more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
Wittgenstein is thinking of the world as what makes truths true. …To get all the truths fixed we need more than the things: we need, as it were, the way things are - that is to say, the facts.
Gist of Idea
He says the world is the facts because it is the facts which fix all the truths
Source
report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 1.12) by Michael Morris - Guidebook to Wittgenstein's Tractatus 1
Book Ref
Morris,Michael: 'Guidebook to Wittgenstein's Tractatus' [Routledge 2008], p.27
A Reaction
Morris says this is 'sometimes suggested'. It strikes me as plausible, and makes LW a key source for the modern truthmaker idea. Perhaps in David Lewis's version of it. The facts include the relations and processes of the things.
Related Ideas
Idea 15546 Predications aren't true because of what exists, but of how it exists [Lewis]
Idea 15548 Say 'truth is supervenient on being', but construe 'being' broadly [Lewis]
| 13881 | We need to grasp not number-objects, but the states of affairs which make number statements true [Frege, by Wright,C] |
| 23462 | He says the world is the facts because it is the facts which fix all the truths [Wittgenstein, by Morris,M] |
| 14397 | Truthmaker demands not just a predication, but an existing state of affairs with essential ingredients [Merricks] |
| 15394 | Truthmaker requires a commitment to tropes or states of affairs, for contingent truths [Cameron] |
| 18341 | Truth-makers seem to be states of affairs (plus optional individuals), or individuals and properties [Rami] |