make anyone wonder what ethics is really about, what is really going on here. So much love, so much ethos, it's really mind blowing, I must say! :) One thing is certain though, no love is lost amidst the brotherhood, or the sisterhood.

If you reach the end of the Tractatus and still hold to that assumption then you have not understood the text. — Fooloso4

If you have read what I have been saying with due care and attention that is not a question you would ask. — Fooloso4

You are so nice! :) You should have been a teacher or something similar, if you are not already, that is. But your approach to discourse resembles very much that of Wittgenstein's - I would say it is of the same form, logical or otherwise - at least in his early years, where he would beat the shit out of people, literally or metaphorically; Like he wrote to Russell at some point: "It distresses me that you did not understand the rule dealing with signs in my last letter because it bores me beyond words to explain it. If you thought about it for a bit you could discover it for yourself! I beg you to think about these matters for yourself: it is intolerable for me to repeat a written explanation which even the first time I gave only with the utmost repugnance".

One could say that this would be somewhat justified, if criticism was just, or the will good, but I don't think this is the case here.

That may be your assumption but it is not an assumption that informs any part of the Tractatus. — Fooloso4

I don't think it is just my assumption. I mean, in our time and in Wittgenstein's time, there is a vast amount of ethical propositions before me and him, so in order to examine them, we need to take them at face value, what these ethical propositions purport themselves to be, regardless what you, me or anybody else think of them. But anyway, little does it matter.

It is not simply lacking form but lacking logical form, which means they do not say anything about what is the case. — Fooloso4

So there, you agree that they lack form or logical form?

6.1264 Every proposition of logic is a modus ponens presented in signs. (And the modus ponens can not be expressed by a proposition.)

So are propositions of logic indeed propositions, or something else? Do they have the same form as elementary propositions?

There are no ethical propositions. Once again — Fooloso4

Yes, this is the conclusion, but we start our investigation assuming there are.

All propositions have the same form - logical form. It is not that ethical propositions are formless, it is that statements about ethics are not propositions — Fooloso4

Yes I suppose you could say that. Why can you not say that ethical propositions are not propositions because they lack form?

There is only one kind of proposition. Elementary propositions are logical propositions — Fooloso4

What about logical propositions such as the modus ponens? Does it represent a state of affairs?

They are alike in that neither can be represented, yet you want to keep talking about them. — Fooloso4

Yes, because there is something about them that bugs me.

In factual propositions, facts can be represented - their content, but not the representational form. In ethical propositions, nothing can be represented.

I can extend something that is in analogy with something else. But here, factual propositions are not in analogy with ethical propositions, so I cannot extend, sorry. What I can do though, is similes. For which Wittgenstein says in the Lecture, if you remember, that once the simile goes away, then you are left with nonsense.

There are three kinds of propositions in the Tractatus: elementary, logical and ethical. They do not have the same form, in fact I think that ethical propositions are formless. But later on, Wittgenstein was forced to abandon elementary propositions, I guess this had an impact on the ethical as well.

Extend this to the whole realm of the ethical and maybe then you will catch on and the misguided questioning will end. — Fooloso4

Can't do that, since the ethical is treated differently: ethical propositions are not like factual propositions where we can talk about the facts but cannot depict their form. But rather they are alltogether senseless, in form and content both. Maybe this is where you are confused.

The form of all propositions is the same. The form of all relations between objects is the same. Just because we say things about both houses and cows does not mean that houses and cows are the same. — Fooloso4

Yes, in the Tractatus it was put forward that all propositions have the same form, however this was abandoned later on. Anyway, what both houses and cows have in common, according to the Tractatus, is the pictorial/representational form, and so they can be depicted, we can form pictures of them, portray them in language. But we cannot make a picture of the pictorial form itself, and thus we cannot talk about it in the same way, or maybe at all, as we do with what this form represents, which was a common error made by philosophers.

Of course not, but rather if black and white are colours, then they must have something in common, they must share a connection, so they are essentially the same, although different. In tractarian terms, their form is the same, but their content is different.

You can call it my own sermon if you like, but they are all things that Wittgenstein says, all things that were referenced. As to why you think calling it a sermon serves any purpose, I will leave to you. And as to why you drag Copleston into this I will also leave to you. — Fooloso4

Right, leave everything to me then! :) If it looks like a sermon, acts like one, then it is what it is. Copleston was dragged because I think he expresses the same views as yours regarding the ethical part of the Tractatus. I put in bold the parts that I find relevant.

Wittgenstein would not agree. He does not regard God as an object, objective/transcendent or otherwise. — Fooloso4

Whether God is that transcendent/objective object or otherwise, he (Copleston) certainly attributes religious/mystical experience to God, one way or another. Whereas, in your reading of the Tractatus, this mystical/ethical/religious experience is attributed to ethics. But then again, you seem to link ethics to God as in the sermon above, so essentially, these two different views are the same.

Well for one I very much doubt that all the above are things that one knows. I said previously what I think W. meant by the world of the happy man, and in the case of religious experience: that one speaks in similes, relating happiness to God or some divine providence, but this is not to be taken literally; and as we do not have words for God or the divine, similarly we do not have words for this happy experience. But as you said we went over this. So you agree that it was your own sermon?

But I think you are claiming the same for the Tractatus and for Wittgenstein as Father Copleston did, in his debate with Russell I linked to before. In there he writes:

http://www.scandalon.co.uk/philosophy/cosmological_radio.htm

C: ... Well, perhaps I might say a word about religious experience, and then we can go on to moral experience. I don't regard religious experience as a strict proof of the existence of God, so the character of the discussion changes somewhat, but I think it's true to say that the best explanation of it is the existence of God. By religious experience I don't mean simply feeling good. I mean a loving, but unclear, awareness of some object which irresistibly seems to the experiencer as something transcending the self, something transcending all the normal objects of experience, something which cannot be pictured (huh, it's not a picture) or conceptualized, but of the reality of which doubt is impossible (what one knows)-- at least during the experience. I should claim that cannot be explained adequately and without residue, simply subjectively. The actual basic experience at any rate is most easily explained on the hypotheses that there is actually some objective cause of that experience.

and

C: ... I'm speaking strictly of mystical experience proper, and I certainly don't include, by the way, what are called visions. I mean simply the experience, and I quite admit it's indefinable, of the transcendent object or of what seems to be a transcendent object. I remember Julian Huxley in some lecture saying that religious experience, or mystical experience, is as much a real experience as falling in love or appreciating poetry and art. Well, I believe that when we appreciate poetry and art we appreciate definite poems or a definite work of art. If we fall in love, well, we fall in love with somebody and not with nobody....

Just as Copleston says that the objective/transcendent object and cause of religious/mystical experience is God, so you say that for Wittgenstein, the condition for these kind of mystical experiences is the ethical. Which is also the condition for beauty - poetry and art, right? And that this is what Wittgenstein was getting at in the Tractatus, well at least in these two pages of his book?

And what was this then?

It is quite clear that there is ethical experience. One knows what it is, according to W., to be a happy man. One knows what it is to be in agreement with the world, with one's conscience, the will of God. One knows what it is for life to have value and meaning. One knows what it is to live in the eternal present. One knows the mystical (it makes itself manifest). One know how to see the world aright and what it is to see the world aright. One knows how all things stand, how it is all related, that is, God. — Fooloso4

Something that someone just knows but cannot put into words? I am asking, because it looked like a sermon to me, and I wouldn't take Wittgenstein to be a preacher.

Right, so number 1 is that, whether for W. meaning and value are actually the same, whether they are essentially the same - same same but different like the asians usually say (same same, in short) -, and whether they have the same source (ethics).

Now number 2 relates to happyness, if, again for W and the Tractatus, it coincides with "good willing", which coincides with doing God's will, for whatever that means, and seeing the world aright, in which case I think we may call this particular interpretation of the Tractatus as the "stairway-to-heaven" interpretation, with the rungs of the ladder referring to this stairway.

The same distinction in use can be found with Bedeutung. In English we also use the term 'meaning' in different ways. — Fooloso4

So you are saying that 'sense' in 4.022/4.031 and 'sense' in 6.41 mean different things? But yes, because I cannot see how the "sense of the world" would represent some situation. So in 6.41, value is meant as "sense"? And in that sense, does he see value and meaning as essentially the same? Is this why you said to me previously:

So I see here W argue in favour of amorality, just like Nietzsche, the opinion that ethics is non-existent, in thinking or in saying, in this world or beyond.
— Pussycat

Here you betray your lack of understanding not only of Wittgenstein but of Nietzsche as well. What they have in common is the fundamental importance of value and meaning for life. They differ, however, in where that is to be found. For Nietzsche it is the revaluation of values. — Fooloso4

I mean to express the position that: if one discards ethics as the condition for value, then one has to discard meaning as well. That is, the world cannot have a meaning, one's life cannot have a meaning, but be utterly meaningless, if one does not accept at least some value coming from the ethical.

If Wittgenstein was correct in claiming that happiness is the reward for the good exercise of the will and it was true that he was not happy, then that seems to be a correct conclusion. If you read Monk's biography and well as comments made by Wittgenstein in Culture and Value and elsewhere it is clear that he sometimes is critical of his actions. See also his comments about confession. — Fooloso4

Yes, I remember reading it some years ago, but diagonally like they say, some excerpts only. Wittgenstein said he wasn't happy, in several occasions, but in any case this is evident. Nowadays, he would have been diagnosed with some mental illness, for sure, bipolar disorder, manic depression, OCD most probably.

hey hi Wallows!

Woof!

We need to make a distinction between meaning as Sinn or sense and meaning as significant or of value. — Fooloso4

Alright, can you bring an example that clearly shows this distinction?

Happiness is said to be a reward for the good exercise of the will (6.43) — Fooloso4

So if that is the case, combined with the fact that W. was not happy in his life, we can safely infer that he did not exercise his will in a good way, and thus he was not rewarded, right?

I'm back, hehe!

So let us conclude this if you like. First of all, I think your reading of the Tractatus sees the transcedental ethics as providing the condition for meaning and value both: without ethics, there would be no value, and no meaning either; ie the condition for meaning and value is the same. Is that what you are saying?

And as to happiness, do you think that Wittgenstein is saying that whoever surmounts these ethical propositions and sees the world aright, will be happy? Because if so, then how do you explain the fact that he led a most unhappy life himself?

how much of personal timidity and vul- nerability does this masquerade of a sickly recluse betray!

Did Nietzsche just call Spinoza a sickly recluse??

But the fact is certainly related to the act. So if he cannot see the immorality in the facts themselves, then how can he see it in the act? Is it only that we cannot speak of it/say it (that it is immoral), as if we were deaf and mute or something, but everything else is the same as before?

Philosophy alienated me from friends and family! So it taught me something with regards to that.

But anyway Wittgenstein must have had a rather peculiar view of ethics and morality in general. It struck me as odd when I read his lecture where he equates an act of murder to that of a falling of a stone:

If for instance in our world-book we read the description of a murder with all its details physical and psychological, the mere description of these facts will contain nothing which we could call an ethical proposition. The murder will be on exactly the same level as any other event, for instance the falling of a stone. Certainly the reading of description might cause us pain or rage or any other emotion, or we might read about the pain or rage caused by this murder in other people when they have heard of it, but there will simply be facts, facts, and facts but no Ethics.

I mean, a normal person I think would have said that the murder was quite unethical and immoral, and denote the murderer as unethical and immoral too. But not Wittgenstein, he only sees facts.

In any case, I think we can safely say where Wittgenstein places all ethical propositions, somewhere next to the lifeline. :grin:

It is not like sightseeing. It is not a once and done experience. — Fooloso4

haha, well done Fooloso4, you have a sense of humour after all!

It is an attempt to put into words what cannot be put into words. When he says "ultimate value", however, it suggests something much more profound and important than something pleasant. When he says that he is "so to speak" in agreement with the will of God, again I think he means something far more profound and significant than something pleasant. When he says that his conscience is the voice of God, he is not stating a matter of fact. To attempt to ascribe a more specific meaning to it is antithetical to the Tractatus. — Fooloso4

The word "meaning" can have different meanings. We use it differently when we say "the meaning of a chair is something that we use to sit on", when we say that "this object has a special meaning for us", and when we inquire into the meaning of life. The word-sign may be the same, but it has a different form, so it means something else in each case. So in the case of "ultimate or absolute value", I think he means the source of all value, the transcedental ethics, or God so to speak, but not the actual value, since no such ultimate value can be ascribed or described, and the source is not the same as what emanates from it.

Do you mean ethics in the sense of rules or standards of proper conduct? If so, Wittgenstein says nothing about this — Fooloso4

No, I meant ethics as the transcendental: if it was employed as a means to see the world aright, then what is its use after this?

The closest he gets in the comment in the Notebooks about conscience quoted in an earlier post: — Fooloso4

I think he uses this as a simile like he says so in the lecture: when someone is happy then he says and feels as if he is with God or in heaven, where being with God and heaven mean something pleasant. The same holds for the ethical rewards - reward must be something acceptable. Equivalently, when someone is unhappy then he says and feels as if he is with the Devil or in hell, where the Devil and hell mean something unpleasant - punishment be something unacceptable. Or doing the will of God, so to speak, he means it also as a simile for when he is happy and in accordance with his own conscience, not that he is actually doing God's will.

My whole tendency and, I believe, the tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of language.

So for the man that finally understands Wittgenstein, it wasn't ethics/the ethical that was transcended, but rather propositions about it: the ethical was needed for this experience of transcendence, having been the condition. But what happens to ethics afterwards?

Wittgenstein does not say and it does not follow from anything he does say that the ethical has been transcended. It is just the opposite, the ethical transcends the facts of the world. (6.41) — Fooloso4

But when he writes that: "he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly". This surmount, climb through, on and over these (nonsensical and ethical) propositions, isn't that transcendence?

I mean, can't we rewrite the above as: "he who understands me finally recognizes the ethical propositions as senseless, when he has transcended them", without changing the meaning?

And yet at the penultimate rung of the latter at 6.421 he says that ethics is transcendental. How do you explain this? — Fooloso4

He gives no meaning to "transcendental", so anyone can explain it how he sees fit. One can take Kant's meaning of transcendental, for which by the way there are different interpretations and debates. Another can say that transcendental is something that can be transcended, or gone beyond, for whatever that means. Another that transcendental is itself nonsensical and cannot be put in words etc.

when someone else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions.

What is the meaning he gives to "transcendental"? What does this sign represent in the proposition "ethics are transcendental"? Is it a metaphysical concept to begin with?

What one sees when the world is seen aright is not simply that propositions about what cannot be put into words are senseless but that the world is mystical. — Fooloso4

Yes, the world is mystical, like we didn't know.

What is inexpressible would be nonsense if one attempted to express it. This does not mean that the mystical or the ethical does not exist. It does, it shows itself. What is senseless is not the ethical but rather propositions about the ethical. — Fooloso4

It doesn't mean it exists either. Or that the ethical that has been transcended has anything to do with what is obtained at the end of this transcendence, it might be something completely different.

There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical.

So he says that the mystical shows itself, not the ethical. But then again, someone may say that whatever is inexpressible shows itself, and as long as the ethical is inexpressible, then also the ethical, which is the mystical, shows itself. Go figure. But this all too funny I think. :grin:

Ethics still of course exists, in a sense, or rather not in a sense, it actually exists, for those that are still on the bottom of the ladder or climbing it up, but once they reach the top, they see it as something senseless, it just won't make sense to them at all then.

Is not this the reason why men to whom after long doubting the sense of life became clear, could not then say wherein this sense consisted? — 6.521

Once they transcend it, or go beyond it, its senselessness will become clear.

My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly. — 6.54

But getting rid of excess baggage is not as easy as it sounds, and one has to occupy oneself considerably with the subject matter in order to do that, for example walking away like the guys in the Vienna circle did, is not an option. And what a peculiar and special deed would that be, if to get rid of something heavy, one had to carry it through thick and thin, only to throw it away at the end. The Tractatus describes that deed.

Of course there is then no question left, and just this is the answer.

But I think that Wittgenstein did not think so only of ethics, but of everything that cannot be expressed in language, ethics only being a small part of it. That is one interpretation at least, but surely there are more, as the bibliography suggests, I mean if one would do some research on the Tractatus, he would find plenty of different views, it is not at all clear.

Thank you Amity, I guess ... :blush:

That is correct. This is a basic Tractarian distinction. One that I have repeatedly pointed to only to have it ignored and the same mistake repeated — Fooloso4

Nope, wrong again. And well, no matter how many times a mistake is repeated, it still remains a mistake won't you all agree now? The only thing that a repetition shows is that someone is stuck in time, sounding like a broken record, like a needle stuck in a groove, as the expression goes.

Ethics, if it is anything, is supernatural and our words will only express facts; as a teacup will only hold a teacup full of water and if I were to pour out a gallon over it.

Here Wittgenstein says that Ethics is supernatural, he doesn't say that "Ethics seems to be supernatural", so there goes the argument about the factual claim. And of course, sceptical like he is, unlike others - not to name them, adds "if it is anything", I mean the guy is not even sure that ethics exists, or if it is anything at all, like a ghost or an apparition or something.

I'm not an expert on Wittgenstein, and anyone who claims that they are, are likely full of shit. — Wallows

no shit Einstein! hahah

down in the deathly hallows
there's a man that wallows
oh what a pity to be
in a pit most shallow
I say spit boy!
and never swallow

You know, it's funny, Amity, that you only see my "lows" and personal false allegations but somehow manage to turn a blind eye to Fooloso4's lows and personal false allegations, repeated comments about my blind spot, and my cacophony as of late. As well as to patience, you think that it is only him that is patient with me, whereas I am just ... what? Fooling around?