(As things get longer, I won't comment on everything, I'll just quote those things I comment on)
2 What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.
Twelve words to say "let's dance around defining 'atomic'". -Atomic- facts? Are these facts that are unanalyzable/unsplittable? Prime facts?...Isn'tthat just axiomatics? Did Euclid (and Eudoxus etc) figure do that taxonomy already?
2.01 An atomic fact is a combination of objects (entities, things).I guess the answer would be 'no' to previous. That is, 'atomic' means um...not atomic.A combination is not atomic right, because you can split it into constituents.
2.011 It is essential to a thing that it can be a constituent part of an atomic fact.
Wow. Not my particular definition of 'atomic'. I'd hope that something called 'atomic' would not have parts at all.
...hm...mea culpa. Sadly, in reading a classic text about philosophy of language, and in philosophy where defining terms and playing with their vagueness and amphiboly is most of the activity, I failed to consult the original text and alternate translations. The original term is
What this says to me is that depending on translations, is like depending on ones native understanding of connotations of particular words, and can therefore be terribly misleading. If you are taking the course of the narrative based on unspoken definitions of the language being used then it will be terribly misleading. And unfortunately this is exactly what most philosophers do, extrapolate on unspecified connotations, which are inherently language and culture specific.
So, two meta comments...in the rest of this commenting, I will try to translate in my head 'atomic facts' to 'states of affairs' with some sort of internal meaning attached to 'Sachverhalten'. Also, I withdraw my above comments I stand on 2.01 and 2.011, but 2 stands. These points are self-explorations mutually defining statements about 'Fall' (a 'case'), 'a fact') and 'Sachverhalten' ('states of affairs'). Hilbert famously remarked that
"One must be able to say at all times--instead of points, straight lines, and planes--tables, chairs, and beer mugs".
and this is exactly the Wittgensteinian 'use implies meaning' thesis. But where does W give that thesis? Here in TLP somewhere? Later in PI? Created out of thin air by commentators? Something in between?
...hm...mea culpa. Sadly, in reading a classic text about philosophy of language, and in philosophy where defining terms and playing with their vagueness and amphiboly is most of the activity, I failed to consult the original text and alternate translations. The original term is
Sachverhaltenwhich is translated by Ogden as 'atomic facts'. Not having facility with German, I can only consult dictionaries and see that this is usually translated by just plain 'facts'. Pears' translation uses 'states of affairs'. So any failings of the text ascribed to the use of the term 'atomic' where it is irrelevant, misleading, and/or wrong, I blame these on Ogden. I don't have any idea what the connotations of 'Sachverhalten' are in distinction to the other 'fact' word, namely 'Tatsachen'.
What this says to me is that depending on translations, is like depending on ones native understanding of connotations of particular words, and can therefore be terribly misleading. If you are taking the course of the narrative based on unspoken definitions of the language being used then it will be terribly misleading. And unfortunately this is exactly what most philosophers do, extrapolate on unspecified connotations, which are inherently language and culture specific.
So, two meta comments...in the rest of this commenting, I will try to translate in my head 'atomic facts' to 'states of affairs' with some sort of internal meaning attached to 'Sachverhalten'. Also, I withdraw my above comments I stand on 2.01 and 2.011, but 2 stands. These points are self-explorations mutually defining statements about 'Fall' (a 'case'), 'a fact') and 'Sachverhalten' ('states of affairs'). Hilbert famously remarked that
"One must be able to say at all times--instead of points, straight lines, and planes--tables, chairs, and beer mugs".
and this is exactly the Wittgensteinian 'use implies meaning' thesis. But where does W give that thesis? Here in TLP somewhere? Later in PI? Created out of thin air by commentators? Something in between?
2.012 In logic nothing is accidental: if a thing can occur in an atomic fact the possibility of that atomic fact must already be prejudged in the thing.
So before this statement, W and the translations were unwittingly -showing- what is the case, but now he is telling us...but badly.
This statement is pure philosophy, in that it is an analysis of how analysis happens.
The rest is a bit of 'meaning' play trying to tease out what exactly a 'fact' should be. Given the above difficulty with the pivotal term 'atomic fact', consider it to be uninterpretable, unanalyzable (but not indivisible, that is something else) and that its use is telling you how it..well, how it is to be used.
This statement is pure philosophy, in that it is an analysis of how analysis happens.
The rest is a bit of 'meaning' play trying to tease out what exactly a 'fact' should be. Given the above difficulty with the pivotal term 'atomic fact', consider it to be uninterpretable, unanalyzable (but not indivisible, that is something else) and that its use is telling you how it..well, how it is to be used.
2.0121 It would, so to speak, appear as an accident, when to a thing that could exist alone on its own account, subsequently a state of affairs could be made to fit. If things can occur in atomic facts, this possibility must already lie in them.
(A logical entity cannot be merely possible. Logic treats of every possibility, and all possibilities are its facts.) Just as we cannot think of spatial objects at all apart from space, or temporal objects apart from time, so we cannot think of any object apart from the possibility of its connexion with other things.
... (lots of stuff (that I don't care to comment on) omitted)...
2.0232 Roughly speaking: objects are colourless.
This just comes out of nowhere. Totally irrelevant to everything else and doesn't 'do' anything. Nonsense in the Edward Lear/Lewis Carrol sense.
...
2.063 The total reality is the world.
Summary: let's talk about 'facts'.
2.1 We make to ourselves pictures of facts.
The rest of this section is an enforced slippage in meaning of 'picture' from whatever you think it is to 'metaphor'. As to the original German, I can't really say.
2.21 The picture agrees with reality or not; it is right or wrong, true or false.
2.22 The picture represents what it represents, independently of its truth or falsehood, through the form of representation.
'Everything is'
2.221 What the picture represents is its sense.
This actually comes close to saying something. And then falls away into nothingness.
2.223 In order to discover whether the picture is true or false we must compare it with reality.
This says something. A 'picture' (whatever it really is supposed to mean) is not reality, but representing reality. I'd go further with what I think he should be getting at ("a picture is an attempt to represent reality, a theory, whose correctness depends on comparison with data..." but that has the latter-day benefit of 100 years of further exploration). But he dosen't go in that direction. He just adds further emptiness.
2.224 It cannot be discovered from the picture alone whether it is true or false.
Maybe he is going that way. Anyway, it stops here.
2.225 There is no picture which is a priori true.
I barely understand what 'a priori' means outside of this, so I certainly don't know what he means here. So i he saying that a 'picture' is a -representation- of a statement that can be either true or false and that a picture isn't necessarily one or the other, but must be checked? (against what? 'reality'? but then a 'picture' is an experimental hypothesis? I find it hard to believe this is where he's going with this.)
No comments:
Post a Comment