Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus'

[Dave]

After reading Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus' I came away with the feeling
that he was concerned with what we say and how we say it rather than
the truth of what is being said. In other words, he focused on
validity not soundness. He did not, as far as I can tell, say anything
about the way the world truly is except that it is rational.(By the
way, this is not a new claim as it was foundational to Greek
philosophy.) He says only that what we assert should be consistent
with what he calls atomic facts or simples which are not defined;
however, my impression is that they must be simple *observables*
suggesting a scientific rather than philosophical and surely not a
metaphysical meaning.

I also think that in writing the 'Tractatus' Wittgenstein assumed his
readers would know he was only talking about inductive rather than
deductive reasoning. I think he was trying to give inferences or
reasoning from particulars to the general the same degree of
acceptance enjoyed by deductive reasoning. That is, he wanted to
demonstrate that if one follows his rules of inductive inference, one
could claim that their conclusions follow necessarily from their
promises (true or false) as in deduction. And, I would say, with the
same tautological implications. Wittgenstein's rules of inference
stand as the subject and the result of following the rules the
predicate. So validity or consistency is demonstrated but not
soundness as the initial premises or his atomic facts are assumed to
be true in the sense of being self evident. One may ask, self evident
to whom?

If atomic facts are limited to observables and perhaps things we can
measure, he appears to limit meaningfulness to categories found in a
worldview that embraces only the material, physical or natural and
rendering as nonsense any talk about a worldview that includes
categories such as the supernatural, spiritual and the mental or
immaterial.

Is this reading of Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus' reasonable, if not where
did I go wrong?

[Chris Diederich]

It's reasonable. I would like to apply your summary to Atheism.
Atheists make truth statements. They therefor move in the realm of
metaphysics. This is a different realm than the realm of religion. In
the realm of religion, the discourse on God is completely
intelligable. If we now remove language's links to reality (as
Wittgenstein did), we discover that the discourse on God begs not the
question: true or not? but rather: salvation or not. In a world of
letters, salvation doesn't seem like a bad prospect.

[Peter Jones]

Seems about right to me, Dave.  Wittgenstein did more harm than good imho. Too clever by half. The Philosophical Investigations show us where the Tractatus leads, i.e. utter confusion.  

[sekhar goteti]

If you are trying to blame Wittgenstein by name so you have to blame language with which we speak,write and also think and feel.One simple question may help us to think of thinking.

On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 8:38 PM, Peter Jones <peterjo...@btinternet.com> wrote:

Seems about right to me, Dave.  Wittgenstein did more harm than good imho. Too clever by half. The Philosophical Investigations show us where the Tractatus leads, i.e. utter confusion.  

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