Well, it just says that the actual world is represented by a designated point in logical space. But why is this point designated? — litewave

Just think of it as an observer that obtains a specific reality from what they observe, the world. Yeah, it's getting mystical and solipsistic here. As the author notes in that referenced text, this isn't subjective idealism, but closer to objective idealism of Plato and Leibniz.

Just think of it as an observer that obtains reality from what they observe, the world. Yeah, it's getting mystical and solipsistic here. — Posty McPostface

Was Wittgenstein a modal realist like David Lewis, that is, did he believe that all possible worlds are just as real as the actual one and the actual one is simply the possible world in which we happen to live? I see that in the article you linked, reality is identified with the totality of all possible worlds (the logical space).

I think that can't be true because reality obtains from atomic facts and the various possibilities they can configure in to give rise to states of affairs in logical space. Wittgenstien doesn't talk about modalities in the Tractatus per the previous posts I made from the Scott Soames book.

My personal opinion is that possible realities branching out and diverging from the actual world kind of fade off and become meaningless. Take it for what's that worth, just an opinion. It kind of sounds like a consensus based objective idealism of sorts, which gets deeply elaborated on in his Investigations...

My personal opinion is that possible realities branching out and diverging from the actual world kind of fade off and become meaningless. Take it for what's that worth, just an opinion. — Posty McPostface

Ok, that's a common intuitive view although upon reflection I fail to see why a particular possible world should be more real than others, or what it would even mean...

although upon reflection I fail to see why a particular possible world should be more real than others, or what it would even mean... — litewave

I think it's about which view is closest to reality. The second link I provided talks about homomorphic and isomorphic states of affairs or realities. I think it all comes down to a pragmatic coherentist view in regards to possible worlds and their relationship with the world.

Edit: Under Fregian logic, I don't think there's room for isomorphic propositions. So my bad.

Thus we get 2.172: "The picture, however, cannot represent its form of representation; it shows it forth." (More below.) — Srap Tasmaner

Hence showing as opposed to saying is one thing that Wittgenstein carried from the Tractatus into the Investigations.

And we still haven't touched the realm of nonsense. Ehh...

And he got it from Frege.

Interesting. Where? I'd like to read it.

It's at least in "Concept and Object" (maybe that's "function"): he tries several ways of explaining the difference between a concept (or function) and an object, explains the trouble with talking about concepts (you're forced to talk about them as if they're objects), and then finally says, I can't tell you the difference but I can show you. And then that's pretty much the point of the predicate calculus: you can see the difference.

On the introduction of a name for something logically simple, a definition is not possible. There is nothing for it but to lead the reader or hearer, by means of hints, to understand the words as is intended.

Nice. Thanks.

LW tends to talk about the logical constants this way too. I can't remember if that's in Frege, but it might be.

Sorry, @Srap Tasmaner; but, I'm at a loss here as what to say. I'm reading the companion provided by another member here, that seems to clarify all these issues. I'm somewhat slow to read it, and it's taking a lot of time to cover everything up until picture theory of meaning.

It's a really good companion, from what I gather. If you're interested in it helping us guide through the Tractatus, let me know.

Been away for a few days, so I'll try to get back into this.

We're going to work on logical space some more?

Been away for a few days, so I'll try to get back into this.

We're going to work on logical space some more? — Srap Tasmaner

Glad you're back.

It's a crapshoot. Do you think we need a companion to help guide us? As I'm reading the Routledge one provided in the first page of this thread, I feel like it can only help us along the way.

We're going to work on logical space some more? — Srap Tasmaner

That'd be pleasing. What do we find in logical space?

What do we find in logical space? — Banno

Substance.

The facts in logical space are the world.

No substance. Facts and logical operators.

2.021 Objects form the substance of the world. Therefore they cannot be compound.

2.024 Substance is what exists independently of what is the case.

A substance is something which remains the same thing through change, although change is ambiguous here and rather irrelevant according to Wittgenstein. Substance is what is constant across all possible differences in the atomic facts.

A proposition determines a place in logical space.

SO propositions are found in logical space.

3.42 A proposition can determine only one place in logical space: nevertheless the whole of logical space must already be given by it. (Otherwise negation, logical sum, logical product, etc., would introduce more and more new elements in co-ordination.) (The logical scaffolding surrounding a picture determines logical space. The force of a proposition reaches through the whole of logical space.)

There's already a holism coming through here.

But

2.0231 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. 

2.025 It is form and content.

The thinking here is something like this. There must be something common, something constant across all possible alternative scenarios. This is (at least close to) what is known traditionally as substance. But what is actually required, according to Wittgenstein, is a common form. What might be meant by ‘form’ here? The notion of form has already been introduced in the idea of the form of an object: it is the ways in which that object can combine with other objects to form atomic facts. Wittgenstein introduces a related notion in connection with atomic facts:

2.032 The way in which objects hang together in the atomic fact is the structure of the atomic fact.

2.033 The form is the possibility of the structure.

Form and content become the substance of logical space. (sorry, other way around)

Think about it in Kantain terms. There cannot be objects or facts or things without logical space.

And finally,

2.0211 If the world had no substance, then whether a proposition had sense would depend on whether another proposition was true.

2.0212 It would then be impossible to form a picture of the world (true or false).

The structure of an atomic fact is something contingent: it is the fact that its constituent objects are actually combined in the way they are. The atomic fact’s form is quite different: it is (as it were — the reason for this caution will have emerged by the time we have reached the end of the book) the fact that the constituent objects can be arranged like that. This latter ‘fact’ — the form of the atomic fact — clearly has its roots in the form of the constituent objects, since ‘objects contain the possibility of all states of affairs’ (2.014). So there can only be a fixed form, common to all possible worlds, if the objects whose form is the root of the form of atomic facts are also common to all possible worlds. This is why substance is both form and content. It is form, because the form of atomic facts — the possibility of there being such facts — is what is common to all possible worlds. And it is content, because the form of atomic facts is carried in the form of their constituent objects, so there must be things as well as forms, if there are to be the appropriate forms. Hence Wittgenstein says:

2.026 Only if there are objects can there be a fixed form of the world.

2.027 The fixed, the existent and the object are one.

I'm quoting at leisure from the Routledge companion to the Tractatus. Sorry.

Are the elements of logical space obtaining and non-obtaining atomic facts, or are the elements of logical space the obtaining and the non-obtaining of atomic facts?

I think the latter is what's in the text, but I don't know how to understand that. Surely these obtainings and non-obtainings are not entities of some kind in addition to the atomic facts themselves. So I want to say it's the former, the atomic facts themselves, obtaining or not, that are the elements of logical space.

Are the elements of logical space obtaining and non-obtaining atomic facts, or are the elements of logical space the obtaining and the non-obtaining of atomic facts? — Srap Tasmaner

As far as I understand, Wittgenstein uses the terms existent and non-existent, so we might want to stick with that; but, yes-I think so.

Yes, what? There were two options.

So I want to say it's the former, the atomic facts themselves, obtaining or not, that are the elements of logical space. — Srap Tasmaner

Sorry for being ambiguous. I meant to affirm the former you're talking about.

Logical space contains propositions connected by logical operators. When those propositions are facts, logical space is the world. The truth or falsehood of a (atomic) fact changes nothing else in logical space - that is, they facts are independent one of the other.

SO logical space is a grammatical system. Substance provides the interpretation of that logical system. That interpretation is in the form of facts.