But he does not explicitly state that “there are laws of nature”. He says we could say “there are laws of nature” if there were a law of causality. He does not say P; P cannot be said. He says If X then we could say P; but we cannot say P. — Jamal

So what's the point? What does that mean, we can only say it if it's true? That's obviously false, as we make false statements quite often. What I am arguing is that he is using an unstated (false) premise, about what we can and cannot do with language, to come to this conclusion that there are things we cannot say.



That makes sense, but in this instance we might better portray Wittgenstein as sublimating Hume rather than Kant.

In any case, your response does not address the issue which is giving me the problem. How does he come to the conclusion that there are things which are inexpressible? I agree with the point made by Wittgenstein in the quote you provide, modern people have replaced God and Fate with "natural laws", such that there exists the modern illusion that natural laws are unassailable, just like God used to be.

Notice, that this is described as an illusion though, that the natural laws are unassailable is an illusion. Illusions can be broken, so this does not support the claim that there are things which cannot be said hidden behind that illusion.

There is not, as Wittgenstein puts it, something "unassailable" that we run up against, but something transcendent and without limit, which, in having no limit, must necessarily include the whole, and thus both sides of mind/nature and appearance/reality (and in this, we get something closer to Hegel's solution to the same issues). — Count Timothy von Icarus

So here's the point I mentioned earlier. This "something transcendent" which you mention, is really language itself, as I've been arguing in this thread. This is evidenced by the nature of mathematics, and the fact that the thing "without limit" is numbers, which constitutes our capacity to measure. This is how we measure something, by using the unlimited capacity afforded to us by language, to encompass the whole. Perhaps one could argue that the use of mathematics is not a form of "saying", but some form of "showing". However, I think that would be just a matter of putting unnecessary restrictions on one's definitions.

From a philosophical point of view I find that the Tractatus is mostly garbage, and that's why I "rant", in Jamal's word. However, within the text Wittgenstein does make some very insightful and interesting remarks concerning the nature of numbers and mathematics in general.

But eventually there has to be something, some concrete principle or law other than what would be the only other option "randomly changing nonsense" or some sort of Twilight Zone. — Outlander

Isn't "concrete principle" an oxymoron? We make assumptions about "substance", and tend to support substance with matter. But matter is what is supposed to support an object or thing, and here we are talking about the laws concerning what a thing can and cannot do. So the issue is, what is the substance which supports these supposed laws.

How could you suggest something if you then say it cannot be pinpointed. — Outlander

It's not a matter of "it cannot be pinpointed". It is explicitly expressed by Wittgenstein as "cannot be said". And later he goes on to say "inexpressible", so clearly he is not taking this to be a matter of we cannot say it because it is false.

With the older and newer expressions placed side by side, Cometti can be seen to be missing the mark when stating:

In the later Wittgenstein the notion of "forms of life" takes the place of the Tractarian doctrine of the boundary between what can and cannot be said, which determines in turn the "limits of my world". My world takes on the limits of my form of life.
— Jean-Pierre Cometti, 'Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, and the question of expression'

Wittgenstein is observing the same limits of 5.557 in both works. The use of "form of life" is not a replacement of a previous schema. — Paine

I think this is very good Paine, but you need to go further to capture the inversion I mentioned. "Form of life" is a replacement, for the previous schema, because to understand it requires completing the inversion. The representation presented in the Tractatus, 'the world forces a boundary on what can be said', is fundamentally wrong. Wittgenstein later comes to grips with this mistake, and sees the need to invert the principle. In the Philosophical Investigations he portrays language as fundamentally unrestricted, but it shows itself as restricted by the "forms of life". The important point to grasp, is that the restrictions are self-imposed, for various purposes. I can create a boundary to the concept of "game", for a particular purpose.

Now the inversion is complete. Language is not a part of the world, it transcends the world as having infinite capacity, limitless possibility. However, we restrict it to conform to the world. That produces the illusion toyed with in the Tractatus, that the world forces a limit on what can be said. So it is not the case that the world forces a boundary on what can be said, that is an illusion. What is the case, is that we, as active living agents, produce those boundaries and enforce them in our attempts to deal with the world.

Wittgenstein is a product of his time, and the thing in philosophy at that time was to call all sorts of things "meaningless." I think Putnam makes a good point that it would be more charitable to swap in "useless" in many of these cases. It's not that someone has no idea what you're talking about when you explain Plotinian hypostases or something, it's that there are "bad paradigms," "blind allies," and "poor ways of thinking." But because of the conversations around philosophy of language at the time and around propositions, you get claims about "meaninglessness," and "incoherence."

Wittgenstein is a product of his time, and the thing in philosophy at that time was to call all sorts of things "meaningless. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There are a number of ways to interpret the Tractatus. Some of the contemporary interpretations see it as a rejection of metaphysics. The idea is that there's a way of philosophizing that seems meaningful, but on closer inspection, it's a misuse of language.

Wittgenstein didn't really call "all sorts of things" meaningless. He liked the idea that meaning is found in language use (as opposed to being revealed by dictionaries, for instance.) As much as Wittgenstein talked about rule following, Kripke found in his writings reasons to reject the idea that meaning arises from it. It's fun to think about what paths unfold from there.

Wittgenstein didn't really call "all sorts of things" meaningless.

Maybe, but it was certainly a very large trend in the enviornment he was writing in. That said, plenty of students of Wittgenstein who bought into the "anti-metaphysical" stance certainly came away with the perception that he had declared, convincingly, that whole areas of inquiry, and their contents, were meaningless.

But if that's a misreading of the Tractus, particularly 7.1, it's a misreading that is partly a product of that same environment, where it wasn't uncommon to deem things meaningless, incoherent, unsayable, etc.

I don't really know what environment you're talking about. I've been focusing more on the evolution of ideas. I'll defer to your knowledge of 20th Century anti-realist environments. :up:

Are you suggesting that the idea of a form of life is an elaboration of the earlier position? — Jamal

The article on Logical Atomism linked by Banno taught me enough about Wittgenstein's changing view of the former work to be unable to call the later work an elaboration. I don't want to (or could) shrink the analytic discussion that developed after Tractatus into a digestible snack.

But the questions cited in Philosophical Investigations reflect the unwillingness to accept a "nexus of causality" as a given through logic. That is expressed in the Tractatus.

The distinction between the 'saying' and what is 'shown' remains a feature throughout.

The sense of the following is reiterated in Philosophical Investigations:

Man possesses the capacity of constructing languages, in which every sense can be expressed, without having an idea how and what each word means just as one speaks without knowing how the single sounds are produced.
Colloquial language is a part of the human organism and is not less complicated than it.
From it it is humanly impossible to gather immediately the logic of language. Language disguises the thought; so that from the external form of the clothes one cannot infer the form of the thought they clothe, because the external form of the clothes is constructed with quite another object than to let the form of the body be recognized.
The silent adjustments to understand colloquial language are enormously complicated. — ibid. 4.002

The discussion immediately following PI 324 and 325 concerns the relationship between thought and language.

On the basis of these ideas, I question Cometti's statement that the boundaries of "my world" have been transposed into the boundaries encountered in participating in a 'form of life'. The later work retains many of the conditions of the former. The formation of language through human activity has not replaced the vanishing point of a person's horizon:

This remark provides a key to the question, to what extent solipsism is a truth. In fact what solipsism means, is quite correct, only it cannot be said, but it shows itself. That the world is my world, shows itself in the fact that the limits of the language (the language which only I understand) mean the limits of my world. — 5.62

I returned to this post from a few days ago, because it seems to provide the substance of the thread.

I take the important and controversial question to be how Wittgenstein’s late philosophy can be transcendental given that it’s significantly anthropological and seemingly empirical, and given that he specifically cautions against the identification of, and the search for, necessity and universality (and by implication, the a priori). — Jamal

Do you agree that the a priori pure intuitions of space and time provide the basis for Kant's transcendental idealism? As the conditions required for the possibility of sense experience, these ideas (if they can even be called ideas) are prior to, and therefore transcend all such experience. This I believe is the essence of transcendental idealism.

The question which arises, is where do these transcendental intuitions come from, where are they seated. We cannot look at them as concepts or ideas learned through education, because then they would be posterior to the sense experience which constitutes learning. So they must be innate, perhaps a part of, or arising from the physiological nature of the human being. In any case, the transcendent here is the internal, what comes to the individual from an internal source, the a priori.

On the other hand, I believe Wittgenstein shows the opposing perspective. What transcends the individual, and is the source of all knowledge, is language and the individual's communion with others. Wittgenstein downplays the internal, as mystical, and not a true source of knowledge in any way. So knowledge is a product of the interactions of human beings, and this makes knowledge dependent on language as the means of interaction, such that language is transcendental in the sense of transcending knowledge.

This can be compared to the traditional realist/nominalist debate. Kant holds the realist perspective, and the pure a priori intuitions transcend internally, like eternal ideas, in the way of Plato's theory of recollection. Wittgenstein takes the nominalist approach, claiming that conceptions and knowledge are a feature of language. The problem Wittgenstein comes up against is that he cannot ever account for the capacity to learn, what precedes the learning process in the human being, as required for learning, because it lies outside his terms for "knowledge", as internal to the human being, and prior to knowledge. This give him all sorts of problems for dealing with skepticism, because the base for knowledge is not itself knowledge. "Certainty" is fundamentally an attitude. So he proposes some sort of bottom, a foundation, bedrock, or something like that, which provides the required attitude, and is supposed to ground certainty. But this cannot quell the skeptic.

Crucially too, the transcendental is anti-sceptical, and not just as a pleasant side-effect. This is seen at various points in the CPR (the Transcendental Deduction of the categories, the Refutation of Idealism, and the fourth Paralogism in the first edition). Generally what we get is the idea that it doesn't make sense to say that objects as we perceive and know them are such apart from those conditions (there is a sense in which Kant's transcendental idealism is almost a tautology: you cannot experience something except in the way you must experience it). Since I'm more familiar with OC than PI, I wouldn't mind pursuing this angle ("Here we see that the idea of 'agreement with reality' does not have any clear application."). — Jamal

I think there is no real place for skepticism within the transcendental idealism, and I take this to be one of its flaws. If for example, the intuitions of space and time are the required conditions for sense experience, it makes no sense to doubt them. That would require doubting the entire sense experience, leaving one with nothing reliable. All we can do is doubt that idea, that these are the required conditions, but this is to doubt transcendental idealism, forcing us outside it. Again, it's similar to Platonic realism, we cannot doubt any Ideas if we accept them as eternal truths.

Similar to Wittgenstein (and Davidson's "triangulation"), Kant transcendentally flipped inner and outer experience to give primacy to the latter, i.e., to the experience of the "external world" as opposed to self-knowledge and self-consciousness. Descartes and his followers, both rationalist and empiricist, assumed that... — Jamal

I don't agree with this, because the a priori intuitions are necessarily "inner" as the conditions for the experience of the outer. The concept of a priori pure intuitions gives primacy to the inner, as the conditions required for the possibility of an experience of an outer.

I don't agree with this, because the a priori intuitions are necessarily "inner" as the conditions for the experience of the outer. The concept of a priori pure intuitions gives primacy to the inner, as the conditions required for the possibility of an experience of an outer. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think I’ve mentioned the tension several times. It’s important to distinguish between (a) a priori concepts and forms of intuition, and (b) inner/outer experience. Although Kant is obviously stuck in a cognitivist and Cartesian paradigm, he is pushing against it in exactly the way I described. Flipping the priority of inner and outer experience is an important aspect of the CPR, expressed first (in A) in the fourth paralogism, and then (in B) in the “Refutation of idealism”. The latter especially is a paradigmatic case of Kant’s transcendental arguments.

(Note that in the following passage, by “idealism” he means Cartesian doubt as to the existence of the external world)

Idealism assumed that the only direct experience is inner expe­rience and that from it we only infer external things; but we infer them only unreliably, as happens whenever we infer determinate causes from given effects, because the cause of the presentations that we ascribe—per­haps falsely—to external things may also reside in ourselves. Yet here we have proved that outer experience is in fact direct, and that only by means of it can there be inner experience . . .

Thus, consequently, inner experience is itself only indirect and is possible only through outer experience. — B 277

I don’t really want to address your other comments except to say that I’ve pointed out many times here that a fundamental difference between the two philosophers is that Kant is all about what’s in your head whereas late Wittgenstein is all about what people do together. (Also, using transcendent to refer to the transcendental without pointing out the potential confusion is dangerous, and may indicate that you’re not clear on Kant’s different uses.)

I think I’ve mentioned the tension several times. It’s important to distinguish between (a) a priori concepts and forms of intuition, and (b) inner/outer experience. Although Kant is obviously stuck in a cognitivist and Cartesian paradigm, he is pushing against it in exactly the way I described. Flipping the priority of inner and outer experience is an important aspect of the CPR, expressed first (in A) in the fourth paralogism, and then (in B) in the “Refutation of idealism”. The latter especially is a paradigmatic case of Kant’s transcendental arguments. — Jamal

I believe the priority is flipped due to a switching from ontology to epistemology. When ontology (metaphysics) is the priority, being and existence, the temporal continuity of sameness in general, is the subject matter. When epistemology is the priority the subject matter turns to activity, change, what things are doing in the world. The necessary condition for an understanding of activity is the external, space to move in, while time is only incidental, as the speed of change in relation to other changes. But the necessary condition for being is time, temporal extension, and in this perspective space becomes incidental. Notice that Kant identified "time" as the internal pure intuition, and "space" as the external pure intuition.

The so-called flip of priority is a function of which of the two is assigned the overall priority, the epistemological approach to the external (space), or the ontological (metaphysical) approach to the internal (time). The "flip" is due to the switch between one prioritizing time, and the other prioritizing space. You'll notice that in relativistic spacetime mathematical representations, time becomes a sort of inversion of space. This is analogous with the distinction between looking inward, and looking outward, and turning around in general. When you turn around what was on your right becomes on your left, and we can assume a similar inversion between looking inward an looking outward.

Despite the fact that we see external objects as existing, and displaying a temporal continuity of sameness, we still cannot derive from observation, the principles required to understand this temporal continuity. And, we do not really need to provide these principles, because we can just take the temporal continuity for granted, as the laws of nature. Newton's first law stipulates the continuity we know as inertia. This, taking it for granted, creates an illusion of necessity, which is not a true logical necessity, as Hume argued.

So when we look inward we see the reality of possibility, through an understanding of freedom of choice, intention, etc., and this effectively annihilates the "necessity" derived from what is taken for granted, as the laws of nature, exposing it as less than a true necessity. This produces a completely different (and what I would call true) understanding of time. In any case the difference is significant. The outward epistemological approach takes temporal continuity as demonstrated to us through sensation, for granted, and this renders what lies beneath that necessity, the substance of it, as something we cannot talk about, it just is, as it is demonstrated to us. To question it would be to deny its necessity. The inward ontological (metaphysical) approach recognizes that to get beyond this wall which is created by the assumed epistemological necessity, we need to employ the principles of possibility which are derived form the internal self.

Kant, I believe, set up the conditions for the division, (the epistemological/phenomenological divide) by distinguishing the internal intuition from the external intuition. Wittgenstein fixated himself on the incompatibility between the two. So Wittgenstein is extremely difficult to understand because all he is doing is pointing to a multitude of little problems which are arising due to this incompatibility.

I think there is no real place for skepticism within the transcendental idealism, and I take this to be one of its flaws. — Metaphysician Undercover

“…. scepticism—the principle of a technical and scientific ignorance, which undermines the foundations of all knowledge, in order, if possible, to destroy our belief and confidence therein….” (A424/B452)

“…. Thus, the critique of reason leads at last, naturally and necessarily, to science; and, on the other hand, the dogmatical use of reason without criticism leads to groundless assertions, against which others equally specious can always be set, thus ending unavoidably in scepticism….” (B23)

Apparently, there isn’t a place for scepticism in transcendental philosophy anyway, insofar as to support our belief or confidence in our knowledge is exactly what the a posteriori aspect of the thesis promises, and, the exposure of flaws in the use of reason without proper critical restrictions on its authority is exactly what the pure a priori aspect demands.

I suspect you might mean as one of the flaws in transcendental philosophy, insofar as the philosophy as a whole is dedicated to defeating scepticism, is the sceptical method….

“…..This method (…) of originating a conflict of assertions, (…) to discover whether the object of the struggle (…) each side strives in vain to reach, but which would be no gain even when reached—this procedure, I say, may be termed the sceptical method. (…) For the sceptical method aims at certainty….” (Ibid a)

….which is part-and-parcel of the nature of reason itself. I’m just saying I don’t think it responsible to fault a predicate of a philosophy that addresses the very thing the human intelligence is prone to doing, and in acknowledging it, guarding against its interference, is possible.

Might be interesting to be informed as to what you think scepticism actually is, and therefrom, where in transcendental philosophy it resides, as a flaw in it.

Solipsism and Skepticism

Solipsism: The I alone. Solus - alone Ipse - self.

The Tractatus begins:

The world is all that is the case.

(1)

In order to determine if the world is limited we would have to know all the elementary objects and all their possible combinations. This is not the limit Wittgenstein draws. The limits he draws are to my language and my world (5.6) and to logic and the world (5.61). The limits of my world are the limits of my language and not the limits of logic and the world. We cannot say a priori all that is the case.

Whatever we see could be other than it is.
Whatever we can describe at all could be
other than it is.
There is no a priori order of things.

(5.634)

The limits of my world are not the limits of the world, the limits, if there is such, of all that is the case and all that will be the case. This distinction is important for understanding what Wittgenstein will say about solipsism.

The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world.

(5.632)

The subject is the "philosophical self", the "metaphysical subject" (5.641). It is not a part of the world. It is not a fact. That which sees is not something seen. Just as the eye is not in visual space, the subject is not in logical space. The subject that represents is not something represented.

Just as the limits of my world is not coextensive with the world, the limits of my language is not coextensive with language.

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)

I alone, solus ipse, am a limit of the world, of my world, the limit of what I can say and think, and see and experience. This is not a fixed limit, since it is always possible to learn something new, but a limit nonetheless. We cannot step out beyond ourselves and our understanding.

Tractarian solipsism does not lead to skepticism in the modern sense of doubt about the existence of the world or the possibility of language. There is only one statement about skepticism:

Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical, when it tries to raise doubts where
no questions can be asked.
For doubt can exist only where a question exists, a question only where an answer exists, and an answer only where something can be said.

(6.51)

This should be understood in light of what follows:

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.

(6.53)

Since what can be said, propositions limited to natural science, have nothing to do with philosophy, the whole of philosophy is nonsense. Philosophical statements say nothing about what is the case. But the failure of philosophy to say, to give meaning, to picture the facts of the world, leaves open and untouched the metaphysical subject. Although propositions about the metaphysical subject are nonsense, this does not mean there is no metaphysical subject, only that the metaphysical subject is not to be found within the world.

Wittgenstein’s own skepticism has much in common with Ancient and Pyrrhonian skepticism. His philosophy was and remained a practice of inquiry, of investigation. And, along with Pyrrhonism, sought a state of tranquility free from troubling questioning. It is in this sense therapeutic.

It leaves open the question of what can be known and in that way differs from dogmatic skepticism. It also leaves open matters of belief that are not matters that can be decided by natural science, matters of ethics and aesthetics.

Might be interesting to be informed as to what you think scepticism actually is, and therefrom, where in transcendental philosophy it resides, as a flaw in it. — Mww

What I meant, is that skepticism (best represented by the Socratic and Platonic methods) is itself beneficial. It is good and useful to any philosopher. So a philosophy which excludes skepticism is flawed, for that reason.

Reasonable, to be sure.

On the other side of that methodological coin, I kinda think endorsement of the LNC makes even beneficial scepticism over-rated.

Anyway….I was just curious, so, thanks.

Tractarian solipsism does not lead to skepticism in the modern sense of doubt about the existence of the world or the possibility of language — Fooloso4

I think the matter is put more forcefully than that:

Here we see that solipsism strictly carried out coincides with pure realism. The I in solipsism shrinks to an extensionless point and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it. — ibid. 5.64

That may have a shared purpose with other expressions of doubt. But it is also cojoining what many have struggled to keep apart.

The book begins by declaring it is not an inventory. The act of naming is what is being investigated.

I think the matter is put more forcefully than that:

Here we see that solipsism strictly carried out coincides with pure realism. The I in solipsism shrinks to an extensionless point and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it.
— ibid. 5.64

That may have a shared purpose with other expressions of doubt. But it is also cojoining what many have struggled to keep apart. — Paine

I decided not to get into the question of what he meant by "pure realism".

Your reluctance makes sense. The discourse following the statement goes in many different directions.

As far as I know, Wittgenstein does not abandon the point of view.

The early Wittgenstein was a Schopenhauerian. He then abandoned transcendental views by the time of the Investigations, which though his best-known work, and while having good stuff in it, is also in some respects, a step down form the Tractatus.

I know it's probably a minority view, but, I prefer his earlier stuff. Better yet if he combined some aspects of the former into the latter.

while having good stuff in it, is also in some respects, a step down form the Tractatus. — Manuel

Yep.

He then abandoned transcendental views by the time of the Investigations, which though his best-known work, and while having good stuff in it, is also in some respects, a step down form the Tractatus. — Manuel

I like the bold language of the earlier work too. But I did not notice the moment of abandonment you refer to.

Is there a particular bit of text that brings this thought home to you?

As far as I can recall, I think it was Bryan Magee's book on Schopenhauer, specifically the chapter on Schopenhauer's influence, talk about this.

The early Wittgenstein was a Schopenhauerian. — Manuel

What does this mean? It is often repeated, but how close does the Tractatus map to the writings of Schopenhauer? A few major points where they seem to differ:

Wittgenstein's claim that logic is transcendental.
Wittgenstein's "pure realism" vs. phenomenal and noumenal distinction.
The role of representation.
Will vs. independence of facts.

What does this mean? It is often repeated, but how close does the Tractatus map to the writings of Schopenhauer? — Fooloso4

It's not a matter of mapping. In the Tractatus his very wording tells us we're in the setting of the WWR (although I have to note that I'm not in a mood to write an essay on that, so if you disagree, that's fine). He's not a disciple of Schopenhauer. He's solving a problem left behind by him.

Wittgenstein's claim that logic is transcendental.
Wittgenstein's "pure realism" vs. phenomenal and noumenal distinction.
The role of representation.
Will vs. independence of facts. — Fooloso4

I don't remember off the top of my head exactly what was Wittgenstein took from Schopenhauer, but it has the flavor.

For instance, the metaphor of reading his book is like climbing a ladder and then kicking it down was taken directly from Schopenhauer who says the same thing.

His last part of the Tractatus, the mystical side, certainly echoes Schopenhauer's views about art, wherein we catch glimpses of a pure idea, but such experiences are very poorly explained in propositional form.

Not how the world is, but that it is, is what's mystical, reminds me of Schopenhauer's claim about the riddle of the world.

As for differences, plenty. Schopenhauer does not deal with the sophisticated logic Wittgenstein dealt with, nor did he particularly care about the nature of language, or reference.

As for representation, I don't know exactly how it fits in, nevertheless, Schopenhauer begins his book by saying "The world is my representation.", Wittgenstein says "The world is everything that is the case." There may be something to that.

As for will, I don't remember Wittgenstein dealing with this in his early work. For more specifics, you might want to see Magee's book.

For instance, the metaphor of reading his book is like climbing a ladder and then kicking it down was taken directly from Schopenhauer who says the same thing. — Manuel

Although they both used the metaphor of the ladder they are talking about different things.

Not how the world is, but that it is, is what's mystical, reminds me of Schopenhauer's claim about the riddle of the world. — Manuel

Schopenhauer traces the sense of wonder back to Plato and Aristotle. Although Wittgenstein claimed he never read Aristotle, he did read Plato. In the Theaetetus (155c-d ) Socrates says that wonder is the origin of philosophy. It is also here (203a) that we find an analysis of elements and their combinations.

His last part of the Tractatus, the mystical side, certainly echoes Schopenhauer's views about art, wherein we catch glimpses of a pure idea, but such experiences are very poorly explained in propositional form. — Manuel

This too can be found in Plato - the place of thinking (dianoia) on the divided line, exstasis (divine madness), and eros (ladder of love).

As for representation, I don't know exactly how it fits in, nevertheless, Schopenhauer begins his book by saying "The world is my representation.", Wittgenstein says "The world is everything that is the case." There may be something to that. — Manuel

It is here that we can see the difference. What is the case, the facts of the world, are independent of my representation of them.

Added: None of this is meant to imply that Plato is the source of origin of these ideas. Influence is not always direct or linear, and similarities or commonalities are not always the result of influence. The neat and tidy stories found in histories of ideas are often simplistic distortions.

Yeah, the ladder is used in different context, but it's the same metaphor.

I'm not saying that Schopenhauer is being specifically original in many of his ideas, but you find all these aspects together in Schopenhauer.

To be fair, you can find almost everything in Plato though. Whitehead had a point.

It is here that we can see the difference. What is the case, the facts of the world, are independent of my representation of them. — Fooloso4

In a certain sense yes, in another sense, the stated facts about the world amount to extremely little in comparison to "what we cannot talk" about. Is this noumena? Or ethics? Or sensations? The Manifest image?

That's left open for us to explore.

Is this noumena? — Manuel

I don't think so. We can know the facts of the world independent of us. He does not make a distinction between phenomena and noumena in the Notebooks or Tractatus.

Or ethics? — Manuel

Ethics and aesthetics are matters of experience. They are outside the bounds of the world and language.

Or sensations? — Manuel

I do not know why he does not say anything about sensations.

I don't recall him making that distinction either. Though I do find his mystical stuff to verge on something close to such a distinction, but my interpretation may be wrong.

Yes. According to the Tractatus ethics and aesthetics don't quite fit seem to fit into what "is the case", but he apparently considers them the most important thing of all, are at least, way up the list.

I do not know why he does not say anything about sensations. — Fooloso4

It's a good point and I wonder what he could have said about the topic during his early views.

My main issue here is that he lets go of too much in the Investigations. I don't believe that transcendental philosophy, can be eliminated through proper language use.

Now, if someone wants to say that the distinction between say, a dogmatist and a skeptic is mostly a "verbal" issue, then that's already found in Hume.

Btw, I found the book online, the relevant chapter is 14, starting on p. 310 (which is p.318 in the pdf):

https://www.docdroid.net/ER9hZXg/computer-science-homework-cs206a-pdf#page=318

Thanks for the link. A few points of contention:

I think Wittgenstein's view of solipsism differs significantly from that of Schopenhauer. This difference centers on their different conceptions of representation.

Magee ascribes to Wittgenstein the idea of:

... the worthlessness of the world (6. 41)

Wittgenstein did not say the world is worthless. He says that no value exists in the world. Worthless is a negative value.

and the ethical will, which rewards or punishes itself in its very action (6. 422)

Wittgenstein's claim that the rewards and punishment are in the action itself is not the same as saying that the will rewards or punishes itself.

Magee goes on to credit:

the power of the will to change the world as a whole without changing any facts (6. 43).

Again, it is the exercise of the will, doing good or bad, that changes the world as it is for me. It changes me.

Wittgenstein says in that passage:

The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.

The most important difference can be found in what Magee says at the start of making the comparison:

[Wittgenstein] could make nothing of the "objectification of the Will"

The objectification of the Will is central and fundamental to Schopenhauer, but not to Wittgenstein.

With regard to both representation and will the differences are far more significant than the commonalities.