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TRACTATUS

                                             August  4, 2022

Wittgenstein's "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus"

   
The Tractatus looks at first glance like it's
intended to be an entry in the genre of                 LOGICAL_ATOM             
Logical Edifice, with basic principles stated
early on, and later more complex points built
on top of them.                              

Actually, there's very little in the way of
*definitions* presented, Wittgenstein simply begins
using certain words as though their meanings are the
ordinary ones we all inherit from our shared context.

What he's saying doesn't seem *nonsensical*, but to get
it to make sense you need to infer more precise
meanings for his terms implied by the way he uses the
words.  Often, his later statements illuminate what he
was getting at with the earlier statements:


Consider the end of the "onesies":

   1.2 The world divides into facts.

   1.21 Any one can either be the case or not be the
        case, and everything else remain the same.


That's actually an odd thing to say about "facts".
It states that they're all *independent* of each
other, one fact is not allowed to imply another.
So we're not quite using the word "fact" in the
ordinary sense...

Then immediately afterwards, with the beginning of the
twosies, he makes it clearer by qualifying the word,
we are indeed talking about something new, now 
called "atomic facts":

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


That forward reference from the ones to the twos 
took me by surprise: perhaps the furniture of the
numbered remarks made me exaggerate the intended 
precision of the logical flow of this work.      
                                              
He does explain in a footnote that he uses the     
decimal points just to show that one remark is     
intended to be a comment on another, so here       Now me, I indicate
1.21 is a comment on 1.2.                          commentary with this
                                                   formatting trick.
                                                  

                                                                 
There's an admission in the very first line of Wittgenstein's preface:     
                                                                           
    "This book will perhaps only be understood by those                   
    who have themselves already thought the thoughts which
    are expressed in it-- or similar thoughts."

Maybe I should've taken that more seriously.








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