Are we trying to understand early Witt's idea (good, bad, or ugly) QUA early Witt, or understand his ideas as they were critiqued by later Witt? — schopenhauer1

Yes. :wink:

.'The nature of his new philosophy is heralded as anti-systematic through and through, yet still conducive to genuine philosophical understanding of traditional problems. In more recent scholarship, this division has been questioned: some interpreters have claimed a certain unity between all stages of his thought, while others talk of a more nuanced division, adding stages such as the middle Wittgenstein and the post-later Wittgenstein.'. --SEP

He doesn't. Objects are demanded by the nature of language. — Banno

So are you making his argument for him? Where is this stated? Oh, right see.. "Where one cannot speak one must be silent.."

It's implicitly (it seems to me) a take from Russell's conception of logical atomism where he at least explains it further as something deriving from sense data, and I guess linking it to a broader empirical tradition.

I don't mind that he says "objects".. There are plenty of philosophies that use "objects" as their starting point and metaphysics, it's just the fact that it is not explained as to why objects.. You seem to have to "read into it" which is prone to bias and error on the reader's part (if he even had a reason to use objects other than he got it from a prior philosopher he worked with like Russell).

I don't agree that objects are his starting point. So far as he has one, it would be relations, following on from Russell and Frege.

Hence,

1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

And facts are broken into states of affairs that are broken into objects and their relations to other objects.

Yet the world is the totality of facts, not of things. I'll bold that to emphasise the point that contrary to your analysis objects are not assumed in a way that is foundational to the Tractatus.

...broken... — schopenhauer1

Not an apt wording. Atomic facts are not constituted from things; rather things are constituted by their relations to each other.

Not an apt wording. Atomic facts are not constituted from things; rather things are constituted by their relations to each other. — Banno

That tree has leaves. I say this pointing to a tree that has leaves. Would you count this as an example of a true proposition because it mirrors a true state of affairs (state of affairs that obtains aka a fact)?

In this case the tree has leaves is the true state of affairs that the proposition is mirroring.

Atomic facts are not constituted from things — Banno

This seems to contradict 2.01 and 2.011.

What?

Yes, I expressed that poorly. Better to point out that that the form of an object is the states of affairs in which it can occur. Hence we understand an object by its relation to other objects.

2.0141 The possibility of its occurring in states of affairs is the form of an object.

From the Spark note:

...objects can only exist within states of affairs and that the world is made up of states of affairs and not of objects. Objects do not exist as the basic building blocks of reality, but rather are given being only in the context of states of affairs...

Wittgenstein never gives us an example of an object because there is nothing to be said about objects. Asking "what is an object?" is like asking "what does everything have in common?" The best answer Wittgenstein can muster to this question is that everything shares in common a logical form that allows it to occur in states of affairs. Objects are the simplest, most general things there are: the only thing that all things hold in common is that we can say something about them.

This in contrast to

Why start by ASSUMING objects? — schopenhauer1

Does that sentence count for a true state of affairs? The tree has leaves.

Ok. and?

This notion of a "private, subjective experience" permeates your writing. It is not used in the Tractatus. — Banno

True, in that Wittgenstein is using the word "thought" - 4.116 "Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly". The problem with Wittgenstein's "thought" is that he has redefined it as a proposition, which is not common usage. I was trying to get the word back into ordinary language, reinforcing the distinction between the public and the private, between the subjective and the objective, and between the unthinking experience rather than cognitive intellect.

The public use of the word "red" and my private experience of the colour red. A subjective fact or truth would be that I like apples, whilst an objective subjective fact or truth would be that the apple is a fruit. My visceral rather than intellectual response.
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So you are not here setting out the tractatus in its own terms — Banno

True, in that the Tractatus writes: 4 "A thought is a proposition with a sense", whilst I wrote " A thought is linked with a proposition". I am probably muddling up my exegesis with my critique.
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language is inherently public.............Language is not moving information from one head to another. — Banno

I agree that language can only evolve within a group of people, and so is inherently public.
However, if language isn't about moving information from my head into the Barista's head, then what is language for.
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any thought can be put into propositional form. — Banno

This is a bit circular, along the lines of known unknowns.

As I can only communicate using language, I can only communicate thoughts that I can put into propositional form, in that I cannot communicate using language thoughts that I cannot put into propositional form.

So , it is true that any thought that can be put into propositional form can be put into propositional form.
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the word "red" has a public and not a private use. — Banno

When I look at a red sunset, I am looking at a wavelength of 700nm. Inside my head, I may have the private subjective experience of a particular colour. No-one apart from myself will ever know what particular colour I am experiencing, it may, for example, be the colour green. Similarly for yourself, you may be experiencing the colour yellow.

We both publicly agree that the colour experienced by whoever observes it shall be named "red". The word "red" has a public and not a private use.

It is true that we may be both talking about the same thing, the "red" light emitted from the sunset, but we may not be thinking of the same thing. I may be thinking of the green sunset and you may be thinking of the yellow sunset.
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Why, indeed, must there be a something to which "red" refers? — Banno

I can see different wavelengths and still have the feeling of seeing the same colour. For example, I can see a sunset with a wavelength of 650nm and say to you that it is red. I can see a postbox with a wavelength of 700nm and say to you that it is also red.

There are two aspects, the public aspect, where red is defined as a wavelength between 625 and 750nm, and the private aspect, the actual colour that I experience in my mind, which could be green for me and yellow for you.

As a noun, we can say that the sunset is red, and as an adjective, we can say that there is a red sunset.

We use the word "red" for a wavelength of 650nm, and we use the word "red" for a wavelength of 700nm. The wavelengths 650nm and 700nm are different, yet we use the same word "red".

Object A has the wavelength property of 650nm and the colour property of red. Object B has the wavelength property of 700nm and the colour property of red. Objects A and B have different wavelengths but the same colour. Objects A and B are not the same, in that their wavelength are different, and so in that sense are different objects.

However, the word "red" can refer to different objects, as long as they have the same property of redness. The word is referring to the property of the object, not the object which may have a set of properties.
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Yet the components, "is blue' and "the postbox", while they might be part of a thought, do not form a thought, a proposition, until brought together. — Banno

4 The thought is the significant proposition
4.023 A proposition is the description of a fact
2.0272 The configuration of the objects forms the atomic fact
4.25 - If the elementary proposition is true, the atomic fact exists; if it is false the atomic fact does not exist

For Wittgenstein, a thought is a proposition, a proposition is a description of a fact, and facts are combinations of objects. Wittgenstein within Tractatus is defining thought as a proposition, "the postbox is red".

However, in common usage, I can think of a thing, such as a postbox, independently of any proposition that it may be within.

Yes, one should be aware to separate the exegesis from the critique.
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Would you care to address Bradley's regress? As i said, I do not understand the argument. Since you rely on it, perhaps you might explain it. — Banno

I will try. That will be my next immediate project, though I will be hard pressed to clarify in a post a debate that started in 1893, involved Bertrand Russell and still continues.

I like Kyle Banicks' 12 minute video British Idealism with FH Bradley that sets the scene.

A thought is expressed in language. This does not mean that a thought is language. The expression, language, is not what is expressed, the thought. — Fooloso4

Wittgenstein wrote in his Notebooks 1914-16: "Now it is becoming clear why I thought that thinking and language were the same. For thinking is a kind of language."

His Tractatus was completed 1918.

I guess the metaphysics he presents would be compatible with Kant. It would be compatible with some kind of mystical view. — Tate

Kant's belief was Scientific Realism rather than mysticism.

Kant's belief was Scientific Realism rather than mysticism. — RussellA

I wasn't saying Kant was a mystic. I was saying that the metaphysics Wittgenstein offers would be compatible with a lot of different ontologies. He's also interpreted as promoting mysticism.

The Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard connection makes that seem fairly likely.

The Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard connection makes that seem fairly likely. — Tate

But Schopenhauer didn't mind (actually most of his writing was about) going into the noumena/thing-in-itself (i.e. Will), the epistemological limitations of the phenomena, and the like. All things Witt avoids to be super cautious he's not violating his own theory.

Reading Schopenhauer left me pondering the limits of the intellect, at how some intellectual avenues seem to be dead ends. This is a theme I'm picking back up in the Tractacus.

Reading Schopenhauer left me pondering the limits of the intellect, at how some intellectual avenues seem to be dead ends. This is a theme I'm picking back up in the Tractacus. — Tate

What makes them dead ends? Circular reasoning may follow...

Whence the tree? Whence the leaves? Whence the verb "has"?
Clearly properties don't seem to exist on their own in Witt but as something kind of inhered in the object. Or so I read it.. So certain objects will bring possibilities that are inherent in that object, some of which get actualized. If we considered other objects and THEIR relations (to this object), then it would not be atomic but complex, and no longer be a simple.

Wittgenstein wrote in his Notebooks 1914-16: "Now it is becoming clear why I thought that thinking and language were the same. For thinking is a kind of language." — RussellA

The statement continues:

For a thought too is, of course, a logical picture of the proposition, and therefore it just is a kind of proposition. — Notebooks 1914-16, p.82

Thinking is a kind of language because it is a logical picture of the proposition. This kind of language, however, need not be a language of words.

The thought, the book is on the table, might occur as a picture in the mind. Without words. And can be expressed that way by a photograph or drawing.

The proposition in picture-writing ... [7]
The proposition onfy says something in so far as it is a picture! [8]
A situation is thinkable' ('imaginable') means: We can make ourselves a picture of it. [24] — Notebooks

The thought that the situation is tense or dangerous or comical can be expressed in music.

Musical themes are in a certain sense propositions. [40] — Notebooks

A picturial or musical language means that the claim that thinking is a kind of language is not the same as the claim that we think in words. Thinking is not silent speaking. A thought is not uttering something silently.

For some interpreters, TLP 3.3 foreshadows the private language argument:

"Only propositions have sense; only in the nexus of a proposition does a name have meaning."

It's called the context principle. As opposed to Russell, who thought that private contact with an object gives its name a meaning, TLP 3.3 is saying that only in use does the name have meaning. Why? Because the name has to have a fixed use to have a fixed meaning.

This view is from the 1960s. In the 1980s, interpreters began to say that what fixes the use of a name is not language use, but rather the object itself. In the 1980s, prominent interpreters saw "uncritical realism" in the Tractacus, agreeing among themselves that Wittgenstein probably didn't understand what he was writing. :chin:

So we have interpretations by decade:

1960s:. mystical readings
1980s:. metaphysical readings, some insisting on realism
1990s: the "resolute reading", no mysticism, no metaphysics, no theory of meaning, no theory period, and nonsense means nonsense (as opposed to some technical jargon). The 1990s interpretation is the one I immediately assumed, and apparently the SEP pretty much does as well.

1 The world is all that is the case.

Is this nonsense? What does that mean? Is it not true that the world is all that is the case?

Toward the end of the Tractatus he says:

6.53 The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except
what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science—i.e. something that has nothing to do
with philosophy—and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions.

Is this nonsense? Is it nonsense to say that there are propositions of natural science? Is it nonsense to demonstrate to someone that he has failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his proposition? Does this mean that he has successfully given a meaning to these signs? If it is nonsense to say that philosophy has nothing to do with natural science, why does he say this? To what end?

Why do those who support a resolute reading spend so much time and effort reading, interpreting , and arguing over interpretations of Wittgenstein? What do the hope to gain from obsessing over nonsense?

And in the middle:

4.112

Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity.

Is this nonsense? Does this mean that philosophy is a body or doctrine and/or not an activity?

He continues:

Philosophy does not result in ‘philosophical propositions’

Is this a philosophical proposition? What about 1? Is this proposition not philosophical proposition? Certainly it is not a scientific proposition. If it is nonsense is it not true or can something be both true and nonsense?

6.5 If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it.

Nonsense? Are there then questions that cannot be answered?

But:

When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words.
The riddle does not exist.

Is it then false that the riddle does not exist? Does all this "nonsense" point to the fact that there are legitimate philosophical questions and problems?

6.44 It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.

This has often been put in the form of a question: Why is there something rather than nothing? Some ask this question is hopes of an answer, but others as an expression of wonder.

6.522 There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest.
They are what is mystical.

Is it nonsense that there are things that cannot be put into words? Nonsense that these things make themselves manifest? Nonsense that they are mystical?

Preface:

The whole sense of the book might be summed up in the following words: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.

Is the whole sense of the book that it is nonsense? Is it nonsense to say that what we cannot talk about must be passed over is nonsense? If this proposition is nonsense, does this mean that what cannot be put into words should not be passed over in silence?

The world is all that is the case.

Is this nonsense? What does that mean? Is it not true that the world is all that is the case? — Fooloso4

Who are you directing this question toward? Wittgenstein? Us? Yourself?

Those who support a resolute reading.

Those who support a resolute reading. — Fooloso4

Oh. There's another interpretation after that. If I understand it correctly, it says that the Tractacus can be taken as a demonstration.

No one climbs a philosophical ladder thinking that it's nonsense. There is firmness to it to the extent that there's logic behind it.

It's only at a certain point that one glimpses the trajectory.

I get the resolute interpretation because my own first impression was that it's a joke. I'm moving on from that, though. I think I'm going to get McGinn's book.

It might be helpful at this point to again look at one of the great themes, perhaps the main theme, running through all Wittgenstein's work. It's the distinction between what can be said and what can be shown. The notion permeates his work.

In the Tractatus, a name is the thing it denotes. So one cannot say the meaning of a name. One can only show it, by pointing, or by using the name in a sentence.

The picture shows itself to be true when held up to the world. On cannot state how it is that the picture is true.

I was trying to get the word back into ordinary language, reinforcing the distinction between the public and the private, between the subjective and the objective, and between the unthinking experience rather than cognitive intellect. — RussellA

He removes the various ambiguities for his own purposes. Can't you be seen as forcing the "distinction between the public and the private", with which Wittgenstein was much to say? If our aim is exegesis, then the question os not how you use "thought", but how he uses it.

That a thought can be put into propositional form serves to keep the argument clear. Saying "I don't use it like that " has no bearing on the argument in the Tractatus.

I agree that language can only evolve within a group of people, and so is inherently public. — RussellA

Cheers. A point at which we meet.

if language isn't about moving information from my head into the Barista's head, then what is language for. — RussellA

In this case, language is for ordering coffee. What information is transferred - a thought, a nod, a grunt, some moneys - is irrelevant. It's the caffein that counts.

Don't look to the information transferred, look to the use.