Single Idea 23462

[catalogued under 3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 5. What Makes Truths / c. States of affairs make truths]

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 Reference

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]