Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Research Articles

Language and Idealism

In the philosophical inquiry adopted by logical empiricists, analysis of scientific language becomes something similar to a metaphysical endeavor which is meant to establish the bounds of sense, and this stance may be easily traced back to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. On the other hand, the analytic tradition transferred this conception to the analysis of ordinary language, and this move, eventually, was able to restore the confidence of many philosophers in their own work. After all they were doing something important and worthwhile, that is to say, something no one else was doing, since linguists are certainly concerned with language, but from quite a different point of view. At this point we may well ask ourselves: What is wrong with this kind of approach, given the present crisis of the analytic tradition and the growing success of the so-called postanalytic thought? At first sight it looks perfectly legitimate and, moreover, it produced important results, as anybody can verify just reading the masterpieces of contemporary analytic philosophy. To answer the question: What is wrong?, we must first of all take into account language itself and check what it is meant to be within the analytic tradition. This will give our question a clear answer. We have to verify, furthermore, what kind of knowledge philosophy needs to be equipped with if it wants to preserve its autonomy. The logical positivists clearly claimed in their program that there is no synthetic a priori knowledge such as the one envisioned by Immanuel Kant. There is, however, an analytic and a priori knowledge which is supplied by mathematics and logic alone. Within this field, the techniques of contemporary formal logic are exalted because they allow us to build artificial languages which - at least theoretically - eliminate the ambiguities of everyday speech.

Wittgenstein and Dostoevsky: Happiness and Subjectivity

This paper analyzes the influence that The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky exerted on Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophical ideas. I argue that this impact was not limited exclusively to Wittgenstein's moral certainty but that it played an important role in his concept of the subject as the limit of the world, as formulated in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. I attempt to show that this concept is embedded in literature, particularly in Dostoevsky, who describes liminal situations—crime, sin, guilt—in which the human being is at the edge of the world, at its boundary, as if within and at the same time outside.

Holism and Atomism in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

The aim of my paper is to describe and evaluate different conceptions of holism in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. I distinguish three readings of holistic elements in this work: i) Minimal Holism (E. Anscombe, M. Black, D. Pears); ii) Moderate Holism (J. Conant, C. Diamond, G. Ryle); and iii) Radical Holism (G. Bar-Elli, M. Kremer, P. Livingston). The conclusion is that the most viable option is the Moderate Holism since it embraces the logico-syntactial notion of use, rejects anachronistic interpretation of Tractatarian ontology and allows us to see that the holistic elements are complementary to the initial atomism of the work. Moreover, I point to the consequences of the topic for the overall reading of Wittgenstein’s early and late work.

On Wittgenstein’s Influence on the Logical Positivists

In this article, I consider the influence of the ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and above all the ideas of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus on the philosophy of logical positivism. Agreeing that the question of such an influence is not a self-evident one, I clarify at first the concept of logical positivism and then turn to the evidence of the leading logical positivists about the influence of Wittgenstein upon them. An analysis of recollections of Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, Friedrich Waismann, and Alfred Ayer suggests that at least these thinkers themselves considered such an influence as very significant.

Logical Positivism, Wittgenstein and Ethical Value of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

The problem of interconnection of L. Wittgenstein and logical positivism is considered. It is proved that mutual influence did not exist and could not exist due to dissimilarities between the tasks proposed in the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” and the goals that are basic for the representatives of the Vienna Circle. But the difference between the tasks and the goals does not diminish the value of the philosophy of early Wittgenstein, if even his philosophy cannot be interpreted from the point of view of the Unified Science. But the ethical value of the “Tractatus” is problematic too. It does not contain any positive decisions for the humanities.

A Different Order of Difficulty: Literature after Wittgenstein by Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé

Reviewed by: A Different Order of Difficulty: Literature after Wittgenstein by Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé Michael McGillen A Different Order of Difficulty: Literature after Wittgenstein. By Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. Pp. 342. Paper $32.50. ISBN 978-0226677156. Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé's thought-provoking A Different Order of Difficulty: Literature after Wittgenstein joins a burgeoning body of scholarship on Ludwig Wittgenstein's relationship to modernism. A study at the boundary of literary studies and philosophy, it explores both the literary qualities of Wittgenstein's philosophy and the philosophical implications of modernist literature. With chapters on Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and J.M. Coetzee, the book offers a comparative analysis of Wittgenstein and these figures based on the affinities of their aesthetic approaches and ethical outlooks—and not a study of influence. What Wittgenstein shares with modernist literature, as Zumhagen-Yekplé demonstrates in a series of incisive readings, is an interest in riddles, puzzles, and parables. The book shows that modernism constructs puzzles that entail a different order of difficulty: they are solved not by finding an answer, but by engaging with problems and perplexities that admit no easy solutions. It is here that we discover a yearning for self-transformation—and for spiritual redemption—that Zumhagen-Yekplé defines as the locus of the ethical. Our encounter with the difficulties of parables and puzzles is ethical because it requires that we engage imaginatively with the limits of our everyday experience. Zumhagen-Yekplé's reading of Wittgenstein follows in the footsteps of Cora Diamond and James Conant, who advocate for a "resolute" account of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921). In its penultimate proposition, Wittgenstein indicates that the true aim of the book's exploration of logic and language was to prompt the reader to recognize the senselessness of these propositions and thereby engage in ethical self-reflection about what it means to live rightly. He likens the metaphysical propositions of the Tractatus to a ladder that, once it has been ascended, can be jettisoned. For "resolute" readers of Wittgenstein, the senselessness of the book's metaphysical propositions is categorical and allows for no distinction between meaningful and meaningless nonsense. Accordingly, "resolute" readers distinguish between the "frame" of the Tractatus (its ethical aim) and its "body" (its logical propositions): on its surface, the Tractatus is a book about philosophical logic, but if one penetrates the surface, one discovers a deeper ethical aim that follows from the recognition of the senselessness of metaphysics. As readers of Wittgenstein, we may rightfully ask ourselves: to what end should we contend with the book's logical propositions if, in the end, they are to be discarded as nonsense? Yet this perplexity, Zumhagen-Yekplé argues, is central to Wittgenstein's method, whose insights lie in the process of thought itself rather than in its results. Indeed, A Different Order of Difficulty proves most compelling when it shows that the "tactical" use of difficulty (in George Steiner's terms) gives way to an "ontological" [End Page 414] difficulty—one that can never be resolved because it is implicit in the conditions of our existence. With reference to Wittgenstein's Lectures on Ethics, the book notes that it is possible to use nonsense creatively and to engage with nonsense through the imagination. This link between ethical self-transformation and the imagination places Wittgenstein in close proximity to modernist literature, whose fundamental concern, Zumhagen-Yekplé suggests, is to probe the limits of human possibility. Comparing the Tractatus with Kafka's "On Parables" (1931), she shows how each is concerned with bridging a gap: between the world of facts and ethical experience (Wittgenstein) and between everyday life and literature (Kafka). Both Kafka and Wittgenstein present their readers with parables that do not communicate a lesson didactically, but rather subtly prompt their readers to change their way of seeing the world. In a chapter on Woolf's To the Lighthouse (1927), by contrast, Zumhagen- Yekplé shows how modernism confronts not only interpretative difficulties but also what Diamond calls the "difficulty of reality" in experiences of suffering, trauma, and death. These difficulties punctuate Woolf's novel, most palpably in the truncated experiences of loss in "Time Passes," and...

Russell and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus

The author argues that Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus owes much to Russell’s early philosophy. This point of view is demonstrated in the article by referring to G. Landini’s recent research on Russell’s Substitution Theory, as well as by the evaluations of the Tractatus of the prominent researchers: L. Goldstein, J. Hintikka, and J. Hacking. A skeptical view on the influence of the Tractatus and Wittgenstein personally on the doctrines of the Vienna Circle is presented by A. Koffa. The author proposes to reject extreme judgments about the Tractatus outside the context of Principia Mathematica.

THE PROBLEM OF LOGICAL FORM: WITTGENSTEIN AND LEIBNIZ

The article is an attempt at explaining the category of logical form used by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Tractatus logico-philosophicus by using concepts from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s The Monadology. There are many similarities and analogies between those works, and the key concept for them is the category of the inner and acknowledged importance of consideration based on basic categories of thinking about the world. The Leibnizian prospect allows for a broader look at Wittgenstein’s analysis of the relation between propositions and facts, between language and the world. Using the Hanoverian philosopher’s terminology allows for the demonstration of the ambivalence of the concept of logical form in the philosophy of Wittgenstein and also the metaphysical nature of his first book.

МЕТЕОРОЛОГІЧНА ЛЕКСИКА В УКРАЇНСЬКІЙ І КИТАЙСЬКІЙ МОВАХ: СИСТЕМНИЙ ПЕРЕКЛАД

Within the anthropocentric paradigm of modern linguistics there is a steady interest in the human factor in language, which, among other things, is realized through the close attention of researchers to the theory of linguistic pictures of the world, which fully reflects the uniqueness of peoples Human life and activity are inseparable from nature. Nature is one, but manifests itself in various forms. In the process of learning about nature, man tries to realize both its unity and diversity. A special place in the perception of the world by man is occupied by climatic and weather phenomena that affect human behavior in the world, various aspects of his life, including economic, as well as well-being. In the IV century. BC became aware of the impact of fluctuations in weather conditions on human health. For example, Hippocrates established a close link between human disease and the weather conditions in which he lives. Over the centuries, people have gathered a variety of knowledge about nature: from misunderstanding of natural phenomena, fear of them, inherent in ancient people, to today’s scientific knowledge of nature, from the first folk signs of weather to the formation of modern science — meteorology. Nature as a source of everything necessary for man has an impact on both the material and spiritual culture of society. Therefore, knowledge of meteorological phenomena occupies an important place in the awareness of reality. The article considers the peculiarities of meteorological vocabulary in Chinese and Ukrainian languages, as well as the peculiarities of meteorological vocabulary translation in two languages.

Color incompatibility in Wittgenstein and its relationship with Arithmetic

After Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein realized that elementary propositions may logically conflict with each other, due to the fact that the most elementary measurements may contradict each other. This led to the view that logic consists of various calculi. A calculus consists of measurement scales, each scale being a rule for the application of numbers. These scales determine logical relationships between elementary propositions by reason of arithmetical relations. Attempts to reject Wittgenstein's change in viewpoint, which ignore the relevance of measurement and arithmetic, are remiss. In this light, I discuss Sarah Moss’s criticism of intermediate Wittgenstein.

Gel growth of aqueous konjac glucomannan solution containing sodium trimetaphosphate dialyzed with dilute sodium hydroxide

The growth rate of the hydrogel of the aqueous konjac glucomannan (KGM) solution containing sodium trimetaphosphate (STMP) dialyzed with aqueous NaOH was investigated in a rectangular cell. The growth rate of the KGM-STMP gel depended on both the KGM and STMP concentrations in addition to the NaOH concentration. The initial growth rate of the KGM-STMP gel was closely related to the diffusion of NaOH into the KGM-STMP solution, leading to the ring-opening reaction of STMP and the deacetylation of KGM at the interface. The time course of the gelation of the KGM-STMP solution was analyzed on the basis of the moving boundary picture theory by introducing the characteristic length to express the consumption of NaOH in the gel layer accompanying the decomposition of STMP. Dynamic mechanical measurements were performed to compare the gelation of the KGM-STMP solution mixed homogeneously with dilute NaOH and the gel dynamics by the dialysis method.

Collaboration and authority in electronic literature

This paper explores collaborative processes in electronic literature. Specifically, it examines writer authority as it applies to text, code, and other media. By drawing from cinematic auteur theory, Mitchell’s Picture Theory (1994), Said’s Beginnings: Intention and Method (1975), Cayley’s Grammalepsy (2018), and Flores’s (2019) generational approach to digital literature, this paper highlights unique issues that arise in the creative collaborative production of digital literary works, and the influence these processes have on how these works are ‘read’. The creative processes employed in Montfort, Rettberg, and Carpenter’s respective Taroko Gorge, Tokyo Garage, and Gorge (2009), Jhave’s ReRites (2017–2018), and Luers, Smith, and Dean’s novelling (2016)), as well as reflections on the author’s own collaborative creative experiences (Paige and Powe (2017) with Lowry and Lane, Little Emperor Syndrome (2018) with Arnold, and V[R]erses (2019–) with Breeze) are explored in detail. From these analyses, this paper concludes that in digital literary practices code should be regarded as a meta-authority that denotes authority to specific components of the work. A better understanding of these complexities as they apply to attribution is emphasised in the future development of digital literary creative practice and education.

The (In)Visibility of Value

Akeel Bilgrami (2016) has argued against the scientistic method and its treatment of ethical values by declaring it a superstition of science for not considering values to be part of nature. This paper agrees with the concept of the engaged self discussed by Bilgrami in order to make sense of ethical values. However, it attempts to argue against the conceptual incoherence by juxtaposing value properties and the engaged self. The incoherence can be avoided by following a Wittgensteinian understanding of ethical values which has been explicated very briefly, yet in a significant way, in Tractatus Logico–Philosophicus and also in A Lecture on Ethics in some detail.

Logic and Value in Wittgenstein’s Philosophy

AbstractIn Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus (TLP), Wittgenstein gave ethics the same semantic status as logic. This paper first investigates this claim from the perspective of Wittgenstein’s lifelong semantic framework. This reveals that ethical sentences are meaningless expressions, which can only be used to ostensively point out conditions of meaningfulness. Secondly, the paper assesses the implications of this conclusion for understanding the seven cryptic remarks on value and ethics in TLP. Using the connection between will and value in TLP and will and sentence interpretation in Philosophical Investigations, it is suggested that Wittgenstein held lifelong views on value and ethics.

Exceeding Continental and Analytic Philosophy: The Post-Continental Thought of W.J.T. Mitchell

The division between Continental and Analytic Philosophy in contemporary philosophy is more difficult to maintain than in modern philosophy. Some philosophers use both Continental and Analytic Philosophy together. They defy the presupposition that Continental thought is subjectivist, collectivist, and historicist, while Analytic thought is objectivist, individualist, and scientific. John Mullarkey calls this circumstance “The Post-Continental Philosophy”. This research aims to examine 'what is the post-continental thought of W.J.T. Mitchell?' and 'how does Mitchell exceed the boundaries of Continental and Analytic Philosophy?'. The method of this research is hermeneutic which involves some elements such as interpretative analyses, historical continuity, heuristics, and descriptive. In conclusion, Mitchell’s post-continental thought bridges the Continental and Analytic philosophy, especially through the concepts of Picture Theory and Image Science. In Picture Theory, he uses the Continental philosophy approach that emphasizes the interpretation of the image. Meanwhile, in Image Science, he employs the Analytic philosophy approach that gives attention to the abstract, rational, and mathematical analysis.

Orientation in pictures: multistable spaces in Kafka and Beckett

This article applies insights from picture theory (W. J. T. Mitchell) and the psychology of perception (Ernst Gombrich) in order to examine Franz Kafka’s and Samuel Beckett’s use of multistable pictures in The Trial and Watt. It argues that these pictures—the portrait of a judge and the picture of a circle and displaced center—are significant not as objects of hermeneutical interpretation, but rather as sites where the conditions of spectatorship and perception become visible. As Kafka’s and Beckett’s protagonists “read” these pictures, they experience perceptual inversions and aspect shifts comparable with those involved in classic multistable images such as the duck–rabbit and the Necker cube. The multistability of their readings thwarts the desire for allegorical interpretations and dramatizes, instead, the act of viewing the picture. Scenes of reading pictures thus allow Kafka and Beckett to explore literary spaces that are given shape as an iterative search for orientation. Contextualizing Kafka and Beckett in relation to empirical and Gestalt psychology and to their interests in reversible figures, the article shows how each writer complicates the representation of aspect switches. In Kafka, multiple readings of a picture appear to be simultaneously possible, resulting in an accumulation of aspects that overdetermine the picture. In Beckett, the binary inversion of figure and ground gives way to a series of possible interpretations that display aspect shifts in overdrive. By representing the problem of reading pictures in the medium of literature, Kafka and Beckett offer insights to the literary dimensions of the pictorial turn in modernism studies.

Wittgenstein


 The purpose of this article is to fill an interpretive gap in L. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in what has been overlooked by most scholars of the Austrian philosopher. It is the consideration of the possible influences that he would have suffered from the time of Mechanical Engineering studies and that reflected directly in his philosophy, especially those arising from the field of Physics. Due to the extensive restrictions that involve a scientific article, it will not be possible to present here what we believe to be the influences of L. Boltzmann’s thought on the Wittgenstein Tractatus – which will remain for future work. However, we present the influences of H. Hertz’s The Principles of Mechanics on at least three fundamental themes of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: on the ontological formalism of Tractarian objects, on the picture theory of language and on the conception of science of that work. It is expected that such clarifications will serve a new and important understanding of this seminal work of the 20th century, this time from the perspective of the relationship between Philosophy and Physics in Wittgenstein.

WITTGENSTEIN’S ELIMINATION OF IDENTITY FOR QUANTIFIER-FREE LOGIC

AbstractOne of the central logical ideas in Wittgenstein’sTractatus logico-philosophicusis the elimination of the identity sign in favor of the so-called “exclusive interpretation” of names and quantifiers requiring different names to refer to different objects and (roughly) different variables to take different values. In this paper, we examine a recent development of these ideas in papers by Kai Wehmeier. We diagnose two main problems of Wehmeier’s account, the first concerning the treatment of individual constants, the second concerning so-called “pseudo-propositions” (Scheinsätze) of classical logic such as$a=a$or$a=b \wedge b=c \rightarrow a=c$. We argue that overcoming these problems requires two fairly drastic departures from Wehmeier’s account: (1) Not every formula of classical first-order logic will be translatable into asingleformula of Wittgenstein’s exclusive notation. Instead, there will often be a multiplicity of possible translations, revealing the original “inclusive” formulas to beambiguous. (2) Certain formulas of first-order logic such as$a=a$will not be translatable into Wittgenstein’s notation at all, being thereby revealed as nonsensical pseudo-propositions which should be excluded from a “correct” conceptual notation. We provide translation procedures from inclusive quantifier-free logic into the exclusive notation that take these modifications into account and define a notion of logical equivalence suitable for assessing these translations.

Truth Operations and Logical-Mathematical Recursivity on the Propositional Calculus Basis of the Tractatus of L. Wittgenstein

The objective of this paper is to present the truth tables method of the propositional calculus of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as a result of computational procedures involving recursive operations in mathematics, since the secondary literature that is involved with such a problem fails to demonstrate such aspect of the work. The proposal is to demonstrate the base calculation of the truth operations as a consequence of the application of mathematical resources that involve the notion of recursivity, inspired both in the natural numbers as well as in the factorial calculus, as well as in the procedures recommended by the combinatorial analysis and the calculation of probability. It is hoped, therefore, to present the truth operations of the propositional calculus as coming from the application of arithmetic to the logical resources.

“God Damn This War”: Virginia Woolf's Struggle for Peace between the Wars

This paper analyses Virginia Woolf's non-fiction and fiction writings in the years surrounding three wars which had a direct impact on her life: the First World War which shaped her generation and made her question the sanity of the society that went on living as if millions had not perished in vain, the Spanish Civil War to which she lost her nephew Julian Bell and which would become one of the driving forces for her book-length anti-war essay Three Guineas (1938), all the way to the Second World War that would eventually play a significant role in her ending her life. How can an experience (such as war) be communicated to others in writing is a preoccupation throughout, and I trace Woolf’s private and public views as they change over time, comparing them to those of her contemporaries, such as her husband Leonard Woolf, Katherine Mansfield and Stephen Spender, as well as juxtaposing them with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s propositions from the last part of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus which arrives at kindred conclusions.