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Full Idea
Distinguishing between things is not enough for counting. …We need the crucial extra notion of a successor in a series of a certain kind.
Gist of Idea
To count, we must distinguish things, and have a series with successors in it
Source
Michael Morris (Guidebook to Wittgenstein's Tractatus [2008], Intro)
Book Ref
Morris,Michael: 'Guidebook to Wittgenstein's Tractatus' [Routledge 2008], p.14
A Reaction
This is the thinking that led to the Dedekind-Peano axioms for arithmetic. E.g. each series member can only have one successor. There is an unformalisable assumption that the series can then be applied to the things.
23460 | To count, we must distinguish things, and have a series with successors in it [Morris,M] |
23449 | Interpreting a text is representing it as making sense [Morris,M] |
23451 | Counting needs to distinguish things, and also needs the concept of a successor in a series [Morris,M] |
23452 | Discriminating things for counting implies concepts of identity and distinctness [Morris,M] |
23484 | Bipolarity adds to Bivalence the capacity for both truth values [Morris,M] |
23491 | There must exist a general form of propositions, which are predictabe. It is: such and such is the case [Morris,M] |
23494 | Conjunctive and disjunctive quantifiers are too specific, and are confined to the finite [Morris,M] |