Ok. And you prefer single inverted commas, but the reader infers, from your use of the word "term", that you use these single marks as quote marks. We aren't sure why you decline to clarify with doubles, when invited, but never mind. — bongo fury

Single quote marks are also sometimes used in academic writing, though this isn’t considered a rule. Specialist terms that are unique to a subject are often enclosed in single quotation marks in both U.S. and British English. This is very common in specific disciplines, particularly philosophy or theology.

https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/punctuation/rules-for-using-single-quotation-marks.html

If you mean, names were for W those symbols that referred to simple or elementary objects, that doesn't sound any different to ordinary usage of "name" in logic. — bongo fury

In general, logic uses proper names. Wittgenstein specifies how he is using the term in the Tractatus:

2.02 Objects are simple.

3.22 In a proposition a name is the representative of an object.

3.26 A name cannot be dissected any further by means of a definition: it is a primitive sign.

The relation between these sign-objects is not another sign-object and so a relation cannot be a name? — Fooloso4

Do you mean,

The relation between these objects is not another object and so a relation cannot be named (referred to by a name).
— Fooloso4

? Or,

The relation between these sign-objects is not another sign-object and so a relation cannot be a name?
— Fooloso4 — bongo fury

The parenthetical remark does not appear in what is quoted. Square brackets [ ] should be used. They should also be used when adding words to a quote: [sign] objects. Wittgenstein distinguishes between a sign and an object. There are no "sign objects".

3.221 Objects can only be named. Signs are their representatives.

A relation cannot be named because a relation is not a object. A relation can, however, be given a sign 'R'.

Do you mean,

"a" and "b" are not names either but refer to
— Fooloso4

... any two particular names, according to context?

Or do you mean, "a" and "b" are two particular symbols with no fixed denotation?

Or something else? — bongo fury

The full sentence is:

'a' and 'b' are not names either but refer to any simple object. — Fooloso4

'a' and 'b' are variables.

Sure, all that. It's not clear to me what you are saying, or even if you are agreeing or disagreeing with the suggestion I made. — Banno

What I disagreed with is:

... while for Wittgenstein the simples are states of affairs. — Banno

The simples are not states of affairs, they form states of affairs.

In the Tractatus, objects are only understood in terms of their relations to each other; we talk about, and hence understand, objects only indirectly via their relations. Fooloso4 seems to disagree with this, but that runs against the text of the Tractatus. — Banno

Yes, I disagree to the extent that if elementary objects are not identified, that is, known, we cannot say what their relations are. It is clear that they stand in relation to each other, but just what those relations are is left unsaid and cannot be said unless we know what the simple objects are.

This does run against the text of the Tractatus, but, as you know, Wittgenstein came to reject the text.

He used the term 'name' in a way that is different from the way we ordinarily use it. Names referred to the simple or elementary objects. What they are, he never said. The relation between these objects is not another object and do a relation is not a name. 'a' and 'b' are not names either but refer to any simple object. An elementary proposition is a picture of the relation between the objects. What that relation is is shown by the proposition.

2.011 It is essential to things that they should be possible constituents of states of affairs.

2.012 In logic nothing is accidental: if a thing can occur in a state of affairs, the possibility of the
state of affairs must be written into the thing itself.

He later abandoned this line of thought.

This sounds incredibly arrogant. — Tate

The classic example is the fate of Socrates. As a result Plato and Aristotle had to be much more circumspect in order to protect themselves and their work, but also because philosophy posed a threat to the city. Certain things had to be hidden in their writings. For Descartes and Spinoza there was the example of what happened to Galileo. Descartes took as his own Ovid's motto: "He who lived well hid himself well". Spinoza's signet ring was engraved "caute". Wittgenstein witnessed how often his students misunderstood him. He thought it better to hide certain things to avoid misleading them. It was only those who are "like minded" who would have the key to unlock the rooms he kept hidden.

That causes a lot of confusion. — Tate

Why they do this is an interesting question. To begin to answer it requires looking at specific examples, but this does not yield a single answer that applies to all cases. In some cases it has more to do with language than with deliberate intention. The meaning of words change over time and pick up meanings that were not in use at the time of writing. But I think that in other cases it is deliberate. A philosopher may have a unique way of thinking that is reflected in a unique use of terms. There may also be a rhetorical intention. Begin with what seems familiar. I don't think we should disregard the possibility that the reader is being deliberately misled. Nietzsche, with his disdain for "the idle reader" comes to mind, or something is being hidden from the reader. Wittgenstein is aware of the need for this:

If you have a room which you do not want certain people to get into, put a lock on it for which they do not have the key. But there is no point in talking to them about it, unless of course you want them to admire the room from outside! The honorable thing to do is put a lock on the door which will be noticed only by those who can open it, not by the rest.
— Wittgenstein Culture and Value

Ah, I see. He's using the word in a unique way. — Tate

It is a common mistake to fail to see when a philosopher, and not just Wittgenstein, is using terms in a unique way.

A proposition is not generally considered to be a representation. I'm glad to see that he didn't use that word. — Tate

4.01 A proposition is a picture of reality.

4.021 A proposition is a picture of reality: for if I understand a proposition, I know the situation
that it represents.

2 What is the case—a fact—is the existence of states of affairs.

2.01 A state of affairs (a state of things) is a combination of objects (things).

2.141 A picture is a fact

2.15 The fact that the elements of a picture are related to one another in a determinate way represents that things are related to one another in the same way.
Let us call this connexion of its elements the structure of the picture, and let us call the
possibility of this structure the pictorial form of the picture.

Although a picture, that is, a representation or proposition is itself a fact, he makes a distinction between the representation and what is represented. A fact, the existence of a state of affairs shares the logical structure that enables propositions about a state of affairs, but the state of affairs depicted is not the same fact as the depiction.

2.151 Pictorial form is the possibility that things are related to one another in the same way as
the elements of the picture.

2.18 What every picture, of whatever form, must have in common with reality in order to be able to represent it at all—rightly or falsely—is the logical form, that is, the form of reality.

2.21 A picture agrees with reality or fails to agree; it is correct or incorrect, true or false.

Pictures are not the reality, the facts, they represent. There are false picture. They do not correctly represent the facts.

Wittgenstein distinguishes between facts and propositions which are representations of facts.

The proposition "the tree is 3m tall" exists in the mind. — RussellA

The proposition, a statement about the height of the tree is true if and only if the tree is 3m tall. There is no measure 3m tall in a "mind independent world', but the height of the tree is not dependent on our measuring it. It may, for example, block the sunlight from trees that are not as tall. The statement "the tree is 3m tall" depends on the use of a standard of measurement, which is not mind independent, and what is measured, the tree, which is as it is independent of the mind.

You might argue that there are no trees or anything else independent of the mind. Certainly there no propositions independent of the mind, but whether this tree blocks the sunlight from shorter trees is not dependent on the mind.

From what you wrote, we agree that objects and names are not what folk mean when they talk of the atoms in Wittgenstein's logical atomism. I suggest that, whereas in Russel the atoms are things and predicates, the atoms in Wittgenstein's logical atomism are the relations, aRb. — Banno

"Atomic facts" and "atomic propositions" are Russell's terminology. Wittgenstein did not use this terminology. He refers to "elementary propositions" "Elementarsätze". An elementary proposition is a combination of simple or elemental names.

4.221 It is obvious that the analysis of propositions must bring us to elementary propositions
which consist of names in immediate combination.

Wittgenstein never names the names in elementary propositions. They are assumed a priori. Further, although he states the form of elementary propositions he never identifies an elementary proposition. 'a' stands in relation to 'b', but without identifying 'a' and 'b' we cannot say what the relation is between names or elementary objects.

And yet:

4.26 If all true elementary propositions are given, the result is a complete description of the world. The world is completely described by giving all elementary propositions, and adding which of
them are true and which false. An elementary proposition is simply one that cannot be further analyzed.

Did you get the chance to review Russell's comments in the introduction? What do you take to be the difference between Russel's and Witti's accounts? — Banno

In his introduction Russell says:

Facts which are not compounded of other facts are what Mr. Wittgenstein calls Sachverhalte, whereas a fact which may consist of two or more facts is a Tatsache: thus, for example “Socrates is wise” is a Sachverhalt, as well as a Tatsache ...

Socrates is not an uncompounded fact. 'Socrates' is not the name of a simple or elemental object and cannot be part of an elementary proposition. Russell's atomism maintains no such distinction between Wittgenstein's elementary propositions about unnamed names of simples and propositions about complex things such as Socrates.

Sure, objects are simples. But...

↪Sam26

The question here is on of exegesis, not ontology. — Banno

My initial post:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/717045

Sam's post is in agreement with what I had posted prior to him.

For Wittgenstein, the atoms are relations between objects. — Banno

The German is:

2 Was der Fall ist, die Tatsache, ist das Bestehen von Sachverhalten.

The Pears/McGuinness translation:

What is the case—a fact—is the existence of states of affairs.

is more accurate. There is no term that in the German that corresponds to atomic facts. It is the Sachverhalten, the states of affairs, the facts that are relations between objects.

what is the point of 3.1432 — Banno

3.1432 Instead of, ‘The complex sign “aRb” says that a stands to b in the relation R’, we ought to put, ‘That “a” stands to “b” in a certain relation says that aRb.’

The statement that follows clarifies this:

3.144 Situations can be described but not given names.

'R' is not the name of the relation between 'a' and 'b'. What that relation is is determined by 'a' and 'b'. Simple objects contain within themselves the possibilities of their combinations.

I would take the opposite route from Fooloso4. — Tobias

Do you mean the opposite route to the same destination or one that leads to the opposite or a different destination?

I think it important to keep in mind Socrates "human wisdom", which is to say, his ignorance. The question arises as to the possibility of humans attaining "divine wisdom", that is, wisdom that goes beyond knowledge of our ignorance. Put differently, the question is whether the full realization of human nature is possible. It may be that it is something to which we aspire but never realize. Human wisdom would then entail the ability to discern what is best in the absence of knowledge of what is best. Human wisdom, then, requires moderation, an acknowledgement of our fallibility.

I'd taken it that the world in the Tractatus is all that is the case, not a collection of simples. That is, the difference between Russell's and Wittgenstein's logical atomism is that for Russell the simples are particulars (objects), while for Wittgenstein the simples are states of affairs. — Banno

The first part is correct. The world is not a collection of simples. The second part, simples are states of affairs, is incorrect. It is the relation of objects that determine a state of affairs. Simple objects contain within themselves the possibilities of combination. It is by combination that facts are produced.

Objects are simple.
— T 2.02

Objects make up the substance of the world. That is why they cannot be composite.
— T 2.021

The substance of the world can only determine a form, and not any material properties. For it is only by means of propositions that material properties are represented—only by the configuration of objects that they are produced.
— T 2.0231

It [substance] is form and content.
— T 2.025

Space, time, colour (being coloured) are forms of objects.
— T 2.0251

Objects are what is unalterable and subsistent; their configuration is what is changing and unstable.
— T 2.0271

In a state of affairs objects stand in a determinate relation to one another.
— T 2.031

Wittgenstein took stats of affairs as the building blocks. — Banno

A state of affairs is the configuration of the building blocks, that is, at its most elemental state the simple objects, which combine to form more complex states of affairs.

The world is those propositions in logical space which are true — Banno

A proposition is a picture of reality.
The proposition is a model of the reality as we think (denken) it is.
— T 4.01

Smolen is a big fan of Leibniz. He has pointed out that it is only fairly recently that scientists have ignored or disparaged philosophy. He points out that scientists of Einstein's generation had more than a passing interest in philosophy.

Perhaps there is a connection with the influence of logical positivism and its disregard for philosophy's past.

Retrieve what? — Jackson

Short answer: the truth (alethea) disclosed at a particular time and place.

Most philosophy departments offer classes in ancient Greek philosophy. — Jackson

And some regard it as nothing more than quaint and misguided ideas that are primitive and from which he have progressed.

I think Heidegger was on the right track when he said that in the movement of thought some things are occluded. Hence the importance of retrieval.

Philosophy is very different from science. In science people do not talk about past science. In philosophy, people still talk about Plato and Aristotle as live topics. — Jackson

Some people think that the continued interest in Plato and Aristotle is regressive. I do not agree.

Progress toward what end?

The goal or assumption of progress in philosophy might be regressive.

The Greek term translated as virtue is arete. It means the excellence of a thing. Human excellence is the realization of human potential. Someone who has attained human excellence is wise.

Someone who lacks courage has not realized or actualized her potential but this does not mean that courage is the same as human excellence or virtue. In fact, an excess of courage can lead to rashness or even ruthlessness.

@Art48

In the Tractatus Wittgenstein attempts to construct the world beginning with what is simple or elemental. Corresponding to simple objects are simple names. Wittgenstein never identifies any simple object or name, but assumes they must exist as constitutive elements of the world.

Logic underlies the compounding of simple objects and names. It is this logical structure that makes possible saying anything about the world. Propositions are true if what they say is what is the case. That the word is a totality of facts not things means that it is not the simple objects or things that make up the world but rather their combinations. The most rudimentary combinations are "atomic facts". Atomic facts combine to form complexes.

He uses the term "world" to mean the totality of these complexes. He also talks about "my world", the world as it is for me. But the "I" is not part of the world in the same way as the eye sees but is not what is seen.

I did not mean a "mental picture", which would just be us picturing something to ourselves, which, as he says, is analogous to a picture like a painting. All those quotes are about a picture in the sense of a theoretical framework — Antony Nickles

In his later work he blurs the lines between seeing and saying, seeing and thinking. Seeing is active, conceptual, constructive. Language reflects this. A mental picture might be analogous to a painting, but it may, in other cases, be closer to a map or diagram or schematic or blueprint. It enables us to visualize something in a sense that is related to but is not the same as the painted image. It can make connections that are not apparent in the painting.

Consider the various senses of "I see". What does it mean to visualize something? There is here a variety of things that have a family resemblance that extends to a theoretical framework.

A "point of view" in the PI is not a cohesive theory; it is an attitude, in the sense of an inclination, a disposition. — Antony Nickles

(I once read somewhere that a geometrical figure, with the words "Look at this", serves as a proof for certain Indian mathematicians. This looking too effects an alteration in one's way of seeing.) (Zettel, 461)

The question is what is it about us that creates the picture of something hidden? And the answer is our desire for crystalline purity, of knowledge that is certain enough that we will know right from wrong (abdicating responsibility for choosing), that we will not be surprised or accused by others, that we will have justification sufficient to satisfy our disappointment with the world and ourselves. — Antony Nickles

The presupposition is that the world is intelligible. But the world of our ordinary experience is messy and does yield to our understanding. One response to this is that the truth of things is hidden and must be uncovered. Another is a form of skepticism that I think Wittgenstein accepts. In On Certainty he quotes Goethe:

In the beginning was the deed. (402)

Language did not emerge from some kind of ratiocination. (OC 475)

A language game is an extension of primitive behavior (Z 545)

Instinct first reason second (RPP 689)

The difficulty is to realize the groundlessness of our believing. (OC 166)

Added: There are different forms of skepticism, some of which he clearly rejects.

However, there is a sense of "picture" which is what I am trying to make clear--what hides the ordinary from us (what is in plain view). — Antony Nickles

As I understand it, what is at issue is the status of a mental picture. It is not as if he is arguing for the elimination of mental pictures, but that a picture does not settle the matter. A picture may lead us astray, but a picture may also represent a "fertile point of view". The mental pictures we construct must be investigated not eliminated. They too are part of our ordinary way of seeing things.

Added: It is not pictures but the picture of something hidden that he rejects.

...but this is different than a picture, which I would equate with a theory. — Antony Nickles

You may equate a picture with a theory, but that is not how Wittgenstein used the term. In the Tractatus a picture represents a state of affairs. He has a theory of how this is possible, but a picture or representation and how is able to do that are two different things. In PI he rejects this theory but picturing remains important.

He does not reject a condition, he rejects pictures — Antony Nickles

He is talking about "a" picture, not picturing or representations in toto.

A main source of our failure to understand is that we don’t have an overview of the use of our words. - Our grammar is deficient in surveyability. A surveyable representation produces precisely that kind of understanding which consists in ‘seeing connections’. Hence the importance of finding and inventing intermediate links.
The concept of a surveyable representation is of fundamental significance for us. It characterizes the way we represent things, how we look at matters. (Is this a ‘Weltanschauung’?)

(PI 122)

A surveyable representation, an übersichtlichen Darstellung , (alternatively translated as perspicuous representation), a representative overview is said to be of fundamental importance. For it is from this vantage point that we see connections between things, how they relate to each other.

The fundamental importance of an übersichtlichen Darstellung is something that Wittgenstein will continue to develop. He is no longer concerned with the Tractarian question of the conditions for the possibility of representation, but rather with the ways in which representation, how we picture things, is how we look at them, and can both stand in the way of and lead to new ways of seeing connections.

Seeing things in a "new way" is not changing to another set of glasses (#103), it is remembering our ordinary ways — Antony Nickles

He concludes this passage by saying:

It never occurs to us to take them [the glasses] off.

A new way is not a matter of replacing one pair of glasses with another. The alternative is not limited to our "ordinary ways".

What a Copernicus or a Darwin really achieved was not the discovery of a new true theory but a fertile point of view. (CV 18) — Fooloso4

Copernicus and Darwin rejected the ordinary ways.

The picture of "representation" of the world, or what is the case, is what is taken apart in the PI as the product off the requirement for a crystalline purity (to give us the certainty we desire). It is representationalism that creates the idea of objective/subjective (personal "experience"), of fact/value. — Antony Nickles

The ways in which we picture the world is a prominent feature of both the Tractatus and PI. In the later work, however, he rejects the notion that logic is the a priori transcendental condition that makes representation possible.

That there are facts but they do no determine how we see the world is something he did not reject.

You are not allowing a distinction between what he says and the reasons he says it. He says the things about ethics in the Tract because of the requirement he has for us (him) in that work in order to be said to say anything. — Antony Nickles

It is not because of his concept of logic that he says what he does about ethics. It is the result of his relationship to the world, of his experience of what is important and meaningful. He distinguishes between this sense of meaningful and Sinn or meaning as referent.

As he shows in the PI, these criteria (the logical form of a thing) are already there, in our language, which holds our culture, which is the history of all the ways we are in the world. — Antony Nickles

Culture and history are not the whole of what he is getting at. Again, the importance of the "possibility of phenomena" and new ways of seeing things. "Logic as grammar" means that it is an activity. Language changes as a form of life changes.

My father went to Temple. — Jackson

I was much older than the other grad students. Maybe your father's age.

Where? Was it approved? — Jackson

Temple University, 2000. Yes, it was unanimously approved.

The Tractatus uses "transcendental" twice. — Jackson

Yes, as I just pointed out, with regard to ethics and again with regard to logic.

You might benefit by taking a look at that book. — Jackson

I have done considerably more than that. I wrote my dissertation on Wittgenstein. I do not say that in order to claim authority, but rather as a response to the suggestion that I "take a look". I have also posted quite extensively on PI and OC on this forum. Take a look.

There is a great deal of interpretive disagreement, which is what attracted me to do work on him. Although, like most everyone else, I want to be right, I am always open to the possibility that I am mistaken, and consider the opportunity to be shown things I have missed or misunderstood to be a welcome benefit.

Then tell me about Wittgenstein's discussion of the transcendental in the Philosophical Investigations. — Jackson

You are right. There is no discussion of the transcendental in PI. It is, however, fundamental to the Tractatus. But there is still in the later works a concern with possibilities:

… our investigation is directed not towards phenomena, but rather, as one might say, towards the ‘possibilities’ of phenomena. We remind ourselves, that is to say, of the kind of statement that we make about phenomena.

The conditions for such possibilities are, however, no longer regarded as a priori.

No. Transcendental means the condition for experience. A Kantian term. Clearly this is not W. meaning. — Jackson

What he says, as quoted, is that ethics/aesthetics is transcendental. It is only once this is acknowledged that we can discuss what it means.

I agree with you that he is using it in Kantian sense of the condition for the possibility of experience. In this case, he is talking about ethical/aesthetic experience.

In addition, it is clear that he also regards them as transcendent:

If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental.
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental.
It must lie outside the world.
— T 6.41[/]

So too it is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics.
Propositions can express nothing that is higher.
— T 6.42

It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words.
Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.)
— T 6.421

But this does not mean he rejects ethics and aesthetics:

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

He also says that logic is transcendental:

Logic is transcendental.
— T 6.13

Propositions can represent the whole of reality, but they cannot represent what they must have in common with reality in order to be able to represent it—logical form.
— T 4.12

Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical (unsinnig) … Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language.
— T 4.003

By the logic of our language he means a priori logical form. But logical form cannot be represented, there can be no propositions about logic form.

Ethics is just the idea of how we want people to act around each other. Nothing mystical or transcendental about it. — Jackson

That is one way in which the term is used. It is not the way it is used in the Tractatus.

He said that ethics/aesthetics are transcendental.
— Fooloso4

That is not Wittgenstein idea at all, false. — Jackson

Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and æsthetics are one.)
— T 6.421

[Edited to indicate a quote from the Tractatus]

We are not relegated to the obscurity Witt originally put ethics and aesthetics into because of his requirement for statements to have certainty. — Antony Nickles

It was not a matter of certainty, but of propositions having a sense, a meaning; they represent some state of affairs in the world. Ethics/aesthetics do not represent what is the case. Ethics/aesthetics are not a matter of certainty but of personal experience.

He wanted it to be reducible to logic ... — Antony Nickles

No. Just the opposite. He said that ethics/aesthetics are transcendental. They stand outside the relations of things in the world, outside logical relations. That is why the have no sense, why they do not represent some state of affairs. But this does not mean that they do not have meaning in the sense of significance or importance for our lives.

The failing is not morality not being scientific; it is our decision to want it to be because of the fear that we must stand in its place. — Antony Nickles

But in the Tractatus he was arguing against the decision to want it to be a science. He ties it to our lived experience of the world.

But intellectualizing this as a "problem" makes the world seem hidden — Antony Nickles

Only if one assumes there is an objective morality to be uncovered.

The desire (to have moral deliberation reducible, a science) is the same desire Wittgenstein had in the Tractatus — Antony Nickles

The Tractatus attempts to show that it is not reducible to a science.

The point of the PI is to show that there is not one logic ... — Antony Nickles

He equates logic with grammar. And there is not one grammar.

... which is a revocation of the fixed criteria of certainty enforced in the Tractates ... — Antony Nickles

Right. Logic is no longer seen as the transcendent and transcendental scaffolding of language.

... that created the picture of aesthetics and ethics as a mystical part of our world (though the world is not without wonder and mystery). — Antony Nickles

I think he maintains a sense of the mystical, of experiences that we may wish to express, but which language cannot convey. He talks about this in his Lecture on Ethics (1929)

It is exactly the desire for purity that creates the idea that they are outside fact and logic. — Antony Nickles

Although he rejects the idea of a logical underpinning it does not follow that he rejects the experience of the mystical.

Just because we may not come to agreement does not mean there is no rationality, no discussion ... — Antony Nickles

The problem is, we do not possess the facts and logic to bring moral deliberation to a satisfactory conclusion. There is no moral science. Moral deliberation, although rational, is not reducible to facts and logic.

The analogy of conceiving as building is that it exactly is an action ... — Antony Nickles

Yes, but not in this sense:

work on changing your acts rather than somehow altering (or understanding) our perception — Antony Nickles

The point is that perception is not passive, it is active, constructive.

Your quotations from Witt's earlier work amount to the limitations he projected onto our ability to (rationally) discuss or understand morality and aesthetics. But it is exactly this picture that he is questioning and replacing through the work of the Philosophical Investigations. — Antony Nickles

And yet he says very little about morality and aesthetics in his later work. What exactly is he replacing the earlier picture with?

Specifically, it was his requirement for crystalline purity in the Tractatus that stopped him from realizing the regular ways we talk about these subjects, causing him to feel this part of the world was "mystical". — Antony Nickles

The demand for crystalline purity does not extend to the ethical/aesthetic. They are not matters of fact and logic. That there is anything at all he regarded as mystical.

Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again. (CV, 5)

This was written in 1930, after he returned to philosophy.

I take "working on oneself" to be an ethical admonishment--work on changing your acts rather than somehow altering (or understanding) our perception (as phenomenology wishes); that philosophy for Witt is not about seeing in a new way, but, to use this re-framing, realizing what we can expect from interpreting and seeing, say, by finding the limit of what they (and we) can and can not do. — Antony Nickles

I agree that there is an ethical aspect to working on oneself, but how one sees things is a prominent and recurring theme for Wittgenstein. Beginning with his 1914-1916 he connects ethics and aesthetics:

The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis; and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. This is the connexion between art and ethics.

The usual way of looking at things sees objects as it were from the midst of them,the view
sub specie aeternitatis from outside.

In such a way that they have the whole world as background.

Is this it perhaps — in this view the object is seen together with space and time instead of in space and time?

Each thing modifies the whole logical world, the whole of logical space, so to speak.

(The thought forces itself upon one): The thing seen sub specie aeternitatis is the thing seen together with the whole logical space.(NB 83)

And in the Tractatus:

Ethics and aesthetics are one. (6.421)

To view the world sub specie aeterni is to view it as a limited whole.
Feeling the world as a limited whole - it is this that is mystical.

(6.45)

If the ethical view, the view from outside, changes your acts, it is as a result of how one looks at the world rather than how one acts within it.

we do not "conceive things" — Antony Nickles

His analogy with architecture should not be ignored. Throughout his writings we also see the recurring use of terms related to building and construction. The German term 'Auffassung' translated in the quote as "interpretation" means conception. In the revised edition (Blackwell, 1998) it is translated 'conception'.

The connection between perception and conception is also discussed in “seeing as”. He has a great deal to say about the conceptual involvement with perception. The way we see things involves the framework we see them in as well as the context we put them in as part of a larger picture. This picture is to a large extent culturally inherited but not immutable.


Although not what is at issue in 126:

For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us.

with regard to interpretation of Wittgenstein and something hidden:

If you have a room which you do not want certain people to get into, put a lock on
it for which they do not have the key. But there is no point in talking to them about it,
unless of course you want them to admire the room from outside!

The honorable thing to do is to put a lock on the door which will be noticed only
by those who can open it, not by the rest. (CV 7-8)

… our investigation is directed not towards phenomena, but rather, as one might say, towards the ‘possibilities’ of phenomena. We remind ourselves, that is to say, of the kind of statement that we make about phenomena.
...
Our investigation is therefore a grammatical one. Such an investigation sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away. (Philosophical Investigations, 90)

By the possibilities of phenomena he means the various ways in which we can see things. This is connected to what we say about things, that is, the way we conceive things. This includes our misunderstandings, which limit the ways in which we can see things. They must be cleared away.

Such clearing is preparation for what may grow:

I believe that my originality (if that is the right word) is an originality belonging to the soil rather than to the seed. … Sow a seed in my soil and it will grow differently than it would in any other soil. (CV, 36)

He gives an interesting example of possibilities of phenomena:

What a Copernicus or a Darwin really achieved was not the discovery of a new true theory but a fertile point of view. (CV 18)

His concern is not novelty for the sake of novelty but with what a new way of viewing things can allow us to see.

The clear lines of distinction in the Tractatus between seeing and saying no longer holds. They are not separate but interrelated:

A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words.—Our grammar is lacking in this sort of perspicuity. A perspicuous representation produces just that understanding which consists in 'seeing connexions'. Hence the importance of finding and inventing intermediate cases.
The concept of a perspicuous representation is of fundamental significance for us. It earmarks the form of account we give, the way we look at things. (Is this a 'Weltanschauung'?) (PI 122)

It is not simply a matter of what is seen objectively, but of the person looking:

Working in philosophy -- like work in architecture in many respects -- is really more a working on oneself. On one's interpretation. On one's way of seeing things. (And what one expects of them.) (Culture and Value, 16)

His concern, however, is not with phenomenology as a method or discipline:

53. There is no such thing as phenomenology, but there are indeed phenomenological problems.
(Remarks on Colour)

The additional statements from 126 should be examined:

For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us.

One might also give the name "philosophy" to what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions.

The first refers to what he calls the "subliming of logic", that is, to certain assumptions about language, the acceptance of which makes it seem as though an explanation for the connection between thought and reality is required.

101. We want to say that there can't be any vagueness in logic. The idea now absorbs us, that the ideal 'must' be found in reality. Meanwhile we do not as yet see how it occurs there, nor do we understand the nature of this "must". We think it must be in reality: for we think we already see it there.

102. The strict and clear rules of the logical structure of propositions appear to us as something in the background -- hidden in the medium of the understanding. I already see them (even though through a medium): for I understand the propositional sign, I use it to say something.

103. The ideal, as we think of it, is unshakable. You can never get outside it; you must always turn back. There is no outside; outside you cannot breathe. -- Where does this idea come from? It is like a pair of glasses on our nose through which we see whatever we look at. It never occurs to us to take them off.

107.The more narrowly we examine actual language, the sharper becomes the conflict between it and our requirement. (For the crystalline purity of logic was, of course, not a result of investigation: it was a requirement.) The conflict becomes intolerable; the requirement is now in danger of becoming empty. -- We have got on to slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!

108. We see that what we call "sentence" and "language" has not the formal unity that I imagined, but is the family of structures more or less related to one another. -- But what becomes of logic now? Its rigor seems to be giving way here. -- But in that case doesn't logic altogether disappear? -- For how can it lose its rigor? Of course not by our bargaining any of its rigor out of it. -- The preconceived idea of crystalline purity can only be removed by turning our whole examination around. (One might say: the axis of reference of our examination must be rotated, but about the fixed point of our real need.)

The second, philosophy as what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions, is a matter of taking the glasses off, of dispelling the preconceived idea of the crystalline purity of logic.

119. The results of philosophy are the uncovering of one or another piece of plain nonsense and of bumps that the understanding has got by running its head up against the limits of language. These bumps make us see the value of the discovery.

120. When I talk about language (words, sentences, etc.) I must speak the language of every day. Is this language somehow too coarse and material for what we want to say? Then how is another one to be constructed?—And how strange that we should be able to do anything at all with the one we have!

In giving explanations I already have to use language full-blown (not some sort of preparatory, provisional one); this by itself shews that I can adduce only exterior facts about language.

Yes, but then how can these explanations satisfy us?—Well, your very questions were framed in this language; they had to be expressed in this language, if there was anything to ask!

And your scruples are misunderstandings.

Your questions refer to words; so I have to talk about words.

You say: the point isn't the word, but its meaning, and you think of the meaning as a thing of the same kind as the word, though also different from the word. Here the word, there the meaning. The
money, and the cow that you can buy with it. (But contrast: money, and its use.)

Some of the limitations of philosophy are the result of questionable assumptions about what philosophy is and does. There is more to philosophy than rational discourse. The imagination was of central importance to Plato and Wittgenstein as well.

What we see is not simply a matter of passive receptivity. The making of images, both mental and visual, is a way of seeing. The images on the wall of Plato's cave and Wittgenstein's "seeing as" or conceptual seeing, are a combination of something given and something imagined.

The play of images in Plato is more than it seems to be. Like two mirrors facing each other there is an endless reflection of reflections within which the reader plays a part. The use of images is one reason why Plato was interested in Geometry. It is also one reason why he often resorts to myths, both those that existed and those he created.

The dichotomy of seeing and saying continued from the beginning to the end of Wittgenstein's writings. The creative expression of language expands upon his earlier understanding of language as propositional, and both what is seen or pictured, including the frame, moves from the transcendent to the more mundane.

A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, fo it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably. (PI 115).

I think I summed up my position vis-а-vis philosophy when I said: Philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry. (CV 28)

Do not forget that a poem, although it is composed in the language of information, is not used in the language-game of giving information. (Zettel)

Is this a useful approach ? It seems not to provide us with much. — Tom Storm

As Wittgenstein is using the term 'concept' he does not mean a rational construct, but rather, pictures of how things are. Such concepts do not provide a rational explanation, but rather, present ways of seeing things. Rational or scientific concepts stand in the way.

The expression "It is God's will" is taken to be an acknowledgement that we cannot know why things as they are. To posit a rational God you acts according to reason is to misunderstand this. It is also an acknowledgement that we are not in control.

One could read later W as a potential ally of theism in some way, right? — Tom Storm

In some ways both the earlier and later Wittgenstein are allies of theism, but in a way that is in line with what I pointed to in a previous post about "possibilities of phenomena". What he is doing clearing the ground to open up a way of looking at things. Tractarian silence is just such an opening up. But he is not an ally in the sense of providing arguments to demonstrate the existence of God.

Is there any way of conceptualizing transcendence outside of the tropes of idealism, higher consciousness, contemplative traditions or god/s? — Tom Storm

If by conceptualizing transcendence you mean a rational concept, then this is what Wittgenstein is struggling against. He retains a sense of mystery, wonder, and awe of life.