A Tractarian Universe

Abstract

In this paper we develop a reconstruction of the Tractatus ontology. The basic idea is that objects are unsaturated and that Sachlagen are like molecules. Bisimulation is used for the proper individuation of the Sachlagen. We show that the ordering of the Sachlagen is a complete distributive, lattice. It is atomistic, i.e., each Sachlage is the supremum of the Sachverhalte below it. We exhibit three normal forms for Sachlagen: the bisimulation collapse, the canonical unraveling and the canonical bisimulation collapse. The first of these forms is unique modulo isomorphism, the second and third are simply unique. The subset ordering on normal forms of the second and third kind reflects the ordering of the Sachlagen.