TRACTATUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS

Author: Ludwig Wittgenstein

Year: 2014 (1922)

Publisher: Norstedts

Language: Swedish (translator: Sten Andersson)

DISCLAIMER: What follows is in no way the thoughts of a trained philosopher. The ideas and concepts herein are not based on formal studies of either contemporary or classic or ancient thinking, nor have they been examined or tested by philosophical scholars for accuracy and coherence. For all intents and purposes, this is the work of a dilettante.

And so is my review.

Tractatus logico-philosophicus was written by an Austrian engineer and wunderkind who never underwent any organised education or conducted any studies in the field. It is not only possible but moreover likely, that most of you who read these lines would be able to produce a more comprehensive philosophical bibliography than the man who is frequently cited as one of the most influential philosophy professors of the 20^th century: Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Despite this, Tractatus has become one of the most admired philosophical books in history. Trying to offer an analysis of this puzzling text would make me an even greater fool than I most of the time pretend not to be. However, one would have sadly wasted one’s time if after having read Tractatus, not a single new thought had sprung to life in one’s head. The first time I tried to read Tractatus was two decades ago. I read it as I would any other book: from cover to cover. To my disappointment, the contents made no sense to me whatsoever. Recently, I tried a different approach and read it from top to bottom, as it were. It still did not make much sense but I think that this time around I misunderstood it in a – shall we say – more useful way.

In order to properly address this piece, it is helpful to first understand the man who wrote it, the purpose of it being written at all, and the age in which it would have made sense to write it. For an incomplete sketch, I humbly refer to my previous review (“Filosofen som inte ville tala” by Sten Andersson) published on Facebook the 8^th of December.

Tractatus posits seven main claims (“propositions” in Frank Ramsey’s and C.K. Ogden’s traditional translation) about the world. Each claim is then followed up by explanations and clarifications in bullet points following the pattern:  1. Claim, 1.n Explanation to 1, 1.n.m Explanation to 1.n, etc. until we reach 2. Consequence of 1., 3. Consequence of 2. and so forth. 

I propose to read the book in the following way: First read the headline propositions 1 through 7. This will give you a broad outline of the book. Then read 1.1, 1.2, ... 1.n until the end of proposition 1. Proceed to Proposition 2 and read 2.1, 2.2, ... 2.n until you exhaust that proposition. Once you have done this for all 7 propositions (proposition 7 is only one point), it is time to dive into the details. Re-read Propositon 1 and point 1.1 and then all lower level points for that proposition. For each point you read, refer back to the nearest higher point. Before you read 1.n.m, read 1.n and then read it again after you have read 1.n.m. It takes some time but to me, this method made a lot of sense. 

I discovered that Wittgenstein makes some provocative statements about the way the world is understood through language. What Wittgenstein really proposes is that the whole world appears to us via the totality of our language and that ultimately our language is our world.

Wittgenstein, like Immanuel Kant (and Plato before him), seems to argue that we can never say anything for sure about any object, only about an approximation of the object, since we will never be able to study anything other than our image of the object. Contrary to Kant, who had the singular object, “Das Ding an sich”, in the crosshair, Wittgenstein rejects isolated objects as invalid facts and instead proposes that the true fact is the relationship between objects. This relationship is what we make pictures or images of for ourselves and found our language on.

It would appear that Wittgenstein is onto something. In 2017, linguists from Lund University discovered a previously unknown language spoken in a village in Malaysia. It turned out that the language lacked words for own, steal, buy, and borrow, as well as possessive pronouns. On the other hand, they had a rich vocabulary describing different forms of cooperation, assistance, help, and sharing. Another language, in Polynesia, appears to have no nouns. Instead, phenomena that we recognise as objects are referred to using verbs. In German, by contrast, all nouns are written with a capital letter, as if to indicate that the term used is merely a name for the object, not the object itself. These three examples would make for three radically different ways to express and manifest the world in language.

Despite its impressive title and deep impact on philosophical thought, Tractatus logico-philosophicus is a work of modest worldly proportions. In fact, the introduction by Bertrand Russell, which regrettably was omitted by Norstedt in this edition, is almost as long as Tractatus itself. What strikes me the most is that, unlike many other philosophical monoliths, Wittgenstein’s is actually entertaining. It is quite simply spanking good fun to read. My copy is a recent Swedish translation by Sten Andersson from 2014 which constitutes a modernisation, albeit not necessarily an improvement, on Anders Wedberg’s classical translation from the 1960s. All things considered, Ramseys’s and Ogden’s English translation from 1922 is still, in my view, the most intelligible, if that word can even be applied to Wittgenstein’s writing in any form.

I have nevertheless taken the liberty of noting down the main propositions made in Tractatus and coating them in some primitive thoughts of my own. I would gratefully accept any effort to correct my mistakes and add to my understanding of what Wittgenstein is trying to teach.

1.       The world is everything that is the case

1.1.    The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

Here Wittgenstein basically says that the world is not limited to mass. But what then is a fact?

2.       What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts

2.01.An atomic fact is a combination of objects

Here we learn that facts are made up of relationships between objects. NB that although Ramsey & Ogden use different words for objects and things, as does Wittgenstein in the German original (“Gegenständen” and “Dinge” respectively) in the German text, Wittgenstein actually defines the term Gegenstand as “Sachen, Dingen”. It is hence not the object/thing in itself that is the building block of the world. It is the relationship it enters into with other objects/things that becomes a fact. Wittgenstein furthermore states that being able to enter into a relationship with other objects is an integral property of every object, without which an object would not be an object.

Further down in this proposition he arrives at the key for our understanding of the world

2.1 We make to ourselves pictures of facts.

Keep this in mind for the next main proposition.

3.         The logical picture of the facts is the thought.

Here Wittgenstein has something important to say to all of us who like to accuse others of being unable to think logically. If the logical picture of the facts IS the thought, it follows that a thought IS a logical picture of the facts. Consequently, a thought is always logical or it would not be a thought. I will honestly say that this part freaked me out a bit. He goes on to say that everything that can be thought can also exist. It does not have to exist, but it could possibly exist. The human brain can only process the possible.

4.         The thought is the significant proposition

4.001 The totality of propositions is the language.

So the language is the complete catalogue of thoughts which are the pictures we make in our mind of facts, which are the relationships between objects which make up the world. If we subscribe to these definitions then Wittgenstein’s famous statement that “the boundaries of language indicate the boundaries of my world” becomes valid. The size and detail of the picture I am capable of creating of the world is directly proportionate to my grasp of language. They are, essentially, one and the same.

5.         Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions (An elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself)

This is where  Wittgenstein leaves the realm of analytical philosophy and veers off into the dense woods of metaphysics. Since our thoughts will always be pictures of the facts, we can never actually know anything about the fact except what the picture allows us to see. We will always only work with pictures, never the fact, and we can never know how similar our picture is to the original fact. However, if I understand this stuff, it will mean that our picture of a fact has a relation to the fact thus constituting a new fact of which others again make their picture all the time adding facts to the world. If we assume that 3 persons are sitting around a table. There are 4 objects which together form cases. But each case will generate 3 pictures. Hence, the world is made up of more pictures than objects. Wittgenstein does not say that there is no truth out there. All he says is that the closest we get is to study the proposition’s truth-arguments or truth-possibilities.

And this is where I think that many of us often go wrong. Suppose that there has been a theft and there are two suspects: Adam and Beatrice. There is a 95% chance that Adam is the thief and 5% chance that it is Beatrice. It is equally LOGICAL that either Adam or Beatrice stole the goods, it is not equally LIKELY that Beatrice as it is that Adam did it, and cannot be TRUE that both did it.

6.         The general form of truth-function is: [p, ξ, N(ξ)]. This is the general form of proposition.

I will admit right away that I have not been sufficiently trained in the notation of logical reasoning to be able to follow this proposition. In his introduction, Bertrand Russell tries to shed some light on Wittgenstein’s notation but even he seems confused. I will refrain from commenting on this and go straight to the last and most famous proposition

7.          Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.