I don't see a point to what you said more than:

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.

But W seems clear enough here that he means "combinations of things". — bongo fury

"Combination of objects". Objects need not be (material) things. The exact use of "name" and "object" is contentious.

"Fact" is used variously to refer to true propositions and states of affairs. — Janus

That's because "p" is true IFF p. They have the same truth value, and hence set out the same state of affairs.

Yes, I think in the Tractaus 'fact' denotes states of affairs, and not the propositions that represent those states of affairs. — 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.

I'd taken it that the world in the Tractatus is all that is the case, not a collection of simples. — Banno

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.

And so a true proposition is a fact — Banno

True propositions mirror or picture facts, they are not facts in themselves. This is explained in W. picture theory of meaning.

@Banno

Why does "on certainty" receive little to no mention? I found it fascinating?

W: “1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.”

Q: What is meant by “facts”? — Art48

2 What is the case—a fact—is the existence of states of affairs.
2.01 A state of affairs (a state of things) is a combination of objects (things). — Tractatus

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:

2.063 The sum-total of reality is the world. — Tractatus

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. — 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.

If you only knew how much this sentence characterizes the state of modern humanity. — schopenhauer1

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.”

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 ? — RussellA

I can't get past this

1 The world is all that is the case.
[...]
1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same. — Wittgenstein

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.)

I don't think either you, nor ↪bongo fury
would disagree with this. — Banno

That's true for my part, at least, I don't disagree with anything there.

When we agree on new uses for a term we are essentially creating a new context with which we use the term.
— Harry Hindu

Sure. Cherry-picking cases of past usage that help to sell our new theory.

Weren't Newton & co. rather cheekily re-purposing psychological words like force ("courage, fortitude"), inertia ("unskillfulness, ignorance"), moment ("importance")? — bongo fury

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.

Or that there are numerous/infinite worlds? — Merkwurdichliebe

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.

I don't see a point to what you said more than:

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. — Banno

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),

no contradiction so far in the text. — bongo fury

Objects need not be (material) things. The exact use of "name" and "object" is contentious. — Banno

Sure, but irrelevant thus far, for W in the text in question:

objects (entities, things) — W

And so a true proposition is a fact
— Banno

True propositions mirror or picture facts, they are not facts in themselves. This is explained in W. picture theory of meaning. — Sam26

Good to see your involvement. — Banno

Thanks Banno.

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. — 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.

Objects are simple.
— T 2.02

Objects make up the substance of the world. That is why they cannot be composite.
— T 2.021

The substance of the world can only determine a form, and not any material properties. For it is only by means of propositions that material properties are represented—only by the configuration of objects that they are produced.
— T 2.0231

It [substance] is form and content.
— T 2.025

Space, time, colour (being coloured) are forms of objects.
— T 2.0251

Objects are what is unalterable and subsistent; their configuration is what is changing and unstable.
— T 2.0271

In a state of affairs objects stand in a determinate relation to one another.
— T 2.031

Wittgenstein took stats of affairs as the building blocks. — 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.

The world is those propositions in logical space which are true — Banno

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

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. — bongo fury

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,

3.14 The propositional sign is a fact.

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.
...

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. — Banno

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:

Useful in developing computers, I suppose.
— Xtrix

If you only knew how much this sentence characterizes the state of modern humanity. — schopenhauer1

Added more to that last post.

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". — 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.

Thanks for the clarifications here. So is Wittgenstein essentially subscribing to a correspondence theory of truth in this text?

,
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?

For Russell, the atoms are objects and predicates, and logical operators — Banno

For Wittgenstein, the atoms are relations between objects. — 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.

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. — Banno

:yawn:

So is Wittgenstein essentially subscribing to a correspondence theory of truth in this text? — Tom Storm

: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."

2.1511 Thus the picture is linked with reality; it reaches up to it.

Blimey. Thanks.

It's more that for a sentence to have a sense (meaning) is for it to have a truth-value. — Banno

So a sentence like, 'Jesus died for our sins' is presumably a sentence with no truth value.

:grin:

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.

So a sentence like, 'Jesus died for our sins' is presumably a sentence with no truth value. — Tom Storm

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.)

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. — Banno

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.

Of course logical operations are not logical operators, — Janus

How's that?

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. — Janus

I think that's the point I made in regard to the OP.

True propositions mirror or picture facts, they are not facts in themselves. This is explained in W. picture theory of meaning. — 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.

Such things are not to be said, but shown. — Banno

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.