Which change? I just edited out some stuff I felt unnecessary myself.

Here https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/644130

I'm mainly writing the book as something to accomplish before I pass away. — Sam26

Fair enough. It's good to have a project. I get that. But my question was aimed more at the book's purpose as a book. Can you explain in two or three dot points what it is attempting to address or discuss or elucidate in more specific detail?

No confusion of first person tenses there. :up: found it a very fascinating read, in fact.

My goal is to present an inductive argument, as outline in my thread on "Does Consciousness Survive the Death of the Body." The argument, I believe, demonstrates that we can know that we survive death. So, I want to show my thinking, i.e., how I progress from Wittgenstein to epistemology, and finally to my argument.

Thanks. Good luck.

This is a re-written continuation of the post at the following location: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/644130

This section of the book, again, is written in the final chapter or chapters, to give those interested a more detailed look at the progression in my thinking. Ideally, I would have written this starting at the beginning of the book, but I was afraid of losing readers. So, I'm starting with my conclusion, and working back to the foundation. Hopefully, the writing is clear enough so that someone without much background can follow the thinking. Now, on with the writing.
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Understanding the history of meaning, and some of the mistakes made about what meaning amounts to, is very important to having a good understanding of how the meaning of a word is acquired. This is not an easy topic. One reason it is not easy, has to do with the complicated nature of language, namely, how is it that we are able to communicate with each other about the world around us? We communicate our view of the world conceptually, so understanding how we learn to use concepts will help clear up some of the linguistic confusions that can and do occur. These confusions not only happen in philosophy, but they often happen in our everyday uses of words and sentences.

Another reason it is difficult to understand the nature of meaning, is that language, by its very nature, is not always given to the kind of exactness some of us are looking for, especially in philosophy and science. However, not having the exactness we want does not mean that we cannot come to an understanding about the general logic behind the use of a concept in various contexts. It just means that it takes a lot of work.

The attempt, in these pages, is to couple some of Wittgenstein’s analysis of language, to the analysis of what it means to know. It is not meant to be a sustained treatment of the subject of epistemology via Wittgenstein, but an overview, that hopefully will provide enough depth to give an understanding of what knowing amounts to. So, this is why starting with the Tractatus is helpful, it will provide the starting point for this overview, and some of the mistakes made about meaning.

Wittgenstein’s early work in the Tractatus, is a more traditional philosophical work. It is traditional in the sense of the kind of analysis he is doing. He analyzes the proposition as if to find some essence that will logically connect it to the world. It is an a priori analysis that shows how propositions picture (or mirror) the world of facts through a one-to-one correspondence between the proposition, and the fact it pictures (it is a picture theory of language). It is through this investigation that Wittgenstein hopes to find an exactness of meaning, or an exactness of expression. He accomplishes this by breaking down the proposition into what he believes are its essential parts, namely, elementary propositions, and even smaller parts, called names. So, according to Wittgenstein, “…propositions must bring us to elementary propositions, which consist of names in immediate combination (T. 4.221).” Names, again, being the smallest constituent part of the proposition. And, since Wittgenstein held to the traditional view of language, namely, that the meaning of a word is the object it refers to, or the object it denotes (T. 3.203). He then links the proposition, via a name, with an object, the smallest constituent part of a fact. Facts being broken down into atomic facts, then into objects. There is a direct connection from the name (the smallest component of the proposition) to the object it represents (the smallest component of the fact). In this way we have a direct logical link between the proposition and the world of facts.

The proposition, in Wittgenstein’s view, was a “…model of reality (T. 2.12),” modeling the facts of reality, just as many paintings are models of reality; and, it is this model of reality that either corresponds with the world of facts, or it does not. This brings us back to the traditional view of meaning, that the meaning of a word is the object it depicts in the world of facts.

The main point, in referencing the Tractatus, is to show how meaning was thought of in the traditional sense, and how Wittgenstein’s Tractatus continued this historical line of thinking in a much more precise way. The exacting nature of Wittgenstein’s analysis is probably why Russell mistakenly thought Wittgenstein was trying to construct an ideal language. Because, if Wittgenstein was correct in the way he thought of propositions, then you would have a more precision based analysis of the nature of the proposition, and how propositions relate to, and picture the world of facts.
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I think this is clear enough for anyone to get a general idea of Wittgenstein's early thinking.