display all the ideas for this combination of texts
9 ideas
| 9442 | The only necessity is logical necessity [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The only necessity that exists is logical necessity. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.37) | |
| A reaction: For Wittgenstein that will mean conventional necessity. He is taking a standard Humean view of these things. |
| 23495 | The tautologies of logic show the logic of language and the world [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The fact that the propositions of logic are tautologies shows the formal - logical - properties of language and the world. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.12) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me an extraordinarily hubristic remark (philosophically speaking), especially coming from a work which famously throws away its own ladder. He is very much pursuing Kant's project. |
| 23487 | What is thinkable is possible [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: What is thinkable is possible too. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 3.02) | |
| A reaction: [Plucked from a context!] The modern tide has turned against this idea. The more clearly you understand the facts, the more restricted the possibilities become. If you think the impossible is possible, it is because you are bad at thinking. |
| 23470 | Each thing is in a space of possible facts [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Each thing is, as it were, in a space of possible states of affairs. This space I can imagine as empty, but not of the thing without the space. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.013) | |
| A reaction: A clear echo of Kant on natural space. LW calls it 'logical space' (1.13). I take this to be exactly the concept of the space of possibilities which contains the modern notion of possible worlds. |
| 23507 | Unlike the modern view of a set of worlds, Wittgenstein thinks of a structured manifold of them [Wittgenstein, by White,RM] |
| Full Idea: In 'Tractatus' Wittgenstein is not just thinking of a set of possible worlds (in the modern account), but of a structured manifold within which each 'possible world' is located. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Roger M. White - Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus' 3 'Positions' | |
| A reaction: So the modern view has the neutrality of a merely formal system, but LW is thinking of them as the modal structure of reality. |
| 23469 | An imagined world must have something in common with the real world [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: It is obvious that an imagined world, however different it may be from the real one, must have something - a form - in common with it. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.022) | |
| A reaction: It is clear that Wittgenstein had a concept of possible worlds close to the modern view. |
| 11027 | To know an object you must know all its possible occurrences [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If I know an object I also know all its possible occurrences in states of affairs. (Every one of those possibilities must be part of the nature of the object.) A new possibility cannot be discovered later. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.0123) | |
| A reaction: The requirement that you know them 'all' seems absurd, especially if we need science to discover them. I take this idea to be extremely important, and essentially Aristotelian (connecting with the notion of 'potentiality'). We need to know the powers. |
| 23465 | The 'form' of an object is its possible roles in facts [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The possibility of its occurrence in atomic facts is the form of the object. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.0141) | |
| A reaction: Morris says this picks up the idea from Kant. We might now label the 'form' as the 'modal profile' of the object (a phrase I like). The modern issues over transworld identity seem to be a development of this thought. |
| 12869 | Two objects may only differ in being different [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If two objects have the same logical form, the only distinction between them, apart from their external properties, is that they are different. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.0233) | |
| A reaction: This isn't a commitment to haecceities, but it seems to be flirting with the idea. See Simons 1987:241. Kit Fine picks up the idea that objects, as well as sentences, might have 'logical form'. How can being 'different' be primitive? Spatial location? |