Perhaps I should also add:

§5.61 Logic fills the world: the limits of the world are also its limits. We cannot therefore say in logic: This and this there is in the world, that there is not. For that would apparently presuppose that we exclude certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case since otherwise logic must get outside the limits of the world: that is, if it could consider these limits from the other side also. What we cannot think, that we cannot think: we cannot therefore say what we cannot think.

So I think the issue of solispsism arises when mistake the way we exist, as some sort of Cartesian ego uncertain of the external world. When in reality we live our entire lives in an external shared world among others, and it is by conceiving of ourselves as this little private, cut off from the world experience, that the issue arises. We are part of a family, we were born and raised within the very language we are thinking about the issue with. We have a family/cultural/evolutionary(or religious) lineage we can trace. We exist within a particular social and historical context. We pre-theoretically inhabit and exist/live within a shared world, among/alongside others. It is only when we introspect and conceive of ourselves as this singular, cut-off experience that the issue even arises - but that's not how we exist in our everyday lives, or at all.

One can be aware of their own mental states and still profess an attitude of pure realism. How is that? — Posty McPostface

Does a professed attitude really suggest certitude? I don't think so.

But our minds are private. You can't really get away from that, so if it is a mistake that we think we're our own little dudes, then it's not that surprising, is it?

Some attitudes* are indubitable or nonsensical to ponder over. Like, the fact that I have two hands.

I'm not even sure talking about having two hands is an attitude. More like a groundrock belief, one that never gets's questioned.

Does Witty say that a fact is certain and true?

Does Witty say that a fact is certain and true? — Buxtebuddha

1. The world is all that is the case.
1.1The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

So, if the world is the totality of facts, then it would seem that it is something indubitable. Obviously, facts can be relevant, something I don't think Wittgenstein incorporated into the Tractatus. However, solipsism is an indubitable fact.

http://www.tractatuslogico-philosophicus.com/#node/n1-1

Is a thing a fact? If so, doesn't that make everything things and facts?

Is a thing a fact? If so, doesn't that make everything things and facts? — Buxtebuddha

A thing doesn't exist. Only facts do.

A thing doesn't exist. Only facts do. — Posty McPostface

That's right, as long as it's clarified that "thing" is being used with a restricted meaning that explicitly excludes facts, or is maybe even limited to "physical" things.

There are only facts. There are no things other than facts.

Is a thing a fact? — Buxtebuddha

Strictly speaking, all facts are things.. ...unless the meaning of "thing" has been specifically limited to exclude facts.

But not all things are facts. For instance a statement isn't a fact, but only a claim about a fact. Of course there's a fact that a statement has been made, or that there's a potential statement that could be made.

The state of affairs that is a fact is a state of affairs that relates some things. Those things, while not facts, could be called parts of that fact. ...what the fact is about. ...comprising the topic of the fact.

In general, unless otherwise specified, things are whatever can be referred to, and that includes facts as things too.

When it's (truly) said that there are no things, just facts, what is meant is that there are no things other than facts. I agree with that statement.

Michael Ossipoff

Does Witty say that a fact is certain and true?

I don't know what W would say to that, but, by definition there's no such thing as an untrue fact.

If a statement isn't true, it doesn't state a fact.

A statement is a claim about a fact.

A fact is a state of affairs, or part of the way things are.

As for "certain", often we can't be certain whether or not a proposition or a statement states a fact.

Michael Ossipoff

You can't logically refute solipsism but it's pointless. It doesn't give you insight into anything. The world's a mess because that's how my sadistic vat programmers set it up. They know I'm a liberal and they programmed Trump to troll me all the days of my miserable vat life. But why am I a liberal? Because they programmed me that way too. It's a nihilistic viewpoint. Nothing means anything.

Descartes asked in 1641 how he could know that all his experiences aren't illusions caused by an evil demon. He concluded that since God is good, God would not let such a thing happen.

Cold comfort in our secular age. But it's not a new idea.

Isn't "Solipsism" just a namecalling word used by advocates of Realism?

There's some sort of supposed, pretend-consensus, stigma implied, so that, if someone says, "That's Solipsism.", that's supposed to settle the matter against whatever position is being called "Solipsism".

My metaphysics is an Anti-Realism. There's no reason to speak of a fact-system other than (each of) our own llfe-experience story..And that system of inevitable abstract facts about hypotheticals is as valid as any other abstract fact or system of them, and is completely independent of those.

On the other hand, plainly there are plainly other abstract facts too. And the ones that make up your life-experience possibility-story aren't really different from those. And it would be chauvinistic and circular to say that the facts that aren't part of a living-being's experience-story are less valid, because validity means being part of someone's experience.

That's why I say that absolute Anti-Realism is out of the question.

Michael Ossipoff

You can't logically refute solipsism but it's pointless. — fishfry

But, then it must be true!

All that you know about this world is from your experience. ...is part of your experience. That's what your life is. The world surrounding you is merely the setting for that story.

Other people? Of course it goes without saying that your experience-story, to be self-consistent, must have you as a member of a species that begat you. Necessarily, in that story, there are other members of that species.

And, among the infinity of life-experience possibility-stories, there inevitably is one about the experience of each of those other beings too.

They're just like you, basically.

Michael Ossipoff

But, then it must be true! — Posty McPostface

It might be true. But it's nihilistic. We should dismiss it because it's boring. Why did the sun rise today? My vat programmers did it. Why didn't the sun rise today? Vatprogs again.

It fails as a philosophy because it's not interesting.

All that you know about this world is from your experience — Michael Ossipoff

Berkeley's subjective idealism, right? The world "outside" is irrelevant, all I know is my sensory impressions. And why do my sensory impressions seem consistent from moment to moment? God did it.

Berkeley was a Catholic bishop so we can understand his point of view. What was Descartes's excuse? "God makes everything work out" is not much of a philosophy either.

Then, I ask to reread the TLP passages I posted. He makes solipsism compatible with pure realism.

Perhaps my solipsistic thread is too solipsistic. No replies. *Despairs* — Posty McPostface

I would hop on you solo solipsistic soul train but I am just too busy being me to boss all the nonentities I once spawned and who now linger on. I have spawned throngs. I comprise worlds. — Bitter Crank

P.M.S Hacker thought along what I am trying to express:

What the solipsist means, and is correct in thinking, is that the world and life are one, that man is the microcosm, that I am my world. These equations... express a doctrine which I shall call Transcendental Solipsism. They involve a belief in the transcendental ideality of time. ... Wittgenstein thought that his transcendental idealist doctrines, though profoundly important, are literally inexpressible. — Hacker, Insight and Illusion, op cit., n. 3, pp. 99-100.

Then, I ask to reread the TLP passages I posted. He makes solipsism compatible with pure realism. — Posty McPostface

I clicked on your Wittgy link and read the yellow highlighted part and I confess I didn't understand at all how that has anything to do with solipsism. Can you break this down for me? I'm not a Wittgy scholar.

They're in the OP and next post right below it.

First, it must be said that to understand what point Wittgenstein is making, one must understand a much larger picture than these quotes you're referencing. This picture includes what Wittgenstein is trying to accomplish in the Tractatus, the background of the Tractatus, which includes Russell, Frege, The Notebooks, Hume (his argument against the impression of the self), and Schopenhauer, and that's just for starters. The Tractatus is one of the most difficult works of philosophy, and as such, there have been numerous misunderstanding of Wittgenstein's thoughts in this early work of his. This is said not to discourage you, but to put all of this in perspective.

First, it's not the case that Wittgenstein was a solipsist in the sense that you may be ascribing to him (keeping in mind that there are variations of solipsism, including linguistic solipsism), but he is sympathetic to the view that there is a metaphysical I that represents a kind of privileged view of things. The self that is associated with this privileged view is not part of the world, i.e., it's at the very boundary of the world peering in. It's also important to point out that for Wittgenstein what's beyond the boundary is what's mystical, and as such can only be shown or reflected in our actions. Remember his illustration of the eye, and the visual field of the eye. One cannot see the eye itself, the eye is behind the visual field, not in the visual field. Think of the self in this way, the metaphysical self is not part of the world, one doesn't see it in the world, although one experiences the world through the self, as one sees the world through one's eyes.

So to partly answer your question about the compatibility of realism with this kind of solipsistic view; Wittgenstein did not deny realism (if anything he affirmed realism, as I understand him), but he also did not deny a kind of privileged view of the world, which is a kind of solipsistic view, but not in the vain that you may be thinking.

There is so much more to this, but it would take much more analysis to spell it out, and it needs, again, to be seen from Wittgenstein's goal of the Tractatus.

First, it's not the case that Wittgenstein was a solipsist in the sense that you may be ascribing to him (keeping in mind that there are variations of solipsism, including linguistic solipsism), but he is sympathetic to the view that there is a metaphysical I that represents a kind of privileged view of things. The self that is associated with this privileged view is not part of the world, i.e., it's at the very boundary of the world peering in. It's also important to point out that for Wittgenstein what's beyond the boundary is what's mystical, and as such can only be shown or reflected in our actions. Remember his illustration of the eye, and the visual field of the eye. One cannot see the eye itself, the eye is behind the visual field, not in the visual field. Think of the self in this way, the metaphysical self is not part of the world, one doesn't see it in the world, although one experiences the world through the self, as one sees the world through one's eyes. — Sam26

Yes, to which I was alluding to here.

I'll repost it:

What the solipsist means, and is correct in thinking, is that the world and life are one, that man is the microcosm, that I am my world. These equations... express a doctrine which I shall call Transcendental Solipsism. They involve a belief in the transcendental ideality of time. ... Wittgenstein thought that his transcendental idealist doctrines, though profoundly important, are literally inexpressible. — Hacker, Insight and Illusion, op cit., n. 3, pp. 99-100.

What do you think is so profoundly important about these transcendental idealist doctrines?

Yes, very good. I see you've read your Heidegger.

I don't believe he was a transcendental idealist either, far from it, i.e., if I'm understanding the post. I would have to hear more about what this amounts to.

"ll that you know about this world is from your experience" — Michael Ossipoff

Berkeley's subjective idealism, right? — fishfry

Subjective Idealism, sure.

The world "outside" is irrelevant

No. The physical world is the setting for your experience. It's a necessary part of your experience.

, all I know is my sensory impressions.

Of course.

And of course there are all of the abstract facts, and it would be chauvinistic to say that the ones in your experience are the only valid ones and are somehow different or more true. I don't take Anti-Realism that far.

But the fact remains that your experience, the system of abstract facts that comprise your experience-story, is quite independent of other abstract facts, and is a universe unto itself.

And why do my sensory impressions seem consistent from moment to moment?

That's a good question, and I don't claim to have a completely satisfactory answer to it. I'd like to hear others' explanations, from other Idealists.

Of course, if your experience-story were inconsistent, then it would no longer consist of inter-referring facts. Mutually inconsistent propositions aren't facts.

Why is there something instead of nothing? Because abstract if-then facts, and complex inter-referring systems of them, are inevitable. But, if mutually-inconsistent, they wouldn't be facts.

But who says experience has to be factual and consistent? Well, your experience is of life in a physical world, and, right there, that means that it's about a logical system of inter-referring facts. Would it be meaningful to speak of a physical world without facts? Only in a cartoon?

There are all of the abstract objects, but how much do they mean without the relations among them that we call "facts"? "Things" could be defined as what facts relate. ...parts of facts. By that definition, things would be meaningless and undefined without facts.

Does that come close to an explanation for why our experience is consistent?

Maybe the "Why is experience consistent?" question comes from the fallacy of believing in metaphysically-meaningful isolated things.

That seems confirmed by the Witgenstein quote that there are no [independently metaphysically-meaningful?] things, just facts.

Of course, if things are defined as what can be referred to, then facts are things. But when referring to something, you make a statement implied to be a fact, which just means that fact can also be a thing, as part of another fact, something that another fact or claimed-fact is about.

God did it.

Just as we tell a Biblical Literalist, "What makes you think that God needed to contravene the physical laws of His creation? What makes you think we weren't created via and in keeping with physical law?", we could ask the same thing, with respect to metaphysics, of someone who wants to portray God as an element of metaphysics.

Michael Ossipoff

For Wittgenstein the most important things lie outside the world of our sensory experiences, outside "...all that is the case." Everything that can be said, i.e., what has sense, falls within the world. Then there is the senseless, i.e., the things that are said about the limit of language, which occurs at the boundary between the world and the metaphysical. Finally, there are those things that are nonsense, which are attempts to say what's beyond the limit, viz., beyond the boundary. What's beyond the limit for Wittgenstein can only be shown (ethics, religion, all that is mystical). Of course some things changed for Wittgenstein in his later philosophy, but some things for him remained the same.

There are some very interesting ideas contained in Wittgenstein's thinking. I don't agree with some of it, but it has expanded my thinking. No matter how much I read his writings I always seem to learn more.

One has to be careful trying to fit Wittgenstein's thinking into some neat philosophical theory.

I included in this post PMS Hacker's book. I will try and read and post what I think he says from that passage.

Wittgenstein's first point is that there is no such thing as the thinking, representing subject (denkende, vorstellende, Subjekt). The argument supporting this contention resembles the standard Humean argument2 of the non-encounterability of the self in experience. If I wrote a book entitled The World as Ifound it I should mention my body, but the subject, my self, could not be mentioned in the book for I do not find it in the world. Here there is an important difference between Wittgenstein and H~me.~ For Hume, who looked Jar the self in (introspective) experience, supposed that it at least made sense to talk of finding it (indeed, he seems absurdly to have thought that a permanent perception would fit the hill). But Wittgenstein, like Kant, held that the 'non-encounterability of the self' in introspection is an essential, not a contingent feature of experience.' Similar points are made in the Notebooks. On 4 August 1916 we find him querying 'Isn't the representing subject in the last resort mere superstition? (NB, p. 80). A week later he remarks 'The I is not an object. I objectively confront every object. But not the I. So there really is a way in which there can and must be mention of the I in a nun-psycholopi.al sense in philosophy' (NB, p. 80). Two months later he repeats the same points in a slightly altered terminology. The illusory non-existent subject is called the 'knowing subject' (erkennendes Subjekt). It is important to bear in mind that the Humean argument of non-encounterability was directea against the Cartesian conception of the self as a res cop'tans.

The similarity of Wittgenstein's argument to that of Itfume goes beyond the repudiation of the thinking, knowing, subject as an object of experience located within the world. Section 5.641 points out en passant that the subject-matter of psychology is the human soul. Wittgenstein's suggestions for the proper analysis of the human soul bear strong affinities to Hume's constructive analysis of the self. The clues to Wittgenstein's proposal lie in the earlier discussion of propositions about belief as potential counter-examples to the thesis of extensionality (TLP, 5.541). The superficial view of the meaning of propositions such as 'A believes p', which Wingenstein attributes to Russell and Moore, is that A stands in the relation of believing to the proposition p. Both Moore and Russell had indeed flirted with such a conception at earlier phases in their careers. Moore, in Some Main Problems ofPhilosophy, toyed with the idea that belief was a special act of mind directed towards an objective entity, viz. a proposition.' Russell, in his three articles 'Meinong's Theory of Complexes and Assumptions' published in Mind xiii (1906), argued similarly that belief was a mental attitude towards a proposition that exists whether or not it is believed. Wingenstein brushes this dual relation theory of judgement aside: it looks as ifthe propositionp stood in some relation to the object (soul, mind)A (and so it looks as if one proposition occurs withim another, viz. 'p' in 'A believes that p', without being a base fur a truth-operation, contrary to the thesis of extensionality). But this is confused (as Moore and Russell had, for various reasons, realized by 1910). It is clear, Wingenstein insists, that 'A believes that p' (or 'A says, or thinks, that 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 (TLP, 5.542). This analysis satisfies the requirement on any analysis of judgement, namely that it be impossible for a judgement to be a piece of nonsense. Russell's theory, he adds, does not satisfy this requirement (TLP, 5.5422). Here Wittgenstein is referring to Russell's later multiple-relation theory of judgement that occurs in his 1910 paper 'On the Nature of Truth and Falsehood" and is repeated in the 1913 manuscript Theoly of

Knowledge. The essentials of the theory are expressed in the following paragraph: judgment is not a dual relation of the mind to a single objective, but a multiple relation of the mind to the various other terms with which the judgment is concerned. Thus if I judge that A loves B, that is not a relation of me to 'A's love for B', but a relation between me andA and love and B. If it were a relation of me to 'A's love for B' it would be impossible unless there were such a thing as 'A's love for B', i.e. unlessA loved B, i.e. unless the judgment were true; but in fact false judgments are possible. When the judgment is taken as a relation between me andA and love and B, the mere fact that the judgment occurs does not involve any relation between its objects A and love and B; thus the possibility of false judgments is fully allowed for.' Wittgenstein's central (but not only) objection was that Russell had purchased the possibility of false judgement at the price of allowing nonsensical judgements. Nothing in Russell's theory ensured the preservation of logical form between the elements of the judgement. But a correct theory of judgement must make it impossible for one to judge that 'this table penholders the book' (NB, p. 96).8 This objection, Russell said, paralysed him, leading to the recantation in 'The Philosophy of Logical Atomism': although it was not until even later that Russell was prepared to dispense with the self as an element in the final analysis of 'A judges that p'. The form of 'A believes thatp', Wittgenstein argued, is '"p" saysp', which does not correlate a fact with an object, but correlates two facts by correlating their objects. This analysis is subsequently said to show that the so-called 'soul' is composite and hence not really a soul. This gives a clue to the interpretation. Facts are always composites of objects, and only composite things (although not 'complexes', which are not facts at all) can 'say' something, for the possibility of saying depends upon the existence of an articulated structure whose elements can be correlated with what is said by means of projection. Only a fact

can represent a state of affairs. 'A believesp' involves the correlation of two facts in the same way as the proposition 'p' says that p in virtue of the correlation of the elements of the proposition-constituting fact with the objects configured in the fact that p (if it is a fact). The obscure relation between the mind and the unco-ordinated terms of the judgement in Russell's theory is here replaced with the (hardly less obscure) method of projection correlating elements of thought or utterance with objects. It should now be clear why the analysis was thought to show the complexity of the 'soul'. The apparent unitary subject A which seemed related to an object, viz. a proposition, is a multiplicity of elements some of which are structured into a fact that pictures the fact or possible fact that p. The 'unitary subject' recedes into the 'metaphysical self (infra) leaving behind a composite empirical self. We have already mentioned Wingenstein's remark in the Notebooks that thinking, even though non-verbal, is a kind of language (NB, p. 82) and his letter to Russell of 19 August 1919 in which he wrote: '. . . But a Gedunke is a Tauache: what are its constituents and components, and what is their relation to those of the pictured Tatrache?' I don't know what the constituents of a thought are but I know that it must have such constituents which correspond to the words of Language. Again the kind of relation of the constituents of the thought and of the pictured fact is irrelevant. It would be a matter of psychology to find out.. .. [A Gedunke consists] of psychical constituents that have the same sort of relation to reality as words. What those constituents are I don't know. (NB, pp. 129-30.) The mind or selfA is not an object, but a complex array of psychical elements. 'A believes p' is allegedly analysable in such a way that the existence of the psychical constituents which correspond to the constituents of the possible fact that p is specified. These psychical constituents are related in some contingent way to whatever other facts or configurations of elements constitute the empirical se1fA.A'~ belief consists of these psychical elements of a manifold being correlated with objects constituting a fact, together perhaps with some kind of 'colouring'. For, to be sure, the differences between distinct propositional attitudes are not captured by the suggested analysis. These differences were, in Wittgenstein's view, a matter for psychology not logic. From the logical point of view the only important points to establish are that 'A believes p' is-appearance not withstanding-not a counter-

And so on. All can be found on pages 99 henchforth.

Some people object, to me, "You say that our world just consists of abstract facts, but how does that be real, how does it make our real world?"

Well, I haven't claimed that it's objectively, "concretely" (whatever that would mean) real.

We've had it hammered into us, from elementary-school and on,that it goes without saying that there's this "concrete", objectively real, brute-fact, physical world.

And, whether explicitly expressed, as it always is, by naive Materialists, or just felt and not expressed, by subconsciously Materialist people familiar with philosophy, who know better than to actually say it, I claim that that long-ingrained teaching referred to in the paragraph before this one, is the basis for why people have a problem with logical Idealism.

Another objection that I sometimes hear:

Some people object that a logically-based metaphysics, based on inevitable abstract facts, takes away the indeterminacy that they expect or want.

Of course there's indeterminacy, even in metaphysics. I can't prove that the objectively-real physical world of Materialism doesn't superfluously exist, as an unverifiable, unfalsifiable brute-fact, alongside of, and duplicating the events and relations of, the inevitable logical system that I describe.

But there are definite things that can be uncontroversially-said in metaphysics. But metaphysics doesn't embody or describe all of Reality. There's definitely indeterminacy, and matters that we don't and can't know--But, for the most part, they aren't in metaphysics.

Metaphysics has a lot in common with science. Definitions need to be well-specified, and consistently-applied, Statements need to be supported. Assumptions should be avoided. Unnecessary brute-facts should be avoided. Definite things can be uncontroversially-said.
Unfalsifiable, unverifiable propositions are rightly suspect.

And, like physics, metaphysics isn't, and doesn't describe, all of Reality.

Michael Ossipoff

example to the thesis of extensionality, and that it has the same logical multiplicity as p.Io It thus emerges that Wingenstein was willing to adopt a neoHumean analysis of the empirical self. There is no empirical soulsubstance thinking thoughts, there are only thoughts. The self of psychology is a manifold, a series of experiences, a bundle of perceptions in perpetual flux. However, the claim in 5.5421 that this analysis of propositions about belief shows that 'there is no such thing as the soul-the subject, etc.-as it is conceived in the superficial psychology of the present day' is, when juxtaposed with 5.641, misleading. For 5.641 refers to the human soul as the legitimate subject-matter for empirical psychology. Yet 5.5421 says that 'a composite soul would no longer be a soul', and the analysis does show the soul to be composite. The claim should be interpreted thus: the soul conceived of as a unitary simple subject encounterable in private experience and constituting the meaning (Bedmtung) of 'A' in 'A believes that p' does not exist. But conceived of as a manifold, it is the legitimate subject-matter of psychology. All that empirical psychology needs to say about the psyche can be said. Philosophy has no concern with this. But nevertheless philosophy must discuss the I in a nonpsychological sense. The reason given for this in the Notebooks is that the I is not an object I confront. In the Tractatus the obscure reason given is that 'the world is my world' The philosophy which is concerned with the self is not the envisaged philosophy of analysis of the post-fiactatus era but the nonsensical philosophy of the Tractatus itself. The self with which philosophy is concerned is not the human being, or the human body, or the soul which is the concern of psychology. It is rather the metaphysical self (TLP, 5.641). We are introduced to this concept immediately after the thinking self has been dismissed as illusory. In 5.632 Wittgenstein wrote 'The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world.' The subject here referred to is not, of course, the thinking subject, but the metaphysical subject. This is clear from the following section 5.633, and confirmed by the source of the remark in the Notebook (NB, p. 79). The metaphysical subject is the bearer of good and evil. Why is it not part of the world? Wingenstein merely hinted at an argument by way of analogy. The metaphysical subject is related to the world as the eye is related to the visual field. Nothing in the visual field entitles one to infer that it is seen by an eye. The eye of the visual field (not of course the physical eye, but what Wingenstein later called 'the geometrical eye' (NFL, pp. 297, 299) ) is the source of the visual field, not a constituent of it. The point is not that I always notice the position from which I see what I see, hut that 'I also always find myself at a particular point of my visual space, so my visual space has as it were a shape' (NB, p. 86). Section 5.634 hints at the shreds of an argument that faintly echoes Kant's 'the "I think" ' that must be capable of accompanying all my representations. No part of our experiences is a priori. Whatever we see could be otherwise. But, by implication, that our experience belongs to us and could not belong to another is a priori. It could not happen that we should need to employ some principle of differentiation to distinguish within the flow of experience those experiences that belong to us from those that belong to others. The 'owner of experience in general', the possessor of all the experience I can ever encounter, is the metaphysical subject." How is this to be intemreted? The received intemretation is that Wittgenstein was in effect dismissing the notion of a metaphysical self. Blackrz argues that Wingenstein entertains the idea of a transcendental ego and eventually rejects it. The Cartesian ego, he claims, is not part of experience but the limit of experience. But since this way of speaking is nonsense, there is no sense in talking of a metaphysical subject. Hence consistent solipsism leads to realism, and he who intends to be a solipsist can he brought to see that there is nothing he really intends to say. Considerable light can he thrown upon the issue by a brief comparison of Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer. Schopenhaueri3 accepted Kant's masterly refutation of the Cartesian doctrine of the soul as a unitary thinking substance. Kant's diagnosis was that Descartes confused the unity of apperception with the perception of a unitary subject. This rejection of the thinking, knowing, representing self as a constituent of the world did not, however, prevent Schopenhauer from a quasi-reification of the transcendental ego to constitute the foundation of his particular version of transcendental idealism. The transcendental self, he claimed, is 'as an indivisible point' (WWR, ii.278). Though it is simple, like the res coptans, it is not a substance (ibid.). The metaphysical subject and its object, i.e. the world as representation, 'limit each other immediately' (WWR, i.5). The transcendental ego is a presupposition of the existence of the world (ibid.): the knowing subject thus conceived lies outside space and time which are merely the forms of its sensible intuition. As the source ofthe forms and categories of experience, it is 'a presupposition of all experience' (WR, ii.15). It is the 'supporter of the world, the universal condition of all that appears' (WWR, i.5) The self is 'the eye (which) sees everything except itself' (WWR, ii.q91), the ego is the 'centre of all existence' (WWR, ii.486). Wittgenstein's metaphors are identical with Schopenhauer's. There can be little doubt that the last of the three extant notebooks was written while Wittgenstein was re-reading Schopenhauer. To be sure, he is only mentioned once by name: 'It would be possible to say (A la Schopenhauer): It is not the world of Idea that is either good or evil; but the willing subject' (NB, p. 79). Immediately following this remark another Schopenhauerian thought is entered: 'the subject is not part of the world but a presupposition of its existence'. Schopenhauer's transcendental subject limits the world as idea. Wittgenstein's metaphysical subject is a 'limit of the world'. Schopenhauer compared the I to the 'dark point in consciousness, just as on the retina the precise point of entry of the optic nerve is blind.. . the eye sees everything except itself'. This metaphor first appears in Wittgenstein's 'Notes on Logic' of September 1913, without any overt reference to the self and without any Schopenhauerian overtones: The comparison of language and reality is like that of a retinal image andvisual image: to the blind spot nothing in the visual image seems to correspond, and' thereby the boundaries of the blind spot determine the visual image-just as true negations of atomic propositions determine reality. (NB, p. 95.) As we shall see below, this original employment of the metaphor to illuminate the relation of language and reality, seen in the light of its subsequent use, is important. In the 1916 notebook the eye metaphor is used to illustrate the relation between subject and experience. On I I June 1916 Wingenstein wrote 'I am placed in it [the world] like my eye in its visual field' (NB, p. 73). The metaphor recurs repeatedly in subsequent remarks (e.g. on 4 August 1916, IZ August 1916, 20 October I~I~NB, pp. 80, 86) in obvious Schopenhauerian contexts. It reappears, as we have seen, in the Tractatus, 5.633-5.634. Finally, even Schopenhauer's reference to the self as the centre of all existence reappears in the Notebooks 'If the will did not exist, neither would there be that centre of the world, which we call the I . . .' (NB, p. 80). These Schopenhauerian influences provide us with important evidence for interpreting Wingenstein's remarks on the self. First, the argument of non-encounterability of a Cartesian self appears in both Kant and Schopenhauer as part of the refutation of the rationalist doctrine of the soul. Given the Schopenhauerian influence upon Wingenstein it is plausible to take its reappearance in the Tractatus, 5.631 to be directed at the same target, as we have already conjectured. Secondly, the common view that the metaphysical self is identical with the illusory thinking self and hence is not countenanced by Wingenstein can be conclusively rejected. In the first place, the non-encounterability argument is effective in demolishing a naive conception of a thinking soul-substance hut is wholly ineffective in dismissing the conception of a metaphysical self, since the laner is not alleged to be part of the world, but its limit, not a constituent of the world, but a presupposition of its existence as idea. In the second place, the parallels with Schopenhauer run sufficiently deep to make it a plausible conjecture, in the absence of countervailing evidence, that Schopenhauer's distinction between the illusoty Cartesian self and the transcendental self was adopted by Wingenstein. In the third place, the enigmatic claims that the self is a presupposition of the existence of the world and that it is the centre of the world do not suggest its illusoriness. Finally, the existence of the metaphysical self as a non-empirical object is required by Wingenstein's doctrines of the will and of good and evil. Wingenstein had little to say about ethics in the Tractatatus. Ethics, in his view, is transcendental. It belongs to those things that cannot be put into words, the mystical. The will is the bearer of value, but as such, not being a phenomenon in the world, cannot be spoken of. Value does not lie in the world, for all that is within the world is contingent. Hence [...]

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