Diogenes Laertius says:

he knew nothing except just the fact of his ignorance.

but fails to provide a reference. In the same paragraph he mentions Xenophon's Symposium but I was unable to find it there.

In Plato's Apology he says that he does not know anything noble and good. (Apology 21d)

In Plato's Symposium Socrates says:

I know nothing other than matters of eros ...

(177d)
His knowledge of ignorance is not simply a matter of knowing that he is ignorant but of knowing how to proceed in the face of ignorance. Knowledge of our ignorance is essential to Socratic philosophy. His practice of inquiry stems from his not knowing, from his search for knowledge.

I have not fully studied the historiography of Socrates (anyone here?) — Lionino

I would not say I did a full study, but I did take a course, mostly centered around Guthrie's "Socrates". That was a long time ago. At the time I thought it was a dead end. The reason is that none of the main sources on Socrates - Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Plato are intended to be historical accounts. Both Plato and Xenophon write in response to Aristophanes portrayal of Socrates as a sophist.

Socrates famously proclaimed that he knew that he knew nothing. — Echogem222

Where does he say this? It is the most famous thing he never proclaimed. If you search the dialogues you will find that what he did say is quite different.

I don't see the issue that you're referring to. — 013zen

What is at issue is the relationship between Wittgenstein's indivisible propositional 'objects' and the objects we find in the world. The question of whether there are indivisible objects that make up the world. In the Notebooks he says:

And nothing seems to speak against infinite divisibility.

(NB 17.6.15)

You said:

In a sense, an object is both logical and physical. — 013zen

But Tractarian objects are not physical:

... only by the configuration of objects that they [physical objects] are produced.

(2.0231)

Objects, the unalterable, and the subsistent are one and the same.

(2.027)

An expression characterizes a form and a content" (3.31). — 013zen

A couple a points on the content of a proposition:

A proposition contains the form, but not the content, of its sense.

(3.13)

All theories that make a proposition of logic appear to have content are false.

(6.111)

We cannot infer the content of the world from the form of a proposition.

Propositions can only say how things are, not what they are.

(3.221)

We cannot say what the objects of the world are. From the Notebooks:

Our difficulty was that we kept on speaking of simple objects and were unable to mention a single one.

(21.6.15)

To my understanding, the Tractatus essentially sets up an isomorphism between thought, language, and possible/actual reality. — 013zen

It is isomorphic. That is, language and the world have the same underlying logical form. It is this form that makes it possible to say anything true or false about the world. But this says nothing about the content.

Sorry, you lost me. The passage you quoted:

"Even if the world is infinitely complex, so that every fact consists of an infinite number of atomic facts and every atomic fact is composed of an infinite number of objects, even then there must be objects and atomic facts" (Tract, 4.2211) — 013zen

Might seem to support that there are, independent of us, simple objects that combine to make the physical world. I have sometimes read it that way, but I think that is wrong. One problem is that if such objects are non-material, then how do non-material objects combine to make material objects?

The facts in logical space are the world.

(1.13)

Logical space is the space of what is possible. The facts in logical space are not the facts in physical space. The facts in physical space is a subset of the facts in logical space.

If things can occur in states of affairs, this possibility must be in them from the beginning.

(Nothing in the province of logic can be merely possible. Logic deals with every possibility and all possibilities are its facts.)

(2.0121)

"The ball" is an arrangement of objects both logically and spatiotemporally. — 013zen

If the ball is an arrangement of objects then it is composite. Objects cannot be composite. (2.021)

Wittgenstein's objects are not physical objects, they are analytical.

In the Notebooks he says:

Let us assume that every spatial object consists of infinitely many points, then it is clear that I cannot mention all these by name when I speak of that object. Here then would be a case in which I cannot arrive at the complete analysis in the old sense at all; and perhaps just this is the usual case.

He asks:

Is it, A PRIORI, clear that in analyzing we must arrive at simple components - is this, e.g., involved in the concept of analysis-, or is analysis ad infinitum possible?-Or is there in the end even a third possibility?

And in response:

And nothing seems to speak against infinite divisibility.

But:

And it keeps on forcing itself upon us that there is some simple indivisible, an element of being, in brief a thing.

(NB 17.6.15)

Whether things in the world are infinitely divisible is left open. His investigation is logical. To the question raised above as to whether we must arrive at simple components or ad infinitum analysis, his answer is a third possibility.

The simple thing for us is: the simplest thing that we are acquainted with.--The simplest thing which our analysis can attain-it need appear only as a protopicture, as a variable in our propositions-that is the simple thing that we mean and look for.

(11.5.15)

Wittgenstein's concern is propositional analysis, not physical analysis.

When the sense of the proposition is completely expressed in the proposition itself, the proposition is always divided into its simple components-no further division is possible and an apparent one is superfluous-and these are objects in the original sense.

(17.6.15)

We do not have to dissect a frog to make sense of the proposition: "The frog jumps". In this proposition the frog is a simple object. If, however, the proposition was about the nervous system of a frog, the name 'frog' would not serve as a simple name.

The demand for simple things is the demand for definiteness of sense.

(18.6.15)

When he says that no further division is possible, this is because we have arrived at the simple propositional names, not at some imagined indivisible entities. Wittgenstein's simples are not Democrates' atoms. Further division is superfluous because it would not make better sense of the proposition.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Putting the government in charge of reporting the news is a nod toward allowing propoganda. — Hanover

This would be a problem if the government was in charge, but it's not.

That was a pro-Biden, anti-Israel, anti-Trump conversation. — Hanover

Without a transcript I can only address this in general terms.

Did one of the participants represent the view of NPR?

What does anti-Israel mean?

Is NPR opposed to the state of Israel? One can be opposed to the war without being anti-Israel.

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".

Implicit in this argument is the additonal argument that if a news outlet doesn't adequately promote the correct ethical side, financial pressure should be placed upon that outlet to get it to change its course.

I'd argue that it is this type of reasoning that has led to the politicalization and delegitimization of much of media where you go only to your own personal trusted news source for any information. — Hanover

I do not think it is a question of whether financial pressure should be placed on the outlet. It is, rather, that readers, listeners, and viewers turn to those outlets that align with their own opinions. The dollars follow.

The article makes clear that NYT readers believe the NYT has an ethical duty to promote Biden and never to provide fodder to the right. — Hanover

Does it? What did I miss?

As a NYT reader who often reads the comment section attached to articles I do not think this claim is true.

My question is whether anyone disagrees with what I've said and believes that the press has a duty to stake out a preferred social objective and then to use its power to promote that objective? — Hanover

The press has a duty to the truth. To put it in terms of "a preferred social objective" is to reduce questions of truth to a matter of preference. The idea of neutrality is a myth with its own preferred social objective.

Do you see the press as a legitimate political force ... — Hanover

Yes. But only if it is free.

... leaving to the reader the conclusions he wishes to draw? — Hanover

The editorial and opinion sections are the place for making persuasive arguments from which the reader can draw his own conclusions.

As usual, in your compulsive attempt to defend Trump you have lost track of the argument. Go back to the beginning.

Thankfully the justices can all read the plain language of the Constitution. — NOS4A2

The objection in the concurrence is that the decision went beyond the plain language of the Constitution regarding the question of whether the state of Colorado has the authority to disqualify Trump.

I think I might like pineapple. I usually make 2 or 3 pizzas, so maybe I will!

I don't think I would like a pizza with the sweet red stuff called BBQ sauce. That is why I have not tried it, or if I did I did not find it memorable.

I would try pineapple but my wife says no.

I do a few variations on white. With ricotta or without.

I do not recall doing barbecue. The tikka masala started as a joke. We were talking about what to make next and my son said tikka masala. If he had said barbecue I would have tried it, We like the tikka masala on occasion but the barbecue might have been one and done.

You're quoting the concurring opinion. — NOS4A2

Yes, I am. I said this several times. They were there and heard and participated in all the arguments. You were't and you didn't. But with your fine legal mind, perhaps you can explain to them why they are wrong.

With regard to the irrelevant issue of insurrection. The fact is, the majority of the senate voted to convict Trump. The fact that he was not convicted has much more to do with politics than with his responsibility for what happened. It is, however, a moot point. For two reasons. First, the court did not address the issue. Their decision has nothing to do with it. Second, even if Congress was in agreement that he is an insurrectionist, procedures are not in place to do anything about it.

The majority mentioned the laws already in place to jail and disqualify insurrectionists from office. — NOS4A2

The majority said:

Congress must “prescribe” specific procedures to “ascertain” when an individual is disqualified under the 14th Amendment.

Those specific procedures do not exist. Without such procedures Congress could be in 100% agreement that a candidate is guilty of insurrection and still not be able to declare him ineligible.

They probably should have mentioned that Trump was already acquitted of insurrection, as well. — NOS4A2

First, what they said is not limited to Trump. It effects all future candidates. Second, the majority of senators voted to convict Trump — 57 to 43, including seven Republicans. But this fell short of the 2-thirds majority required.

... on the basis of some hare-brained theory, — NOS4A2

The court did not determine that it is a hare -brained theory. The issue was whether the states rather than the federal government has the authority to disqualify insurrectionist candidates, not that a candidate guilty of insurrection should be disqualified.

There is one issue brought before the court and decided by the court. Per Curium. 9-0. And that was whether those who tried to remove Trump from the ballot were wrong in doing so. They were. You ignore it. — NOS4A2

Right. There was one issue. It was decided unanimously that eligibility is a federal rather than state matter. The court should have stopped there. It didn't.

Let me repeat that since you fail to understand it:

The court should have stopped there. It didn't.

The majority says that Congress must “prescribe” specific procedures to “ascertain” when an individual is disqualified under the 14th Amendment. Such procedures, of course, do not exist today. And without them, the majority insists—in just a few paragraphs of sparse reasoning—the insurrection clause cannot be enforced against office seekers.

(https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/03/supreme-court-trump-colorado-ballot-disaster.html)

There are two issues. You ignore the second. Although the petition raised a single
question, that is, the first issue, the court's main opinion did not stop there as it should have and reached a second opinion.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in their joint concurrence, that the court's main opinion:

... reaches out to decide Section 3 questions not before us, and to foreclose future efforts to disqualify a Presidential candidate under that provision. In a sensitive case crying out for judicial restraint, it abandons that course.

This is not my spin. It is a direct quote from them. It is judicial overreach. It has direct bearing not only on Trump but future insurrectionist attempts.

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.

As expected, your spin veers off from the truth. What they determined is that this is not a matter to be decided at the state level. However:

“Although federal enforcement of Section 3 is in no way at issue, the majority announced novel rules for how that enforcement must operate,” Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in their joint concurrence, referring to the section of the 14th Amendment that contains the insurrection clause. The court’s main opinion, those three justices wrote, “reaches out to decide Section 3 questions not before us, and to foreclose future efforts to disqualify a Presidential candidate under that provision. In a sensitive case crying out for judicial restraint, it abandons that course.”

(bold added)

In their opinion the court's decision went too far.

The decision hints as how the majority might vote on the question of presidential immunity. The court did not weigh in on the question of insurrection, but the concern of the three justices is that even if Congress were to find Trump or any other presidential candidate guilty of insurrection, the decision, in overstepping the limits of the case, forecloses future efforts by Congress to disqualify an insurrectionist candidate.

What started years ago as a hobby eventually became a requirement.

Bread - french, focaccia, ciabatta, semolina, sourdough, cinnamon, cranberry walnut, naan

Pizza - anything from Margherita, to seafood - clam, scallops, shrimp, to goat cheese sun dried tomatoes and asparagus, to chicken tikka masala, to apple

Liberalism as we now understand it is the idea that no conception of the good life is to be imposed, and everyone is to be allowed to pursue their own notion of the good life. — Leontiskos

As expressed in the Declaration of Independence: the pursuit of happiness. But this does not mean, do whatever you think makes you happy. In his recent book constitutional scholar Jeffery Rosen argues that the term as used by the Founders traces back before the philosophers of Liberalism to the classical philosophers such as Aristotle and Cicero. The pursuit of happiness is deliberative and public minded. It is not self interested but a matter of the 'common good' and 'general welfare'.

My earlier comment about epistemology was in jest, and yet that seems to have been your read on these Daoist "parables." — ENOAH

I am in agreement with Wittgenstein when he says:

The language used by philosophers is already deformed, as though by shoes that are too tight.

[CV, p. 47].

Just as shoes that are too tight make it difficult to walk, the language used by philosophers makes it difficult to think.

To read Zhuagzi in terms of the theories and problems of epistemology can put us in a bind - disputes over in what way he is or is not in line with this or that epistemological claim. An objection would be that he misuses the term 'know'.

I don't agree that Plato ignored Socrates. On my reading he is a Socratic philosopher. He too knows that he does not know and demonstrates to other that they do not know either. At best, as Timaeus puts it, we have "likely stories". If you are interested I have several threads of varying length and detail on some of the dialogues:

Timaeus

Phaedo

metaphysics

Socratic Philosophy

Euthyphro

You cut the story short:

Huizi [his friend] said, “I’m not you, so I certainly don’t know what you know. And since you’re not a fish, you don’t know what fish like. There, perfect!”
Zhuangzi said, “Let’s go back to the beginning. When you asked how I knew what fish like, you had to know I knew already in order to ask. I know it by the Hao River—that’s how.

The word ‘how’ can also be translated ‘where’. In other words, he knows it relative to his own perspective, from a bridge above the water. That is, from where they are standing looking at the fish. But Huizi is also standing on the bridge. When Zhuangzi suggests going back to the beginning it is not just the beginning of their conversation but back to what it means to know something.

Elsewhere Zhuangzi says:

Only as I know things myself do I know them.

Knowing the limits of his perspective is to know things in a way that differs from him not knowing his limits. I discuss this in a thread I started on Zhuangzi

If there were a law of causality, it might be put in the following way: There are laws of nature.
But of course that cannot be said: it makes itself manifest.

(6.36)

Why can't this be said? Of course he can say the words, he just did, but:

We cannot infer the events of the future from those of the present.
Belief in the causal nexus is superstition.

(5.1361)

There is no compulsion making one thing happen because another has happened. The
only necessity that exists is logical necessity.

(6.37)

The law of causality is not a law but the form of a law.

(6.32)

The form is the method used to describe the world not what is described.

All such propositions, including the principle of sufficient reason, the laws of continuity in nature and of least effort in nature, etc. etc.— all these are a priori insights about the forms in which the propositions of science can be cast.

(6.34)

But they seem to be as inscrutable, and hence as propositionally useless, as Kant's 'things in themselves' — Janus

I agree that they are inscrutable and propositionally useless, but Wittgenstein's argument is about the possibility of propositions.

Just as elementary facts consist of objects, elementary proposition consists of names. (4.22)

We now have to answer a priori the question about all the possible forms of elementary
propositions.

Since, however, we are unable to give the number of names with different meanings, we are
also unable to give the composition of elementary propositions.

(5.55)

Simple names function as the names of simple objects, but this does not mean they name things in the way tables and chairs do. They are not the names of 'this' or 'that'. They are about the form not the content of propositions.

Do you read it as suggesting that we can know any "internal properties" of objects, or is all we can know of objects "external properties"? — Janus

Well, to begin we would have to identify the objects.Wittgenstein does not do this. We do not even know what these objects are let alone knowing internal or external properties except that internal to them they must have the ability to combine with other objects.

Cheers. — Banno

l'chaim.

But where is this used by Wittgenstein in the Tractatus? — Banno

Where is what used?

objects by themselves don't do much of anything — Sam26

Objects contain within them all of the possible ways in which they can combine.

If I know an object I also know all its possible occurrences in states of affairs.
(Every one of these possibilities must be part of the nature of the object.) (2.0123)

As you point out, we have no examples of objects. This raises the question of in what way we can know these objects.

If I am to know an object, though I need not know its external properties, I must know all
its internal properties. (2.01231)

If all objects are given, then at the same time all possible states of affairs are also given. (20124)

It would seem that we know these objects in so far as they are the source of the possibilities of the world. From themselves they generate the world through the ways in which they combine.

There is a bottom up order to the universe.

From what I've read and heard things in this statement are not objects. — Sam26

2.01:

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

A combination of elementary objects would be a state of affairs. A table is a combination of elementary objects. A fact of the world.

We're not at the object stage yet. — Sam26

I think that this is where he is at. This is what he begins with. Elementary configurations of elementary objects. But what he says would also be the case with compound objects or things. The world is not a collection of separate things.

Facts for Wittgenstein are states of affairs which are not things (not a list of things like table, chairs, mountains, etc), but the arrangement of things and their relationship to each other. — Sam26

By 'things' he means simple or elementary objects not configurations of things such as tables and chairs.

Objects are simple.

(2.02)

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

(2.021)

Tables and chairs are composite. This is not nit picking. It is essential for understanding both the ontology of the Tractatus and the logical structure of language.


.

In a now famous letter to von Ficker Wittgenstein says:

The book's point is an ethical one. I once meant to include in the preface a sentence which is not in fact there now but which I will write out for you here, because it will perhaps be a key to the work for you. What I meant to write, then, was this: My work consists of two parts: the one presented here plus all that I have not written. And it is precisely this second part that is the important one. My book draws limits to the sphere of the ethical from the inside as it were, and I am convinced that this is the ONLY rigorous way of drawing those limits. In short, I believe that where many others today are just gassing. I have managed in my book to put everything firmly in place by being silent about it. And for that reason, unless I am very much mistaken, the book will say a great deal that you yourself want to say. Only perhaps you won't see that it is said in the book. For now, I would recommend you to read the preface and the conclusion, because they contain the most direct expression of the point of the book.

Ethical claims are meaningless but ethics is not. Ethics lies outside the limits of logical constructs and analysis. It is experiential , existential. From within the world, logic. From without, ethics and aesthetics. The two transcendentals of the Tractatus.

Best drop this. It is a side line and rather pointless. — Banno

Sure, we can drop it. But what it means for the limit of my language to be the limit of my world is not a side line and is not pointless.

We cannot a priori construct all true propositions and cannot do so a posteriori either unless we knew of all the facts of the world.

As to the claim:

if you have all the true propositions, then you have completely described the world. — Banno

it is a tautology. If you could say everything true about the world, then you could say everything true about the world.

Nowhere does Wittgenstein say that we cannot know all the facts. Nowhere is that relevant to his argument. — Banno

Immediately before saying the limits of my language means the limits of my world. (5.6)

He says:

If I cannot say a priori what elementary propositions there are, then the attempt to do so must lead to obvious nonsense.

(5.571)

The idea of having all true propositions is nonsense.

The application of logic decides what elementary propositions there are.
What belongs to its application, logic cannot anticipate.
It is clear that logic must not clash with its application.
But logic has to be in contact with its application.
Therefore logic and its application must not overlap.

(5.557)

Logic tells is there must be elementary propositions, but cannot determine what they are. This requires a move from logic to its application, from form to content. The claim that the world is the totality of facts is a priori,. From this we know nothing about any of the facts of the world, what they are, how many there are, or what the totality of them is.

Of course if we did have all the true propositions we would have a complete description of the world! But positing this hypothetical condition does not explain Wittgenstein's claim that the limits of my language means the limits of my world. The limits of my language does not include the totality of true propositions.

My language is limited by my life:

So too at death the world does not alter, but comes to an end.(6.432)
The world and life are one. (5.621)
I am my world. (5.63)

One need not put aside the question of truth, but the question of whether what he says is true should not come before the question of what it is he is saying. What he is saying is what is at issue.

I don't know what this is supposed to mean. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle didn't think rational inquiry was useful? Is Plato sceptical of the dialectical having any utility? This would seem strange. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Both terms 'zetetic' and 'skeptic' originally meant inquiry. It is not skepticism in the modern dogmatic sense, which denies the possibility of knowledge, but rather an acknowledgement that one does not possess knowledge. Hence, to proceed by inquiry, which in large part is dialectical, that is, via argument.

... he also seems to allow that they can point to, aid in the remembrance of, knowledge (e.g. the Meno teaching scene) — Count Timothy von Icarus

Recollection (anamnesis) is a myth. As a reasoned argument it suffers from the problem infinite regress. There must have been some previous life in which one learned what in later lives is recollected. In that case knowledge would not be recollection.

Recollection also plays a part in our life here and now. In the Phaedo Socrates gives the following example:

Well now, you know what happens to lovers, whenever they see a lyre or cloak or anything else their loves are accustomed to use: they recognize the lyre, and they get in their mind, don't they, the form of the boy whose lyre it is? And that is recollection. Likewise, someone seeing Simmias is often reminded of Cebes, and there'd surely be countless other such cases.

(73b-d)

There seems to be no distinction here between recollection and being reminded of something. In the example given recollection is independent of stories of death. Simmias must be reminded of the argument that learning is recollection. If he is to learn that learning is recollection he learns it by being reminded of the story, not by recollecting something from a previous life. As he says:

'I don't doubt it,' said Simmias; 'but I do need to undergo just what the argument is about, to be "reminded".

It should not escape notice that he says "undergo". Accepting the story is more like an indoctrination than simply hearing the story.

A person must be ruled over by the rational part of the soul to leave the cave — Count Timothy von Icarus

Reason functions in the same way in the cave:

And suppose they received certain honours and praises from one another, and there were privileges for whoever discerns the passing shadows most keenly, and is best at remembering which of them usually comes first or last, which are simultaneous, and on that basis is best able to predict what is going to happen next.

(Republic 516c-d)

Reason can rule even for us ignorant cave dwellers who are not ruled by the myth of transcendence.