Wittgenstein's Tractatus
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- Опубліковано 19 чер 2024
- Wittgenstein's Tractatus is one of the most baffling, mysterious, brilliant, and difficult works of philosophy ever written. But the main lines of thought are relatively simple to understand. I'm going to explain them in this video.
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00:00 - Intro
00:42 - The Tractatus
02:04 - Metaphysics: States of Affairs
05:05 - The Picture Theory
09:03 - Meaning and Nonsense
11:26 - Saying vs Showing
12:51 - The purpose of philosophy
14:01 - The Empiricist Interpretation
16:16 - Logical Positivism
17:44 - The Tractatus’s Influence
If there’s a topic you’d like to see covered, leave me a comment below.
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subarashiki hibi
Neat video! I have always skipped to the end of Tractatus! 😅 You've earned a subscriber!
Thanks! There's lots of magic (as well as deeply confusing stuff) in the middle
Great video! I'll be glad to see another one like this but on his other famous work - Philosophical investigations
Thanks! Way too much in PI for one video, I'm hoping to pick up on some of the main topics: private language, meaning as use, sensations, etc.
Thank you for this path into the small dense thicket that is the TLP.
literally every lecturer I have ever interacted with regarding this damn book: actually, it's a lot more complicated than that
It certainly is a complex book!
Can you briefly comment on the mystical/theological interpretations of the Tractatus?
This sounds a bit like the way the founder of The Samaritans, Chad Varah, discovered what his organisations purpose was, when a woman visited him again and again, repeating something she was trying to get straight in her head. Every repetition made is clearer in her head what the problem (confusion) was in her head, until eventually she knew exactly what it was she meant at which point she left and never came back. As he said himself about it, he never did or said anything to the woman, just gave her space to clarify what was going through her head
Amazing video! UA-cam algorithm really did a good job for me today
Thank you for taking the time to break this down. Excellent video!
Thanks!
Watching this before my Wittgenstein Tractatus exam, let's hope this will go well...
how did it go?
@@CompassionateCoos i think it went well, I’ll have the results somewhere before Wednesday.
YESMore Wittgenstein please! It would be interesting to know what did he contribute to modern logic.I think truth tables was kinda his invention,
OK! Yes truth-tables, although these also come from a number of places (Post, Russell, and maybe Peirce). W also links these to probabilities (around 5.15), and the idea that p and q are (or express) the same proposition when each entails the other - that's an influential view in modal logic & Phil language.
That he was willing to put himself out there despite noting his self-contradiction, instead of waiting forever to be perfect before doing anything infront of the eyes of another. That's quite meaningless by his standards, but very admirable nonetheless and something we could all learn from.
Wittgenstein didn't lack confidence! I'm not sure people insisting they're right, even though their ideas are contradictory, is always a good thing.
So love the topics, and made this philosophical theory very accessible, but honestly you looking just below the camera and not at it, really throws me off.
I know it’s small but I feel that finding a way to look right at the camera will really help bring these videos home and more attention by your audience (IMHO)
Agreed
Another excellent, clear, concise overview of a hugely complex topic. A lot of the saying/showing, meaningful/meaningless dichotomy of the Tractatus depends on the limitations of the picture (I prefer 'model') theory of meaning. If a model cannot describe its own state of representation, and this is what the Tractatus is trying to do, then all we can do is throw away the ladder. But, modal logic adds multiple possible worlds to the mix. So now, a model cannot describe its own state of representation in its own world. But from the perspective of another possible world, we can describe the original state of representation. So it's models all the way down, until we run into an actual state of affairs, somewhere ... possibly.
Thanks! Although this wasn't W's argument, there is a general feeling that a model can't describe too much of its own modelling, else you get paradoxes (like the Liar, if you internalise how the model treats sentences as true or false + use classical logic).
When you understand the evolution of language on an instinctual level, the Tractatus opens like a miracle. It approaches Buddhism in its intense clarity and really brings immanence into philosophy.
What an amazing comment. You are an absolute king.
Excellent video mate
Thanks! So You might like the one I’ve got coming tomorrow, on Bertrand Russell
Perfect explanation. Thank you 🎉
Thanks!
I read
(with a guide - I have to say)
the Tractatus when I was seventeen
and applying to university
(and thanks to the Vice-Master of
University College, Durham for recommending some key texts)
I have read and re-read it multiple times
I find it like a highly faceted jewel
if you turn it slightly
you see another aspect of his thinking.
My believe is it is best read as an expanding website
where you start with the seven propositions
and you navigate around each layer
I think of it like a tree diagram.
BTW I know Wittgenstein did write things on index cards
but the later Investigations
does read like a Zettelkasten.
One of my ideas in my retirement is to
take the Philosophical Investigations
and turn it into a full blown electronic Zettelkasten.
That’s a great way to think of the structure. I think W would like that too.
@@AtticPhilosophy
Well his initial training was in engineering
and he came to the UK
to study the new science
of aeronautics at Manchester.
Nice🎉🎉
By “meaningless” I think he meant to question the concept itself of “meaning”. What is “meaningless” isn’t necessarily “useless”.
He was giving a theory of meaning, so not questioning whether *any* sentence is meaningful - but it turns out, on his theory, that many sentences are meaningless. As he says, ethical & theological sentences may have a purpose, but aren’t meaningful.
I believe we are « saying the same thing ».
A nice video about a majestic book, though I am not that resolute about your resolute interpretation of the TLP.
Thanks (I think!)
I actually just finished reading the Tractatus a couple of weeks ago, and I found it far easier to understand than some other works, like Hegel or Satre. Not to say this video is unnecessary, but Wittgenstein is refreshingly clear.
what are you talking about mate? he never explains what he means by his words or how he came to those conclusions
(I think this question/statement could just be rephrasing stuff you’ve already said, but nonetheless I want to ask!)
If philosophy produces nonsense, surely the Tractatus can only hope of proving that philosophy is sensical? If it does prove philosophy is sensical we can put the question to rest. If it doesn’t, we can only keep searching to see if we can prove it’s sensical.
The Tractatus is excavating a cavern, defining the edges of what language can do, but our excavation can neither strike gold (find philosophy as sensical) or collapse on us (kick the ladder away), unless we believe it has. Doesn’t this mean the Tractatus has a subjective, dare I say it Idealistic quality or flavour?
The TLP isn’t trying to find sense in philosophy, the whole point (in the standard reading) is that philosophy itself is nonsense, but by going through the process, can show us something important.
thankyou for the great video
My pleasure!
I'm hearing Wolfram's Hypergraph :)
Interesting.
Or horseman's pinogram?
How would things be if Wittgenstein had access to category theory?
Who knows? But my guess is that his views would have been roughly the same.
@@AtticPhilosophy Probably, imo it might have added something
"This is for the real adepts in madness, who have gone beyond all psychiatry, psychoanalysis, who are unhelpable. This third book is again the work of a German, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Just listen to its title: TRACTATUS LOGICO PHILOSOPHICUS. We will just call it TRACTATUS. It is one of the most difficult books in existence. Even a man like G.E.Moore, a great English philosopher, and
Bertrand Russell, another great philosopher - not only English but a philosopher of the whole world - both agreed that this man Wittgenstein was far superior to them both.
Ludwig Wittgenstein was really a lovable man. I don't hate him, but I don't dislike him. I like him and I love him, but not his book. His book is only gymnastics. Only once in a while after pages and pages you may come across a sentence which is luminous. For example: That which cannot be spoken should not be spoken; one should be silent about it. Now this is a beautiful statement. Even saints, mystics, poets, can learn much from this sentence. That which cannot be spoken must not be spoken of.
Wittgenstein writes in a mathematical way, small sentences, not even paragraphs - sutras. But for the very advanced insane man this book can be of immense help. It can hit him exactly in his soul, not only in the head. Just like a nail it can penetrate into his very being. That may wake him from his nightmare.
Ludwig Wittgenstein was a lovable man. He was offered one of the most cherished chairs of philosophy at Oxford. He declined. That's what I love in him. He went to become a farmer and fisherman. This is lovable in the man. This is more existential than Jean-Paul Sartre, although Wittgenstein never talked of existentialism. Existentialism, by the way, cannot be talked about; you have to live it, there is no other way.
This book was written when Wittgenstein was studying under G.E.Moore and Bertrand Russell.
Two great philosophers of Britain, and a German... it was enough to create TRACTATUS LOGICO PHILOSOPHICUS. Translated it means Wittgenstein, Moore and Russell. I, on my part, would rather have seen Wittgenstein sitting at the feet of Gurdjieff than studying with Moore and Russell. That was the right place for him, but he missed. Perhaps next time, I mean next life... for him, not for me. For me this is enough, this is the last. But for him, at least once he needs to be in the company of a man like Gurdjieff or Chuang Tzu, Bodhidharma - but not Moore, Russell, not Whitehead. He was associating with these people, the wrong people. A right man in the company of wrong people, that's what destroyed him.
My experience is, in the right company even a wrong person becomes right, and vice-versa: in a wrong company, even a right person becomes wrong. But this only applies to unenlightened men, right or wrong, both. An enlightened person cannot be influenced. He can associate with anyone - Jesus with Magdalena, a prostitute; Buddha with a murderer, a murderer who had killed nine hundred and ninety-nine people. He had taken a vow to kill one thousand people, and he was going to kill Buddha too; that's how he came into contact with Buddha.
The murderer's name is not known. The name people gave to him was Angulimala, which means 'the man who wears a garland of fingers'. That was his way. He would kill a man, cut off his fingers and put them on his garland, just to keep count of the number of people he had killed. Only ten fingers were missing to make up the thousand; in other words only one man more.... Then Buddha appeared. He was just moving on that road from one village to another. Angulimala shouted, "Stop!"
Buddha said, "Great. That's what I have been telling people: Stop! But, my friend, who listens?"
Angulimala looked amazed: Is this man insane? And Buddha continued walking towards Angulimala. Angulimala again shouted, "Stop! It seems you don't know that I am a murderer,
and I have taken a vow to kill one thousand people. Even my own mother has stopped seeing me, because only one person is missing.... I will kill you... but you look so beautiful that if you stop and turn back I may not kill you."
Buddha said, "Forget about it. I have never turned back in my life, and as far as stopping is concerned, I stopped forty years ago; since then there is nobody left to move. And as far as killing me is concerned, you can do it anyway. Everything born is going to die."
Angulimala saw the man, fell at his feet, and was transformed. Angulimala could not change Buddha, Buddha changed Angulimala. Magdalena the prostitute could not change Jesus, but Jesus changed the woman.
So what I said is only applicable to so-called ordinary humanity, it is not applicable to those who are awakened. Wittgenstein can become awakened; he could have become awakened even in this life.
Alas, he associated with wrong company. But his book can be of great help to those who are really third-degree insane. If they can make any sense out of it, they will come back to sanity."
Is a fact not just a thought, so is there anything that is not thought? and if it were not for my facility of mind would I even be able to make that up?
And is that not just another thought.
For Wittgenstein, a fact is an entity in the world, not in the mind. Thoughts correspond to facts in the world, but aren't the same. It's a reasonable view: there would be facts (e.g., that Everest is taller than Snowdon, that 2+2=4, etc) even if there were no people around to have any thoughts.
@@AtticPhilosophy thank you for your reply, I have a question, Is there anything in the world that is not a manifestation of mind?
Another question, is it not our minds that allows us to have this experience that we call life "ie our realitys".
And having come this far can we explore the possibility that life is an inside out experience rather than an outside in experience.
Kind regards Eamonn Leonard.
Really enjoyed the video.
But it seems so bizarre to me that Wittgenstein says the Tractatus is meaningless. Does it not build up its own picture? By describing what meaning is, does it not points towards a state of affairs of how the world is?
Not according to Wittgenstein, who (in the Tractatus) thought of meaning and logic as “outside the world”, somehow unsayable and beyond meaningful theorizing.
Early Wittgenstein or Late Wittgenstein?
The Tractatus is early Wittgenstein
@@AtticPhilosophy Do you prefer him to later Wittgenstein?
...and this philosophy of Wittegenstein helps us how?
not much if his views on ethics are anything to go by.
Don’t tell me what to do Wittgenstein.
tractatus is baffling? Your hair is baffling.
I've never been convinced by Wittgenstein. A case of the emperor's new clothes for the most part.
If you don't know what you're talking about, keep your mouth shut.
What's baffling about that?
That's not what Wittgenstein is saying. Rather, it's about what he takes to be unsayable (by anyone).
Perhaps that you don't...
notice me senpai.