In my years of life, I never thought that someone would make a dissertation of a modern (or postmodern) philosopher because of a Visual Novel, and a good one at that, but here we are! Thanks for the great video.
The approximate topics of the individual sections: 1-2.0141 - ontology 2.02-2.063 2.1-3.144 - language, thought, representation 3.2-3.5 - the sense of propositions and names 4-4.116 - saying vs. showing 4.12-4.128 - formal concepts, concepts proper 4.2-5.156 - laws of inference 🔨 5.2-5.4611 - logical axioms, logical objects 🔨 5.47-5.54 5.541-5.641 - the “soul” 🔨 6-6.241 - the form of a proposition 6.3-6.3751 6.4-7 - ethics, metaphilosophy
This is one of those strange videos you find in the middle of the night with no relation to your feed whatsoever that makes the internet worth supporting.
I cannot overstate how much I appreciate that you made this video. Its safe to say that without it I wouldnt have been able to finish the tractatus, and not only do I believe I have a pretty good understanding of it now, but I ended up absolutely loving it. So, thank you so much for making this video!
I love to live in a world where a japanese VN inspires a random person living thousands of miles away from me to make an actual and well constructed video essay about one of the most infamously complex thinkers of early 20th century
Zanno, if you know mathematics most of his opinions are merely trivial. If you know how manifold theory came to be and of atlasses, then the first 10 pages of his Tractatus is merely a philosophization of those mathematical foundations.
Having just finished reading the Tractatus concurrently with a Reread of Subahibi, I gotta say; this was a very insightful video. Thank you for putting this together, especially the context for what Wittgenstein wrote and why. Very well researched.
@sleepycrest4264 Fancy seeing you here! I came to refresh myself on the teaching of our lord and philosophical savior! Lemme ask you, did you get through the entire Tractatus? I got up to 4.0312 before I got distracted by whatever it was that I was consuming a year back.
from the way I understand it, objects according to wittgenstein are only intelligible insofar as they form states of affairs with other objects. for example, if I have a linear function on a graph, any point on the line cannot be spoken of other than its relation to another point on the line. the issue i have with this is that the objects themselves are not only unintelligible by themselves, but seem to be irrelevant to the picture theory of meaning entirely. I can picture a state of affairs in logical space without understanding the objects that make up the state of affairs, but this doesn't subtract from the meaning of the thought. for example, if i see a book that I haven't read and picture the book, the book in the picture has no definite number of pages, nor does it have any content, because I haven't read it. The physical book in the world, however, has a definite number of pages and a definite number of words, yet the picture still shows the book. I guess my main question is: is the number of pages part of what constitutes the form, and if so can the book be pictured without knowing the number of pages, and thus without knowing the form?
I think you are comiting a mistake in equating x=x' meaning the book equals the published version of the book. You could have pictured an ebook or a scroll, does that make the proposition more wrong? The correct way (i guess) would be "x book has y amount of pages" then you can compare the proposition with the state of affairs. Edit: check 5.156
You could maybe do some conceptual proof checking by analyzing the pattern of neurons that form the thought for the same structure. For example, activities in 2 dimensions have a two dimensional neuron firing pattern. How do basic configurations of neurons and what they represent relate to the logic in the philosophy?
Thank you, this video essay helped me read the Tractatus with much more confidence, and I understood it much better due to the context you so thoroughly provided.
this is such an amazing video, im so glad someone made a full analysis and explanation of this book. i might not be able to quote this video in my philosophy essays but please know that you are greatly appreciated!
YOU MAKE IT LOOK EASY! fantastic video. Now, not only do i fell like i understand the positivist reading of wittgenstein but i also find his philosophy very interesting, all thanks to you.
continental? did you mean to say analytic? from what exposure I've had to continental philosophy the Tractatus seems to be a total antithesis, I can't stand listening to the nonsense of continental philosophy for reasons similar to the thesis of the Tractatus (I just dropped Nietzsche because he never said anything clearly, save his "will to power" which he made no attempt to justify).
Thank you very very much for making this. I assume you made it as much for your own learning as ours, but you shared it and that’s the generosity of the internet that makes it great. Best to you
really good presentation. if you ever want to make a video on philosophical investigations and how it relates to the tractatus or something of that sort I'd watch it for sure.
You haven't uploaded for a while, so I'm guessing you are too busy to read this, but I will say it anyways. Amazing explanation and analysis. After reading Subahibi and thoroughly enjoying it, I saw this recommended by someone on a Subahibi vid and decided to check it out. Because of my poor attention span, I listened to this over the course of SEVERAL days, but I think this just added to my appreciation of your analysis and this work's propositions. As for if you were able to help towards the purpose of giving pleasure to those who read the Tractatus, I would say you have definitely succeeded on that front. Also Ayana basedgoddess.
Oh, my dude. Thank you so much for this video. I've been doing a really basic philosophy module to get my head around the topic. Week 1 had a small mention of Wittgenstein, and suggested that we go read more about the philosophers in the module IDK if you've tried this, but it's impossible to find anything about Wittgenstein's philosophy online. So I tried reading the Tractatus, and a few related works. And like, I'm barely grasping what you're saying (I can tell, like you said, that it's the text that's incomprehensible. You're doing such a good job at this omg), but it's helping me so much. Seriously, man. I'm fuckin' stoked.
I’m legitimately scared. I literally just started taking a Wittgenstein course for my undergrad last week; and I NEVER looked up anything related to Wittgenstein on TH-cam before this popped up in my recommended. Not only that, the fact that this video feels so fine tuned to my sensibilities as a guy with a very ironic sense of humor and an appreciation for anime-remix/meme culture is concerning. This video is a gift btw
Truly great video! Should be the first result when searching info on the Tractatus. Well done! I would love to see similar videos on Kant or Hegel, also known to be convoluted.
Bravo. Both the "traditional reading" and the "resolute reading" miss the *ethical* point of the Tractatus, by the way. For that point, it is necessary to see that Wittgenstein's view of logic was not a static one, but intimately connected to the action of the subject ("the will", as Wittgenstein says, including the application of logical operations, which determines the limits of the world and shows forth internal relations, aesthetics, and ethics -- though not independently of the world (or others/language)).
“Tractātus” in Latin is the perfect passive participle of “tractō” (“I tug; I drag; I haul; I pull”). The participle of which meaning “Dragged; Tugged; exercised, performed; managed.”
The moment when it really clicked for me, was when I was thinking about why computers are being programmed by programming *languages*. If I can formulate something in a language, I will always be able to find an answer to it. In fact I don't even have to go searching for that answer a machine can do it just fine. But what cannot precisely be expressed in language (like `What is the meaning of life`) has no answer in language. I can, of course, make something up that I proclaim to be my meaning of life. But this is then just a sort of program, which my life runs on (similar to what Eric Berne called scripts) and has nothing to do with intrinsic `truthfulness`.
@@vogel2499 I disagree. Truth is only something that can be defined within a formal system like a language. Under certain pre-conditions, do we then describe something as being "true". However, there is nothing that could be objectively "true" in a platonic sense.
@@MrOndra31 While Wittgenstein isn't necessarily declaring platonic truths to exist in the Tractatus, Vogel is right that the "logical positivist" interpretation you're making is off base. See the discussion of the "mystical."
I have little knowledge about philosophy, but as a software developer the way his facts and states of affairs are constructed feels really familiar to me. I was reminded of logical gates and boolean logic.
@@Ethereal_dust philosophy reached its end at the beginning when the greeks acquired all that it amounted to from the indians, culminating in apophatic philosophy i.e. their method 'via negativa'. this is present in advaita vedanta, neoplatonism and first buddhism. officially it ends with John Scottus Eriugena, a neoplatonist who was the last to endorse the philosophy. post-antiquity the spirit of this philosophy diffused with the sentimentality of abrahamism, and post-rennaisance was destroyed completely, enjoying corrupt forms its various pseudo-platonisms (hegel, a platonist). then you have rubbish like existentialism come up, which is not philosophy but navel-gazing.
Very nice. It seems to me the Tractatus is wresting with the ways that human consciousness via language reads and creates reality. Yet Wittgenstein rarely places himself in the text as author; rather it is presented as a complete object. Part of his weakness is his interest in mathematical logic; like religious philosophers before him, he must twist his thought into pretzels to make his philosophy align with his mathematics, whose logic hardly encompasses all that is human.
@@rishiy6183 That can be said about anything related to Japanese otaku culture that goes deeper than Dragonball and Pokémon or whatever, they had to take down loli related advertisements in Tokyo for the olympics due to all the tourists and outsiders
Are you sure about Spinozas' influence on Ludwig? Im pretty sure the only connections between early Wittgenstein and Spinoza is the english title of Tractatus which of course could be considered as a reference to Baruch but it was proposed by George Edward Moore. I have heard that it was just an sarcastic joke by Moore.
Amazing video! Thank you for explaining it so clearly. However, i differ in what the conclusion of the Tractatus is, i don't think that "the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth". Instead, I think that the Tractatus affirm that there is something as truth (meta linguistically), only that we cannot say it, but rather we can show it. Philosophy (or theoretical knowledge in general) is nonsense. If it is true in all cases/all possible worlds that "the world is all that is the case" and that tautologies and contradictions are nonsensical or meaningless (opposed to contingent propositions, that have something as meaning) then we cant say anything about the world, but that limit between language and reality is not only negative, but also positive, now that we see that limit we can surpass it by showing how things are, instead of saying it.
48:35 Maybe I can try to explain it. Wittgenstein, implicitly, explains why a proposition shows its logical form. Let's take the same proposition from the video: 'Socrates is a wise Athenian.' How can you express its logical form in words? Some of you will answer: "Easy: 'Socrates' is the name because it stands in front of the verb, while 'a wise Athenian' is the predicative nominal because it stands after the verb. So, with this logic, I can connect the sentence with the proposition and, hence, with the world." (Explanation 1.0) But this is not an explanation of it because, when you explain it, you are using language. To understand that explanation, I have to understand the language, and in order to understand the language, I already need to know the logical form of the language. When you made Explanation 1.0, you were using the logical form in your explanation because you were using the language. In this sense, we can't talk about the logical form of the language within the language because, to explain it, we have to use our language. As a result, we are explaining the logical form of the language while using the logical form of the language in our explanation. Thus, a sentence can only show the logical form because it can't be explained-it wouldn't be an explanation.
what a great lecture, really, thank you. here in vienna, fully able to walk by the palais wittgenstein while reading the tractatus, there still remain more ? than !. whats the title of the graphic novel/manga/comic that brought you to the tractatus btw? cheers
Subarashiki Hibi ～ Furenzoku Sonzai (2010). Sometimes translated as "Wonderful Everyday ～ Discontinuous Existence," but usually just called Subarashiki Hibi or SubaHibi for short.
I'm pretty late to this comment but I'm going to give a pretty big content warning on that one. Also while it's rich in references I'd be careful about how they're contextualised in the vn.
@@weinrotjack9363 I'll give explaining the content warning a shot. There's some very heavy themes - suicide, sexual content (both consensual and not), and some gore. I'm not the most sensitive person ever but even I had to skip one scene in particular. As for how Wittgenstein's Tractus is used in the novel (maybe contextualized was the wrong word?)... I think I regret saying that. It's a fairly deep vn with lots of really interesting literary, and cultural references. I think it was written by someone who was very well read, but just don't expect them to have understood, and incorporated each of those books perfectly. At the end of the day it's a visual novel, not a philosophy lecture, and some artistic freedom was taken. Is it a good vn? Yes, most definitely. But I just can't in good conscience recommend it to everyone.
Can anyone help me with how simple objects are to be understood? Here are some questions that I cant get over: 1. If they are irreducible, shouldn't we arrive at only one kind of "simple object" (for example, a kind of atom (if that were the end of it))? But he speaks of it as if there were multiple kind of simple objects. 2. If this kind of object is independent of anything else, it means also there is no cause for it, doesn't it? So if we think in terms of causality how is that possible? Doesn't the question of creation arise hereafter? @Jade Vine how would you see this vis-a-vis the method employed by Nagarjuna? You likened the ends but their means are totally incompatible, no? Elucidations or any links to anything helpful would be much appreciated.
Objects constitute the substance of the world, so they cannot be complex. If the world had no substance, then that a sentence makes sense would have to depend on whether another was true. It would then be impossible to design an image of the world that could be true or false. This I also do not get. If we say following Nagarjuna, everything is dependent, I would argue, albeit oversimplified: The sentence/fact "the car is red" depends on the sentence/fact that "red is a color" or even " x can see color", " x is seeing the car" etc. Or is this a complete misunderstanding?
@weinrotjack @weinrotjack Thank you for the questions! And to be transparent, these sections are extremely difficult to me and it's an area (probably the only one of this work) where I believe I have a fundamental disagreement with Wittgenstein, which is why I bring up Nāgārjuna as someone who I understand more (and just because I'm biased since he's a philosopher I have also spent a lot of time trying to understand). This is my understanding. 1. Wittgenstein doesn't really seem to know what kind of simple objects there are or not. He might in fact not think it's possible to know. He only thinks that there must be something fundamental since for him there has to be something at the base of his system that isn't dependent on anything else, and clearly simple propositions like "the car is red" and "car" cannot be those he has in mind. So it seems that he thinks there are some kinds of objects that are simply re-arranged and combined separately without ever directly impacting each other. But he makes no statement about the number of them; he sees that as out of his scope of knowledge or unimportant for the matter at hand. There's a part in the Tractatus I wish I would have included in this analysis that explicitly says that even if the world were infinitely complex so that every proposition consistent of an infinite number of facts and each fact consisted of an infinite number of objects, his conclusion about the ontology of the world would still stand. 2. Yes. In Wittgenstein's own words, "superstition is belief in the causal nexus." Wittgenstein believes there is no logical base to the belief in cause or effect. Note that dependence is not the same thing as causation; dependence means that one thing cannot exist without another, while causation means that one thing has to occur before the other in time to bring the other into existence. This is a very radical conclusion but it is one that he is consistent to. The last point you mentioned gets at what I think is their fundamental difference: Wittgenstein believes, at this point in his philosophical career, it seems, that to convey meaning their must be something at the base of the ontology. Nāgārjuna doesn't. Both of them believe that the meaning of words, propositions, etc. comes through use, but Nāgārjuna believes there is only a sort of constant chain of dependence where everything depends on something else. Wittgenstein, at this point in his career at least, seems to believe that there is some kind of basis to the chain of meaning. But Wittgenstein is evasive about them. In my personal opinion, I find this kind of logical atomistic base ontology to be somewhat unusual clinger-on from the kind of Bertrand Russell-inspired logic tradition that Wittgenstein studied in which can mesh uncomfortably with other parts of the Tractatus. I see it as an influence of a western philosophical tradition that demands that philosophy begin with ontology and metaphysics to reach conclusions, while the later Wittgenstein is far more similar to Nāgārjuna, who begins in many ways from epistemological rather than ontological or metaphysical grounding. In Nāgārjuna's belief, it is impossible to find any kind of simple object at the base of an ontology. It is impossible to define anything apart from all the other things around it. In the world we live in, to use a physical allegory, things like elementary particles or strings are something close to the "simple objects" that form our quantum physics, and thus the world as we know it, but these are themselves highly theoretical constructs that depend on the things that they form (atoms, etc.) to be defined and conceived. Even if we take simple objects to be logical or theoretical rather than physical, there is a similar problem. What's interesting is that Wittgenstein seems to be aware of these difficulties in a way; he understands that if there are simple objects, they have to be so fundamental that they can barely be talked about or understood. Due to his vagueness about the idea of simple objects, there is also a big problem over whether he speaks of them according to a realist or nominalist position. While it seems evident that they aren't material, it is unsure if they are things that exist out there in the real world or if they are spoken of as constructs in our mind. I personally believe the nominalist reading could have the ability to fix the difficulties of reading it with regard to Nāgārjuna's argument. Computer coding is a good way to understand this. All the text on this screen, the comment chain on TH-cam, my video, etc. are at their most simple form nothing more than 1s and 0s. That means that in the realm of computers we have a metaphysics that breaks down to simple objects of 1s and 0s, but that these 1s and 0s are still just constructs that we create for a specific purpose rather than something that inherently exists. There are no analogues to these 1s and 0s in the real world. This works in language to a degree too. We can talk about doing something for the "sake" of something else, but there is no such thing as a "sake" in the actual world that we can find. If we read Wittgenstein nominally, he might be saying that these simple objects are things we create as a system to convey meaning like 1s and 0s in a computer, without necessarily guaranteeing their real existence. Of course, this is not a perfect 1:1 comparison and ignores some fundamental differences in the way humans work from computers, but I think the nominal position is still the most philosophically sound. In his later writings, Wittgenstein actually abandons this kind of metaphysics of simple objects and, like Nāgārjuna, believes that things have meaning in favor of their use in "the stream of life" rather than based on a hierarchical ontological ground.
@@DwellingInTheFourfold Thanks for the incredibly thorough answer! Re: causation. I understand the differentiation but would it makes sense to call something truly independent if it is caused at some point? For me they seems synonymous. If my existence is dependent on you and vice-versa, don't we then cause each other in a certain sense? Or for example, man is dependent on air. If air is not, man is not. Air alone might not be the direct cause of man but there is after all a fundamental causal relationship. But if you (W) say that cause-effect is essentially superstitious, this argument would go up in smoke. Hence W is, like you said, just not at all interested in that. SparkNotes says this: "Wittgenstein never gives us an example of an object because there is nothing to be said about objects. Asking "what is an object?" is like asking "what does everything have in common?" The best answer Wittgenstein can muster to this question is that everything shares in common a logical form that allows it to occur in states of affairs. Objects are the simplest, most general things there are: the only thing that all things hold in common is that we can say something about them." Would that come close to the nominalist reading then? As for the rest, I have to go into it deeper to really grasp the whole picture here. I might come back to this post once things become clearer. Do you have any essential recommended reading re: Tractatus and Nagarjuna?
@weinrotjack I think I can agree with your idea of causation and dependence to a degree, but for me the primary difference is that causation on some level involves time or ordering. For example, X happening first that has a power in it to bring about Y, then Y being brought about after X because of the Y-bringing power, or something like that. Whereas dependence does not entail that. Dependence just means that one thing cannot exist without the other. At the very least, and this is more evident near the end of Proposition 6, Wittgenstein explicitly believes that "this event happened, therefore another one must necessarily happen" is not a logical conclusion (this argument echoes Hume), and therefore seems to be rejecting the temporal, chronological kind of causation. I suppose if we want to interpret causation as not necessarily temporal and chronological and simply as "A not being able to exist without B," then you could say that Wittgenstein believes in this kind of causation. In fact, maybe that's why he uses the phrase "the causal nexus" instead of "causation"! On the surface, when I read these sections of the Tractatus, it sounds like there are simple objects that are the foundation of the entire ontology. It doesn't seem to say that they are "uncaused" or not (since for Wittgenstein causation as a whole doesn't really apply to logic), but they are irreducible to anything else, which is what is really key. And then depending on how they are "combined" or "arranged" so to say, they create facts. I think this is difficult to grasp because the whole thing is a lot more abstract and theoretical than it seems. They don't to "combine" in a way that occurs in a point in time and has a physical, observable process, but rather "combine" in the way that, say, 2 + 3 combines 2 and 3 to create 5. We tend to anthropomorphize this relation in our thoughts of 2 existing, then 3 being added to it, then 5 occurring chronologically, but in reality math equations don't occur temporally. So I think that these relations are all things that occur like equations, not in time. At least this is how I read it. And yes, I think that quote sounds similar to the nominalist reading for me. It explains it in the sense of a system of logic, though it doesn't seem to know whether that system of logic is something that inherently exists in the world or is something that exists at the level of our minds understanding the world. I tend toward the latter reading (maybe because of a bias that makes me not want the idea of something irreducible to exist in nature, since Nāgārjuna doesn't like this idea). For the Tractatus and Wittgenstein, I'm a fan of "Wittgenstein" by William Child in the Routledge Philosophers series, which discusses the whole object/fact/etc. ontology at the beginning and the realist/nominalist distinction very well. The only thing I'm not so fond of is that skips (and admits openly to omitting for the sake of time, granted) analysis of the "truth in solipsism" section near the end of Proposition 5, which I find one of the most interesting areas. Peter Sullivan, Lucy O'Brien, and Hilary Putnam have apparently written a lot more on this solipsism section but I haven't read their works yet. For Nāgārjuna I've read more. I think "Nāgārjuna's Madhyamaka: A Philosophical Introduction" by Jan Westerhoff is a marvelous book which not only explores the ideas in depth and with clarity, but also does more to explain the strange argumentative form of Nāgārjuna's dialectic more than others, which is too often overlooked and can make his arguments hard to follow at first glance. After that, to really delve into the meaty verses themselves with a full analysis of the most important philosophical work by him, I highly recommend "The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā" translated by Jay L. Garfield. Cheers!
1. Why wouldn't there be different 'types' of simple objects? Wittgenstein never decisively stated what those simple objects would be, but he did lean towards sense data. The sentence 'the car is red' could then ultimately be analyzed into 'there is a black dot here and a red dot there and another red dot there etc' - and the same of course for auditive data and so on. Only now could it not be analyzed any further. His reason for believing in the existence of simple objects is not that hard to understand. 'my cat lies under my bed' as all sentences consists entirely of names. It makes sense even if my cat has passed and does not exist anymore. Therefore, 'my cat' cannot be one of those names, because if it were, with the passing of my cat one of the names would stop referring to some thing in the world rendering the sentence meaningless. Therefore, there have to be simple (i. e. indestructible) objects. 2: this should clarify that causality has little to do with it.
Hello, it is very nice to see such a well thought out explanation of this book. However, I do not quite agree with what you say at 19:20: "the world consist of facts, which are made up from the existence or non existence of states of affairs". I can not find Wittgenstein stating that facts are made up of states of affairs, but rather think that W. says the existence of states of affairs is a fact. 2: "What is the case-a fact-is the existence of states of affairs". Your (Jade Vines) explanation would furthermore mean that facts do not just contain states of affairs but also objects. This would make not reallly sense considering that W. puts facts as the "smallest" part of the world. Maybe I see it wrong or just misunderstood you (i am not a native speaker). So can somebody help me out here?
I think what you say is correct and I admit that I should have phrased this better. Instead of "made up from," I should have said "depend on" (that is to say, whether or not a certain state of affairs or group of states of affairs exists is a fact). What I really wanted to get at was this dependence relation, but I interpreted it and thus portrayed it in too direct and simplistic a way, which leads to the problem you mentioned. Although I think that "made up from" and "dependent on" is a somewhat ambiguous difference that my own research in Buddhist philosophy has biased me towards blending together, which is a struggle I have in dealing with this text. To be frank, I find this section fairly difficult to parse since there's a lot in it that, from a philosophical perspective, I have doubts and questions about so I'm happy to hear your interpretation.
I'm just 22:49 deep here, but could the "objects" allude to a verifiable source of information that backs up (or not) states of affairs in the logical space, rendering facts true or false? I'll suggest an allegory of objects being guesses, states being a box's lid and the facts the content of said box; your guess might or not be confirmed upon the opening, but the contents always remain the same.
Im only 45 minutes in, but would i be able to visualize objects as vectors? For example temperature. Temperature can be explained as a vector: 1. It cannot be simplified any further. 2. it is a commonality between different states of affairs, just like the example of length. 3. Temperature is a building block in all state of affairs, everything has a temperature. thus it can be seen as an object. I would appreciate any directional advice
In Physics temperature is considered a scalar rather than a vector. Also, I'm not very well acquainted with Wittgenstein's philosophical ideas, but I would assume stuff like chairs, horses, or iron all more or less constitute objects, I don't think any of those things can be conceived of as vectors. That being said, I do think temperature would be considered an object. All of this is coming from someone who has not read the Tractatus though, so take it with a grain of salt. Good luck in your learning!
I really liked your exposition. I can't say the same for the Tractatus itself. It hasn't aged well and Wittgenstein's account of logic is hopelessly out of date. Too much of the book is concerned with the limits of Wittgenstein's imagination, rather than the limits of what is possible.
Aristotle not Rationalist. Proto-empiricist who believed Reason could also derive Knowledge from examining concepts intellectually received from sense perception: materially instantiated Universals. See Raphael's magnificent painting School of Athens
never take this video off TH-cam for as long as it exists please
In my years of life, I never thought that someone would make a dissertation of a modern (or postmodern) philosopher because of a Visual Novel, and a good one at that, but here we are! Thanks for the great video.
Introduction 0:01
Biography 0:33
Context and Overview 10:34
18:37 1-2.0141
28:29 2.02-2.063
37:28 2.1-3.144
50:12 3.2-3.5
1:09:20 4-4.116
1:18:11 4.12-4.128
1:28:01 4.2-5.156
1:41:13 5.2-5.4611
1:52:53 5.47-5.54
2:06:26 5.541-5.641
2:19:21 6-6.241
2:28:35 6.3-6.3751
2:40:46 6.4-7
Personal background 2:59:26
Closing 3:00:42
The approximate topics of the individual sections:
1-2.0141 - ontology
2.02-2.063
2.1-3.144 - language, thought, representation
3.2-3.5 - the sense of propositions and names
4-4.116 - saying vs. showing
4.12-4.128 - formal concepts, concepts proper
4.2-5.156 - laws of inference 🔨
5.2-5.4611 - logical axioms, logical objects 🔨
5.47-5.54
5.541-5.641 - the “soul” 🔨
6-6.241 - the form of a proposition
6.3-6.3751
6.4-7 - ethics, metaphilosophy
Thank you so much for this!
go and search "wittgenstein brought back to life" - thank me later
You're the goat
Ayana's infodumps got out of hand
only infodumps which i actually enjoy and make narrative sense
This is one of those strange videos you find in the middle of the night with no relation to your feed whatsoever that makes the internet worth supporting.
I cannot overstate how much I appreciate that you made this video. Its safe to say that without it I wouldnt have been able to finish the tractatus, and not only do I believe I have a pretty good understanding of it now, but I ended up absolutely loving it. So, thank you so much for making this video!
This is the best philosophical overview and explainer guide on the TH-cam. Thanku for your services.
I love to live in a world where a japanese VN inspires a random person living thousands of miles away from me to make an actual and well constructed video essay about one of the most infamously complex thinkers of early 20th century
Clicked for the anime girl, stayed for everything else
I think its a guy
why did you click for a 2000s bad quality version of a small animated female figure ..? no this can't be perversion this person must have a life..
@@sfdvas Looks feminine enough
@@sfdvas I'm sorry, you're gay.
@@sfdvasit’s not
this is the greatest video on the platform, without any exaggeration
Ayana really pulls it all together.
reading Wittgenstein and NOT going "holy shit" is an impossibility
How
@@Dubulcle ly shit
Zanno, if you know mathematics most of his opinions are merely trivial. If you know how manifold theory came to be and of atlasses, then the first 10 pages of his Tractatus is merely a philosophization of those mathematical foundations.
I go “eureka!”.
Having just finished reading the Tractatus concurrently with a Reread of Subahibi, I gotta say; this was a very insightful video. Thank you for putting this together, especially the context for what Wittgenstein wrote and why. Very well researched.
Didnt expect to see le wild sleepy crest here... Or maybe i should have?
Hey there Sleepy. 👋
@@EctrosParlor meowdy
@sleepycrest4264 Fancy seeing you here! I came to refresh myself on the teaching of our lord and philosophical savior!
Lemme ask you, did you get through the entire Tractatus? I got up to 4.0312 before I got distracted by whatever it was that I was consuming a year back.
from the way I understand it, objects according to wittgenstein are only intelligible insofar as they form states of affairs with other objects. for example, if I have a linear function on a graph, any point on the line cannot be spoken of other than its relation to another point on the line.
the issue i have with this is that the objects themselves are not only unintelligible by themselves, but seem to be irrelevant to the picture theory of meaning entirely. I can picture a state of affairs in logical space without understanding the objects that make up the state of affairs, but this doesn't subtract from the meaning of the thought. for example, if i see a book that I haven't read and picture the book, the book in the picture has no definite number of pages, nor does it have any content, because I haven't read it. The physical book in the world, however, has a definite number of pages and a definite number of words, yet the picture still shows the book.
I guess my main question is:
is the number of pages part of what constitutes the form, and if so can the book be pictured without knowing the number of pages, and thus without knowing the form?
I think you are comiting a mistake in equating x=x' meaning the book equals the published version of the book. You could have pictured an ebook or a scroll, does that make the proposition more wrong? The correct way (i guess) would be "x book has y amount of pages" then you can compare the proposition with the state of affairs.
Edit: check 5.156
A book is not a fact. In this ontology it is only facts that exist, so these are the only kinds of thing you can form a picture of.
Huh
Very simply, it might be that thinking cannot represent. What is representation after all, and can thinking really do it? I do not believe it can.
You could maybe do some conceptual proof checking by analyzing the pattern of neurons that form the thought for the same structure. For example, activities in 2 dimensions have a two dimensional neuron firing pattern. How do basic configurations of neurons and what they represent relate to the logic in the philosophy?
Thank you, this video essay helped me read the Tractatus with much more confidence, and I understood it much better due to the context you so thoroughly provided.
Based and Ayanapilled
Yess
Ah mira Zeif, que cosa encontrarte aquí xd
based and dino pilled
you clickbaited me perfectly with the anime and the video was still amazing, good work
this is such an amazing video, im so glad someone made a full analysis and explanation of this book. i might not be able to quote this video in my philosophy essays but please know that you are greatly appreciated!
this is like an evil graphic novel where a character just comes up to you and infodumps for three hours and then leaves
YOU MAKE IT LOOK EASY! fantastic video. Now, not only do i fell like i understand the positivist reading of wittgenstein but i also find his philosophy very interesting, all thanks to you.
go and search "wittgenstein brought back to life" - thank me later
Amazing video, the Tractatus is my fav philosophical book and this might be the best video i've seen on it yet.
One of the best videos about the Tractatus in TH-cam. Thank you! :)
why are people who have no interest in continental philosophy being recommended this ... i love it
continental? did you mean to say analytic? from what exposure I've had to continental philosophy the Tractatus seems to be a total antithesis, I can't stand listening to the nonsense of continental philosophy for reasons similar to the thesis of the Tractatus (I just dropped Nietzsche because he never said anything clearly, save his "will to power" which he made no attempt to justify).
thank you Otonashi Ayana for introducing me to Wittgenstein
I will watch the rest of this later but what you have presented so far is very interesting and I really wanna learn more about Wittgenstein.
Thank you very very much for making this. I assume you made it as much for your own learning as ours, but you shared it and that’s the generosity of the internet that makes it great. Best to you
I will never be able to parse what it means but I'm glad this video exists.
Otonashi Ayana, I liked the part where she talks about the problem with immortality
Many thanks. You have blessed the minds of many philosophy students
really good presentation. if you ever want to make a video on philosophical investigations and how it relates to the tractatus or something of that sort I'd watch it for sure.
You haven't uploaded for a while, so I'm guessing you are too busy to read this, but I will say it anyways. Amazing explanation and analysis. After reading Subahibi and thoroughly enjoying it, I saw this recommended by someone on a Subahibi vid and decided to check it out. Because of my poor attention span, I listened to this over the course of SEVERAL days, but I think this just added to my appreciation of your analysis and this work's propositions. As for if you were able to help towards the purpose of giving pleasure to those who read the Tractatus, I would say you have definitely succeeded on that front.
Also Ayana basedgoddess.
I still check comments even if I've been to busy to upload recently. I am glad you found value in it :)
Incredible video! The best I've seen on Wittgenstein by far.
if i could go back in time i’d make wittgenstein play subahibi 😂
he was a mech eng student, he'd probably do it
He would've absolutely loved VNs
@@jKherty💀
imagine showing Subahibi to a victorian child
@@FlynnMegaTensei "Banger, I love Zakuro" - Victorian child
Oh, my dude. Thank you so much for this video. I've been doing a really basic philosophy module to get my head around the topic. Week 1 had a small mention of Wittgenstein, and suggested that we go read more about the philosophers in the module
IDK if you've tried this, but it's impossible to find anything about Wittgenstein's philosophy online. So I tried reading the Tractatus, and a few related works. And like, I'm barely grasping what you're saying (I can tell, like you said, that it's the text that's incomprehensible. You're doing such a good job at this omg), but it's helping me so much.
Seriously, man. I'm fuckin' stoked.
Can you do a walk-through on the philosophical investigations?
Thank you sir I am ready to read subahibi now.
After like a year of shitty youtube recommendations they hit me with this absolute fucking gold mine. Fantastic job.
I’m legitimately scared. I literally just started taking a Wittgenstein course for my undergrad last week; and I NEVER looked up anything related to Wittgenstein on TH-cam before this popped up in my recommended.
Not only that, the fact that this video feels so fine tuned to my sensibilities as a guy with a very ironic sense of humor and an appreciation for anime-remix/meme culture is concerning.
This video is a gift btw
Truly great video! Should be the first result when searching info on the Tractatus. Well done! I would love to see similar videos on Kant or Hegel, also known to be convoluted.
Bravo.
Both the "traditional reading" and the "resolute reading" miss the *ethical* point of the Tractatus, by the way. For that point, it is necessary to see that Wittgenstein's view of logic was not a static one, but intimately connected to the action of the subject ("the will", as Wittgenstein says, including the application of logical operations, which determines the limits of the world and shows forth internal relations, aesthetics, and ethics -- though not independently of the world (or others/language)).
“Tractātus” in Latin is the perfect passive participle of “tractō” (“I tug; I drag; I haul; I pull”). The participle of which meaning “Dragged; Tugged; exercised, performed; managed.”
No sh1t sherlock
The moment when it really clicked for me, was when I was thinking about why computers are being programmed by programming *languages*. If I can formulate something in a language, I will always be able to find an answer to it. In fact I don't even have to go searching for that answer a machine can do it just fine. But what cannot precisely be expressed in language (like `What is the meaning of life`) has no answer in language.
I can, of course, make something up that I proclaim to be my meaning of life. But this is then just a sort of program, which my life runs on (similar to what Eric Berne called scripts) and has nothing to do with intrinsic `truthfulness`.
I think you're only covered half-of-the-point. Even if we can't express/answered something in some language, doesn't mean it's not true/meaningful.
@@vogel2499 I disagree. Truth is only something that can be defined within a formal system like a language. Under certain pre-conditions, do we then describe something as being "true". However, there is nothing that could be objectively "true" in a platonic sense.
@@MrOndra31 While Wittgenstein isn't necessarily declaring platonic truths to exist in the Tractatus, Vogel is right that the "logical positivist" interpretation you're making is off base. See the discussion of the "mystical."
You can't always find a knowably correct answer though.
My thought exactly! I was intensely reminded reminded of computers and programming.
A beautiful video on a beautiful book from a beautiful mind
I have little knowledge about philosophy, but as a software developer the way his facts and states of affairs are constructed feels really familiar to me. I was reminded of logical gates and boolean logic.
philosophy started and ended with the greeks. everything else is pointless navel-gazing nonsense.
@@fadinglightsarefading would you like to elaborate?
@@Ethereal_dust philosophy reached its end at the beginning when the greeks acquired all that it amounted to from the indians, culminating in apophatic philosophy i.e. their method 'via negativa'. this is present in advaita vedanta, neoplatonism and first buddhism. officially it ends with John Scottus Eriugena, a neoplatonist who was the last to endorse the philosophy. post-antiquity the spirit of this philosophy diffused with the sentimentality of abrahamism, and post-rennaisance was destroyed completely, enjoying corrupt forms its various pseudo-platonisms (hegel, a platonist). then you have rubbish like existentialism come up, which is not philosophy but navel-gazing.
@@fadinglightsarefadingwhat do you have to say about contemporary analytic philosophy?
@@pika_speed utterly pointless and contributes only to confusion
I love Duty of genius, my favorite biography of all time
Finally i understand what is Tractacus about, thanks man.. even though i can citation this video for my article
This was wonderful. Live happily (:
Very nice. It seems to me the Tractatus is wresting with the ways that human consciousness via language reads and creates reality. Yet Wittgenstein rarely places himself in the text as author; rather it is presented as a complete object. Part of his weakness is his interest in mathematical logic; like religious philosophers before him, he must twist his thought into pretzels to make his philosophy align with his mathematics, whose logic hardly encompasses all that is human.
Thanks for putting in the work to make this video! This book is tough to understand on its own.
very interesting to see this after reading both early and late wittgenstein. very nice. Also Hegel when?
Thanks a lot for this. I’m not super intelligent and I was struggling to get through this book, until I found this video.
Unfathomably, incalculably, immeasurably based.
@@someguy4405 Ludwig would be proud
Can't believe this wouldn't have been possible if it wasn't for a hardcore gore cp mongolian digital picture book
kimika best girl
feel like wittgenstien straight up was this anime girl the way he gets lost in his internal world and focuses on little things so hard.
Wow. This video is unique. Step by step explanation!
thank you for making this
Nice video, thanks for the explanation.
Great video, thank you for making it!
I gotta read Subahibi I have never read any VNs but I read both Logico philosophical treatise and philosophical letters by Wittgenstein
I heard this is filled with gross pedo stuff so beware.
@@rishiy6183
That can be said about anything related to Japanese otaku culture that goes deeper than Dragonball and Pokémon or whatever, they had to take down loli related advertisements in Tokyo for the olympics due to all the tourists and outsiders
I gotta ask, what are some of your favourite works of art?
Are you sure about Spinozas' influence on Ludwig? Im pretty sure the only connections between early Wittgenstein and Spinoza is the english title of Tractatus which of course could be considered as a reference to Baruch but it was proposed by George Edward Moore. I have heard that it was just an sarcastic joke by Moore.
Make videos again please😢
Amazing video! Thank you for explaining it so clearly. However, i differ in what the conclusion of the Tractatus is, i don't think that "the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth". Instead, I think that the Tractatus affirm that there is something as truth (meta linguistically), only that we cannot say it, but rather we can show it. Philosophy (or theoretical knowledge in general) is nonsense. If it is true in all cases/all possible worlds that "the world is all that is the case" and that tautologies and contradictions are nonsensical or meaningless (opposed to contingent propositions, that have something as meaning) then we cant say anything about the world, but that limit between language and reality is not only negative, but also positive, now that we see that limit we can surpass it by showing how things are, instead of saying it.
gonna watch this for the sake of ayana ty
the thumbnail algorithm engineering on this is going crazy
word up brother ludwig wittgenstein spoke facts i cant lie.
Mythical fyp pull
why is peak at the bottom half of the video?
1:56:32 that's Brouwer not Sheffer
this is splendid. thank you very much
48:35
Maybe I can try to explain it. Wittgenstein, implicitly, explains why a proposition shows its logical form.
Let's take the same proposition from the video: 'Socrates is a wise Athenian.' How can you express its logical form in words? Some of you will answer: "Easy: 'Socrates' is the name because it stands in front of the verb, while 'a wise Athenian' is the predicative nominal because it stands after the verb. So, with this logic, I can connect the sentence with the proposition and, hence, with the world." (Explanation 1.0)
But this is not an explanation of it because, when you explain it, you are using language. To understand that explanation, I have to understand the language, and in order to understand the language, I already need to know the logical form of the language. When you made Explanation 1.0, you were using the logical form in your explanation because you were using the language.
In this sense, we can't talk about the logical form of the language within the language because, to explain it, we have to use our language. As a result, we are explaining the logical form of the language while using the logical form of the language in our explanation.
Thus, a sentence can only show the logical form because it can't be explained-it wouldn't be an explanation.
nothing is hidden everything is plain in sight
Amazing explanation. Thanks a lot!
Goat and Ayanapilled
Amazing, keep up the good work
what a great lecture, really, thank you. here in vienna, fully able to walk by the palais wittgenstein while reading the tractatus, there still remain more ? than !. whats the title of the graphic novel/manga/comic that brought you to the tractatus btw? cheers
Subarashiki Hibi ～ Furenzoku Sonzai (2010).
Sometimes translated as "Wonderful Everyday ～ Discontinuous Existence," but usually just called Subarashiki Hibi or SubaHibi for short.
I'm pretty late to this comment but I'm going to give a pretty big content warning on that one. Also while it's rich in references I'd be careful about how they're contextualised in the vn.
@@rex9912 could you elaborate on the warning and how its contextualised? was thinking about buying the game but now i'm not sure anymore
@@weinrotjack9363 I'll give explaining the content warning a shot. There's some very heavy themes - suicide, sexual content (both consensual and not), and some gore. I'm not the most sensitive person ever but even I had to skip one scene in particular.
As for how Wittgenstein's Tractus is used in the novel (maybe contextualized was the wrong word?)... I think I regret saying that. It's a fairly deep vn with lots of really interesting literary, and cultural references. I think it was written by someone who was very well read, but just don't expect them to have understood, and incorporated each of those books perfectly. At the end of the day it's a visual novel, not a philosophy lecture, and some artistic freedom was taken.
Is it a good vn? Yes, most definitely. But I just can't in good conscience recommend it to everyone.
@@rex9912 thank you very much for taking the time to explain
Can anyone help me with how simple objects are to be understood? Here are some questions that I cant get over:
1. If they are irreducible, shouldn't we arrive at only one kind of "simple object" (for example, a kind of atom (if that were the end of it))? But he speaks of it as if there were multiple kind of simple objects.
2. If this kind of object is independent of anything else, it means also there is no cause for it, doesn't it? So if we think in terms of causality how is that possible? Doesn't the question of creation arise hereafter?
@Jade Vine how would you see this vis-a-vis the method employed by Nagarjuna? You likened the ends but their means are totally incompatible, no?
Elucidations or any links to anything helpful would be much appreciated.
Objects constitute the substance of the world, so they cannot be complex. If the world had no substance, then that a sentence makes sense would have to depend on whether another was true. It would then be impossible to design an image of the world that could be true or false.
This I also do not get. If we say following Nagarjuna, everything is dependent, I would argue, albeit oversimplified: The sentence/fact "the car is red" depends on the sentence/fact that "red is a color" or even " x can see color", " x is seeing the car" etc.
Or is this a complete misunderstanding?
@weinrotjack @weinrotjack Thank you for the questions! And to be transparent, these sections are extremely difficult to me and it's an area (probably the only one of this work) where I believe I have a fundamental disagreement with Wittgenstein, which is why I bring up Nāgārjuna as someone who I understand more (and just because I'm biased since he's a philosopher I have also spent a lot of time trying to understand). This is my understanding.
1. Wittgenstein doesn't really seem to know what kind of simple objects there are or not. He might in fact not think it's possible to know. He only thinks that there must be something fundamental since for him there has to be something at the base of his system that isn't dependent on anything else, and clearly simple propositions like "the car is red" and "car" cannot be those he has in mind. So it seems that he thinks there are some kinds of objects that are simply re-arranged and combined separately without ever directly impacting each other. But he makes no statement about the number of them; he sees that as out of his scope of knowledge or unimportant for the matter at hand. There's a part in the Tractatus I wish I would have included in this analysis that explicitly says that even if the world were infinitely complex so that every proposition consistent of an infinite number of facts and each fact consisted of an infinite number of objects, his conclusion about the ontology of the world would still stand.
2. Yes. In Wittgenstein's own words, "superstition is belief in the causal nexus." Wittgenstein believes there is no logical base to the belief in cause or effect. Note that dependence is not the same thing as causation; dependence means that one thing cannot exist without another, while causation means that one thing has to occur before the other in time to bring the other into existence. This is a very radical conclusion but it is one that he is consistent to.
The last point you mentioned gets at what I think is their fundamental difference: Wittgenstein believes, at this point in his philosophical career, it seems, that to convey meaning their must be something at the base of the ontology. Nāgārjuna doesn't. Both of them believe that the meaning of words, propositions, etc. comes through use, but Nāgārjuna believes there is only a sort of constant chain of dependence where everything depends on something else. Wittgenstein, at this point in his career at least, seems to believe that there is some kind of basis to the chain of meaning. But Wittgenstein is evasive about them.
In my personal opinion, I find this kind of logical atomistic base ontology to be somewhat unusual clinger-on from the kind of Bertrand Russell-inspired logic tradition that Wittgenstein studied in which can mesh uncomfortably with other parts of the Tractatus. I see it as an influence of a western philosophical tradition that demands that philosophy begin with ontology and metaphysics to reach conclusions, while the later Wittgenstein is far more similar to Nāgārjuna, who begins in many ways from epistemological rather than ontological or metaphysical grounding. In Nāgārjuna's belief, it is impossible to find any kind of simple object at the base of an ontology. It is impossible to define anything apart from all the other things around it. In the world we live in, to use a physical allegory, things like elementary particles or strings are something close to the "simple objects" that form our quantum physics, and thus the world as we know it, but these are themselves highly theoretical constructs that depend on the things that they form (atoms, etc.) to be defined and conceived. Even if we take simple objects to be logical or theoretical rather than physical, there is a similar problem. What's interesting is that Wittgenstein seems to be aware of these difficulties in a way; he understands that if there are simple objects, they have to be so fundamental that they can barely be talked about or understood.
Due to his vagueness about the idea of simple objects, there is also a big problem over whether he speaks of them according to a realist or nominalist position. While it seems evident that they aren't material, it is unsure if they are things that exist out there in the real world or if they are spoken of as constructs in our mind. I personally believe the nominalist reading could have the ability to fix the difficulties of reading it with regard to Nāgārjuna's argument. Computer coding is a good way to understand this. All the text on this screen, the comment chain on TH-cam, my video, etc. are at their most simple form nothing more than 1s and 0s. That means that in the realm of computers we have a metaphysics that breaks down to simple objects of 1s and 0s, but that these 1s and 0s are still just constructs that we create for a specific purpose rather than something that inherently exists. There are no analogues to these 1s and 0s in the real world. This works in language to a degree too. We can talk about doing something for the "sake" of something else, but there is no such thing as a "sake" in the actual world that we can find. If we read Wittgenstein nominally, he might be saying that these simple objects are things we create as a system to convey meaning like 1s and 0s in a computer, without necessarily guaranteeing their real existence. Of course, this is not a perfect 1:1 comparison and ignores some fundamental differences in the way humans work from computers, but I think the nominal position is still the most philosophically sound. In his later writings, Wittgenstein actually abandons this kind of metaphysics of simple objects and, like Nāgārjuna, believes that things have meaning in favor of their use in "the stream of life" rather than based on a hierarchical ontological ground.
@@DwellingInTheFourfold Thanks for the incredibly thorough answer!
Re: causation. I understand the differentiation but would it makes sense to call something truly independent if it is caused at some point? For me they seems synonymous. If my existence is dependent on you and vice-versa, don't we then cause each other in a certain sense? Or for example, man is dependent on air. If air is not, man is not. Air alone might not be the direct cause of man but there is after all a fundamental causal relationship. But if you (W) say that cause-effect is essentially superstitious, this argument would go up in smoke. Hence W is, like you said, just not at all interested in that.
SparkNotes says this: "Wittgenstein never gives us an example of an object because there is nothing to be said about objects. Asking "what is an object?" is like asking "what does everything have in common?" The best answer Wittgenstein can muster to this question is that everything shares in common a logical form that allows it to occur in states of affairs. Objects are the simplest, most general things there are: the only thing that all things hold in common is that we can say something about them."
Would that come close to the nominalist reading then?
As for the rest, I have to go into it deeper to really grasp the whole picture here. I might come back to this post once things become clearer. Do you have any essential recommended reading re: Tractatus and Nagarjuna?
@weinrotjack I think I can agree with your idea of causation and dependence to a degree, but for me the primary difference is that causation on some level involves time or ordering. For example, X happening first that has a power in it to bring about Y, then Y being brought about after X because of the Y-bringing power, or something like that. Whereas dependence does not entail that. Dependence just means that one thing cannot exist without the other. At the very least, and this is more evident near the end of Proposition 6, Wittgenstein explicitly believes that "this event happened, therefore another one must necessarily happen" is not a logical conclusion (this argument echoes Hume), and therefore seems to be rejecting the temporal, chronological kind of causation. I suppose if we want to interpret causation as not necessarily temporal and chronological and simply as "A not being able to exist without B," then you could say that Wittgenstein believes in this kind of causation. In fact, maybe that's why he uses the phrase "the causal nexus" instead of "causation"!
On the surface, when I read these sections of the Tractatus, it sounds like there are simple objects that are the foundation of the entire ontology. It doesn't seem to say that they are "uncaused" or not (since for Wittgenstein causation as a whole doesn't really apply to logic), but they are irreducible to anything else, which is what is really key. And then depending on how they are "combined" or "arranged" so to say, they create facts. I think this is difficult to grasp because the whole thing is a lot more abstract and theoretical than it seems. They don't to "combine" in a way that occurs in a point in time and has a physical, observable process, but rather "combine" in the way that, say, 2 + 3 combines 2 and 3 to create 5. We tend to anthropomorphize this relation in our thoughts of 2 existing, then 3 being added to it, then 5 occurring chronologically, but in reality math equations don't occur temporally. So I think that these relations are all things that occur like equations, not in time. At least this is how I read it.
And yes, I think that quote sounds similar to the nominalist reading for me. It explains it in the sense of a system of logic, though it doesn't seem to know whether that system of logic is something that inherently exists in the world or is something that exists at the level of our minds understanding the world. I tend toward the latter reading (maybe because of a bias that makes me not want the idea of something irreducible to exist in nature, since Nāgārjuna doesn't like this idea).
For the Tractatus and Wittgenstein, I'm a fan of "Wittgenstein" by William Child in the Routledge Philosophers series, which discusses the whole object/fact/etc. ontology at the beginning and the realist/nominalist distinction very well. The only thing I'm not so fond of is that skips (and admits openly to omitting for the sake of time, granted) analysis of the "truth in solipsism" section near the end of Proposition 5, which I find one of the most interesting areas. Peter Sullivan, Lucy O'Brien, and Hilary Putnam have apparently written a lot more on this solipsism section but I haven't read their works yet.
For Nāgārjuna I've read more. I think "Nāgārjuna's Madhyamaka: A Philosophical Introduction" by Jan Westerhoff is a marvelous book which not only explores the ideas in depth and with clarity, but also does more to explain the strange argumentative form of Nāgārjuna's dialectic more than others, which is too often overlooked and can make his arguments hard to follow at first glance. After that, to really delve into the meaty verses themselves with a full analysis of the most important philosophical work by him, I highly recommend "The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā" translated by Jay L. Garfield.
Cheers!
1. Why wouldn't there be different 'types' of simple objects? Wittgenstein never decisively stated what those simple objects would be, but he did lean towards sense data. The sentence 'the car is red' could then ultimately be analyzed into 'there is a black dot here and a red dot there and another red dot there etc' - and the same of course for auditive data and so on. Only now could it not be analyzed any further.
His reason for believing in the existence of simple objects is not that hard to understand. 'my cat lies under my bed' as all sentences consists entirely of names. It makes sense even if my cat has passed and does not exist anymore. Therefore, 'my cat' cannot be one of those names, because if it were, with the passing of my cat one of the names would stop referring to some thing in the world rendering the sentence meaningless. Therefore, there have to be simple (i. e. indestructible) objects.
2: this should clarify that causality has little to do with it.
Gonna be real with you. I ain't watching all of that, but I respect the work you put into it. Love Subahibi btw
Well.. that was a nice 3 hour experience. Proposition 7 was a great plot twist
Thanks a lot❤️
Let us consume 2024 content, esoteric philosophy and anime.
calling wittgenstein esoteric is crazy
Learned of wittgenstein through Alan Watts. He thought very highly of him.
It sucks that they took down the video of Alan watts discussing the Tractatus. I can’t find it anywhere
@@lettersfromanihilist9092 here's a transcript of it.
www.alanwatts.org/3-3-11-ghosts/
Will thank you! u knew the exact lecture I was talking about lol
@@lettersfromanihilist9092 you're welcome. I've likely got that one as mp3. Will try to hunt it down soon. I've listened to them too much. Lol
Will I would actually appreciate that so much, I feel like he was one of the few people who understood him
Good video. Love from Argentina
Hello,
it is very nice to see such a well thought out explanation of this book.
However, I do not quite agree with what you say at 19:20:
"the world consist of facts, which are made up from the existence or non existence of states of affairs".
I can not find Wittgenstein stating that facts are made up of states of affairs, but rather think that W. says the existence of states of affairs is a fact. 2: "What is the case-a fact-is the existence of states of affairs". Your (Jade Vines) explanation would furthermore mean that facts do not just contain states of affairs but also objects. This would make not reallly sense considering that W. puts facts as the "smallest" part of the world.
Maybe I see it wrong or just misunderstood you (i am not a native speaker). So can somebody help me out here?
I think what you say is correct and I admit that I should have phrased this better. Instead of "made up from," I should have said "depend on" (that is to say, whether or not a certain state of affairs or group of states of affairs exists is a fact). What I really wanted to get at was this dependence relation, but I interpreted it and thus portrayed it in too direct and simplistic a way, which leads to the problem you mentioned. Although I think that "made up from" and "dependent on" is a somewhat ambiguous difference that my own research in Buddhist philosophy has biased me towards blending together, which is a struggle I have in dealing with this text.
To be frank, I find this section fairly difficult to parse since there's a lot in it that, from a philosophical perspective, I have doubts and questions about so I'm happy to hear your interpretation.
Great work
I'm just 22:49 deep here, but could the "objects" allude to a verifiable source of information that backs up (or not) states of affairs in the logical space, rendering facts true or false?
I'll suggest an allegory of objects being guesses, states being a box's lid and the facts the content of said box; your guess might or not be confirmed upon the opening, but the contents always remain the same.
yt algorithm is cooking this night
Im only 45 minutes in, but would i be able to visualize objects as vectors?
For example temperature. Temperature can be explained as a vector:
1. It cannot be simplified any further.
2. it is a commonality between different states of affairs, just like the example of length.
3. Temperature is a building block in all state of affairs, everything has a temperature.
thus it can be seen as an object.
I would appreciate any directional advice
In Physics temperature is considered a scalar rather than a vector. Also, I'm not very well acquainted with Wittgenstein's philosophical ideas, but I would assume stuff like chairs, horses, or iron all more or less constitute objects, I don't think any of those things can be conceived of as vectors. That being said, I do think temperature would be considered an object. All of this is coming from someone who has not read the Tractatus though, so take it with a grain of salt. Good luck in your learning!
I really liked your exposition. I can't say the same for the Tractatus itself. It hasn't aged well and Wittgenstein's account of logic is hopelessly out of date. Too much of the book is concerned with the limits of Wittgenstein's imagination, rather than the limits of what is possible.
This is so randomly popular
3 HOURS?? yeah im watching this for sure
me when i install arch linux
Amazing job. Well done.
Best video of the earth!!!!
I cant grasp how logic coresponeds with phenomenal world.
Now I gotta finish Wonderful Everyday.
Thank you so much this is amazing 💕
Great change in philosophy: 1776 Jefferson self-evident, Kant 1781 A priori.
Aristotle not Rationalist. Proto-empiricist who believed Reason could also derive Knowledge from examining concepts intellectually received from sense perception: materially instantiated Universals. See Raphael's magnificent painting School of Athens
The Sheffer Stroke stuff is making me freak out.