When W says that solipsism is not an opinion, the view is connected to the Tractatus saying it is present but cannot be said. There is something to be overcome but is not like overturning a proposition.

When W says that solipsism is not an opinion, the view is connected to the Tractatus saying it is present but cannot be said. There is something to be overcome but is not like overturning a proposition. — Paine

Yes, of course there must be a connection. That's very tricky. One might have expected W to announce that he had changed his mind, or not, and here's why. But, as usual, there's no explicit reference to the Tractatus. I suppose one question is whether W has overcome the solipsism of the TLP or is just expressing it in a different way. I think the orthodox view is that he has overcome it, in the sense that he does not even pick up the TLP discussion - not would it make much sense, I think, without the framework of logical atomism. To be honest, I don't know what I think. Thank you for that.
A possible preliminary question is whether W stands by solipsism “strictly carried out coincides with pure realism” (5.64). I can't see an analogy with that remark in what he says here. Nor does he even mention the limits of the world.

It is very tricky. I am inclined to think that it is not overcome but I won't try to argue for that as a thesis but just give some impressions on a field of uncertainty.

The solipsism of TLP appears as a natural consequence of the previous statements but accepting that result is not a speaking of it. It sounds like a speaking of it. We need a point of comparison to approach this negative.

The reference to the condition of being "realist" is connected in my mind to 6.431:

So too the world doesn't change when we die, it just ends.

This suggests that Berkeley not "carrying out" the thought allowed him to have opinions about what is objective that is a misunderstanding of his transcendental place, to employ a Kantian term. Wittgenstein insists that we are constrained in this regard. That restraint is also evident in his later work. For example:

240. Disputes do not break out (among mathematicians, say) over the question whether a rule has been obeyed or not. People don't come to blows over it, for example. That is part of the framework on which the working of our language is based (for example, in giving descriptions).

241. "So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?"—It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is no agreement in opinions but in form of life. — Philosophical Investigations

There is also all the emphasis on what is private or not in the context of language. I will leave it there.

The first issue is to get him puzzled, to get him to see that his resolution is not a solution. Or, it is we who feel unhappy with his conclusion. So, in a way, all we are doing - all we can ever do - is to develop an untangling - an alternative view, and then, perhaps, persuade him of it. — Ludwig V

But if you remember on p.6, the solipsist/skeptic were already in a “muddle” that they turned into a problem so that they could have it be something to solve (to find an “answer”). “How do I know you are in pain?” So it is not just untangling the solution, but reversing the framing of it as a problem/puzzle in the first place. I would offer that the “source” of their puzzlement is in a sense themselves. Witt starts by saying they mistakenly picture thoughts as objects, and that they are forced into befuddlement by the analogy, but it’s from a “temptation” to chose “objects” as analogous, and I offer it’s because they want the same things from thoughts that they have with objects, like a direct relationship, something verifiable, measurable, predictable, generalizable, independent, etc., i.e. “object”-tive.

If that is the case, then his method, of showing other senses of the same expressions/propositions, is not to show them they are “wrong” or are being obtuse, but for them to see that their solution simply can’t do what they want it to—to know/or not know the other for certain, objectively (at least not without circumstances like conjoined twins)—it can’t satisfy their desire, their intellectual requirement. And perhaps it’s not just a desire for objectivity, but also a fear, a truth they are unwilling to accept: that you and I just have separate bodies, and we are thus responsible for the work (back and forth) to bridge that gap. The reluctance to give up claiming impossibility is the fear of being known, possibly entirely, because we may not have the depth (or difference) they wanted to hold on to as inherent (as different from you as a bat).

Now I know @Ludwig V might worry the difference between the “psychological” and logical, or others might say I’ve changed the issue to feelings, but Witt talks about the mindset of the skeptic (tempted, dissatisfied, puzzled). I am not attributing motives as necessary, but from the categorical error (anthropomorphizing the logical mistake) because we are not just talking about a “philosophical” issue, but our basic human response to others. The skeptic claims the same dominion, only limiting it to the intellectual, which is (though unaware) by design, and the whole problem.

Why would the solipsist ask that question? — Ludwig V

I think it is similar to getting sucked into asking how we could destroy red (p.31) or what the absence of thought would look like (or maybe a thought about nothing; can’t remember where that was) because we got stuck on a framework with color as a quality and thought as an object (then how: an object of nothing?). But I could barely get there.

To me, this reads as his response to the Oxford ordinary language philosophers. — Ludwig V

Wisdom, yes, and Hume; to say “of course that’s a table, duh”, not trying to understand the “difficulty”, not seeing there is perhaps something to learn from/by the skeptic.

I have no idea what this [negation discussion] is referring to. — Ludwig V

No idea. There is mention of imagining a substantive (object) for time would make it understandable how there might be a deity of negation (p.6). But I know more understand that, then the reference here, nor negation itself really.

The solipsism of TLP appears as a natural consequence of the previous statements but accepting that result is not a speaking of it. It sounds like a speaking of it. We need a point of comparison to approach this negative. — Paine

Not sure I understand the last sentence. There is a very tricky problem, though, in working out how one can state a philosophical thesis without relapsing into nonsense - because, in the standard account - one is working on the borderline between sense and nonsense. The latter is not an assertion and therefore cannot be denied, or contradicted. For example, strictly speaking, it is performatively self-contradictory to assert solipsism as an assertion addressed to someone else.
The stuff about my world vs the real world tracks back to Berkeley's realization that he doesn't have an idea of himself, because his perceiving self is not among the things (ideas) that he perceives. (So he postulates that he has a "notion" of himself instead.) Lichtenberg, I believe, a little later comes up with the objection to Descartes' cogito that it goes further than it should because it includes the doubter in what is immediately known, but the doubter is not an element of the thinking - and indeed is not subject to doubt.
In the TLP, the world is everything that is the case - facts or states of affairs, not objects. The world is described by the totality of states of affairs that can be described in a language., My world, presumably, is all the states of affairs that I am aware of. Common-sensically, then, my world is a subset of the world. But if solipsism is true, the distinction between my world and the real world collapses - my world and the world overlap completely. The list of propositions that describe my world is identical with the list of propositions that describe the world. So where one might describe a state of affairs in the real world with "The cat is on the mat" and in my world as "I know that the cat is on the mat", in a solipsistic world there is no difference between the two states of affairs. "I know ..." adds nothing to the report - and indeed is not meaningful in real-world-speak (because "I" doesn't designate an object in the world). One needs multiple "I"'s to articulate the concept of one's own self.

I hope that makes some sense. The relevant point I'm after is that one cannot give a clear sense to solipsism in an ordinary language.

This suggests that Berkeley not "carrying out" the thought allowed him to have opinions about what is objective that is a misunderstanding of his transcendental place, to employ a Kantian term. Wittgenstein insists that we are constrained in this regard. That restraint is also evident in his later work. — Paine

Well, I can see that Berkeley did not understand the point he was making when he introduced the concept of the perceiver as essential to the perception but additional to it. It is true, I think, that the connection between the TLP and the Blue Book is the continuing struggle to clarify just what it is that the solipsist is trying to assert.

Disputes do not break out (among mathematicians, say) over the question whether a rule has been obeyed or not. People don't come to blows over it, for example. That is part of the framework on which the working of our language is based (for example, in giving descriptions). — Philosophical Investigations 240

Few people would quarrel with that. I am, let us say, a bit queasy about the first sentence. Disputes like that break out quite often - his own argument with (about) Godel is an example. But that doctrine is indeed a lynch-pin in orthodox philosophy. Yet, later on, the distinction between grammatical statements and others gets serious eroded and transformed into different uses of particular grammatical (linguistic) forms.

"So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?" —It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is no agreement in opinions but in form of life. — Philosophical Investigations 241

An excellent quotation. People make that mistake a lot. I must remember that for future use.

Privacy is indeed another issue.

Your summary of Berkeley and his reception is helpful and germane.

I would only add that the "world ending" in 6.431 is a recognition of the solitary that reveals the Berkeleyan move to be a giving oneself a world before retreating from it. When not permitted the move, one cannot judge objectivity from a separate space. That is an echo of PI 251:

These words are a defence against something whose form makes it look like an empirical proposition but which is really a grammatical one.

When not permitted the move, one cannot judge objectivity from a separate space. — Paine

That's complicated. This argument is not like others - the length of a rod, say. It's about the limits of language. We have to explore them in devious ways. I can envisage an argument that solipsism might provide opportunities for understanding those limits that are not available without playing with nonsense.

Wisdom, yes, and Hume; to say “of course that’s a table, duh”, not trying to understand the “difficulty”, not seeing there is perhaps something to learn from/by the skeptic. — Antony Nickles

Hume is very explicit about the difference between radical scepticism, which he identifies as Pyrrhonism or academic scepticism. That, he thinks, cannot be refuted, but must be cured by immersion in real life. On the other hand, he thinks that "judicious" scepticism and "necessary for the conduct of affairs".

So it is not just untangling the solution, but reversing the framing of it as a problem/puzzle in the first place. — Antony Nickles

It's very hard to produce a concise statement of exactly what is going on. Seeing the puzzle as a puzzle is an interpretation. Seeing it as not a puzzle is another. The duck-rabbit again.

Witt starts by saying they mistakenly picture thoughts as objects, and that they are forced into befuddlement by the analogy, but it’s from a “temptation” to chose “objects” as analogous, and I offer it’s because they want the same things from thoughts that they have with objects, like a direct relationship, something verifiable, measurable, predictable, generalizable, independent, etc., i.e. “object”-tive. — Antony Nickles

I agree that reification is endemic in philosophy and likely the commonest example of the mistake of applying one's model in inappropriate circumstances. Here's another example of what I consider to be the same thought.

It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs. — Nicomachean Ethics Book I, 1094b.24

we are not just talking about a “philosophical” issue, but our basic human response to others. The skeptic claims the same dominion, only limiting it to the intellectual, which is (though unaware) by design, and the whole problem. — Antony Nickles

On the other hand, the field of philosophy is often described as logic - and that makes sense to me in the extended sense of logic that applies to Wittgenstein's work. Basic human responses does not exclude logic, I suppose, but does call up a field that is, perhaps, more closely related to psychology or even biology - instincts, for example, could count as basic human responses. I don't want to be caught out trying to imprison philosophy within any very specific boundaries. But there's a certain vagueness here that, as you put it, I'm uneasy with.
I do agree that one effect of W's work is to make us aware of the limitations, for philosophy, of a purely theoretical perspective - especially when it becomes dogmatic about what it and isn't philosophy.

When not permitted the move, one cannot judge objectivity from a separate space. — Paine

I can envisage an argument that solipsism might provide opportunities for understanding those limits that are not available without playing with nonsense. — Ludwig V

I was giving a reading of what the "ending of the world" might mean in Wittgenstein's argument. not arguing for it on my own behalf.

@Ludwig V @Paine

Section 18 - the unidentifiable individual (p.61-65)

At first, I take his “considering the criteria for the identity of a person” (p.61) as more about ‘essence’ and grammar (criteria). He says that we could and might identify someone entirely differently if circumstances changed making certain characteristics more prevalent or useful, implying there is not an underlying, determinate identity. “We can say whichever we like [that Jekyll and Hyde are one or two people]. We are not forced to talk of a double personality.” (p.62) He even throws away that there is a “right” or “wrong” about identity. The “inheritance” and “preservation” of what is meaningful is “at liberty” and without one “legitimacy”, as, by analogy, circumstances shift under our (say, math) terms over time, becoming meaningful for entirely different reasons.

I take the point as: how society ended up with the criteria for judgments that we have is not only contingent on how our world rolls (our history of circumstances). The fact that we do, or could, have multiple ways of judging something shows that we also have an interest (or multiple) in doing it the way we do. The “usage” is connected to those (cultural) interests in something, reflected in the criteria to identify that use.

He next considers the idea that ‘seeing’ is a continuous part of who ‘we’ are; that it is essential and ever-present (as people take Descartes to want from thinking). Logically, this would mean that every instance of seeing would have something in common, which he narrows down to “the experience of seeing itself” (p.63), which I read as distinguishing nothing (“pointing… not at anything in [ the visual field ]” (p.64)), and thus wishful rather than meaningful to point out.

The difference between a physical object and what we ‘see’ are not different types of objects, as a railroad law is not a railroad track (one is an idea). I take this to mean that what we are trying to do, in ‘seeing’ something, is not in the same category (“kind”) as our relationship with physical objects (equated with knowledge). Our interests differ for each. Some examples would be that we are pointing something out to you when we ‘see’ something; or we are evaluating it, say, seeing it’s potential; or interpreting it as… (PI #74), say, a box to step on or a container.

So he finally gets to our interest in only wanting what I see to be ‘real’, which is to keep part of me for myself, in reserve, impossible to be fully known or limited, read, characterized, labeled. To hold “what I mean” (p.65) as unable to be fully understood is to wish for the implications and connotations of our expressions to be ultimately under my control, judged as met or meant by me, to always allow me the last word, as if there was an essence of what I say that is “information” that the other lacks because it is mysterious, hidden, private… me.

I would only add that the "world ending" in 6.431 is a recognition of the solitary that reveals the Berkeleyan move to be a giving oneself a world before retreating from it. When not permitted the move, one cannot judge objectivity from a separate space. That is an echo of PI 251: — Paine

I don't really understand 6.431. I can see that death is the limit (end) of life and consequently not an even in life (he says that somewhere in the book, doesn't he?). Consequently death is not the destruction of my world because that destruction would be part of my life. But he seems to be saying that my death is the end of the world. That would be true of the solipsist's world, But not of anybody else's.
But what is the Berkeleyan move, exactly? The move that insists that it is only our own minds that we perceive and that consequently exists? in what way does he retreat from that? Or do you mean that he posits the world as the ideas of God, but allows God to remain hidden behind those ideas? (I could make sense of the idea that Kant does this, by giving himself the phenomena, but then positing the hidden reality of the noumena or being-in-itself.)

a “temptation” to chose “objects” as analogous, and I offer it’s because they want the same things from thoughts that they have with objects, like a direct relationship, something verifiable, measurable, predictable, generalizable, independent, etc., i.e. “object”-tive. — Antony Nickles

Yes, I notice that you are also suggesting quite a wide range of possible needs in the next paragraph as well. All good grist for the mill of reflection. Thanks.
A small contribution from me. Scepticism is often explained as a desire for certainty, but if certainty is an unattainable ideal, perhaps we should think of it as being, not the desire for certainty, but the fear of it, as some inflexible that hems us in.

I'll come back later when I've read your latest carefully and the relevant extract.

A small contribution from me. Scepticism is often explained as a desire for certainty, but if certainty is an unattainable ideal, perhaps we should think of it as being, not the desire for certainty, but the fear of it, as some inflexible that hems us in. — Ludwig V

If we may equate skepticism with doubt, then…

“A doubt that doubted everything would not be a doubt” “The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.”
(On Certainty)

@Paine

Scepticism is often explained as a desire for certainty, but if certainty is an unattainable ideal, perhaps we should think of it as being, not the desire for certainty, but the fear of it, as some inflexible that hems us in. — Ludwig V

Obviously I’d like to stay on topic (understanding this text), or at least until we get to the end (only 10 pages left), after which we will of course open it up to discuss these themes in larger contexts. But I think we can address this in the ballpark of the topics of the book. In understanding ‘certainty’ as a term we could apply here, it would be the framework imposed by the analogy of our relation to objects. In the PI it is the ideal of a pure logic, like math, and On Certainty is its own beast, but @Ludwig V has a point, which is the flip-side of what Witt takes up in the last section (being unknowable). If we have/are something ‘certain’, we keep something, but if language is ‘certain’, like equating ‘meaning’, as an object, with the world as something static (meaning as only labels), then we might object (fear) that I am trapped by my ‘self’, not only for me, but that I am completely ‘knowable’ to others in my entirety, as unguarded myself and through what I say—not just wedded to it, but only to it, constrained within it. Thank you for your patience with the reading.

Are you asking me to not comment with references to earlier and later work by W until you finish going through the text?

My focus has been on the discussion of solipsism in the Blue Book and why W says it is not an opinion. I don't see the issue of certainty as germane to my observations.

But I will refrain if that is your preference.

Thank you for your patience with the reading. — Antony Nickles

It's a question of balance. I didn't think that my observation would be a distraction in the sense of getting in the way of the reading.

If we may equate skepticism with doubt, then… — Joshs

Yes, that's a good reply. One might want to argue about whether it is conclusive on its own. But that wasn't quite what I was talking about. It was, rather, Wittgenstein's comments about "our real need" or the what motivates, for example, the sceptic. Why would anyone say that they were the only person in existence? I think we need to tease out what, exactly, that means.

In understanding ‘certainty’ as a term we could apply here, it would be the framework imposed by the analogy of our relation to objects. — Antony Nickles

Yes, that's the context. I was just a bit concerned that sometimes people seem to think that the only problem is reification, and I think that could become a source of cramp.

we might object (fear) that I am trapped by my ‘self’, — Antony Nickles

I have seen people refer to being caged in the self, in the context of solipsism.

If we may equate skepticism with doubt, then…
— Joshs
Yes, that's a good reply. One might want to argue about whether it is conclusive on its own. But that wasn't quite what I was talking about. It was, rather, Wittgenstein's comments about "our real need" or the what motivates, for example, the sceptic. Why would anyone say that they were the only person in existence? I think we need to tease out what, exactly, that means? — Ludwig V

You were right to point out that in the context of the reading, the kind of certainty that scepticism is a response to is that associated with knowledge of a picture. And yet the sceptic isnt able to dissolve the confusion arising from the separation of meaning from expression. For the sceptic , the idealist cant know what they claim to know. But an examination of the grammar of a solipsist statement like ‘it is only I who see’ reveals not whether something can or cannot be meant, but HOW it is meant, thereby avoiding both idealist certainty and scepticism.

Logically, this would mean that every instance of seeing would have something in common, which he narrows down to “the experience of seeing itself” (p.63), which I read as distinguishing nothing (“pointing… not at anything in [ the visual field ]” (p.64)), and thus wishful rather than meaningful to point out. — Antony Nickles

Well, he is quite right. There is a territory that, so far as I know, he does not explore. I point at a bus, and say (in grammatical mode) “That’s a bus”. The self-same gesture, in a different context could count as a definition of “red”. It’s not really a question of my intention being different. It’s that my audience needs to understand what kind of object a bus or a colour is, before they can interpret my definition.
In one way, one cannot point to one’s visual field – only to objects in it. To understand the gesture that W is talking about, we have to think about how we realize that we have a visual field, that is, we have to understand what kind of thing a visual field is. Whether that understanding would coincide with what the solipsist is trying to say is another question.

To hold “what I mean” (p.65) as unable to be fully understood is to wish for the implications and connotations of our expressions to be ultimately under my control, judged as met or meant by me, — Antony Nickles

Yes. But it could also be that I do not wish to be caged in the implicatons and connotations of our expressions.
I would be happy to say that we never “fully understand” things, even if we can understand them sufficiently for the purposes in hand. That is, that the phrase “fully understand” (which, presumably, contrasts with “partly understand) has not been given a coherent meaning.

What he said really recommended his notation, in the sense in which a notation can be recommended. — p.60

I can think of cases where a notation might recommend itself - for the most part on pragmatic grounds. Whether they are relevant to philosophy is not clear to me. I think we think that because any notation must conform to the same logic, the difference between notations will not be significant.

We are inclined to use personal names in the way we do, only as a consequence of these facts. — p.61

This, of course, radically changes how we need to think of analytic vs synthetic. The consequences are not at all clear to me. I think we need some distinction along those lines. (My next quotation suggests that W agrees).

But I wish it to be logically impossible that he should understand me, that is to say, it should be meaningless, not false, to say that he understands me. Thus my expression is one of the many which is used on various occasions by philosophers and supposed to convey something to the person who says it, though essentially incapable of conveying anything to anyone else. — p.65

But when W talks of understanding the solipsist, rather than merely refuting him, he suggests that we should be asking what they are trying to convey. His discussion in these pages illustrates how that might go, and be reduced to a difference of notation.

It would be wrong to say that when someone points to the sun with his hand, he is pointing both to the sun and himself because it is he who points; on the other hand, he may by pointing attract attention both to the sun and to himself. — p.66

This goes back to the question how we can point to a visual field.

But an examination of the grammar of a solipsist statement like ‘it is only I who see’ reveals not whether something can or cannot be meant, but HOW it is meant, thereby avoiding both idealist certainty and scepticism. — Joshs

But doesn't he also claim that what the solipsist want to say, or mean, is incoherent or perhaps just a question of notation. You make me realize that I'm actually quite confused about exactly what is going on here.

@Ludwig V

My focus has been on the discussion of solipsism in the Blue Book and why W says it is not an opinion. I don't see the issue of certainty as germane to my observations. — Paine

Ah, my mistake; I lost the trail (from p.60). The “opinion” reference is obviously germane. I take it up here (though, of course, there is no obligation to address that). And to answer your question on the discussion: yes, we are pointing to/contrasting, etc. any corresponding mention of terms/discussions in other texts. I only mentioned it as we are of course primarily trying to understand how this text considers them. All that is just to say that I’m having a hard time understanding even what this text is saying (internally).

The solipsist who says ‘only I feel real pain’, ‘only I really see (or hear)’ is not stating an opinion; and that's why he is so sure of what he says. — (p.60)

For example, the text of the quote and its place in the surrounding train of thought seems to beg some questions (all of which I state rhetorically, simply to show the depth of his esotericism, and not to dismiss anyone else’s interests in the matter). Foremost, if not an “opinion”, what? or is it that the solipsist is not “stating” an opinion? (Or both) and then what is the alternative act? and form? Does their “being so sure” have anything to do with their being “irresistibly tempted”? (just below) or, if “so sure” is not being ‘certain’—like knowledge of a fact as if a math-like equation—what constitutes this surety? i.e., why/how “so” sure?

In that vein, the act they are doing (besides “stating an opinion”) is described by negation (in the paragraph above) in that “[ in not stating an opinion, they do ] not thereby disagree with us about any practical question of fact” i.e., we agree on the facts, so their claim is not that what they are saying is actually the correct fact of the matter. Thus, logically, what they are saying is not a factual claim in opposition to: ‘I am not the only one to feel (real) pain’; or, ‘others feel pain, and theirs is as “real” as mine’. If what they are saying is not opinion nor fact, then what are they doing (in what they are saying)? and how is not being a claim to knowledge “why” they are “so sure”? (a compulsion? a conviction?)

Another part any answers I would think have to include is that, even though “not stating an opinion”, they still want to “restrict” what is referred to as “‘real’” (and so how, if not restricted factually?). Methodologically Witt would take the fact to which he claims we both agree—about only my pain being “real”—and give examples of usages of “real” other than what gives the solipsist what they want (what I read, in Sec 18, as the desire to be unknowable). As I said in my reading of this quote above, these could be “real” as in: not possibly manufactured; not (necessarily) over-exaggerated as someone could; contained, in feeling the pain but not having to be responded to, as another’s are by me.

When W says that solipsism is not an opinion, the view is connected to the Tractatus saying it is present but cannot be said. There is something to be overcome but it is not like overturning a proposition. — Paine

I do think [ responding to the quote, that ] Wittgenstein is looking for a way to help the solipsist find an answer to a problem — Paine

Not an opinion: present, not proposed; problematic though not to be overturned, but answered by overcoming. I would guess this is referring to the “irresistible temptation”, but I am not familiar enough with the Tractatus to be sure in relation to the reference to that and the subsequent discussion. Any chance any of what I said is close? or at least the text here is related in some way?