it's good fun, ain't it?

This has already been addressed. It is not a matter of what he says or thinks, but of what he does, how he lives. — Fooloso4

Ok, and what he does and how he lives can be described by a very certain state of affairs, like we are watching him from afar how he goes about his own business and life, and record all his actions in our little book. But, according to W, there is no ethical state of affairs, "no absolutely right road", as he puts it. Therefore in fact, the way the ethical man lives is also nonsensical and idiotic, just like his saying or thinking, as far as he believes this to be so that is.

I don't think we are anywhere in particular, we are just discussing bits and pieces, here and there.

You have completely missed the point. The “ethical man” has nothing to do with either what is said or thought to be ethical. — Fooloso4

Right, so how does this "ethical man" differ from someone that is not? If it doesn't have anything to do with whatever he says or thinks, then what else is there?

Now perhaps some of you will agree to that and be reminded of Hamlet's words: "Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." But this again could lead to a misunderstanding. What
Hamlet says seems to imply that good and bad, though not qualities of the world outside us, are
attributes to our states of mind. But what I mean is that a state of mind, so far as we mean by that a
fact which we can describe, is in no ethical sense good or bad.

Here he is starting to attack also the "thinking" mode of being ethical, besides the "saying". For the "saying", it is clear as rain what he contends, he said it so many times over, and we discussed it as well, agreeing that what he means is that language and logic cannot capture ethics, that all ethical propositions are nonsensical, and so all ethical ideologies that have been written are in fact ethical idiotologies, with the most prominent moralists and ethicists being the most idiots of all. But this left people with believing that it's ok if we cannot speak of the ethical, because we can think of it, and also act upon this thinking, so that we can know what the right/good/ethical way to live is, and also follow it. Well here he is trying to also bring down this castle, the last fort, the last resort of the ethical man.

And now I must say that if I contemplate what Ethics really would have to be if there were such a science, this result seems to me quite obvious. It seems to me obvious that nothing we could ever think or say should be the thing.

So Ethics is no science for W as there is nothing to be learnt by studying it. This applies to thinking as well, not just saying: "nothing we could ever think or say should be the thing".

And similarly the absolute good, if it is a describable state of affairs, would be one which
everybody, independent of his tastes and inclinations, would necessarily bring about or feel guilty
for not bringing about. And I want to say that such a state of affairs is a chimera. No state of affairs
has, in itself, what I would like to call the coercive power of an absolute judge.

So here comes the part about the chimera, hell, I thought he wrote it "chimaera", I like it better this way, just like I prefer daemon to demon. Anyway, he sees the "absolute right way to live life", as that being thought of or expressed by the ethical man, as a chimera. What he means by that? Let us first take what the wikipedia article is saying about the chimera: "The term "chimera" has come to describe any mythical or fictional animal with parts taken from various animals, or to describe anything composed of very disparate parts, or perceived as wildly imaginative, implausible, or dazzling. The sight of a Chimera was an omen for disaster". So by chimera he means that we, more than often, get carried away or are overwhelmed by thoughts and feelings that point us to an "absolute right road", but that this is wildly imaginative, not having anything to do reality, but rather with psychology as he contends later:

Then what have all of us who, like myself, are still tempted to use such expressions as 'absolute good,' 'absolute value,' etc., what have we in mind and what do we try to express? Now whenever I try to make this clear to myself it is natural that I should recall cases in which I would certainly use these expressions and I am then in the situation in which you would be if, for instance, I were to give you a lecture on the psychology of pleasure.

It is therefore when and because we feel good with ourselves, pleasurable, that ethical thinking and saying springs. But it's all purely imaginative and overwhelming. So I see here W argue in favour of amorality, just like Nietzsche, the opinion that ethics is non-existent, in thinking or in saying, in this world or beyond. And it is a contradiction in thought, or rather a paradox, if the only possibility for an ethical man would be for him to deny ethics alltogether.

What do you think is this chimaera he is referring to?

I overslept and missed the lecture. — Wallows

Watch out! you will get a bad grade. :razz:

And the part where he says that it is a chimaera?

God's will, yeah right!

Anyway, you brought me W's lecture on ethics to corroborate your analysis of the Tractatus that whatever is beyond logic, language and the world is only knowable experientially and not by rational discourse, however W clearly does not attribute any knowledge and in any sense to all these experiences, as he notes at the end of his lecture. And neither is there a similar statement in the Tractatus, relating - how to call them, transcedental experiences, or even better metaphysical experiences, as you would have them - to knowledge.

Yes, but there is no experiential knowledge either. In fact, there is no knowledge at all about stuff like that.

"A Lecture on Ethics", yes, I remember I linked that to Wallows a while back, I don't know what he has done with it.

So there W closes the lecture with:

This running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. Ethics so far as it
springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it.

So "does not add to our knowledge in any sense". Then why do you say that these sort of things, God etc, can be known experientially? Wittgenstein above strictly ousts knowledge away from them, why don't you?

So where is it that W says that we cannot know God using reason, but that we can know God experientially?

I do not extract that from the quote. He explicitly states that this is what philosophy does. I quote it and reference it in a post on the section of the Tractatus where he says it. — Fooloso4

I see no problem with this one, I was referring to your last sentence.

If they are not within the bounds of language then by definition they cannot be known discursively. — Fooloso4

But what does "discursively" mean? Rational thinking? So that pure reason or rationalism cannot reveal the truth about what is outside the bounds of language? Most likely this is what W meant, but by saying that "these cannot be known discursively", it endangers that we leave and throw reason completely out of the game. In a similar tune in stanford's article on Kant that you shared, it says somewhere:

If, for example, propositions about the supersensible were incoherent according to Kant, then he would not need his Antinomies or Paralogisms. Rather, he could sweep them all away quite simply through the charge that they fall short of the conditions for meaning.

Why would Kant deal with reason with what is outside the bounds of language, if the latter - the unreasonable - were unknowable? (but neither with this I have a problem)

As to the experiential, I discussed this in my post on part six, specifically with regard to the will and the world of the happy man. What do you think he means by the world of the happy man? — Fooloso4

Now with this, I have a problem. I don't see anywhere in the Tractatus Wittegenstein:

a) say explicitly that what is outside the bounds of language can be known experientially.

b) even imply or hint that such is the case.

I read your comments on part 6, where you repeat this claim, but again I cannot see how you came to this conclusion. So if you could, for my sake, answer whether there are excerpts in the Tractatus containing a) and b) above, and which are those.

As to the world of the happy man, we can take the usual example of the half-full/half-empty glass: how can we use language and science to describe the situation? one way is this: we say that this glass can hold a maximum of 100 ml of water, and it now holds 50, this is a scientific proposition, a proposition of natural sciences, expressing a definitive fact, which cannot be changed no matter how hard we try. Now, the happy man says: "oh what joy, this glass is half-full, and I will get to drink some water! :smile: ", whereas the unhappy man says: "oh what a bummer, this glass is half-empty, couldn't it have been full! :sad: ".

(If good or bad willing changes the world, it can only change the limits of the world, not the facts; not the things that can be expressed in language).

So the worlds of the happy and unhappy man are quite different. For the first his world waxed, as optimism shined in, for the second it waned, as pessimism caved in.

(In brief, the world must thereby become quite another. It must so to speak wax or wane as a whole.
The world of the happy is quite another than that of the unhappy).

What do you think about Wittgenstein's answer to Hume's problem of induction in the Tractatus? — Wallows

Mind you that Wittgenstein's friend David (Hume) Pinsent was a descendant of David Hume. A coincidence? But there are no coincidences in logic.

Amity, amity
why show you such enmity?
after all
there's no calamity

But I am just trying to be honest here, you understand honesty, right? Honesty's form I mean, its logical form, irrespective of its content.

I have already asked you to point out where I have made a mistake or questionable move. Where specifically do my own views differ from his? What textual evidence points to that difference? I do not make my views pass as his. I set his statements in quotes and then comment on them. The two are easily distinguished.

Lots, like the last comment, "not discursively, but experentially", what the heck is this, where on earth did W say that, or even hinted??
— Pussycat

The following are direct quotes from the text. I cited them in my post.

It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words.
Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.)

— T 6.421
If the good or bad exercise of the will does alter the world, it can alter only the limits of the world, not the facts—not what can be expressed by means of language.
In short the effect must be that it becomes an altogether different world. It must, so to speak, wax and wane as a whole.
The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.
— T 6.43 — Fooloso4

From which you extract:

Philosophy sets boundaries. The boundaries of language exclude the metaphysical, but this is not a rejection of the metaphysical but rather means that the metaphysical is misunderstood and only leads to nonsense if one attempts to treat it as if it were within the bounds of language. Thus the right method of philosophy leads to silence about such things. There are not known discursively but experientially. — Fooloso4

Now where exactly does W. say explicitly in the Tractatus that the things that are not within the bounds of language "are not known discursively but experentially"? Particularly the second.

Lots, like the last comment, "not discursively, but experentially", what the heck is this, where on earth did W say that, or even hinted??

I think that he is doing a good job, but partly. For the other part, its really bad: he makes his own views pass as W's, most commonly they appear at the end of a paragraph.

No, he seems to know what he is talking about. "A priori metaphysics" is somewhat superfluous and I'm still not sure what purpose was it suppose to serve. — Wallows

So you see now its purpose?

Most questions and propositions of
the philosophers result from the fact that we do not understand
the logic of our language.
(They are of the same kind as the question whether the Good
is more or less identical than the Beautiful.)

But later on...

(Ethics and æsthetics are one.)

So is the Good - ethics - more or less identical than the Beautiful - æsthetics??

It's just that I got the impression from you that you are lacking some basic knowledge in philosophy, when you utter things like "a priori metaphysics". I think that to disguise this blunder, you later said that you meant by that what is usually called "traditional metaphysics", the inquiry into the existence of God, the immortality of the soul and free will. But noone, as far as I can tell, would use and had actually used the term "a priori metaphysics" to describe this, this is just you, trying not to lose face, like they say. Because metaphysics is all a priori, so saying "a priori metaphysics" is like saying "round circle" or "unmarried bachelor". So, this leads me to believe that you know nothing, or very little, about metaphysics, or philosophy for that matter, and you are just doing guess work here. I mean, I could be wrong, it's a know fact after all that I've been wrong before, but this is my current impression, what can I say. Therefore I am sorry, but I won't be discussing anything more with you, not before you you do a bit of studying first at least, to get the basic philosophical concepts cleared out.

Sorry man, but this "a priori metaphysics" of yours got me laughing, and now I can't stop! :lol:

What are you talking about? Metaphysics is not divided into a priori and non-a priori, it is a priori only, part of its definition. Saying non-a priori metaphysics is like saying circular square.

Yes, follows Kant, who said that the metaphysical is a priori. So, the metaphysical self cannot be taken to be the subject who experiences, as you said earlier, that is what I've been trying to tell you! And since there are no experiences for the metaphysical self, the self in solipsism (that posits that only one's experiences are real), is shown to be non-existent, as it was taken to the world's and logic's limits and dissolved there. It is actually a dialectical process that W is describing here, in the mode of Hegel's philosophy, his aufheben, if you know what I mean.

But metaphysics, at the time of Wittgenstein at least, was supposed to be knowledge - or something anyway - beyond experience. If W wanted to redefine metaphysics, then why didn't he do so, as he did with logic and philosophy? Since he didn't, we must assume that he saw metaphysics as it had always been seen.

This is a translation from an excerpt of a greek poet's work that has something to do with anti-natalism:

"The pain that began with the resistance of matter to become a world, becomes a pain of matter that ceases to be a world anymore. You do not understand, I see, my poetic expressions are to blame: in the face of the act of my birth (which, irrespective of the fact that it is not an act of mine, it nevertheless is the most important event in the history of my being) is the only act of MINE that can stand at the same height because it has insurmountable power and tragedy.

What benefits me to exist for what it's worth, since at the moment that I did not ordain, but luck itself - the very power that gave birth to me, I should bend my head and die patiently, consoling myself that this is how the law of nature dictates, and what can I do?

A course that has a beginning and an end the command of a hostile law, totally and beyond alien to me - because neither my birth did I will (how could that be?), nor death do I accept - what is the point in that? Since I was not able to give birth to myself, I make an equivalent act: I destroy him. By taking life from my matter, I raise it against my mother - fate -, thus taking away from her the right to decide for my end; she decided for my beginning - I decide for my end - I equate my power with hers".

By do both do you mean give my own opinion? If so, the reason is that it muddies the water. Whether or not I agree with W. or anyone else must be secondary to the question of what it is that I am agreeing with. All too often someone will say I agree with this or that philosopher, but what they are agreeing or disagreeing with is their own misconception of what the person they are agreeing or disagreeing with said. — Fooloso4

Yes, this is what happens very often indeed. But there are also cases when one actually agrees with someone else, but thinks he disagrees. And this says something about the world, as Wittgenstein would say. But why is that? Here "why" has two different connotations: 1) the reason for this, as for example "why did the apple fall from the apple tree? 'cause it was heavy and there is this force of gravity bla bla bla", so cause and effect and natural sciences, and 2) as in "why do things like apples have to/are made to fall? why is the world like this and not some other where apples wouldn't fall? Why isn't there an accurate way of knowing whether I agree or disagree with someone? (not from a bio-logical/psycho-logical point of view) Is there a fundamental reason for this? Can we imagine, think of a world where this wouldn't happen? And how would that world be like?", questions like these don't have to do with the natural sciences, but rather relate to philosophy/ontology/metaphysics, and logic. And it so happens that many philosophers - but not only philosophers, everyone apparently, physicists, mathematicians, and other scientists, and the common people of course - conflate the two into one, or take evidence from the physical to "prove" the meta-physical positions, which is of course wrong and absurd, 'cause "everything we see could also be otherwise" (again, why is that - two different why's - and this says something about the world). So, to answer here your question as to what W is rejecting, I think he was trying to separate the two, so that one knows exactly with what kind of questions he would be dealing. And he pinpoints the problem in language, as the example hopefully showed, because even a simple "why" can mean two entirely different things, the "why" sign, I mean. The first "why" points somewhere in the world, whereas the second "why", where does it point? It doesn't point anywhere, it has been taken to the limits, not a part of the world.

So problems arise when we conflate these two different kind of questions into one, when we talk about the second with having the first in mind, and vice-versa.

Oh well, I guess something like that. :meh:

Not. If there is a metaphysics it is not a theory or doctrine. It is something that cannot be talked for such talk would be nonsense because it does not share the logical structure of the physical world and the language that represents it. — Fooloso4

Metaphysics has changed significantly since antiquity, since Aristotle first discovered it as a science, so it is difficult to say what it really is, or what it's subject matter is. However, a common characteristic in all its variants is that it is a priori, unrelated to experience, just like logic is, so some say they are essentially the same.

It is not clear whether you are asking what I think is meant by the metaphysical as used by Wittgenstein or by others or my thoughts on the metaphysical. The first is the only question that I think is relevant to the discussion. Here a further distinction needs to be made between the question of whether logical form and simple objects are meant to be a metaphysical ontology he accepts or rejects as nonsense, whether this is saying something metaphysical (6.53), and what he means by the metaphysical self.

I do not think the discussion of form and content is intended as a metaphysical theory, although it might serve as such if one were “doing metaphysics”. But Wittenstein is not. I think his intent is to mark the boundaries of the physical and sayable on the basis of logical structure. They are elucidatory. — Fooloso4

I was asking about your own thoughts, as you yourself were not very clearly whether these were your own opinions or the opinions concerning those in the Tractatus, when you said above: "The ethical, aesthetic, and metaphysical are also outside of the sphere of the logical. And so too lead to nonsense when one attempts to represent what is experienced". But why not do both?

Anyway, I think that Wittgenstein wants, maybe unknowingly, to dispose of the old and traditional metaphysics, only to replace it with another, as it is usually the case in the historical process of metaphysics.

As to the philosophical I, it is metaphysical self, the subject who experiences. — Fooloso4

But supposedly, metaphysics is void of experience, a priori, just like logic is. Or not?

The ethical, aesthetic, and metaphysical are also outside of the sphere of the logical. And so too lead to nonsense when one attempts to represent what is experienced. — Fooloso4

What is the metaphysical, to you, I mean?

I don't think this is right. It is because logic has nothing to do with an "I" that a logical I or logical self does not make sense. — Fooloso4

Whereas the philosophical I or philosophical self makes sense? What does that mean?

There is a great deal here that I am not addressing. My focus is on trying to understand what W. means in the preface and ending. It may be that one cannot hope to climb the ladder by skipping the rungs but if that is the case I hope someone will be able to identify those rungs by showing how they are necessary for the climb. — Fooloso4

I don't know whether you caught our conversation with dear Wallows from the beginning, but this is what I believe, I wrote it here:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/236523

The mystical, or the dionysean aspect of reality, the irrational, in contrast to the logical, the rational and the apollonian, if you know what I mean.

Yes, very confusing. I wonder what can that possibly mean, or do we just have to remain silent about the philosophical self? — Wallows

If this confuses somewhat, then maybe, in the relevant propositions we were discussing 5.631-5.641, you could replace the "philosophical" with the "logical", the "metaphysical" with the "logical", so that "metaphysical subject" becomes "logical subject", and re-read the passages again with that replacement in mind and place. e.g.

"The logical (philosophical) self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the logical (metaphysical) subject, the limit of the world".

So where is this logical I/subject to be found?

philosophical I = logical I . Purely logical I mean, unmarred and untarnished by the psyche - whatever that is. Non psycho-logical, as if you take away the psyche from it, only to end up with pure logic. Why then solipsism?

I don't know nor can I remember how we ended up talking about this in the first place, as I said, I want to take things for the beginning.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/242949

This is true with regard to objects and facts but the 'I' is not a thing, not an object or thing. — Fooloso4

Maybe you are confused as I were, still I am a little bit by the way - logic is like this, what can you do! :) - but my take is that Wittgenstein addresses the concept of solipsism to see if it is justified, or pure nonsense, and he finds out the former, that it is. But first you must bear in mind that philosophy and metaphysics deal with the world as a whole, or at least this is what is desirable for them, it is what they are striving to do. I mean, metaphysics does not want to talk about some particular cases, but describe and expose the totality of things. But by dealing with the whole, a peculiar thing happens, in that the self, the philosophical (non-psychological) "I" is taken to the world's limit, to its periphery, the boundaries. This, Wittgenstein says, has to do with how our world is structured, its logical form, the fact that propositions of logic are tautologies, that the world is my world, and so solipsism is directly derivable from all this.

As I understand it, his main concern is not with what is in the world, its content, but what stands outside of it. — Fooloso4

Yes, but W never says that there is actually something outside the world, I guess this does not make any sense for him. Being outside the world is equivalent to being at the world's limit.

The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world.
— T 5.632

This quote has been of my interest recently. Does it imply a form of solipsism? — Wallows

I think what he means is that for someone to be able to describe the world fully, as philosophers commonly purport to do/have done, he must go the world's limit, exit the world that is, and look at it from the outside, outside looking in, like they say. Which is why he says later:

5.64 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.

i.e. at the world's limit, at logic's limit, solipsism=realism, but this so-called equality holds only at that limit, and philosophers (the philosophical I) are or are striving to be solipsists.

If the limits of logic and the world are the same then by determining a limit to the world we can determine a limit of logic.

Here is the most important case:

The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world.
— T 5.632 — Fooloso4

Yes, presumably. However W says that we cannot determine a limit to either of them (rest of 5.61). We can only say that they have the same limit (because logic fills/pervades the world - so in that sense, they are one and the same), but there isn't any investigation we can make that could lead us finding that limit.

As to language:

What any picture, of whatever form, must have in common with reality, in order to be able to depict it—correctly or incorrectly—in any way at all, is logical form, i.e. the form of reality.
— T 2.18

The propositions of logic describe the scaffolding of the world, or rather they represent it. They have no ‘subject-matter’. They presuppose that names have meaning and elementary propositions sense; and that is their connexion with the world. It is clear that something about the world must be indicated by the fact that certain combinations of symbols—whose essence involves the possession of a determinate character—are tautologies. This contains the decisive point.
— T 6.124 — Fooloso4

I think what he means by this is that logic rests on its head, so to speak, in a closed circle, a sphere rather, as I quoted T 5.4541 above: that the propositions of logic (and logic in general), being tautologies, can only describe/show/represent the structure, the form of the world, but they do not actually tell us absolutely anything about the world's content.

5.61 says that the limits of logic and the world are the same, the statement does not include language. Limits can be drawn (or set) to language, but not to logic.

The tractatus is all about limits: limits to language, to thought, to propositions, and as they play their role in probabilities. However, we dont see limits drawn (or set) to logic: we cannot think illogically, as he writes. And there is no mention of limiting logic either, as it is the case with language and thought. This is what i meant earlier.

but if thats the case, he would/should have said "set limits to what cannot be thought clearly". The ogden trans is worse, since it actually says "the unthinkable".

As for the illogical, we see the pattern here repeating, thinkable/unthinkable - logical/illogical. But i really doubt that W saw anything as illogical.

Exactly, proposition 4.114 I had in mind when I wrote above:

...But this assertion has commentators confused, since it seems that there are contradictory remarks in the Tractatus, the relation between logic, thought and sense, I mean. — Pussycat

I remember reading about this a while ago, some find it contradictory, others not. I don't know what to make of it, I just don't bother with thoughts in the Tractatus (what can be thought), but only with language (what can be said).