[Wittrs] Some Views on the Tractatus from the Philosophical Community
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2010 01:47:43 -0000
Should folks here deem it interesting to look more closely at the Tractatus,
either piecemeal or as a whole, here are some good places for us to start:
http://philpapers.org/rec/CHETDO-4
This paper aims to argue against the resolute reading, and offer a correct way
of reading Wittgenstein'sTractatus. According to the resolute reading, nonsense
can neither say nor show anything. The Tractatus does not advance any theory of
meaning, nor does it adopt the notion of using signs in contravention of
logical syntax. Its sentences, except a few constituting the frame, are all
nonsensical. Its aim is merely to liberate nonsense utterers from nonsense. I
argue that these points are either not distinctive from standard
interpretations or incorrect. Instead, the Tractarian elucidations help to shed
light on the nature of language and logic, and introduce the correct method in
philosophy. Philosophy deals with philosophical utterances and Tractarian
elucidations by pointing out that they are nonsensical. By doing this, one is
helped to see that what they appear to be saying is shown by significant
propositions saying something else.
http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=16246
"Roger White's book on the Tractatus is an exemplary work. It succeeds in
introducing the novice to the logical and metaphysical doctrines needed to
navigate the archipelago of epigrams that constitute the Tractatus. It also
succeeds in advancing our understanding of those doctrines. One is left with a
profound impression of the Janus-faced features of the Tractatus, features that
enabled Russell and Ramsey to make sense of the Tractatus as a work of
discursive genius but eventually led Wittgenstein to recognise that what he had
written was nonsense."
"What does it mean to draw a "limit" and why would one want to draw one? It was
common ground between Russell and Wittgenstein that Russell's paradox resulted
from our transgressing the limits of what may legitimately be thought or said.
Russell attempted to provide a resolution of the paradox by establishing a new,
scientific way of talking, a perfect language governed by the theory of types,
whose strictures on what could legitimately be said would exert a constraining
rational influence upon us, preventing our transgressing those limits and
straying into paradox and nonsense. But the difficulty with the theory of types
is that any attempt to state it violates the theory's own type restrictions. So
Russell's attempt to state the limits of language and thought is self-defeating
because the theory of types he employs is, by its own lights, nonsense.
Wittgenstein therefore proposed an alternative way of drawing a limit to what
could legitimately be thought or said. His idea was if we understand the way
our ordinary language already works, its implicit logical syntax, then
Russell's paradox would already have been dealt with from within, from the
resources already given to us. How so? Because, as White puts the point, 'a
complete account of the logical syntax would set the limits of language, not by
stating what those limits were, but simply because the offending sentences
would never be generated' (WTLP: 10, see also 24, 119).
"To provide a complete account of logical syntax that enables us to appreciate
the limits of thought and language Wittgenstein sets himself the extraordinary
-- really jaw-dropping -- programme of establishing "the general form of the
proposition", the form that captures what is common to every possible
proposition. As White explains it, 'the general form of a proposition would
show the limits of language since it would establish a systematic way of
generating every possible proposition, and what could not be so generated would
be thereby shown to be nonsense' (WTLP: 11). White breaks this programme down
into three stages: first to discover the nature of the proposition; second, to
demonstrate that there is such a beast as the general form of a proposition;
third, to carry out the technical task of specifying what that form is. The
ensuing commentary of WTLP is designed to illuminate in detail the different
ways in which the different sections of the Tractatus contribute to the
execution of this programme."
http://www.lycos.com/info/ludwig-wittgenstein--tractatus-logico-philosophicus.html?page=2
In the Tractatus Wittgenstein's logical construction of a philosophical system
has a purpose ? to find the limits of world, thought and language; in other
words, to distinguish between sense and nonsense. "The book will ? draw a limit
to thinking, or rather ? not to thinking, but to the expression of thoughts ?.
The limit can ? only be drawn in language and what lies on the other side of
the limit will be simply nonsense" (TLP Preface). The conditions for a
proposition's having sense have been explored, and seen to rest on the
possibility of representation or picturing. Names must have a bedeutung
(reference/meaning), but they can only do so in the context of a proposition
which is held together by logical form. It follows that only factual states of
affairs which can be pictured, can be represented by meaningful propositions.
Source: plato.stanford.edu
With the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein became the founder of
logical empiricism, the representatives of which ... met at the Wittgenstein
House for a time and became known as the Vienna Circle. However, Wittgenstein's
thought certainly did not come to a halt with the Tractatus, which had been
published by 1922. At the urging of Bertrand Russell, in particular, he
returned to Cambridge in 1929, became a fellow of Trinity College and was
eventually appointed Professor of Philosophy. He worked continually on his
second main work, the Philosophical Investigations, which only appeared after
his death. He now doubted many of his early opinions and completely discarded
the ideal of exactness he had previously postulated. Logic itself became
suspect to him. Source: goethe.de
The brilliant, gnomic, and influential Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)
was the only book Wittgenstein published in his lifetime (1889-1951). This book
offered an elaboration of its prefatory dictum, "What can be said at all can be
said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent." Many
philosophers have argued that Wittgenstein believed that the truths which one
could not speak - those supposedly found in ethics, religion, and philosophy
itself, for example - could still be 'shown'. A new, alternative
interpretation, associated especially with Cora Diamond and James Conant, is
that Wittgenstein meant the dictum quoted above quite austerely and resolutely
- that there was simply nothing to be said about what cannot be said. On this
interpretation, Wittgenstein was quite in earnest when he wrote that the
Tractatus itself was nonsense. The illusions of sense that it produced would be
thrown away by one who, in reading it, understood his point in writing it.
Source: philosophers.co.uk
Wittgenstein wrote copiously after his return to Cambridge, and arranged much
of his writing into an array of incomplete manuscripts. Some thirty thousand
pages existed at the time of his death. Much, but by no means all, of this has
been sorted and released in several volumes. During his "middle work" in the
1920s and 1930s, much of his work involved attacks from various angles on the
sort of philosophical perfectionism embodied in the Tractatus. Of this work,
Wittgenstein published only a single paper, "Remarks on Logical Form," which
was submitted to be read for the Aristotelian Society and published in their
proceedings. By the time of the conference... Wittgenstein had repudiated the
essay as worthless, and gave a talk on the concept of infinity instead. Source:
en.wikipedia.org
Wittgenstein believed the Tractatus had solved all the problems of philosophy
and decided to become a Primary school teacher. However, he began to see flaws
in it (notably through discussions with Piero Sraffa a Marxist economist) and
this soon led him into thoughts which would become the foundations for his
other greatly influential book Philosophical Investigations. Through his
discussions with Sraffa, Wittgenstein began to see the social and interactive
nature of language. Furthermore, he now rejected the idea that the meaning of a
word was the thing it stood for. Not all words needed to be so clearly defined.
Vagueness is not always a weakness. Source: faithnet.org.uk
Wittgenstein's view of what philosophy is, or should be, changed little over
his life. In the Tractatus he says at 4.111 that "philosophy is not one of the
natural sciences," and at 4.112 "Philosophy aims at the logical clarification
of thoughts." Philosophy is not descriptive but elucidatory. Its aim is to
clear up muddle and confusion. It follows that philosophers should not concern
themselves so much with what is actual, keeping up with the latest
popularizations of science, say, which Wittgenstein despised. The philosopher's
proper concern is with what is possible, or rather with what is conceivable.
Source: iep.utm.edu
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