It's just that I got the impression from you that you are lacking some basic knowledge in philosophy, when you utter things like "a priori metaphysics". — Pussycat

Your impression is wrong, very wrong. I do not generally discuss my education or credentials in the forums because I prefer that the arguments be evaluated on their own merit.

I think that to disguise this blunder, you later said that you meant by that what is usually called "traditional metaphysics", the inquiry into the existence of God, the immortality of the soul and free will. — Pussycat

If you look back over the discussion you will find that you asked:

What is the metaphysical, to you, I mean? — Pussycat

To which I responded:

I think that Wittgenstein's use follows that of Kant. The metaphysical refers to questions of God, soul, and world. They are not objects in the world and thus cannot be known by the natural sciences or by experience of things in the world. Nor can they be known a priori. — Fooloso4

The issue here is not metaphysics as a philosophical discipline or science but specific questions or concerns of metaphysics - the metaphysical questions of God, soul, and world. Kant did not reject the questions of metaphysics, he rejected a priori solutions to these questions. Pure reason, that is, a priori reason, reaches an impasse as the antinomies show. This means that there can no a priori science of metaphysics. It does not mean there can be no God or soul but that such things are not within the purview of a science. They are for Kant matters of faith not knowledge.

On one reading of the Tractatus they are to be disregarded as nonsense. What I am claiming is that although they are nonsense in that they do not represent things in the world, they are not to be dismissed, they are what matters.

So, this leads me to believe that you know nothing, or very little, about metaphysics, or philosophy for that matter, and you are just doing guess work here. — Pussycat

Believe whatever you want about me, but pay attention to the text. Where does the text contradict anything I have said about it? Where have I made a false step?

Therefore I am sorry, but I won't be discussing anything more with you, not before you you do a bit of studying first at least, to get the basic philosophical concepts cleared out. — Pussycat

That is uninformed, condescending, and evasive. The real problem here is that if my analysis is right then some of your basic claims about the text are wrong. And so, instead of addressing my analysis you create a smokescreen.

I am attempting to follow the Tractatus step by. What W. presents is already a distillation, which I have further reduced to a set of quotes followed by my own brief comments. In what follows I will first restate those comments and then tie it all together.

Free will.

The soul is not part of the natural world.

The “I” plays a role in determining the facts.

There is a limit to knowledge based on the fact that we cannot identify or name all of the simple objects.

“My language” means not simply English or German but the way in which I represent reality.

There is a relationship between the “I” which is not a part of the world it represents factually.

Solipsism: The “I” alone (solus "alone" and ipse "self”) is a limit of the world, the limit of what I can say and think. This is not a fixed limit, since it is always possible to learn something new, but a limit nonetheless. We cannot step out beyond ourselves.

The facts that make up the world are not independent of the subject who perceives and represents those facts. Facts are not independent of their representation. My world, the microcosm, is the world as I represent it.

“It alone could not be mentioned”, solus ipse. The I (ipse) alone (solus) that writes the book (The World as I found it) is not something that is found in the book. The I is a limit of the world.

The subject is metaphysical because it is not a part of the physical world. Propositions about it are nonsense, for it does not represent anything in the world. That which sees is not something seen. Just as the eye is not in visual space, the subject is not in logical space. The subject that represents is not something represented.

The I alone which sees the world, that experiences, that describes, has no logical connection to the world. We can only say how things are, not how they must be or will be.

My world is the world I see, the world I experience, the life I lead. My limits are its limits.


The self or I or soul or subject is free. It is not a part of the world. The world is for each of us mine - my world, the world as I perceive it, the world as I represent it in my language, the world as I live it. The limits of my world are not the limits of the world. This limit marks a form of skepticism.

I addressed this a couple of days ago in my post on section 5 of the Tractatus in the topic on the Tractatus. There has been no response. I would like to hear your thoughts since you had been active on that topic.

The only answer I could think of was that you thought his summary in that section (that we see things differently in different circumstances) was itself the conclusion of philosophical interest — Isaac

There are several issues - same/identity and difference (a problem that is as old as philosophy itself), seeing the same thing differently, and the connection between seeing and conceiving.

Literally the entire book is about how we deal with metaphysical propositions. I think I'm starting to understand why we might be at such odds over this. — Isaac

That does not mean that every passage and every issue that is addressed is a metaphysical one.

Yes, we don't because we don't make any comments at all. — Isaac

That ignores and distorts what has been said. There has been some paraphrasing but there has been more. What there has been a lot of from you is arguing about how we should be doing this and how we should be relying on the secondary literature. It is a waste of time and I am not going to indulge you any longer.

Right, so if we see dogs and horses and cows all as animals, we see them as the same, animals. But I think that this is not a very precise or accurate way of seeing them, because it is a matter of overlooking all the differences between them, and seeing them all as the same, animals. — Metaphysician Undercover

We might see humans and pigs as being very different but we use the valves from pig hearts to replace faulty human valves. That would not be the case if it was not seen that humans and pigs have this in common.

You were specifically defending the concept that what Wittgenstein says in these passages is in some way elucidatory. — Isaac

I am simply pointing to the connection between perception and conception, something he will be discussing latter on.

That requires a defence that others have been labouring with the actual concept you're claiming he is clarifying, and I don't see that in Moore. — Isaac

I have made no claim that he is clarifying anything or addressing a particular concept that anyone else has dealt with. I simply pointed out that in a section dealing with conceptual boundaries, clarity, and so on, he gives a set of visual rather than conceptual examples.

I mentioned Moore only because you asked why he would bring up such things to an audience of highly educated philosophers, as if it were odd that highly educated philosophers would even consider such obvious things.

But my question was not "is this the case?", my question was "does anyone seriously think it isn't?". — Isaac

People generally believe what they see. They believe they saw a creepy looking guy leering at the children. When thinking about it they may acknowledge that there may be more than one way of looking at it, but generally people act on and react to what they see without consideration of how else one might look at it or what they might see if they look at it differently.

Isn't this what W. is doing with his various examples?

The point here, is that which Wittgenstein comes to around 89 on, that the problem is in part that we should think anything queer is going on here. That metaphysical propositions have the character they do often only because they sound queer, not because they are. — Isaac

That there is something queer going on is something you interjected. There is nothing queer about it. I don’t see what metaphysical propositions have to do with the passages being discussed or anything I have said.

But in what examination of music does anyone make any comment at all after only hearing the first. — Isaac

That is the point. We don’t. And yet that is what you want to do here.

In what form of musical exegesis do we pause after the first chords to say "well, here are some musical notes played one after the other, but let's say no more for now"? — Isaac

There may be a great deal to say about the notes that have been played, but we cannot say anything about the notes that have not been played. We hold off saying anything about the piece as a whole until we have heard the whole of the piece.

OK, so all that is about reading the text, but we are not here and now reading it are we? — Isaac

Some have read the whole thing but others have not. If you do not approve of this approach then why do you keep coming back just to complain about it?

But Moore's question is very different. Moore is primarily investigating the relationship between the sense-data and the object surface. In fact he quite frequently makes reference to how difficult the problem of perception judgement actually is. It is to exactly this type of difficulty that Wittgenstein is marshalling what it is that we already know about the ordinary function of this judgment. — Isaac

I do not want to compound the problem of trying to understand what W. is saying by raising questions about what Moore is saying. I am simply pointing to the fact that W. is not introducing the problem of perception out of the blue where others saw no problem. Moore’s paper Some Judgments of Perception was presented in 1918.

Exactly. But are ordinary people struggling with their use? — Isaac

They may be. Show a picture of a man watching children play to two groups of people one of which had earlier been told a story of a child molester and the other a story about a man who has just returned after being away from his family for a long time. The majority of the first group will see the man in the picture as sinister and the other as caring even though no direct connection has been made between the picture and the story. We do something similar all the time. A carpenter may see a tree as material for making a table, someone else as wood for the stove, a builder may see it as something that must be removed to build a house, and an environmentalist as an integral part of the ecosystem. We do not all simply see the same thing.

The question is premature.
— Fooloso4

Why? — Isaac

Because it is like asking how a musical theme develops in the third movement if we have only heard the first.

again it is too early to discuss whether there is one theme or several and what it or they may be.
— Fooloso4

Again, why? I'm genuinely confused as to what you're trying to do and it's quite difficult to get involved under such seemingly arbitrary restrictions. — Isaac

Again, how can we tell whether there is one or more themes to a piece of music if we have not yet heard the whole thing?

We are reading the book together section by section just as we would when reading it for the first time. For all I know some may be reading it for the first time. Not everyone who follows to topic contributes to it. No doubt the second time through one sees some things differently, but you cannot get there by bypassing the process of reading the text. Occasionally reference is made to latter sections but as a comment in passing rather than an attempt to jump ahead.

You are confusing an epistemological distinction - a priori and a posteriori with an ontological distinction - in terms of the Tractatus, what is and is not part of the world of factual relations. Metaphysics as a science is not what the science attempts to address, the objects of metaphysics - in this case, God, soul, and world. Kant rejects the idea of a metaphysical science of God, soul, and world, but does not reject the idea of metaphysical reality - the existence of God, soul, and world.

The error is evident when you say:

Yes, follows Kant, who said that the metaphysical is a priori. — Pussycat

Kant does not say that “the metaphysical” is a priori, he says that there can be no a priori knowledge of the metaphysical claims of the antinomies, claims about God, soul, and world.

In addition, you are ignoring two different kinds of experience - our experience of things in the world and ethical/aesthetic experience:

Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and æsthetics are one.) — T 6.421

The world of the happy is quite another than that of the unhappy. — T 6.43

But that discussion is yet to come.

Meanwhile you have completely ignored my discussion of 5.

Right, so all these descriptions of what 'seeing' really is are perfectly reasonable, but all you've done here is paraphrase them. Yes, things can be seen one way or another, who on earth thought they couldn't? Yes, sometimes seeing things one way can cause problems when you act on that conception, other times it can be quite useful. Again who on earth ever thought that this was not the case? Remember, Wittgenstein is speaking to an audience of highly educated philosophers. — Isaac

And yet he points these things out. See, for example, Moore’s position on perception.

You obviously have to don't really think that someone widely credited with being one of the greatest philosophers who have ever lived is thus acclaimed because he provided us with such banal insights as the fact that we sometimes see things one way and sometimes another? — Isaac

Issues such as “seeing as” and framing are things that “highly educated philosophers” are still discussing. As I said he is introducing something that will be developed later.

So what do you think Wittgenstein is trying to show with respect to the theme of the book? Where do you think this discussion of 'seeing' is leading? Why bring it up now? What does Wittgenstein want us to do with it? — Isaac

The question is premature. We are still near the beginning of the book. I do not think that there is a single theme, but again it is too early to discuss whether there is one theme or several and what it or they may be.

There is no one thing that all things that have something in common have. Making distinctions is not the one thing that seeing what things have in common have in common.

See the second case in § 72, the shapes and shades of leafs in §73, and other examples where we see what things have in common despite their differences. Do we see a dog and a horse or cow as the same or different? In some respects we can see them as the same and in others as different. They do have a lot in common.

As to different shades of blue, as the samples get closer to green or red some will see them as blue but others will say they are no longer blue but aqua or violet. How much yellow or red makes a difference for seeing the samples as having blue in common or no longer being blue?

If white turns into black some people say “Essentially it is still the same”. And others, if the colour becomes one degree darker, say “It has changed completely”. — Wittgenstein, Culture and Value 42

In the middle of a discussion of conceptual commonalities and distinctions W. introduces three paragraphs on seeing. The connection between seeing and concepts is something that will be addressed later. Seeing is not passive perception, it involves active conception.

Seeing what is in common. — PI § 72

In order to see what various things have in common requires making distinctions and disregarding all other features.

And what is then to prevent us from viewing it - that is, from using it - only as a sample of irregularity of shape? — PI § 73

Note that viewing it in such cases it an activity, a way of using it.

Of course, there is such a thing as seeing in this way or that; and there are also cases where whoever sees a sample like this will in
general use it in this way, and whoever sees it otherwise in another way. For example, someone who sees the schematic drawing of a cube as a plane figure consisting of a square and two rhombi will perhaps carry out the order “Bring me something like this!” differently from someone who sees the picture three-dimensionally. — PI § 74

Seeing it this way or that. In the Tractatus (5.5423) he gives us two ways of looking at the two dimensional drawing of a cube. We can deliberately see something this way or that. But it is not always deliberate. In some cases looking at it this way rather than that may be wrong, as in the example of when you want someone to bring you a cube, but in other cases it may allow you to see things and thus regard things in a new way, leading to some insight. In addition, there is no hard line between viewing objects and viewing situations.

This can be seen in the following comment from W.:

Working in philosophy -- like work in architecture in many respects -- is really more a working on oneself. On one's interpretation. On one's way of seeing things. (And what one expects of them.) — Culture and Value 16

5.133
All deductions are made a priori.
5.134
One elementary proposition cannot be deduced form another.
5.135
There is no possible way of making an inference from the existence of one situation to the existence of another, entirely different situation.
5.136
There is no causal nexus to justify such an inference.
5.1361
We cannot infer the events of the future from those of the present.
Belief in the causal nexus is superstition.
5.1362
The freedom of the will consists in the impossibility of knowing actions that still lie in the future. We could know them only if causality were an inner necessity like that of logical inference.—The connexion between knowledge and what is known is that of logical necessity. — T

Wittgenstein affirms the freedom of the will. It is not in the world. It is at the limit.

5.541
At first sight it looks as if it were also possible for one proposition to occur in another in a different way.
Particularly with certain forms of proposition in psychology, such as ‘A believes that p is the case’ and A has the thought p’, etc.
For if these are considered superficially, it looks as if the proposition p stood in some kind of relation to an object A.
(And in modern theory of knowledge (Russell, Moore, etc.) these propositions have actually been construed in this way.)

5.542
It is clear, however, that ‘A believes that p’, ‘A has the thought p’, and ‘A says p’ are of the form ‘“p” says p’: and this does not involve a correlation of a fact with an object, but rather the correlation of facts by means of the correlation of their objects.

5.5421
This shows too that there is no such thing as the soul—the subject, etc.—as it is conceived in the superficial psychology of the present day. Indeed a composite soul would no longer be a soul. — T

W. is not denying the existence of the soul but a particular concept of the soul as an object in the world containing or possessing thoughts, beliefs, etc.

5.5423
To perceive a complex means to perceive that its constituents are combined in such and such a way.
This perhaps explains that the figure can be seen in two ways as a cube; and all similar phenomena. For we really see two different
facts.
(If I fix my eyes first on the corners a and only glance at b, a appears in front and b behind, and vice versa.) — T

The cube can be perceived in two different ways - with a in front and with b in front. Thus we really see two different facts. It is then not simply a matter of the configuration of objects that establish the facts, but the way in which we see them.

5.55
We now have to answer a priori the question about all the possible forms of elementary propositions.
Elementary propositions consist of names. Since, however, we are unable to give the number of names with different meanings, we are also unable to give the composition of elementary propositions. — T

This is a linguistic limit in so far as we cannot name all the different simply objects, but it is also an epistemological limit since we cannot identify or say what those objects are.

5.6
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. — T

What is the significance of his shift from language and the world to “my language” and “my world”? The self cannot be found in the world. It can play no part in logical relationships, and propositions about it are nonsense. My world and my language do not connote a relationship between facts or objects.

My language means not simply English or German but the way in which I represent reality.

5.61
Logic pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its limits.
So we cannot say in logic, ‘The world has this in it, and this, but not that.’
For that would appear to presuppose that we were excluding certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case, since it would require that logic should go beyond the limits of the world; for only in that way could it view those limits from the other side as well.
We cannot think what we cannot think; so what we cannot think we cannot say either. — T

The logical relationships within the world are not the only relationships. There is also a relationship between the “I” and the world.

5.62
This remark provides the key to the problem, how much truth there is in solipsism.
For what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest.
The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world. — T

In what way does the limits of language show that the world is my world? Suppose someone were to reject W.’s claim saying: “There must be more to my world”, to which the response would be: “What more is there”? And of course no answer could be given. If an answer could be given, whatever is said would be within that limit. I take this to be a form of skepticism. He is not denying that there may be more than I can say or think but that it is nonsense to say this because it does not point to anything. It does not mark a limit to the world or to language but to my world and the language I understand. But the same is true for all of us.

Solipsism - solus "alone" and ipse "self”. That language which alone I understand, is that language which solus ipse is understood. If there is a language I do not understand then even though the propositions are in proper logical order to picture reality, they are for me without sense (sinnlos) because I do not know what state of affairs they represent. They cannot represent if they cannot be understood.

5.621

The world and life are one.
5.63
I am my world. (The microcosm.) — T

The world is all that is the case (1). The facts that make up the world are not independent of the subject who perceives and represents those facts. This is the point of the cube having two facts. Facts are not independent of their representation. A picture is a fact. (2.141)The facts of the world include the representation of facts.

5.631
There is no such thing as the subject that thinks or entertains ideas.
If I wrote a book called The World as I found it, I should have to include a report on my body, and should have to say which parts were subordinate to my will, and which were not, etc., this being a method of isolating the subject, or rather of showing that in an important sense there is no subject; for it alone could not be mentioned in that book.—

5.632
The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world. — T

“It alone could not be mentioned”, solus ipse. The I (ipse) alone (solus) that writes the book is not something that is found in the book.

5.633
Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found?
You will say that this is exactly like the case of the eye and the visual field. But really you do not see the eye.
And nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye. — T

The subject is metaphysical because it is not a part of the physical world. Propositions about it are nonsense, for it does not represent anything in the world.

That which sees is not something seen. Just as the eye is not in visual space, the subject is not in logical space. The subject that represents is not something represented.

5.634
This is connected with the fact that no part of our experience is also a priori.
Everything we see could also be otherwise.
Everything we describe at all could also be otherwise.
There is no order of things a priori. — T

What is the connection between the metaphysical subject and the contingency of facts?

5.64
Here we see that solipsism strictly carried out coincides with pure realism. The I in solipsism shrinks to an extensionless point and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it. — T

The I alone which sees the world, that experiences, that describes, has no logical connection to the world. We can only say how things are, not how they must be or will be.

5.641
There is therefore really a sense in which the philosophy we can talk of a non-psychological I.
The I occurs in philosophy through the fact that the “world is my world”.
The philosophical I is not the man, not the human body or the human soul of which psychology treats, but the metaphysical subject,
the limit—not a part of the world. — T

My world is the world I see, the world I experience, the life I lead. My limits are its limits.

The metaphysical questions of God, soul, and world that are not rejected by Kant.

The existence of God cannot be proven a priori but that did not lead Kant to deny the existence of God. It cuts both ways, it cannot be proven that God does not exist either. This leaves space for faith. As he famously said in the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason:

I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith. — Kant

And how do we know they are 'good' in the absence of having what they say concur with what we already believe (or arrive somewhere we unexpectedly find ourselves comforted by)? What other measure would you use, surely not something as vacuous as 'truth'? — Isaac

By that measure a good teacher is one who panders. Why should a teacher concur with what we already believe unless what we already believe is unquestionably correct? To arrive somewhere we unexpectedly find ourselves comforted by is to go nowhere. A philosophical education is not about being comforted, it is about having the rug pulled out from underneath you. It is about being disoriented and lost. Wittgenstein said:

When you are philosophizing you have to descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there. (CV 65)

Socrates was called a torpedo fish because he left his interlocutors numb and confused. Plato’s ascent from the cave was painful and contrary to the desire to crawl back into the comfort of the darkness of the cave.

Under the guidance of a good teacher the text opens up. We begin to see things in it that we had overlooked. The text becomes more cohesive. Passages we could not understand now make sense. But a good teacher is also one who teaches us not to rely on her.

So if you don't approach a text with such expectations as I describe, what justification do you have for the belief that an author has something to teach you? Do you think that justification lies outside of your expectations and biases? — Isaac

You open the book and begin reading it. Perhaps you are not ready for it and put it aside. Perhaps you think that since the author is held in such high regard that you should make the effort to work through it. Perhaps your work pays off, perhaps it doesn’t.

How did you 'find' this? What sensation caused you to doubt your original beliefs, not their lack of concordance with 'truth' surely (not in Plato at least), for if you already knew what 'truth' was so as to be able to make the comparison you would not have needed to read Plato. — Isaac

It was not a sensation. I found what I thought were weaknesses and began to pull the argument apart only to find out that it was not as weak as I had assumed. I thought of counterarguments and found that they did not hold up against what he was saying. In short, he won the imagined argument every time. I came to question my assumption that some guy who lived in ancient times could not know more than someone living today. I came to question my assumption that I saw things as they are.

Yes, but it is a mode of historical thinking, biographical thinking, not necessarily philosophical thinking. — Isaac

For me it is neither historical nor biographical. It is a direct engagement with the text itself. At some point historical and biographical background may be helpful, but it may also be misleading. A first rate philosopher is not a product of history, he makes history.

Is Kripke's obviously faulty paraphrasing any less philosophy for the fact that he misrepresented Wittgenstein? — Isaac

If he misrepresents W. then he will not be useful if my goal is to understand W. He may have something of value to say - some here evidently believe he does. The point of this topic is to understand the PI. If the text leads you to your own thoughts then that is all well and good, but it does not help us understand W.

If you give even a cursory glance over the secondary literature, you will see that intelligent, well-respected academics have been able to answer all of your questions in just about every conceivable way and virtually none of them agree, leaving you free to choose whichever answer satisfies you. So what are you going to base that choice on if not your existing beliefs? — Isaac

It is because there is so little agreement that I became interested in W. What I base my choice on is what seems to me to be most faithful to the text itself.

Again, I would ask you how you are making the judgement that the author is worth reading outside of your pre-existing beliefs about what is of value? — Isaac

The judgment that an author is worth reading is something that may evolve as I spend time reading the author. I may be drawn in or I may lose interest. Perhaps it is the fact that the author challenges my beliefs and values that I interesting. Perhaps it is the author’s way of looking at things that I find interesting. Perhaps it is the author’s ability to change my mind that I find most compelling.

If you want to defer to the secondary literature that is your choice, but some of us prefer to work through the text itself.

I am going to hold off going further with this because it will only take us further from the PI.

Yes, follows Kant, who said that the metaphysical is a priori. — Pussycat

Kant did not reject metaphysics, he rejected a priori metaphysics. God and the soul were for Kant matters of faith. W. too rejects a priori metaphysics.

So, the metaphysical self cannot be taken to be the subject who experiences, as you said earlier, that is what I've been trying to tell you! — Pussycat

I will be posting my reading of section 5 later today. We can discuss it then.

Nice sentiment but I'm afraid decades of teaching have made me much too cynical to believe it. — Isaac

The way I was trained and the way I taught was via primary texts. This approach does not appeal to everyone. It is difficult and slow going. It too has its limits. We are all in need of good teachers, ones who can teach us how to read, how to interpret, how to connect the dots and read between the lines. It is both analytic and synthetic. This, in my opinion, should be the role of secondary materials. At each step they return us to the text, to what is said here and here and here, how they go together or seem to contradict each other, and how the can be reconciled, how together they help shed light on the whole.

Everyone reads every text looking to find support for the thing they already believe to be the case at the outset. — Isaac

Of course we do not approach a text without presuppositions, but that does not mean that everyone reads in order to find support for what they believe. If I believe that an author has something to teach me then I am not looking for confirmation but open myself to disruption. This is something that I learned at the beginning reading one of Plato’s dialogues. I thought that if I were there I could win the argument. But I soon found that my beliefs were not as obviously true or defensible as I had assumed. None of this would have happened if instead of reading Plato I was reading about Plato.

As far as I am concerned there is only one way to interpret a text, any text, and that is by a careful and persistent effort to understand what the author is saying.
— Fooloso4

This seems to directly contradict the quote you placed beneath it. What Wittgenstein is really saying is far less important than what it is that you think he's saying has made you think. — Isaac

The quote:

I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking. — PI Preface

Interpretative reading is a mode of thinking. If I am to understand him I must think along with him. Again, this is not something one would learn from a reliance on secondary sources that provide ready made conclusions that spare you the trouble of thinking. It is not information gathering. It is wrestling with the text - Why would he say this? Is this what he means? What support can I find that this is what he means? Does that seem right? What has led him to say that? What support does he offer? How does this all fit together and what light does this provide for the whole?

While it sometimes happens that something an author says stimulates thoughts that go in a direction different than the author’s, it can also be the case that that direction is one the author is attempting to steer you away from. In my opinion, if an author is worth reading carefully then what he is really saying is far more important than what it is that I think he's saying. We can, however, never be certain that we have got it right. What he has made me think may or may not be important, but I think that too many of us too often put far too great importance on what we think. This is something that W.’s mirror is intended to help us see. Socrates’ maieutics helped his interlocutors deliver their windeggs, but they often valued them none the less because they were their own.

I mean, there's only four basic ways to interpret the PI — Isaac

If one reads the text based on some theory of how it is to be interpreted then what one will see is not the PI but another text: “The PI According to X”. This is a problem that is more prevalent in academia then one might think. One does not read Plato or Aristotle but Plato or Aristotle according to X. In many cases the author is not even read and questionable claims repeated from one generation to the next. The secondary literature takes on a life of its own. The primary source is relegated to secondary status as the focus shifts from Wittgenstein to what X and Y have said about Wittgenstein.

As far as I am concerned there is only one way to interpret a text, any text, and that is by a careful and persistent effort to understand what the author is saying. Others who are more familiar with the text may be helpful, but it should never be too far from mind that they may simply be wrong.

From the preface:

I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking. — PI

I think that Wittgenstein's use follows that of Kant. The metaphysical refers to questions of God, soul, and world. They are not objects in the world and thus cannot be known by the natural sciences or by experience of things in the world. Nor can they be known a priori.

Solipsism, the shift from the world to my world, is the turning point. I will have more to say on this. For the moment I would suggest that we keep in mind that what he means by solipsism may not be what others mean.

On the whole I think the thread is going well. I hope we don't give up on it like so many other threads. — Sam26

I have not given up but I don't have anything to add to the current sections and since I am a late comer don't want to push forward.

However, a common characteristic in all its variants is that it is a priori, unrelated to experience, — Pussycat

I do not think that W. thought of it in that way. I will be discussing some of his comments on God.

I was asking about your own thoughts, as you yourself were not very clearly whether these were your own opinions or the opinions concerning those in the Tractatus, when you said above: "The ethical, aesthetic, and metaphysical are also outside of the sphere of the logical. And so too lead to nonsense when one attempts to represent what is experienced". But why not do both? — Pussycat

I was referring to the Tractatus, what I think W. is saying.

By do both do you mean give my own opinion? If so, the reason is that it muddies the water. Whether or not I agree with W. or anyone else must be secondary to the question of what it is that I am agreeing with. All too often someone will say I agree with this or that philosopher, but what they are agreeing or disagreeing with is their own misconception of what the person they are agreeing or disagreeing with said.

My own opinion is that the Tractarian analysis of simples and compounds is wrong. He himself seems to have come to this conclusion in the Philosophical Investigations.

What I am trying to do at this point, however, is to understand the Tractatus on its own terms.

Anyway, I think that Wittgenstein wants, maybe unknowingly, to dispose of the old and traditional metaphysics, only to replace it with another, as it is usually the case in the historical process of metaphysics. — Pussycat

What is it that you think he is rejecting and what is he proposing in its place? One obvious problem is to explain how such a metaphysics escapes the accusation of nonsense.

But supposedly, metaphysics is void of experience, a priori, just like logic is. Or not? — Pussycat

Not. If there is a metaphysics it is not a theory or doctrine. It is something that cannot be talked for such talk would be nonsense because it does not share the logical structure of the physical world and the language that represents it.

It is not clear whether you are asking what I think is meant by the metaphysical as used by Wittgenstein or by others or my thoughts on the metaphysical. The first is the only question that I think is relevant to the discussion. Here a further distinction needs to be made between the question of whether logical form and simple objects are meant to be a metaphysical ontology he accepts or rejects as nonsense, whether this is saying something metaphysical (6.53), and what he means by the metaphysical self.

I do not think the discussion of form and content is intended as a metaphysical theory, although it might serve as such if one were “doing metaphysics”. But Wittenstein is not. I think his intent is to mark the boundaries of the physical and sayable on the basis of logical structure. They are elucidatory.

As to the philosophical I, it is metaphysical self, the subject who experiences.

Yes, I did read it. I don’t think he was trying to “dissolve language”, but to set boundaries to what language does - represent reality, and how it does it - logical form. It sets limits to the sphere of natural science. (4.113) From the inside by clarification and elucidation, and from the outside by marking the limits of the logical space of representation. This leaves what shows itself, what can be seen and experienced as opposed to thought and represented.

I am not sure that reference to the “dionysean aspect of reality” is helpful since it raises questions as to what this means, it presents another layer of interpretative problems.

I also have reservations about calling the mystical “irrational”. I would use the term transrational except it has already been taken and has another meaning. It is outside the logical form or structure of the world and its modes of representation. It is experiential. Attempts to represent such experience in language leads to irrational or nonsensical propositions.

The ethical, aesthetic, and metaphysical are also outside of the sphere of the logical. And so too lead to nonsense when one attempts to represent what is experienced.

philosophical I = logical I — Pussycat

I don't think this is right. It is because logic has nothing to do with an "I" that a logical I or logical self does not make sense.

There is a great deal here that I am not addressing. My focus is on trying to understand what W. means in the preface and ending. It may be that one cannot hope to climb the ladder by skipping the rungs but if that is the case I hope someone will be able to identify those rungs by showing how they are necessary for the climb.

4

A thought is a proposition with a sense. — T 4

4.01

A proposition is a picture of reality.
The proposition is a model of the reality as we think (denken) it is. — T 4.01

3.5

A propositional sign, applied and thought out, is a thought. — T 3.5

Thought and a thought are not the same. A thought is a representation, a picture or model. It is the product of thought, the activity of thinking - representing, picturing and modelling the facts of the world.

4.022

A proposition shows its sense.
A proposition shows how things stand if it is true. And it says that they do so stand. — T 4.022

4.031

Instead of, ‘This proposition has such and such a sense’, we can simply say, ‘This proposition represents such and such a situation’. — T 4.031

4.12

Propositions can represent the whole of reality, but they cannot represent what they must have in common with reality in order to be able to represent it—logical form. — T 4.12

A proposition is able to picture reality because they share a logical form or structure. Only propositions that point to a state of affairs, that is, to some fact, have a sense. They can, however, only point to a state of affairs it they have the right logical form. Propositions can fail to point because they lack sense (sinnlos) or because they are nonsense (unsinn). The former does not point to a fact, the latter does not represent a fact because it does not have a logical form.

4.003

Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical (unsinnig) … Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language. — T 4.003

By the logic of our language he means logical form. But logical form cannot be represented, there can be no propositions about logic form.

4.04

In a proposition there must be exactly as many distinguishable parts as in the situation that it represents.
The two must possess the same logical (mathematical) multiplicity. — T 4.04

4.128

Logical forms are without number.
Hence there are no pre-eminent numbers in logic, and hence there is no possibility of philosophical monism or dualism, etc. — T 4.128

4.1

Propositions represent the existence and non-existence of states of affairs. — T 4.1

4.11

The totality of true propositions is the whole of natural science (or the whole corpus of the natural sciences). — T 4.11

4.111

Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences.
(The word ‘philosophy’ must mean something whose place is above or below the natural sciences, not beside them.) — T 4.111

4.112

Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts.
Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity.
A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.
Philosophy does not result in ‘philosophical propositions’, but rather in the clarification of propositions.
Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries. — T 4.112

4.113

Philosophy sets limits to the much disputed sphere of natural science. — T 4.113

4.114

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

4.115

It will signify what cannot be said, by presenting clearly what can be said. — T 4.115

4.116

Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be put into words can be put clearly. — T 4.116

Tentatively: the limits of thought is where the boundaries of thought loses its sharpness, that is, where it no longer represents a state of affairs.

It should be noted that W. has said nothing about the facts of the world, only their logical form. He has not presented a picture of reality. Philosophy does not picture reality, it clarifies those pictures. It says nothing about the natural world, nothing about the facts of the world, nothing about reality. Philosophy lacks sense (sinnlos). Tautologies and contradictions also lack sense (sinnlos) but are not nonsense (Unsinn). (4.461) They tell us nothing about what is the case.

There are no philosophical propositions, for propositions represents states of affairs, the facts of the world. But as we shall see, W. will refer to his propositions. Since they do not represent a state of affairs they lack sense (sinnlos). Since philosophy’s place is above or below the natural sciences it is not in the logical space of the world/language/thought. What is says then must be nonsense (Unsinn).

This is, of course, not the end of the story. There is still more to be said.

The Guardian article cited by Amity is very helpful in addressing your question.

Some quotes from Nietzsche compiled by Arthur M. Melzer Nietzsche on Reading Nietzsche (and Some Others) that may help in reading him and why there is so little agreement regarding the interpretation of his work. Like Plato he was a master ironist. Nothing should be taken at face value. But we must all begin from where we are. Don’t let anyone dissuade you from reading him. Whether or not you have understood him properly is secondary at this point to what you may find of value in what you read.

Plato has given us a splendid description of how the philosophical thinker must within
every existing society count as the paragon of all wickedness: for as critic of all customs
he is the antithesis of the moral man, and if he does not succeed in becoming the lawgiver
of new customs he remains in the memory of men as ‘the evil principle.’
– Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, 202 (aph. 496)

Our highest insights must–and should–sound like follies and sometimes like crimes when
they are heard without permission by those who are not predisposed and predestined for
them. The difference between the exoteric and the esoteric, formerly known to
philosophers–among the Indians as among the Greeks, Persians, and Muslims, in short,
wherever one believed in an order of rank and not in equality and equal rights –….
[consists in this:] the exoteric approach sees things from below, the esoteric looks down
from above…. What serves the higher type of men as nourishment or delectation must
almost be poison for a very different and inferior type…. There are books that have
opposite values for soul and health, depending on whether the lower soul, the lower
vitality, or the higher and more vigorous ones turn to them; in the former case, these
books are dangerous and lead to crumbling and disintegration; in the latter, [they are]
heralds’ cries that call the bravest to their courage. Books for all the world are always
foul-smelling books.
– Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 42 (aph 30)

Whatever is profound loves masks. . . . There are occurrences of such a delicate nature
that one does well to cover them up with some rudeness to conceal them…. Such a
concealed man who instinctively needs speech for silence and for burial in silence and
who is inexhaustible in his evasion of communication, wants and sees to it that a mask of
him roams in his place through the hearts and heads of his friends.
– Ibid., 50 (aph. 40)

On the question of being understandable–One does not only wish to be understood when
one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood. It is not by any means
necessarily an objection to a book when anyone finds it impossible to understand:
perhaps that was part of the author’s intention–he did not want to be understood by just
“anybody.” All the nobler spirits and tastes select their audiences when they wish to
communicate; and choosing that, one at the same time erects barriers against “the others.”
All the more subtle laws of any style have their origin at this point: they at the same time
keep away, create a distance, forbid “entrance,” understanding, as said above–while they
open the ears of those whose ears are related to ours.
– Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 343 (aph. 381)

[M]y brevity has yet another value: given such questions as concern me, I must say many
things briefly…. For being an immoralist, one has to take steps against corrupting
innocents–I mean, asses and old maids of both sexes whom life offers nothing but their
innocence. Even more, my writings should inspire, elevate, and encourage them to be
virtuous.
– Ibid., 345 (aph. 381)

The effectiveness of the incomplete.— Just as figures in relief produce so strong an
impression on the imagination because they are as it were on the point of stepping out of
the wall but have suddenly been brought to a halt, so the relief-like, incomplete
presentation of an idea, of a whole philosophy, is sometimes more effective than its
exhaustive realization: more is left for the beholder to do, he is impelled to continue
working on that which appears before him so strongly etched in light and shadow, to
think it through to the end.
– Friedrich Nietzsche, Human All Too Human, 92 (1.4.178)

The misfortune suffered by clear-minded and easily understood writers is that
they are taken for shallow and thus little effort is expended on reading them: and
the good fortune that attends the obscure is that the reader toils at them and
ascribes to them the pleasure he has in fact gained from his own zeal.
– Ibid., 92 (1.4.181) — Nietzsche

There is one that I am active in now. I would like to hear what you have to say. We have covered through 3 without getting bogged down in details but now the other participants are anxious to jump ahead. I am somewhat sympathetic but think there are still some issues that need to be discussed that will shed light on the later problems.

I think there are some areas of agreement but some areas of disagreement. I have tried to address the objections he has made.

I would like to go through 4 and 5 before saying more on this. It has been a long time since I read the Tractatus. I will forego a discussion of them except in so far as they address the issues you and Pussycat are anxious to address.

Yes, but W never says that there is actually something outside the world, I guess this does not make any sense for him. Being outside the world is equivalent to being at the world's limit. — Pussycat

This is true with regard to objects and facts but the 'I' is not a thing, not an object or thing.

Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found? — T 5.633

The philosophical self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul,
with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit of the world—
not a part of it. — T 5.641

This is something I want to address but would like to work up to it.

... but there isn't any investigation we can make that could lead us finding that limit. — Pussycat

This is where the distinction between saying and showing becomes crucial.

I think what he means by this is that logic rests on its head, so to speak, in a closed circle, a sphere rather, as I quoted T 5.4541 above: that the propositions of logic (and logic in general), being tautologies, can only describe/show/represent the structure, the form of the world, but they do not actually tell us absolutely anything about the world's content. — Pussycat

As I understand it, his main concern is not with what is in the world, its content, but what stands outside of it.

If the limits of logic and the world are the same then by determining a limit to the world we can determine a limit of logic.

Here is the most important case:

The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world. — T 5.632

As to language:

What any picture, of whatever form, must have in common with reality, in order to be able to depict it—correctly or incorrectly—in any way at all, is logical form, i.e. the form of reality. — T 2.18

The propositions of logic describe the scaffolding of the world, or rather they represent it. They have no ‘subject-matter’. They presuppose that names have meaning and elementary propositions sense; and that is their connexion with the world. It is clear that something about the world must be indicated by the fact that certain combinations of symbols—whose essence involves the possession of a determinate character—are tautologies. This contains the decisive point. — T 6.124

Yes, but it depends on what you mean by his ontology. If you mean his analysis of how propositions connect with the world, and the limits he puts on language, then I agree. — Sam26

It is not simply a matter of how propositions connect with the world but of the logical structure of the world from simple objects that make up the substance of the world (T 2.02 - 2.021) that combine in determinate logical ways to form the facts of the world (T 2.01).

Sorry, I missed the clarification you made between them:

Wittgenstein still believes in the logic of language in the PI, but it's the logic of use, and not the a priori logic found in the Tractatus. — Sam26

I still think it is important to emphasize that the rejection of Tractarian logic is as much a rejection of an ontology as it is a rejection of a view of language and the activity of analysis.

The difference is that W. had in his own words sublimed the logic of language in the Tractatus (PI §38, PI §89).

Logic is transcendental. — T 6.13

It is not just the relationship between logic and language that he comes to reject.

The facts in logical space are the world. — T 1.13

Logic pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its limits. — T 5.61

Logic, according to the Tractatus underlies and is the scaffolding of both language and the world.

In the PI logic is not prior to, independent of, or determinate for the language game.

The tractatus is all about limits: limits to language, to thought, to propositions, and as they play their role in probabilities. However, we dont see limits drawn (or set) to logic: we cannot think illogically, as he writes. And there is no mention of limiting logic either, as it is the case with language and thought. This is what i meant earlier. — Pussycat

The limits of logic, world, and language are the same.

Logic pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its limits. — T 5.61

Wittgenstein still believes in the logic of language in the PI — Sam26

It is not the logic of language but the logic of the language-game, different games different logics, that is to say, different grammars or rules.

This is a new term for me. I had to look it up. The problem with such labels is that once the label is applied or accepted one is implicated in a variety of assumptions he or she may not hold. How T 6.54 is to be interpreted, what it means for his propositions to be nonsensical, are open questions not determinations that should inform one’s interpretation.

The sense of the world must lie outside the world. — T 6.41

What does this mean? Is it that anything we say about the world does not convey its sense? In that case, all propositions about the world are nonsense since they talk about what is in the world. As far as I can see this commits us to neither the irresolute idea that they convey “ineffable insights into the nature of reality” or that they are a “string of words that convey no content whatsoever”. (Bronzo Resolute Reading)

On my tentative reading they simply do not convey what cannot be said but can only shown. To see what is being shown means to move beyond the propositions about the world.

Whitmarsh makes the following point in the opening sentence of his article Battling the gods:

Conflicts between atheism and religion are often assumed to be a feature of the post-Enlightenment West alone. — Whitmarsh

There is the oft told tale that the ancients believed in gods and in time God, until the Enlightenment thinkers came along and challenged this belief, pitting reason and science against religion.

Toward the end of the article he says:

When Imperial Rome embraced Christianity, that marked an end to serious thought about atheism in the West for over a millennium. It is this historical fact that we tend to misread, when we think of atheism as an exclusively modern, western phenomenon. If we compare the post-enlightenment West to what preceded it, we can very quickly come to the false assumption that societies fall neatly into two groups: the secular-atheist-modernist on the one side and the entirely religious on the other. What pre-Christian antiquity shows, however, is that it is perfectly possible to have a largely religious society that also incorporates and acknowledges numerous atheists with minimal conflict. — Whitmarsh

I am sure that most of us here are familiar with just such dichotomous thinking, and, indeed, some are guilty of it.

The article ends:

When we consider the long duration of history, the oddity is not the public visibility of atheism in the last two hundred years of the West, but the Christian-imperialist society that legislated against certain kinds of metaphysical belief. — Whitmarsh

↪Fooloso4 but if thats the case, he would/should have said "set limits to what cannot be thought clearly". The ogden trans is worse, since it actually says "the unthinkable". — Pussycat

That was stipulated at 4.112

As for the illogical, we see the pattern here repeating, thinkable/unthinkable - logical/illogical. But i really doubt that W saw anything as illogical. — Pussycat

What cannot be thought as determined by the limits he sets to philosophy is not the illogical but the nonsensical. This is not to say that we cannot think something that is nonsense but that it is disqualified as a philosophical activity.

The ethical is outside the limits of language/world. Thus outside the distinction between logical and illogical. The relationship between thought and ethics/aesthetics. Is the feeling that the world is mystical something that is thought? Does what makes itself manifest show itself in thought?

To follow up on my last post about subliming language, according to the Tractatus:

Logic is transcendental. — T 6.13