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problems of philosophy can be solved by coming to a proper understanding of how

language works.

Language has an underlying logical structure. we have to make sense of that.

Our thought is mirrored in our language.

what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about, we must

consign to silence. It means: what can be expressed by propositions SHOULD be

expressed in proposiitons of language and what cannot be expressed should. not be

talked about at all.

ethics aesthetics religion etc are not themselves ruled out as nonsensical, it is only

an attempt to say anything about them which is so. showing rather saying is what

is possible.

unwritten second half of tractatus is the unsaid portion, which is more important.

his task is to reveal the nature of language and its relations to the world. (how

meaning attaches to the propositions we assert)

Main argument of tractatus:

Both language and the world, Wittgenstein says, have a structure. Language consists

in propositions, and these are compounds made up of what he calls elementary propositions,

which in turn are combinations of names. Names are the ultimate constituents of language.

Correspondingly, the world consists in the totality of facts, and facts are compounded out of

states of affairs , which in turn are compounded out of objects. Each level of structure in

language matches a level of structure in the world. The objects, which are the ultimate

constituents of the world, are denoted by the ultimate constituents of language, the names;

names combine to form elementary propositions, which correspond to states of affairs; and
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each of these further combine to form, respectively, propositions and the facts which, in a

sense to be explained, those propositions picture . Here, in a crude preliminary form, is a

representation of the two parallel structures:

propositions facts

elementary propositions states of affairs

names objects

The correspondence between elementary propositions and states of affairs is

constituted by the fact that the names out of which elementary propositions are built denote

the objects out of which their correspondent states of affairs are built; the arrangement of

the names logically mirrors or pictures the arrangement of the objects in states of

affairs. It is in virtue of this picturing relation that the propositions compounded out of

elementary propositions have sense. This is the picture theory of meaning which lies at the

heart of the Tractatus, constituting the explanation of how language and the world are

connected, and therefore of how meaning attaches to what we say when we use language

correctly. Much more will be said of this below.

The elementary propositions are logically independent of each other. Because this is

so, we need to say which of them are true and which false in order to give a complete account

of reality. This is equivalent to saying that reality consists of all possible states of affairs,

whether existing or non-existing. In other words, how everything actually is in reality

depends upon what is and what is not the case; and that is why we need to know which

elementary propositions are true and which false, for only then can we specify how things

actually stand in reality.

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Propositions are formed out of elementary propositions by the truth-functional

connectives (more exactly, by a single truth-functional connective in terms of which all the

others can be defined). They are therefore truth-functions of elementary propositions.

Because they depend for their own truth-value on the truth-values of the elementary

propositions which constitute them, propositions will be true or false according to the

distribution of the truth-values among the elementary propositions. But there are two

important cases where this is not so: one in which a proposition is true no matter what its

constituents' truthvalues, and the other in which a proposition is false no matter what its

constituents' truth-values. In the first case the proposition is a tautology, always true; in the

second it is a contradiction, always false. The true propositions of logic are tautologies, and

the true propositions of mathematics may be considered so too. Neither logical nor

mathematical propositions say anything about the world, however, because in virtue of

their always being true they are consistent with any way the world could happen to be (with

the existence or non-existence of any state of affairs).

When a sign or string of signs fails to express a proposition it is nonsense. It is not

that such a sign or string of signs says something false; it is that it says nothing at all, for it

fails to picture anything in the world and hence has no connection with the world.

Wittgenstein includes most of the propositions of philosophy in this class. Because

this is so, he says at the end of the Tractatus: My propositions serve as elucidations in the

following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when

he has used them as steps to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the

ladder after he has climbed up it.) (T 6.54; the image of the discardable ladder comes from

Schopenhauer.) The limits of what can significantly be said, and therefore thought, thus turn
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out to be imposed by the structure of both language and the world, and by the way they

connect with each other through the picturing relation. Only when such a connection obtains

do our signs (the expressions of our language) have sense. And because the content of ethics,

religion, and the problems of life lie outside the world outside the realm of facts and their

constituent states of affairs nothing can be said about them. To try to say anything about them

is, given the way language works, to fall into nonsense. This does not, as mentioned, mean

that ethics and the rest are themselves nonsense. It is only the attempt to talk about them

which is so. In Wittgenstein's view, matters of ethical and religious significance show

themselves; they cannot be stated. Wittgenstein considered this to be a crucially important

point, and was careful to indicate that the ultimate aim of the Tractatus is indeed to reveal, via

the argument about language (thought) and the manner of its connection with the world, just

what the status of ethical and religious values is.

1.0 to 2.063 - deal with ontology. What the world is fundamentally made of.

- objects #statesofaffairs #facts #case

What we encounter in the world are never objects but facts, states of affairs.

facts: objects in relations

facts: actualized states of affairs

states of affairs: combinations of objects

case: the fact that holds

World is the totality of all states of affairs that are the case.

World is always a relational world. Objects are in relation with one another.

objects are unanalyzable. They can exist only in the context of state of affairs.
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Objects have a logical form which determines how they are connected with other

objects.

He was opposed to overarching speculative philosophical systems. Reality is what

is thinkable and what is linguistically available.

2.1 to 4.128 - how language works so that it describe the world accurately

In our thought complexes, propositions are represented.

To understand the world, we have to understand the nature of propositions.

These propositions have logical structures.

Facts are there in a logical space and logical space is what there is in the world.

Now, logic deals with necessary truths. For wittgenstein, there are no synthetic a

priori truths.

Logical truths are not truths about the world, but they form a logical space which

limits the world of comprehension of humans using language.

logically necessary propositions are a kind of by-product of the ordinary use of

propositions to state facts

Kant says that our cognitive capacities structure the world. Wittgenstein says that

language structures the world. For him, a lot of things have been said in

philosophy which should not have been the case.

It is not that language deceives us. But we miuse language. There are certain

limits to our language.

For EW, meaning does not originate from the constituents of the proposition, its

grammatical structure but from the whole proposition itself and its location in

the world.
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All languages have a uniform logical structure. They differ because of their

difference in surface level structures.

Language games: When we use a language, we are actually playing a game like

chess in which there are certain rules which are internal to it and which we need to

follow.

EW tries to take a middle path between logical atomism and logical positivism.

FOR COURSE, 3, 4 AND 5 OF TRACTATUS ARE IMPORTANT.

@: Philosophy of language (Witt)

Witt starts with proposition

When we encounter the word, we do not encounter discrete objects. What I

encounter always in objects in relations.

The world is that is the case: the world is relational in nature. What we really get

are certain facts about the world. The world is constituted of things in relations.

Facts: things in relations

If you get one fact, you get all facts. Because there is a logical connection between

them

What is represented in out thought are complexes: These are propositions. When

we represent the world, we do it in propositional world. To understand the world,

we need to understand the nature of the proposition. To understand propositions,

we need to investigate into logic. Since logic is concerned with relations between
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propositions. Once this logical structure is known to us, we can go back and start

looking at the world.

Logical space? Akin to Noumena of Kant?

What the philosophers have been saying about the world, cannot be said about the

world. We see it in limits of logical space.

Philosophy as therapy. It looks at its own ways of functioning.

For Witt, logic deals with necessary truths.

Two types of necessary truths for Frege. Informative (contingent) and non-

informative. Influenced by Kant.

For Witt, all necessary truths are tautologies. (non-informative). They are just

ideas of relation. Logical truths are not truth but without them, we cannot talk

about the world. They are preconditions about any speech.

SO, limits of our thought (language) are necessarily limited. Because they are

derived from logic. And hence there is a certain boundary.

And the task of philosopher to locate the conditions, the area and spread of logical

space These conditions are not part of the logical space.

Logical truths are not truths about the world. And there is a great divide between

logical and factual truths.

difference between showing and seeing.

For Kant, I is not part of the phenomenal world. For Witt, logical truths measure

the limits of world we can talk about =, and yet logical truths are not part of that

world.

For him, limits of language lie in the absolute necessities.

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Essential nature of language can be derived from the actual language. Those truths

which are universally valid are vacuous.

A proposition gives us some information of the world if and only if we can think

(conceive) of its opposite. Information is connected with misinformation. a

proposition p gives us information if we can think of (not)p.

The sum up: What cannot be said. Draw a limit to thinking, or rather: not

thinking.

When we draw a boundary around our thought/language, we should have an idea

of what lies on both sides of the boundary.

Philosophy does not progress in a linear manner like science. We come back again

and again to the same set of problems. (Preface of tractatus)

How can this task of plotting the logical space be carried out by the philosopher?

Witt. does in two phases.

First, he tries to get into the centre of the discourse. Understand the nature

of elementary propositions. At the heart of factual discourse, there are

elementary propositions.

From the heart of elementary propositions, he starts going out to find the

boundary which limits.

Elementary propositions? -

All nonfactual discourse is nonsensical. This nonsense is not non-useful.

All factual propositions are to be analyzed into elementary propositions.

This gives his picture theory. Nature of elementary propositions can be

deduced from the picture theory.

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It is simple: that elementary propositions (EP) differ from each other in

terms of being logically unconnected (is it true?). No logical connection

between them.

Later he will come to the point that, EP are pictures of atomic propositions.

Three questions to answer to understand the nature of EP

what is a theory of meaning?

how do we establish a theory of meaning?

how do we deduce that language has limits based on this theory of

meaning?

If we answer these three questions, we come to the nature of EP.

His theory of meaning is. based on two axioms:

Every factual proposition should have a precise sense. To say that a

proposition has a precise sense is to allow draw a sharp line around

what are necessarily implied.

And the sense is pictorial.

The sense of a proposition is a function of its implication. It means

that a proposition always implies some other proposition. What the

proposition implies constitutes its sense. To make sense of a

proposition is to understand its implications.

If the proposition is true, then it is necessarily the case that its

implicated propositions are also true.

WHAT I THINK IS WHAT WITTGENSTEIN ENDS UP DOING IS limit THE

DISCOURSE OF LOGIC. He seems to be saying that logic should not enter the
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domain of ethics or religion. This is what he should have concluded. And

Witgenstein actually defined the limits of language, which he actually accepts. His

statement, that we should not speak of what I cannot speak, is overblown. He did a

great service. By