Aren't you already speaking about them in making that claim (and then going on to talk about them even more later on)? I presume, then, that you either disagree with Wittgenstein, or you believe that one can say something about the mystical and the ethical. Or do you mean to be deliberately paradoxical? I've heard it said that the entire Tractatus is meaningless nonsense if one takes literally this particular aphorism from Wittgenstein.First, the mystical or the ethical is what can be referred to as those things which cannot be spoken about.
The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world. (5.62)
Whatever our experiences, we can make up a word for them, so there is nothing we cannot talk about. And yet no amount of talk can capture the experience, so there is always a chasm between talk and world. We can talk about anything, but it will only ever be talk. — unenlightened
I presume, then, that you either disagree with Wittgenstein, or you believe that one can say something about the mystical and the ethical. — MetaphysicsNow
I've heard it said that the entire Tractatus is meaningless nonsense if one takes literally this particular aphorism from Wittgenstein. — MetaphysicsNow
I'll have to reread the Tractatus, but at that stage in his philosophy I think the idea of a private language still made sense to Wittgenstein, and this certainly seems to be lying behind this remark. — MetaphysicsNow
Also, Wittgenstein was not the first philosopher to attempt to set limits to what philosophy can accomplish. Kant got there before him, and arguably did a better job of it. — MetaphysicsNow
What it is like to see red, or not to see red, no one can say, because one does not even know oneself, except by one's ability to use the word correctly. — unenlightened
Whatever our experiences, we can make up a word for them, so there is nothing we cannot talk about. And yet no amount of talk can capture the experience, so there is always a chasm between talk and world. We can talk about anything, but it will only ever be talk. — unenlightened
OK, but in the Tractatus he had a very restricted view of what language is (at least that is one interpretation of it). Language is precisely and only a way of picturing reality in the Tractatus, and in the Tractatus reality is just the totality of facts, so language in the Tractatus is just a way of picturing facts. All facts are built up from atomic facts, and the logical relations between propositions mirror the ontological relations between facts. With that in mind, proposition 7 reduces (or can be reduced) to the idea that you should shut up if you are not attempting to state either an atomic fact, or a fact constructed from atomic facts, because that's all that you can do with language. But where does that leave the propositions of the Tractatus? They are not statements to the effect that some specific atomic fact obtains. They also do not look like statements to the effect that some fact constructed from atomic facts obtains.Not really. Wittgenstein set out to delineate the limits of language and thought with the Tractatus. I think he achieved that goal.
Not sure about that: "reality is the totality of facts not of things" - that sounds like a metaphysical claim to me.Kant had to invoke the metaphysical. Wittgenstein got by with doing without it.
I might just do that - in any case I've been thinking about rereading PI and TLP for a while now (since I joined the forum in fact, and saw Wittgenstein's name bandied and battled about a fair bit). Do you happen to have any specific papers in mind?I think I'd read a couple of papers in which the authors tried to distinguish between those and others that were really meant as nonsense. What do you think?
OK, but in the Tractatus he had a very restricted view of what language is (at least that is one interpretation of it). — MetaphysicsNow
All facts are built up from atomic facts, and the logical relations between propositions mirror the ontological relations between facts. — MetaphysicsNow
With that in mind, proposition 7 reduces (or can be reduced) to the idea that you should shut up if you are not attempting to state either an atomic fact, or a fact constructed from atomic facts, because that's all that you can do with language. But where does that leave the propositions of the Tractatus? — MetaphysicsNow
They are not statements to the effect that some specific atomic fact obtains. They also do not look like statements to the effect that some fact constructed from atomic facts obtains. — MetaphysicsNow
Not sure about that: "reality is the totality of facts not of things" - that sounds like a metaphysical claim to me. — MetaphysicsNow
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