[Wittrs] Re: some helpful guidelines for reading Wittgenstein's philo...

> [ more to follow, a work in progress ]
>
> Kirby
>

5.  The picture theory of meaning in the TLP sets language off from
the world (yet joins them at "the limits").

Discussion:

The TLP's atomism represents language as a simulcrum of the world
operating internally to the world, like a reflecting crystal ball
aimed at providing a faithful isomorphism or homeomorphism (dimensions
missing) by means of projective geometry (logic).  This language
mapping to not-language breaks down at the end of the day, but we want
to see how and why (the TLP is our guide)

6.  The partially overlapping language games analogy in the PI
intermixes language and the world every step of the way

Discussion:

The author of the PI has already experienced the TLP's ladder and
thrown it away.  We could think of TLP as "lowering a ladder" from a
state of realization to a person schooled in the logic of Russell and
Frege.  The PI aims to communicate similar findings regarding the
interplay of the eternally meaningful versus the spatio-temporal
(special case) but by staying very close to the vernacular, not
requiring special schooling in logic as a means to an end.  You still
need to be able to think clearly though, or you won't understand.

7.  The PI and TLP are both concerned with "judgment day".

Discussion:

Yes and no (we have to decipher what that means, before we sign off or
not).  "Every day is judgment day" might be a paradigm Wittgensteinian
bumper sticker, meaning we're condemned to suffer by our wrong
concepts sometimes, and coming to see aright doesn't necessarily
require any changes in "the facts of the matter" i.e. we're not
bottle-necking around some "just around the corner" scientific finding
that will prove we were right or wrong about some matter of fact.  In
religious terms, God's grace is orthogonal to the arrow of time in
that some kinds of enlightenment change the context, not the content,
of the world.  In this sense, the self partakes of the eternal i.e. is
"outside the world" (what is the case).

Kirby

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