This paper examines the analysis of judgements of belief that Wittgenstein offers in 5.54–5.5423 of the Tractatus. We offer an interpretation of these paragraphs wich also pays attention to 5.5423, usually forgotten. In our opinion, this interpretation fits with Wittgenstein’s doctrines, and makes clear that such non-genuine propositions are nonsense. These are not, as has sometimes been proposed, the propositions of psychology. In the second part of the article we give a detailed discussion of interpretations of these paragraphs which (...) have been offered previously. (shrink)

This paper looks into the contents of the Tractatus suppositionum terminorum by Master Franquera, in the context of the teaching of logic in Salamanca in the fifteenth century. Franquera’s work is characterised by its explicit realist bias and its rejection of Ockhamist theses, i.e., by its recognition of the existence of a natura communis or a universale in re, which is evident in all discussions related to suppositio simplex and the theory of significatio. But, apart from this, Franquera’s discussion (...) of the theory of suppositio stands out as a strange mixture of different doctrines: some of them are derived from thirteenth-century analyses, others from fourteenth-century developments; realist goals are reached by means of instruments that, while not being nominalist, are definitely inspired by terminism. While upholding the theses of realist schools, Franquera adopts the definitions and rules of nominalist authors. (shrink)

This paper examines the analysis of judgements of belief that Wittgenstein offers in 5.54-5.5423 of the Tractatus. We offer an interpretation of these paragraphs wich also pays attention to 5.5423, usually forgotten. In our opinion, this interpretation fits with Wittgenstein's doctrines, and makes clear that such non-genuine propositions are nonsense. These are not, as has sometimes been proposed, the propositions of psychology. In the second part of the article we give a detailed discussion of interpretations of these paragraphs which (...) have been offered previously. (shrink)

In his Tractatus and Notebooks 1914-1916, Wittgenstein develops some themes concerning the nature of the subject, transcendentalism, solipsism and mysticism. Though Wittgenstein rejects a naive, psychological understanding of the subject, he preserves the idea of the metaphysical subject, so-called “philosophical I”. The present investigations exhibit two ways of grasping the subject: (1) subject as a boundary (of the world); (2) subject (I) as the world. The author of the paper aims to analyze different methods of conceiving the subject, both (...) logical and transcendental. Then he discusses the naturalistic or reductionist consequences of solipsism which were derived by Wittgenstein. Moreover, he refers to the concept of ‘subject of will’ introduced in the Tractatus. Finally, the author puts a question whether the metaphysical subject is a boundary of the world identified with the subject of will. While trying to answer this question one can point to the essential difficulties of Wittgenstein’s standpoint. These difficulties become especially evident if we examine Wittgenstein’s statements concerning mysticism. The category of subject seems to gain a new dimension when reconsidered in this context. In the conclusion, the author offers an interpretation inspired by Schopenhauer’s conception of the double aspect of the subject that is to overstep these difficulties. (shrink)

This book is a translation of Petrus Hispanus' 13th century text.

Journal Name: SATS Issue: Ahead of print.

"Ludwig Wittgenstein's brief Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is one of the most important philosophical works of the Twentieth Century, yet it offers little orientation for the reader. The first-time reader is left wondering what it could be about, and the scholar is left with little guidance for interpretation. In Tractatus in Context, James C. Klagge presents the vital background necessary for appreciating Wittgenstein's gnomic masterpiece. Tractatus in Context contains the early reactions to the Tractatus, including the initial reviews (...) written in 1922-1924. And while we can't talk with Wittgenstein, we can do the next best thing-hear what he had to say about the Tractatus. Klagge thus presents what Wittgenstein thought about germane issues leading up to his writing the book, in discussions and correspondence with others about his ideas, and what he had to say about the Tractatus after it was written-in letters, lectures and conversations. It offers, you might say, Wittgenstein's own commentary on the book. Key Features: Illuminates what is at stake in the Tractatus, by providing the views of others that engaged Wittgenstein as he was writing it. Includes Wittgenstein's earlier thoughts on ideas in the book as recorded in his notebooks, letters, and conversations as well as his later, retrospective comments on those ideas. Draws on new or little-known sources, such as Wittgenstein's coded notebooks, Hermine's notes, Frege's letters, Hänsel's diary, Ramsey's notes, and Skinner's dictations. Draws connections between the background context and specific passages in the Tractatus, using a proposition-by-proposition commentary"--. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's conception of the general form of a truth function given in thesis 6 can be presented as a sort of a trade-off: the author of the Tractatus is unable to reconcile the simplicity of his original idea of a series of forms with the simplicity of his generalisation of Sheffer's stroke; therefore, he is forced to sacrifice one of them. As we argue in this paper, the choice he makes – to weaken the logical constraints put on the (...) concept of a series of forms, thus effectively metaphorising that concept for the sake of upholding the N-operation's role of generating the series – is unfortunate. An actual expansion of a series of truth functions as defined in 6 would require either making decisions at each step (Anscombe) or outwardly rejecting the concept of a series (Sundholm). However, neither is faithful to Wittgenstein's own fundamental intuitions regarding the nature of logic. For this reason, a different trade-off that prioritises upholding the basic features of a series of forms over the simplicity of the operation that generates that series seems to be much more reasonable. We offer such a trade-off by developing the schema already present in the Tractatus (5.101). The key element of our alternative solution is the construction of an operation that can perform the task of producing all consecutive truth functions of a given collection of atomic propositions as an invariant difference between any base and its successor throughout the series. We define it as a composition of three functions (in an algebraic sense): the first turns a symbol of a given truth function into a binary number, the second increments that number, the third turns the result back into a symbol of another truth function. We also show how the operation can be defined by means of a different notation without invoking binary arithmetic. (shrink)

On many interpretations of Spinoza’s political philosophy, democracy emerges as his ideal type of government. But a type of government can be ideal and yet it can be unwise to implement it if certain background conditions obtain. For example, a dominion’s people can be too ‘wretched by the conditions of slavery’ to rule themselves. This begs the following question. Do Spinoza’s arguments for democracy entail that all political bodies should be democracies at all times (the received view), or do they (...) merely entail that we should only have a democracy when the right sort of background conditions are in place (the challenging view)? This paper argues that a new interpretation of one of the four versions of the rationality argument for democracy as it features in the Tractatus entails that the received view is correct. The paper also explains away part of the appeal of the challenging view by arguing that none of the other versions of the rationality argument supports the received view. It closes by arguing that a slightly modernised version of the rationality argument can be important for contemporary political philosophy. (shrink)

Discussion of Wittgenstein's Tractatus is currently dominated by two opposing interpretations of the work: a metaphysical or realist reading and the 'resolute' reading of Diamond and Conant. Marie McGinn's principal aim in this book is to develop an alternative interpretative line, which rejects the idea, central to the metaphysical reading, that Wittgenstein sets out to ground the logic of our language in features of an independently constituted reality, but which allows that he aims to provide positive philosophical insights into (...) how language functions. McGinn takes as a guiding principle the idea that we should see Wittgenstein's early work as an attempt to eschew philosophical theory and to allow language itself to reveal how it functions. By this account, the aim of the work is to elucidate what language itself makes clear, namely, what is essential to its capacity to express thoughts that are true or false. However, the early Wittgenstein undertakes this descriptive project in the grip of a set of preconceptions concerning the essence of language that determine both how he conceives the problem and the approach he takes to the task of clarification. Nevertheless, the Tractatus contains philosophical insights, achieved despite his early preconceptions, that form the foundation of his later philosophy. -/- The anti-metaphysical interpretation that is presented includes a novel reading of the problematic opening sections of the Tractatus, in which the apparently metaphysical status of Wittgenstein's remarks is shown to be an illusion. The book includes a discussion of the philosophical background to the Tractatus, a comprehensive interpretation of Wittgenstein's early views of logic and language, and an interpretation of the remarks on solipsism. The final chapter is a discussion of the relation between the early and the later philosophy that articulates the fundamental shift in Wittgenstein's approach to the task of understanding how language functions and reveal the still more fundamental continuity in his conception of his philosophical task. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the role of the nonsensical ‘statements’ of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and the aims of the book, a topic which has in recent years been the subject of, at times heated, controversy among Wittgenstein’s readers.1 In this debate the so-called ineffability interpretation argues that the role of nonsense in the Tractatus is to make us grasp ineffable truths which ‘strictly speaking’ cannot be said or thought2. By contrast, the interpretation known as the resolute reading emphasises (...) the incomprehensibility of the notion of ineffable truths. According to the latter, nonsense in the Tractatus serves a therapeutic purpose: that of curing us from attempts to put forward nonsensical philosophical doctrines3. By employing a method of juxtaposition I.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.2 (2002) 345-363 [Access article in PDF] Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: A "Poem" by Ludwig Wittgenstein David Rozema In the Fall term of 1911 the 22-year-old Ludwig Wittgenstein presented himself to the Cambridge philosopher of mathematics, Bertrand Russell, as a prospective student of philosophy. Wittgenstein had left off his studies as a promising young aeronautical engineer because, in the course of his engineering studies, (...) he had become obsessed with problems in the foundations of mathematics, the very problems Russell himself had tried to solve in his Principia Mathematica, a work he had completed just the year before. Wittgenstein, it seems, did not consider Russell's work to be the end of the matter, and so he had planned a book of his own on the subject. Although this work never materialized, Wittgenstein's interest in philosophy grew under his studies with Russell. And although Wittgenstein's early work in the philosophy of mathematics and logic were the initial impetus for his interest in philosophy, the events of his life soon led him back to the concerns which have always been central to the spirit of philosophy: How ought a man to live? What constitutes the good for man? What sort of life is a worthy or a beautiful one?It is likely that Wittgenstein's concern with these questions was heightened by what he saw in Russell, who followed a notoriously loose way of life outside of his academic studies. 1 If Wittgenstein ever wondered whether or not there was any connection between Russell's philosophical commitments and Russell's way of life, he never directly confronted Russell with the question. Russell was, after all, his benefactor, his mentor, and the source for his initial interest in philosophical problems. 2 Nevertheless, I maintain, Wittgenstein did confront Russell indirectly: he confronted the part of himself that was like Russell and, by attempting [End Page 345] to describe it in writing—the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus—he discovered its barrenness. Insofar as such an act of writing is elucidatory of a person's soul in what and in how it pictures, it can legitimately be called a kind of poetry, for it bears the essential feature of all poetics: it serves to shape, through catharsis, the passions.Thus, though Wittgenstein neither considered the Tractatus to be a poem nor intentionally wrote it as a poem, it turned out to be a kind of poem in the sense that its form fits its content, both of which, in turn, accurately picture a specific form of life, and the passional result of this poetic construction is (and was, for Wittgenstein) a certain appropriate disdain for the form of life it pictures. This is what I suggest with regard to the Tractatus: it is most helpful and is best read as a poem. I will also try to show that this is how Wittgenstein himself came to think it should be read, which in turn helps to explain why he initially allowed and later continued to allow its publication.What does it mean to read the Tractatus as a poem picturing the form of life implicated by a philosophy like that of Russell's? In this poem Wittgenstein takes the fundamental principles of Russell's philosophy—that all words are signs that stand for objects or kinds of objects and that all meaningful propositions represent a possible arrangement of these objects—and draws out the full-blown implications of these principles. In the last section of the poem Wittgenstein shows the practical consequences of a life lived on these principles, concluding: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." 3 The two-edged nature of this remark carries the force appropriate to the last line of a poem, for it is both descriptive and imagistic. It describes Wittgenstein's own thought when he realizes that, because of his Russellian philosophical commitments, he has nothing to say with regard to the good, the truth, and the beauty of life; and it is an image of the necessity that a... (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the status of a symbol in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. It is claimed in the first section that a Tractarian symbol, whilst essentially a syntactic entity to be distinguished from the mark or sound that is its sign, bears its semantic significance only inessentially. In the second and third sections I pursue this point of exegesis through the Tractarian discussions of nonsense and the context principle respectively. The final section of the paper places the forgoing work (...) in a secondary context, addressing in particular a debate regarding the realism of the Tractatus. (shrink)

Wittgenstein gives voice to an aspiration that is central to his later philosophy, well before he becomes later Wittgenstein, when he writes in §4.112 of the Tractatus that philosophy is not a matter of putting forward a doctrine or a theory, but consists rather in the practice of an activity – an activity he goes on to characterize as one of elucidation or clarification – an activity which he says does not result in philosophische Sätze, in propositions of philosophy, (...) but rather in das Klarwerden von Sätzen, in our attaining clarity in our relation to the sentences of our language that we call upon to express our thoughts.1 To say that early Wittgenstein already aspired to such a conception of philosophy is not to gainsay that to aspire to practice philosophy in such a manner and to succeed in doing so are not the same thing. It is therefore not to deny that, by Wittgenstein’s later lights, the Tractatus is to be judged a work that is marked by forms of failure tied to its having failed fully to live up to such an aspiration. But if it is thus to be judged, then it is to some degree a failure even by Wittgenstein’s own earlier lights. This means that if one wants to understand the fundamental turn in Wittgenstein’s thinking as he moves from his earlier to his later philosophy, and why it is that he wanted the Tractatus to be published and read together with Philosophical Investigations, one needs to understand what sort of failure this is – and that requires coming to terms with the Tractatus’s own understanding of what sort of work it was trying to be. We think that readers of the Tractatus – be they admirers or detractors of Wittgenstein – have, on the whole, failed to do this. (shrink)

Why worry about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus? Did not Wittgenstein himself come to think it was largely a mistaken work? Is not Wittgenstein’s important work his later work? And does not his later work consist in a rejection of his earlier views? So does not the interest of the Tractatus mostly lie in its capacity to furnish a particularly vivid exemplar of the sort of philosophy that the mature Wittgenstein was most concerned to reject? So is it not true that (...) the only real reason to worry about the Tractatus is to become clear about what sort of thing it was that the later Wittgenstein was most against in philosophy? Is the interest of the book therefore not largely exhausted by its capacity to show us what the later Wittgenstein did not think? Much of the secondary literature on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, either implicitly or explicitly, answers these questions largely in the affirmative. The aim of this paper is to suggest that the manner in which it has done so has done much to obstruct the possibility of an understanding of Wittgenstein’s philosophy – both early and late. The aim is not to suggest that these questions should be answered instead in the negative, but rather to furnish a prolegomenon to the possibility of a proper understanding of what – and how much – ought to be affirmed in answering them in the affirmative. As the present volume makes evident, there is currently a debate underway about how to read (and how not to read) Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. This paper will not attempt a direct contribution to that debate,2 it will attempt instead to bring out some of what might be at stake in that debate. It is natural to think that all that ought to be at stake is a fairly parochial question concerning the proper interpretation of Wittgenstein’s work during a single, relatively early phase of his philosophical development. Thus it is natural to conclude that, whatever differences may divide the parties to this debate concerning how to read the Tractatus, nonetheless, au fond these interpreters of Wittgenstein may be in broad agreement about how to read most of the rest of Wittgenstein’s work – or, at least, whatever their disagreements may be about the early work, they are ones that can be independently adjudicated, without substantial cost to anyone’s prior.... (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This article discusses the relation between the early Wittgenstein’s and Carnap’s philosophies of logic, arguing that Carnap’s position in The Logical Syntax of Language is in certain respects much closer to the Tractatus than has been recognized. In Carnapian terms, the Tractatus’ goal is to introduce, by means of quasi-syntactical sentences, syntactical principles and concepts to be used in philosophical clarification in the formal mode. A distinction between the material and formal mode is therefore already part of the (...) Tractatus’ view, and its method for introducing syntactical concepts and principles should be entirely acceptable for Carnap by his own criteria. Moreover, despite the Tractatus’ rejection of syntactical statements, there is an important correspondence between Wittgenstein’s saying-showing distinction and Carnap’s object-language-syntax-language distinction: both constitute a distinction between logico-syntactical determinations concerning language and language as determined or described by those determinations. Wittgenstein’s distinction therefore constitutes a precursor of the object-language syntax-language distinction which the latter in a certain sense affirms, rather than simply contradicting it. The saying-showing distinction agrees with Carnap’s position also in marking logic as something that isn’t true/false about either language or reality, which is a conception that underlies Carnap’s principle of tolerance. (shrink)

Albert Maslow points out that Wittgenstein dedicated a copy of the Tractatus to Morris Schlick with the following sentence: “ Jeder disese Sätze ist der Ausdruck einer Krankheit ” (Each of this propositions is the manifestation of a disease.) We will try to see some of the treatments to see if the remedy is not, in many cases, worse than the disease. Few philosophical texts have so many material surrounding it as the Tractatus, but and at the same (...) time do maintain such a vast spectrum of interpretations. To the point that one can expect every now and then, exegetical revolutions. Like the political ones, they usually burry the past in its way. An example: the appearance in the 1980s of Wittgenstein's Vienna was a fundamental milestone that showed that it is impossible to dissociate the author from the Viennese intellectual environment. However, attempts have been made to present this new approach as the refutation of the rest, falsely equating the Tractatus with continental philosophy in a book that is really weak in terms of elements of symbolic logic and without any expertise in regard to the philosophy of logic of Frege and Russell, which are essential to understand the context of the concepts in the text of the Tractatus itself and the records of the time. A similar case is the new interpretation that was awarded some ten years later by the North American school: they rightly called attention to the neglect of the essential paradox of the Tractatus of having intended to say what is shown. However, the value of this perspective is lost when the book is treated as the work of a postmodern nihilist, an antimetaphysical dialectician. The same can be said of the interpretation of Raymond Bradley, whose praiseworthy efforts to highlight the Tractarian modal element have resulted in an inadequate Leibnizian framing in his work The Nature of All Being (Bradley, 1992). To show an overview, I would broadly follow the outline of Cerezo (1998), adding and extending his taxonomy a bit. I think Cerezo´s outline is accurate and simple. Cerezo does not take into account contextualist readings or, in any case, it isnt her concern in her Lenguaje y Lógica in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Let us mention among the ways of reading the Tractatus the empiricist perspectives (in classical version, like Russell, or positivist, like those of Shlick and Carnap ), non-empiricist logicists ( Anscombe, Kenny ), Kantian ( Stenius, Coffa ), metaphysical (in actualist variant, Hacker, or positilist Leibnizian, Bradley), continental (such as Janik and Toulmin ), nihilistic ( Diamond and Conant, Ostrow and his dialectical idea ), and MacGuinn 's elucidatory -ecumenical attempt. David Stern (Stern,1998 ) made a stratification that is not incompatible with the one I point out. 1. The logical-atomistic reading ( logical atomist reading ) of Russell ; 2. The reading of logical positivism ( logical positivist reading ) : with the belligerent antimetaphysical charge ; 3. Metaphysical reading ( metaphysical reading ), like Hacker's, with a logically based idea of metaphysics; 4. The irrationalist reading ( irrationalist reading ) that Toulmin and Janik maintain, for example, or Isidro Reguera, where there is pre-eminence of the religious ethic elements; and 5. therapeutic reading ( therapeutic reading ), which poses it as a kind of infinity joke. We are going to add to the list a reading, which we will call a pathological reading. (shrink)

It is odd that something that Wittgenstein says is clear should have been so puzzling to English-speaking philosophers. 5.542 begins:— ‘Es ist aber klar, dass “A glaubt, dass p”, “A denkt p”, “A sagt p” von der Form, “p ‘sagt p” sind.’ I would like to suggest that one reason for the difficulties that have been felt with this lies in a misleading translation, particularly of, “p ‘sagt p”. For this both English translations have “p” says p’. But since German (...) has a single present tense where English has two, ‘sagt’ may be rendered either ‘says’, or ‘is saying’, and I want to argue that ‘“p” is saying p’ is preferable. (shrink)

It is odd that something that Wittgenstein says is clear should have been so puzzling to English-speaking philosophers. 5.542 begins:— ‘Es ist aber klar, dass “A glaubt, dass p”, “A denkt p”, “A sagt p” von der Form, “p ‘sagt p” sind.’ I would like to suggest that one reason for the difficulties that have been felt with this lies in a misleading translation, particularly of, “p ‘sagt p”. For this both English translations have “p” says p’. But since German (...) has a single present tense where English has two, ‘sagt’ may be rendered either ‘says’, or ‘is saying’, and I want to argue that ‘“p” is saying p’ is preferable. (shrink)

My aim in this chapter is to explore an analogy between logic and ethics, as Wittgenstein understands them in the Tractatus. First, I argue that Wittgenstein regards logic as a condition of the possibility of meaning, in the sense that logic makes meaningful language and thought possible. Second, I ask why Wittgenstein calls both logic and ethics ‘transcendental’. I suggest that, while logic is a condition of the possibility of semantic meaning, ethics is a condition of the possibility of (...) existential meaning. Without ethics, life could not be meaningful. Third, I show that harmony and agreement play a crucial role in Wittgenstein’s accounts of logic and ethics. A meaningful proposition can be true or false, a meaningful life can be happy or unhappy, and both truth and happiness consist in some kind of harmony or agreement with reality. (shrink)

As a celebration of theTractatus100th anniversary it might be worth revisiting its relation to the later writings. From the former to the latter, David Pears recalls that “everyone is aware of the holistic character of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, but it is not so well known that it was already beginning to establish itself in theTractatus” (The False Prison, 1987). From the latter to the former, Stephen Hilmy’s (The Later Wittgenstein, 1987) extensive study of theNachlasshas helped removing classical misconceptions such as (...) Hintikka’s claim that “Wittgenstein in thePhilosophical Investigationsalmost completely gave up the calculus analogy.” Hilmy points out that even in theInvestigationsone finds the use of the calculus/game paradigm to the understanding of language, such as “in operating with the word” (Part I, §559) and “it plays a different part in the calculus”. Hilmy also quotes from a late (1946) unpublished manuscript (MS 130) “this sentence has use in the calculus of language”, which seems to be compatible with “asking whether and how a proposition can be verified is only a particular way of asking ‘How do you mean?’” Central in this back and forth there is an aspect which seems to deserve attention in the discussion of a semantics for the language of mathematics which might be based on (normalisation of) proofs and/or Hintikka/Lorenzen game-dialogue: the explication of consequences. Such a discussion is substantially supported by the use of the open and searchableThe Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen. These findings are framed within the discussion of the meaning of logical constants in the context of natural deduction style rules of inference. (shrink)

Now we should have to answer the question: when were the questions on Perihermeneias written? Little is known about the chronology of Buridan's works. Even a relative date is difficult to establish. However, some remarks can be made. First, there is the fact that the questions on Perihermeneias are quoted several times in Tractatus I of the Summule (4), in a way that makes it highly probable that the Summule were written after the Questiones on Perihermeneias (5). (...) Now, according to professor Pinborg the first lectura of the Summule may be dated as early as the late 1320es (6), that is at the very beginning of Buridan's career as a teacher of philosophy at the university of Paris. This may be an indication for an early date of the Questiones on Perihermeneias, possibly as early as 1325. There are two other reasons for assuming that the commentary on Perihermeneias is one of Buridan's first works. The first clue is given by the places where Buridan refers to one of his own works: once he refers to his commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge (7), twice to his commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics (8), and six times to his commentary on the Physics (9). The way in which he refers to these tracts seems also to be significant: the reference to his commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge shows that this work is of an earlier date than the present work. As to the other two works, he only refers to the number of the book in which he is going to treat a particular subject, not to the number of the question. A (cross)reference to the Summule is not given, although, as Pinborg remarks, there is a general doctrinal concordance between the two works. The questions on Metaphysics do not contain a (cross)-reference to the questions on Perihermeneias, at least not on the places where one would expect them. I am not certain about possible references occurring in the commentary on Physics. However, we should be very careful to draw conclusions from the occurrence of references, since it is always possible that we are dealing with a second or third lectura of the text.. (shrink)

"What one cannot compute, one must poetize." So concludes this remarkable sequence of propositions on the centrality of poetry for what we call cognition. Developed through brief, lucid, and eloquent logical elaborations that are punctuated by incisive readings of a range of poems--Western and non-Western, low culture and high--Poetry and Mind offers to theorists and practitioners of literature, together with logicians and cognitive scientists, a more sophisticated account of the extraordinary regimes of human mental experience. Poetry grants us the ability (...) to move "beyond the limits of thought" and to explore the beyond of cognition. It teaches us to think differently. An elliptic response to Wittgenstein's point of arrival in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, this book is first and foremost an interdisciplinary study of poetry, drawing on literary, philosophical, and scientific traditions. The work conducted on minds and brains over the last decades in psychology, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience cannot be ignored if, as humanists, we are interested in the way we think. Dubreuil thus calls for a constant dialogue with the positive examination of cognition to better situate the normal regimes of thought, as well as to underline the other mental possibilities that literature opens up. Poetry and Mind shows that poetry--a widespread and perhaps universal phenomenon among humans--arises through syntactic structures, cognitive binding, and mental regulations, but that, in going through them, it also exceeds them. The best poems, then, are not only thought experiments but actual thinking experiments for the unthinkable. They expand the usual semantics of natural languages, and singularly deploy the rhetorical armature of speech. Made of iterations and linguistic reorganizations, they exceed their own algorithms and, often, they become reflexive, strange, and cognitively dissonant. They provide detachable, movable, and livable significations to our selves. The literary scope of this book is more than "global": it is uniquely broad and comparative, encompassing dozens of different traditions, oral or written, from all continents, from Ancient times to the contemporary era, with some thirty specific readings of texts, ranging from Sophocles to Gertrude Stein, from Wang Wei to Aimé Césaire, and from cuneiform tablet to rap music. Together, Dubreuil's readings and elaborations offer a major reappraisal of the relations between creation, language and our embodied brains."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

A new translation which is eminently readable and extremely accurate. Much of the awkwardness and unnecessary obscurity of the Ogden translation has been eliminated. The comprehensive index which combines both English and German expressions is designed to meet the special problems involved in understanding the Tractatus. Unfortunately Russell's introduction to the 1922 edition is reproduced without any indication of the controversy concerning Russell's interpretation, or subsequent interpretations of the Tractatus.--R. J. B.

It is odd that something that Wittgenstein says is clear should have been so puzzling to English-speaking philosophers. 5.542 begins:— ‘Es ist aber klar, dass “A glaubt, dass p”, “A denkt p”, “A sagt p” von der Form, “p ‘sagt p” sind.’ I would like to suggest that one reason for the difficulties that have been felt with this lies in a misleading translation, particularly of, “p ‘sagt p”. For this both English translations have “p” says p’. But since German (...) has a single present tense where English has two, ‘sagt’ may be rendered either ‘says’, or ‘is saying’, and I want to argue that ‘“p” is saying p’ is preferable. (shrink)

The hundred-year history of interpretations of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus we examine in the article through a gradual approach (through the refusal of researchers from obviously erroneous interpretations) to an ethical (or metaphilosophical) reading of the work. The latter explains Wittgenstein’s unambiguous indication of ethical meaning as the main meaning of the Tractatus and consistently reconciles various parts of the work (ontology, figurative theory of meaning, rejection of the theory of types and logical constants, etc.) with the latest so-called (...) ethical and mystical statements of the Tractatus and with demanding silence. An ethical (metaphilosophical) reading explains the continuing influence and relevance of the Tractatus and is presented in the article as a necessary condition for understanding the continuity between the works of early and late Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Schlick’s relationship with the Tractatus has been mainly investigated in what concerns the conception both of language and world, the insight of logic, the criteria of verifiability, the proper role of philosophy as mental activity. However, some other features of Schlick’s reading of the Tractatus require a closer consideration. In the 1920s, Schlick was dealing with the questions of ethics (and, to some extent, of religion), that represent from the early days the core issue of his philosophy of (...) culture. Schlick’s intellectual relationship with Wittgenstein ought to be explored also in this broader context, namely after his first encounter with the Tractatus. As it emerges from their private conversations in 1929, Schlick did not agree with Wittgenstein’s account of ethics as a domain going beyond the limits of language. Whereas Wittgenstein maintains that “that ethics cannot be put into words. Ethics is transcendental. (Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same [Tractatus 6.421]”, Schlick considers ethics as a factual science. As he says in the Problems of ethics (1930), “if there are ethical questions that have meaning, and are therefore able to be answered, then ethics is a science”. Wittgenstein’s position is patently in contrast with Schlick’s. According to Wittgenstein, ethics, no differently from religion, cannot be tested as is usual for meaningful propositions, namely by recurring to hypotheses, high probability or knowing. My paper aims at highlighting this contrast, that is rooted both in the Tractatus and in Schlick’s conception of ethics as science already endorsed in his work before the arriving in Vienna. How Schlick would have appreciated Wittgenstein’s late thoughts on ethics remains, at any rate, an open question. (shrink)

A conjecture on the metaphysical nature of Tractatus objects is put forward and its interpretative adequacy is tested. The clarification of the true import of the metaphor of logical space and the recognition of the theoretical role played by Wittgenstein's explicit claim that the emptiness of logical space is conceivable enable us to account for the thesis that objects are the substance of the world. Once objects are identified with those universal abstract entities which are qualia, and complexes or (...) states of affairs with their concrete instances, some statements of the Tractatus become liable to a consistent reading: that objects are colourless ; that space, time and colour are forms of objects ; that Leibniz's Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles, though still holding for complexes, does not apply to objects . Lastly, it is shown how the interpretation of objects as qualia sheds a vivid light on the theme of the relation between objects and time. (shrink)