The world is all that is the case and what is the case is the Bestehen of a Sachverhalten. One way of thinking about this is that the world is "how stuff hangs together". And it is holding together particular ways the facts might lie together--Sachlage — John Doe
Anyway, I think states of affairs are more or less by definition possibilities, and a fact is such a possibility obtaining. Thus the world (i.e., the actual world) is fully determined by which possibilities happen to obtain.
You can imagine a collection of things, but even if you imagined a collection of everything, you would not be imagining a world.
1) A collection of things;
(2) A collection of things arranged into states of affairs;
Should we move on, or do people think there is more to milk out of these first few propositions? — MetaphysicsNow
arguably whatever form a collection of objects has is derived from and only from those objects, so any collection of objects has form at least in some sense — MetaphysicsNow
However, on the other hand doesn't at least some of what is going on in these opening propositions suggest a distinction between actual and possible states of affairs? — MetaphysicsNow
As for some Sachverhalten being actual rather than possible -- I'm a little puzzled by the dichotomy. S is actual entails S is possible. — Srap Tasmaner
You must not think — Sam26
Any suggestions or should we just dismiss this issue as to treating Sachverhalten as actual and obtaining to the world, and Sachlage as possible and not necessarily obtaining to the world, and Tatasche as being a composite of the previous two? — Posty McPostface
1.21 Any one ((i.e., any Tatsache)) can be the case or not be the case, and everything else remain the same.
...
2.02 The object is simple.
2.0201 Every statement about complexes can be analysed into a statement about their constituent parts, and into those propositions which completely describe the complexes.
2.021 Objects form the substance of the world. Therefore they cannot be compound.
2.0211 If the world had no substance, then whether a proposition had sense ((Sinn)) would depend on whether another proposition is true.
2.0212 It would then be impossible to form a picture of the world (true or false).
...
2.061 Atomic facts ((Sachverhalten)) are independent of one another.
2.062 From the existence ((Bestehen)) or non-existence of an atomic fact we cannot infer the existence or non-existence of another.
When we think about differences in the way the world might be, we expect to be able to find a smallest unit of difference. — Srap Tasmaner
When we think about differences in the way the world might be, we expect to be able to find a smallest unit of difference. Must we be able to do so? Can we imagine always being able to go still smaller, never reaching something that is only a class member and not itself a class? — Srap Tasmaner
I think @Posty McPostface touches on what I'm about to say in his last post. Do we need to be careful about introducing talk about predicates when expounding W's arguments in this part of the Tractatus? 2.0231 says that we do not get material properties until we already have configurations of objects, and predicates are generally used to signify material properties. Unlike Frege who had a basic ontology of concept and object, and a corresponding predicate/name distinction, W in the Tractatus seems to be burrowing down deeper and has only objects and names. Of course, these are issues we'll be digging into in more depth when we start dealing with W's theory of symbolism. I get, though, that you are just giving an analogy of how one might argue for some kind of foundationalism, but we might need to come back to W's argument for foundationalism once we've dealt a little more with his ideas about depiction (somewhere he gives the metaphor of depiction involving putting out feelers, and there needs to be something that feelers can grab hold of - if everything they grab hold of dissipates when grabbed, then they never end up touching reality).It seems clear that any predicate will have such a smallest unit of applicability, and then the smallest unit of difference in the world we can imagine is such a predicate applying or not applying to one such a unit.
The link to the Jeff Speaks lecture notes was useful, thanks. — MetaphysicsNow
There's something niggling at me that makes me want to say that the difference between an actual state of affairs and a possible state of affairs is significant to understanding W here, but I'm having difficulty putting my finger on what might be the difference between our positions here. I'll have a rethink and see if I can be more precise - but you may be right that there is nothing significant here. — MetaphysicsNow
But, if you recall, Russell had a kind of convincing argument for the existence of
negative facts: suppose that we have a list of atomic facts f1 . . . fn. Now consider
some true sentence ‘not-S.’ Is the truth of ‘not-S’ determined by f1 . . . fn? It seems
not. For f1 . . . fn are atomic facts, and there is nothing to prevent a series of atomic
facts from being consistent both with the truth of S, the falsity of S, or even S lacking
a truth-value. Hence, Russell concluded, true negations of atomic propositions must
correspond to negative facts. How can Wittgenstein avoid this argument?
I think that his ideas about objects provide him a way out. Recall that, for Wittgenstein,
objects are not only what underlie change over time, but also what underlie
necessity and possibility: all possible changes to the world are just a matter of the
recombination of simple objects. As he puts it,
2.0124 If all objects are given, then at the same time all possible states of
affairs are also given.
If there are a fixed number of objects, then a list of all the states of affairs (i.e.,
atomic facts) will not be consistent with both the truth and falsity of a sentence S.
A worry about this view: the intuition that all objects exist only contingently.
Wittgenstein often discusses the world or reality. How are these two notions related?
(This question is made especially difficult by the fact that Wittgenstein seems to
say contradictory things in §§2.04, 2.06, 2.063.)I think that the basic idea can be
stated as follows: the world consists of all the existing states of affairs, whereas reality
consists of the world plus all possible but non-actual states of affairs. Wittgenstein’s
claim is then that the world determines reality: once we know everything about what
states of affairs exist, we know everything about what states of affairs could exist
as well. (Indeed, as Fogelin points out, this follows from the claims that the world
consists of states of affairs, that all objects must be in some state of affairs, and the
passage from §2.0124 cited above.) — Jeff Speaks
It would be good if all of the comments on this thread were made within the context of a reading group that is off the ground. Just saying.All will be revealed in due time. — Posty McPostface
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