He said the world is made up of facts or states-of-affairs. — Sam26
Of course what is unknown is part of reality, unless you're referring to that which is outside the world, the metaphysical, this goes beyond the world, or beyond what can be said. However, there is that which is unknown in the world, and this can be pictured too. All the facts in the world, known or unknown, are what we can talk about. Wittgenstein mapped out what can be talked about (at least in theory). — Sam26
Then read more! Consider: the reason you don't know what I mean is the same reason you take the Tractatus to be so original: ignorance of the history of philosophy. If you knew what the empiricists had said for example, you'd never think that the tactic of treating philosophers' statements as meaningless rather than wrong, due to them misunderstanding how language works, was original to Wittgenstein.
In general, we tend to think great figures are more original than they are, because we read them in isolation. Once we read more widely, this illusion disappears. — Snakes Alive
The point is that Wittgenstein's early view of language is not based on observation of how language actually works, but on how it must work if the presuppositions he has hold. You basically just recapitulated that very thought process to me in your post. — Snakes Alive
Wittgenstein never read Hume and nowhere is it evident that Hume had any influence on Wittgenstein’s works. Perhaps the only influence Hume had on Wittgenstein is simply being a philosopher of a certain tradition that Wittgenstein primarily sought to question. Wittgenstein like Hume, however, is committed the view that human knowledge, philosophical or otherwise, is ultimately grounded in natural facts about human beings.
It’s hard to think of two philosophers more distant than David Hume and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein himself is supposed to have said that he ‘couldn’t bear’ to read Hume. It’s easy to see why: in Philosophical Investigations (PI) (Wittgenstein 1968) Wittgenstein ‘trashes’ Hume’s basic tenets. Hume’s thesis that every word expresses an ‘idea’ derived from an ‘impression’ is more noxious to Wittgenstein than Augustine’s idea (quoted at the beginning of PI) that every word is a name. For Hume’s doctrine makes every word a name of a private object, and every language a private language. Also, Wittgenstein has no truck with any absolute notion of a simple idea (a mistaken notion which he traces to Plato’s Theaetetus), yet Hume made ‘simple ideas’ the basis of all knowledge.
It is well known that Wittgenstein’s reading of the philosophical classics was patchy. He left unread a large part of the literature which most philosophers would regard as essential to a knowledge of their subject. Wittgenstein gave an interesting reason for his non-reading of Hume. He said that he could not sit down and read Hume, because he knew far too much about the subject of Hume’s writings to find this anything but a torture. In a recent commentary, Peter Hacker has taken this to show that ‘Wittgenstein seems to have despised Hume’. Hume, he adds, ‘made almost every epistemological and metaphysical mistake Wittgenstein could think of’.
And what is this logic of language that makes metaphysics meaingless? I havent seen any particular examples. — Gregory
What's a truth that the philosophy of language can prove? — Gregory
He [Wittgenstein] said that he could not sit down and read Hume, because he knew far too much about the subject of Hume’s writings to find this anything but a torture.
Suppose at one time there is X states-of-affairs, and at a slightly later time there is a different set of states-of-affairs, Y. This implies change. So we must account for what occurs between X and Y, the change, as a real part of the world. We could posit another set of states-of-affairs, Z, and say that Z is what the world consists of in the change between X and Y. However, we now need to account for the change between X and Z, and the change between Z and Y. Suppose we posit the set of states-of-affairs A, to account for the change between X and Z, and B to account for the change between Z and Y. What we have here is an infinite regress, and no way of describing the activity which accounts for the change between static states-of-affairs. — Metaphysician Undercover
Just because in Tractatus Wittgenstein claims " that is the case" does not mean that it is the case for anyone else. Internal self-consistency is not sufficient reason for others to accept it, it also requires the work to fit in with their own model of the world. — A Seagull
No I am talking about the work to be 'agreeable' to the reader. — A Seagull
Ah to a particular reader you mean? And not to all readers? This would be easier, I guess. — Pussycat
I don't think the tractarian 'state of affairs' describes a static state, as you put it. — Pussycat
Basically it isn't concerned at all with this distinction, or with change, but with what is pictured, and so you can have a state-of-affairs that pictures a running horse, or another with a still life. — Pussycat
If you have something constructive to say then say it. — Metaphysician Undercover
A "state of affairs", "fact", or "what is the case", is something which cannot be changed, — Metaphysician Undercover
And you just recapitulated that Wittgenstein was prejudiced. So? Where does this leave us? — Pussycat
Well, no, it isn't. Except to you. — Banno
Do you really believe that a fact is something which can change? — Metaphysician Undercover
Suppose at one time there is X states-of-affairs, and at a slightly later time there is a different set of states-of-affairs, Y. This implies change. So we must account for what occurs between X and Y, the change, as a real part of the world. We could posit another set of states-of-affairs, Z, and say that Z is what the world consists of in the change between X and Y. However, we now need to account for the change between X and Z, and the change between Z and Y. Suppose we posit the set of states-of-affairs A, to account for the change between X and Z, and B to account for the change between Z and Y. What we have here is an infinite regress, and no way of describing the activity which accounts for the change between static states-of-affairs. — Metaphysician Undercover
But you take this as implying that change can never occur. — Banno
Do you accept that one can find the instantaneous velocity of an accelerating body? — Banno
No, of course not, that's completely illogical. — Metaphysician Undercover
I think this survives in the way 'western civilization' in general seems to simply value talking, even to no end.There is some bizarre idea that no matter what is being discussed, and no matter to what end, discussion is a kind of good in of itself. We're always 'having conversations,' and 'democracy' is sacrosanct even beyond any material benefits it might provide or fail to provide.
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