Chỉ trong tư tưởng của Wittgenstein, em mới tìm thấy thứ mà người xưa gọi là "minh triết." thế giới hiện nay của chúng ta khẩn thiết cần những bộ não như thế, trong mọi ngành, để giải quyết triệt để những vấn đề thực tiễn. có phải bởi vậy mà một vị nổi tiếng nào đã nói rằng các triết gia thời nay, nếu có tồn tại, thì họ sẽ là các "skillful philosophers", âu cũng là do thời thế mà sinh ra. những prometheus "đã đánh cắp tia chớp từ thiên đàng để đem ánh sáng soi rọi vào màn đêm tăm tối của những câu đối lớn." người mang lại "trật tự" cho "hỗn loạn," người đã tự cởi trói bản thể khỏi xích xiềng của "animal nature," của giới hạn "space and time" mà phóng tư tưởng và linh hồn của người vào "infinity."
Excerpt From: Monk, Ray. “Ludwig Wittgenstein - The Duty of Genius”
Wittgenstein’s attack on theory dominates his discussions with Schlick and Waismann during the Christmas vacation of 1930. ‘For me’, he told them,
‘a theory is without value. A theory gives me nothing.’ In understanding ethics, aesthetics, religion, mathematics and philosophy, theories were of no use. Schlick had, that year, published a book on ethics in which, in discussing theological ethics, he had
distinguished two conceptions of the essence of the good: according to the first, the good is good because it is what God wants; according to the second, God wants the good because it is good. The second, Schlick said, was the more profound.
On the contrary, Wittgenstein insisted, the first is: ‘For it cuts off the way to any explanation “why” it is good, while the second is the shallow, rationalist one, which proceeds “as if” you could give reasons for what is good’:
The first conception says clearly that the essence of the good has nothing to do with facts and hence cannot be explained by any proposition. If there is any proposition expressing precisely what I think, it is the proposition ‘What God commands, that is good’.
Similarly, the way to any explanation of aesthetic value must be cut off. What is valuable in a Beethoven sonata? The sequence of notes? The feelings Beethoven had when he was composing it? The state of mind produced by listening to it? ‘I would reply’, said Wittgenstein, ‘that whatever I was told, I would reject, and that not because the explanation was false but because it was an explanation’:
If I were told anything that was a theory, I would say, No, no! That does not interest me – it would not be the exact thing I was looking for.
Likewise the truth, the value, of religion can have nothing to do with the words used. There need, in fact, be no words at all. ‘Is talking essential to religion?’ he asked:
I can well imagine a religion in which there are no doctrinal propositions, in which there is thus no talking. Obviously the essence of religion cannot have anything to do with the fact that there is talking, or rather: when people talk, then this itself is part of a religious act and not a theory. Thus it also does not matter at all if the words used are true or false or nonsense.
In religion talking is not metaphorical either; for otherwise it would have to be possible to say the same things in prose.
‘If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn’t be that we talk a lot about religion’, he had earlier told Drury, ‘but that our manner of life is different.’ After he had abandoned any possibility of constructing a philosophical theory, this remark points to the central theme of his later work. Goethe’s phrase from Faust, ‘Am Anfang war die Tat’ (‘In the beginning was the deed’), might, as he suggested, serve as a motto for the whole of his later philosophy.
The deed, the activity, is primary, and does not receive its rationale or its justification from any theory we may have of it. This is as true with regard to language and mathematics as it is with regard to ethics, aesthetics and religion. ‘As long as I can play the game, I can play it, and everything is all right’, he told Waismann and Schlick:
The following is a question I constantly discuss with Moore: Can only logical analysis explain what we mean by the propositions of ordinary language? Moore is “Can only logical analysis explain what we mean by the propositions of ordinary language? Moore is inclined to think so. Are people therefore ignorant of what they mean when they say ‘Today the sky is clearer than yesterday’? Do we have to wait for logical analysis here? What a hellish idea!
Of course we do not have to wait: ‘I must, of course, be able to understand a proposition without knowing its analysis.’
The greater part of his discussions with Waismann and Schlick that vacation was taken up with an explanation of how this principle applies to the philosophy of mathematics. So long as we can use mathematical symbols correctly – so long as we can apply the rules – no ‘theory’ of mathematics is necessary; a final, fundamental, justification of those rules is neither possible nor desirable. This means that the whole debate about the ‘foundations’ of mathematics rests on a misconception. It might be wondered why, given his Spenglerian conviction of the superiority of music and the arts over mathematics and the sciences, Wittgenstein troubled himself so much over this particular branch of philosophy. But it should be remembered that it was precisely this philosophical fog that drew him into philosophy in the first place, and that to dispel it remained for much of his life the primary aim of his philosophical work.
It was the contradictions in Frege’s logic discovered by Russell that had first excited Wittgenstein’s philosophical enthusiasm, and to resolve those contradictions had seemed, in 1911, the fundamental task of philosophy. He now wanted to declare such contradictions trivial, to declare that, once the fog had cleared and these sorts of problems had lost their nimbus, it could be seen that the real problem was not the contradictions themselves, but the imperfect vision that made them look like important and interesting dilemmas. You set up a game and discover that two rules can, in certain cases, contradict one another. So what? ‘What do we do in such a case? Very simple – we introduce a new rule and the conflict is resolved.
They had seemed interesting and important because it had been assumed that Frege and Russell were not just setting up a game, but revealing the foundations of mathematics; if their systems of logic were contradictory, then it looked as if the whole of mathematics were resting on an insecure base and needed to be steadied. But this, Wittgenstein insists, is a mistaken view of the matter. We no more need Frege’s and Russell’s logic to use mathematics with confidence than we need Moore’s analysis to be able to use our ordinary language.
Thus the ‘metamathematics’ developed by the formalist mathematician David Hilbert is unnecessary.fn1 Hilbert endeavoured to construct a ‘meta-theory’ of mathematics, seeking to lay a provably consistent foundation for arithmetic. But the theory he has constructed, said Wittgenstein, is not metamathematics, but mathematics: ‘It is another calculus, just like any other one.’ It offers a series of rules and proofs, when what is needed is a clear view. ‘A proof cannot dispel the fog’:
If I am unclear about the nature of mathematics, no proof can help me. And if I am clear about the nature of mathematics, then the question about its consistency cannot arise at all.
The moral here, as always, is: ‘You cannot gain a fundamental understanding of mathematics by waiting for a theory.’ The understanding of one game cannot depend upon the construction of another. The analogy with games that is invoked so frequently in these discussions prefigures the later development of the ‘language game’ technique, and replaces the earlier talk of ‘systems of propositions’. The point of the analogy is that it is obvious that there can be no question of a justification for a game: if one can play it, one understands it. And similarly for grammar, or syntax: ‘A rule of syntax corresponds to a configuration of a game … Syntax cannot be justified.’
But, asked Waismann, couldn’t there be a theory of a game? There is, for example, a theory of chess, which tells us whether a certain series of moves is possible or not – whether, for instance, one can checkmate the king in eight moves from a given position. ‘If, then, there is a theory of chess’, he added, ‘I do not see why there should not be a theory of the game of arithmetic, either, and why we should not use the propositions of this theory to learn something substantial about the possibilities of this game. This theory is Hilbert’s metamathematics.’
No, replies Wittgenstein,
the so-called ‘theory of chess’ is itself a calculus, a game. The fact that it uses words and symbols instead of actual chess pieces should not mislead us: ‘the demonstration that I can get there in eight moves consists in my actually getting there in the symbolism, hence in doing with signs what, on a chess-board, I do with chessmen … and we agree, don’t we?, that pushing little pieces of wood across a board is something inessential’. The fact that in algebra we use letters to calculate, rather than actual numbers, does not make algebra the theory of arithmetic; it is simply another calculus.
After the fog had cleared there could be,
for Wittgenstein, no question of meta-theories, of theories of games. There were only games and their players, rules and their applications: ‘We cannot lay down a rule for the application of another rule.’ To connect two things we do not always need a third: ‘Things must connect directly, without a rope, i.e. they must already stand in a connection with one another, like the links of a chain.’ The connection between a word and its meaning is to be found, not in a theory, but in a practice, in the use of the word. And the direct connection between a rule and its application, between the word and the deed, cannot be elucidated with another rule; it must be seen: ‘Here seeing matters essentially: as long as you do not see the new system, you have not got it.’ Wittgenstein’s abandonment of theory was not, as Russell thought, a rejection of serious thinking, of the attempt to understand, but the adoption of a different notion of what it is to understand – a notion that, like that of Spengler and Goethe before him, stresses the importance and the necessity of ‘the understanding that consists in seeing connections'.
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"Meine Sätze erläutern dadurch, dass sie der, welcher mich versteht, am Ende als unsinnig erkennt, wenn er durch sie – auf ihnen – über sie hinausgestiegen ist. (Er muss sozusagen die Leiter wegwerfen, nachdem er auf ihr hinaufgestiegen ist.)"
Wittgenstein used the word "unsinnig/nonsensical" to describe all the propositions set out in the Tractatus; however, as far as I understand, I would say that his propositions must be sinloss/senseless, but not unsinnig/nonsensical (ie, silly) at all. Those propositions are like, or exactly are, aphorisms (ie, tautologies in your wording). I indeed see them complete in themselves and true on their own merits, like little works of art standing the test of time and remaining true and elegant regardless. That's what makes the whole Tractatus, as you maintained and me too, be among the most beautiful books ever written.
On the ethical point of the book, I agree with your comprehension. The Tractatus is, thus, a perfect example of when the True (Logic), the Good (Ethics) and the Beautiful (Aesthetics) unite and are fundamentally the same, "they are no more than duty to oneself" :)
There is, as far as I understand it, no mistake in Wittgenstein's use of "unsinnig" in proposition 6.54. The propositions of the Tractatus are nonsensical, not senseless.
On the Tractarian theory of language, meaningful propositions (i.e. propositions with a sense) depict possible states of affairs in the world. A proposition that does not do this is either senseless (sinnlos) or nonsensical (unsinnig).
The only things that are senseless (sinnlos) are tautologies and contradictions. These do not depict any state of affairs in the world, but they are a legitimate part of any system of representation and show the shared logical form of representation and of the world. All so-called "laws of logic" are of this sort. For instance, the tautology "Either it is raining or it is not raining" does not depict any state of affairs in the world, but it does show something about the possibilities afforded by our system of representation.
In contrast, nonsensical (unsinnig) propositions occur when one of the signs it contains has not been assigned a meaning. Wittgenstein believes that all propositions of ethics and metaphysics are of this variety. For instance, the pseudo-proposition "The absolute is green" is nonsensical because we have not assigned an object to the term "absolute". One way that nonsense occurs is when formal concepts (e.g. the concept of an object) are used as anything else than a propositional variable, as if they were concepts proper — for instance, if we say "There are objects".
Now this sheds some light on why the propositions of the Tractatus are themselves nonsensical: they are not tautologous propositions of logic, but are meta-logical attempts at speaking about the logical form that these propositions display. But the crucial thesis of the book is that we cannot speak about this: in doing so, we inevitably end up (as Wittgenstein does) using such formal concepts as "objects", "relations", etc. and so falling into nonsense.
I have read the Tractatus again with a focus on the propositions that deal with the nonsensical (unsinnig) and senseless (sinnlos) as the last time I read it I had skipped many steps of the ladder. Now I'm confident to maintain that Wittgenstein's use of the word "unsinnig" in prop. 6.54 is a mistake. The propositions of the Tractatus are senseless, not nonsensical; they are elucidations, i.e. tautologies.
It should first be made clear that in the Tractatus, it is agreed that meaningful propositions (i.e., propositions with senses) depict possible states of affairs, and if the possible state of affair corresponds to reality then the proposition is true, otherwise, it is not. Nonsensical and senseless propositions are out of this sort since they say nothing about possible states of affairs, have no sense, and add no information.
Nonsensical propositions exist due to attempts to speak about what in reality the concept of which is not established to bear that sense. Most questions and propositions of the so-called philosophers so far result from the misunderstanding of the logic of natural language, ie, messing up and assigning improper senses to established concepts due to failing to fully understand the meaning of those concepts in the first place, which results in, for example, asking nonsensical questions such as "how much does a voice weight?" or "is there a consciousness within a consciousness? [just read Freud’s works and one can find many examples of such nonsensical questions/propositions, said Wittgenstein]” or "who am I?" "why is there something rather than nothing?" "is there life after death?" "does god exist?" "what is the best moral system?" etc. nonsensical questions can never be answered as the concepts thereof, when established in reality, are not assigned the senses at issue, and thus, are simply invalid and should vanish.
Further, all attempts to speak about the transcendental such as logic, ethics and aesthetics or love or meaning of life/world, etc. all fall into the nonsense as they can never be said but can only be shown, given their meaning must lie outside the limits of themselves, and therefore, the transcendental are simply inexpressible; they only make themselves manifest and one lives to experience them, then death is an end of one’s life/world/experiences. The world of a happy man is different from that of an unhappy man since the former tastes life with pleasant/happy/ethical/good experiences while the latter does not. What is true or false, good or bad, beautiful or ugly, happy or unhappy cannot be said, but only shows; one can only experience and feel it consciously, all attempts to put it into words fall into the nonsense. The meaning of life is, thus, simply to live it to the utmost. The meaning of a good life is simply to live it happily to the utmost.
Whilst, senseless propositions are logical propositions, the truth or falsity of which is self-evident from the propositions alone. Tautologies are of this sort; they are always true but say nothing; they serve as elucidations/clarifications. A tautology follows from all propositions [prop. 5.142]. Besides the example: either it rains or it does not rain (p or ~p), let’s examine other types of tautology: if for example two propositions “p” and “q” give a tautology in the connexion “p ⊃ q”, then it is clear that q follows from p (prop. 6.1221). Another example, if p follows from q and q from p then they are one and the same proposition, so the tautology “p is q” says nothing but serves only as an elucidation/clarification of p by q. Taking one classic example: all bachelors are unmarried men. This tautological proposition depicts nothing about possible state of affairs but is always true; it says the same thing twice but in different words (ie, bachelors and unmarried men are one/the same but put in different words), all for the purpose of clarifying/elucidating themselves.
So what did Wittgenstein exactly do in the Tractatus?
Wittgenstein played a language game creating tautological propositions by saying the same thing twice but in different words all for the purpose of making concepts in our natural language [those were made bewildered/misused by so-called philosophers due to their failure to fully and correctly understand the meaning of those concepts in the broadest correct spectra] become fully elucidated so that the reader will finally see the world rightly.
Let’s examine these first propositions:
"The world is all that is the case.
The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts.
For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever is not the case.
The facts in logical space are the world.
The world divides into facts.
Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same.
What is the case – a fact – is the existence of states of affairs.
A state of affairs (a state of things) is a combination of objects (things).
...
The totality of existing states of affairs is the world.
The totality of existing states of affairs also determines which states of affairs do not exist.
The existence and non-existence of states of affairs is reality.
...
The sum-total of reality is the world.
We picture facts to ourselves.
A picture presents a situation in logical space, the existence and non-existence of states of affairs.
A picture is a model of reality."
So you can see, the world/what is the case/a fact/totality of facts/existence of states of affairs/existence of combination of objects (things)/totality of existing states of affairs/the existence and non-existence of states of affairs/reality/a picture [the existence and non-existence of states of affairs]/a model of reality/sum-total of reality are all saying about the same thing [ie, the world/sum-total of reality] but put in different words just to help themselves elucidated fully in their broadest [ie, truest] senses; it’s like saying that the world is the world – this is always true but says nothing, and thus, senseless (sinnlos).
Misunderstanding/failing to fully understand the meaning of the concepts established/used in natural language such as the concepts the world/reality/what is real results in asking nonsensical questions like those listed by Bertrand Russell in the book Problems of Philosophy.
So, the propositions of the Tractatus are not nonsensical, but are senseless; they are not meta-logical attempts to speak about the unspeakable, but are logical attempts to clarify thoughts by means of language. No propositions in the Tractatus say anything about possible states of affairs but manifest themselves in the totality of elementary propositions, and thus draw a limit to thought, the sphere of what was not written in the book simply cannot be said and passed over in silence, which is the ethical point of the book.
What better way to solve problems than to go to the root of the problems and then make themselves vanish? What better way to solve the misunderstanding of the logic of our language than to go to the root of the logic of our language and then manifest a correct way of understanding of logic of language so as for other ways to simply vanish themselves?
Now suppose that the Tractatus did consist of purported tautologies, as you think it does. Even if all of the propositions it contained could be understood in this way (which I think is implausible), there would nonetheless be a problem, namely that these purported tautologies contain terms that have no reference. As I pointed out, "object" and "state of affairs" are formal terms. As a result, they are misused wherever they appear in the Tractatus, including in the passages you cite (4.1272). Even if they had the form of a tautology, they would nonetheless be nonsensical. For instance, it seems to me that "The absolute is the absolute" is nonsense, even if it has the form of a tautology, because the term "absolute" has no reference.
I admit straightaway that I have not given enough thought to the notion of elucidation in Wittgenstein. Based on the definition provided in the Tractatus itself, it does not seem to me that elucidations can be understood as tautologies even when they are not nonsensical. In any case, I will read P.M.S. Hacker's paper on the topic and get back to you .
As I currently understand it, the book elucidates — i.e. speaks about — the structure of the logical space that tautologies show, as well as the conditions of representation that are shown in our use of language. This is how Wittgenstein draws the limits to thought: anything that does not consist of a picture of a possible situation in the world is nonsensical, and so cannot be thought. This includes all of the propositions of the Tractatus, hence his claim at 6.54. The ethical point of the Tractatus consists precisely in showing that what we intend by our ethical judgments is not to say something about the world. The result is that there can be no science of ethics: it is impossible to lay out systematically which ethical propositions are true and which false or to deduct the true ones from the totality of true propositions about the world as some of his contemporaries believed. Ethics is not such that it can be argued about or demonstrated, but must be lived.
The controversial ending proposition of the book:
My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.
There are, at present, two dominant ways to read Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP).
The irresolute reading takes what is called a view of nonsense: it takes Wittgenstein's propositions in the TLP to be nonsensical in that they are trying to express what, according to Wittgenstein, can only be shown, e.g. propositions about the logical form of propositions. The traditional interpretation, perhaps best represented by P. M. S. Hacker, takes Wittgenstein to be pointing out that the kinds of subject matter he treats of lies outside the realm of sensible discourse. The Tractatus treats of things that cannot be said, but can only be shown.
The resolute reading on the other hand takes what is called an austere view of nonsense: this takes the propositions in the TLP to be actual, irredeemable nonsense. In this sense the whole of TLP becomes a quasi-ironic argument against transcendental idealism. The locus classicus of this reading is Cora Diamond's The Realistic Spirit.
However, we can try to understand the frame of mind that would be necessary to think that these propositions make sense. They seem evident as logic itself. But the problem is that they aren't necessary entailed by logic, they remain part of the philosophy (a kind of a metaphysics or meta-logic) or of the way Wittgenstein is seeing the world. Wittgenstein is not trying to tell us a number of things that we did not already know; he is trying to instruct us in a way of thinking that will help us out of philosophical muddles. While the propositions of the Tractatus may themselves be nonsense, Wittgenstein hopes that they have served their instructive purpose. We are expected to put down this book with a new and correct perspective (see the world rightly). The goal of the Tractatus, as Wittgenstein claims in his preface, is "to draw a limit … to the expression of thoughts". But in order to draw a limit to language, we have to cross that limit, and in this contradiction lies the mystical side of the Tractatus, a inevitable contradiction indeed.
The only time I've had the opportunity to speak to Diamond face-to-face, we immediately hit a snag over the question whether the Tractatus contains an ontology (she was convinced that it does not, and I continue to maintain that it does) and were unable to get any further. However, some of the remarks she made (e.g. that "in the Tractatus, we start from analysis") seemed to me incompatible with her position in "Ethics, Imagination, and the Method of Wittgenstein's Tractatus," so it may be that she has since modified her views.
I certainly agree that "Wittgenstein is not trying to tell us a number of things that we did not already know." But this is something that both traditional and resolute interpreters would grant; it all depends on what we mean by this. On my (rather traditional) view, Wittgenstein is not trying to telling us anything new because we already already know it: insofar as we are involved in activities of representation, we necessarily already have synthetic a priori knowledge of the shared logical structure of language and the world.
The central issue here is I wish to be enlightened of whether the Tractatus' propositions are nonsensical (ie, unsinnig as written in prop 6.54) or senseless (ie, sinnlos - logical propositions as I understand it). If the latter is the case, then Wittgenstein wrote a mistake.
To Philippe's first rebuttal inquiry, it is Wittgenstein who said in the preface of his later book, Philosophical Investigation, that he wrote “grave mistakes” in the first book. Yeah, it’s quite ridiculous for someone that was dealing with unsinnig/sinnlos propositions to have dropped a mistake about that very thing. But it’s possible sometimes when one overlooks careless dumb mistakes one makes at things one feels so confident of. I was nevertheless not trying to prove anything but it’s just that I’m much curious to know what exactly those mistakes are.
It's obvious that we first need to fully understand what is nonsensical vs. what is senseless, and I don't think you have understood these concepts completely. Though both propositions depict no possible picture of reality (ie, possible state of affairs/ possible situation in the world), the fine line between a nonsensical proposition and a senseless one is that the latter is a logical proposition while the former is not; the latter can be said (the prop can exist but says nothing) and is always true (its truth is self-evident from the proposition alone) while the former cannot be even said (unspeakable/cannot exist/should vanish because of improper senses the signs in it are assigned); the latter serves to elucidate itself by showing what it entails/follows and also simultaneously what it does not entail/follow, such as: p v ~ p; or: p is q provided p entails q; etc.
By the way, elucidation is really just a fancy name for "explanation," just interpret it literally in the Tractatus, no big deal about this concept.
Now, about the "formal" terms such as "object" or "state of affairs" used in the Tractatus, if you follow all the propositions, you may see that such terms do have reference, ie. "object" is "thing" (prop. 2.01), and "state of affairs" is "situation/combination of objects". Actually, we don't need to find reference for such terms as these are just to be interpreted literally; they are just atomic terms: object is just object, state of affairs is just state of affairs; nothing can be simpler than that. Besides, the proposition "the absolute is the absolute" is obviously logically true but meaningless as it says nothing. I can even say "abcxyz is abcxyz" and this is still true logically even when there is no reference for it. The truth or falsity of a logical proposition does not depend on reference, but the form thereof. Like Wittgenstein wrote in prop. 6.127 "Every tautology itself shows that it is a tautology" because it is the form that decides.
Thus, as far as I understand it, the Tractatus consists entirely of elucidations, namely tautological propositions repeated in different expressions and entails each other. In the Tractatus, saying: the world is all what is the case/totality of facts/…/sum-total of reality is exactly saying: the world is the world but in different words with an equivalent sense; it's just like saying about the broadest spectrum of the subject word "the world". Or, just examine props. 6.4 - 6.45 that deal with ethics and you will find that these propositions are really elucidations; they deal with the same subject but expressed in different words; each proposition is like a step of the whole ladder, reading from one proposition to another is like climbing the ladder, step by step, one can understand the subject that is dealt with more clearly, more rightly.
Can we say anything higher than its limit? No, we can't and it's exactly the limits of expression by language the Tractatus draws. Saying tautological propositions, for example, that the world is the world [but in different words], or that ethics is mystical/transcendental, is saying nothing. As such, the whole Tractatus is just really a big joke.
It seems to me that Wittgenstein's comment in PI about the TLP containing "grave mistakes" is most intuitively to be interpreted as referring to errors at the level of philosophical doctrine that are exposed via further reflection, and not to typographical errors that could simply be fixed during proofreading. In other words, I suspect that he is talking about his having missed certain aspects of language-use that would speak against the picture-theory of language, and not about having accidentally written unsinnig when he meant sinnlos
As for your comments about formal concepts: yes, an object is a thing because the terms "object" and "thing" are synonymous. The point is that there is, so to speak, no such thing as as a "thing". On this point, I refer you to TLP 4.1272:
Wherever the term 'object' ('thing', etc.) is correctly used, it is expressed in conceptual notation a variable name.
For example, in the proposition, There are 2 objects which...", it is expressed by '(∃x,y)...'
Whenever it is used in a different way, that is as a proper concept-word, nonsensical pseudo-propositions are the result.
So one cannot say, for example, 'There are objects', as one might say, 'There are books'. And it is just as impossible to say 'There are 100 objects', or 'There are א0 objects."
And it is nonsensical to speak of the total number of objects.
The same applies to the words 'complex', 'fact', 'function', 'number', etc.
Here you have exactly the explanation of why the propositions of the Tractatus consist in "nonsensical pseudo-propositions" and not in senseless tautologies. Talking about the logical structure of the world requires that we use these formal concepts as if they were proper concepts, which Wittgenstein does throughout the book. And here, he explicitly says that it is nonsense, just as he does later on.
I do concede that "The absolute is the absolute" is a tautology and is therefore true in all cases. That was a very silly slip-up on my part. The result is that your interpretation of the Tractatus is not ruled out by the simple fact that it uses several terms that are meaningless. But I simply do not see how there could be any grounds for holding that the book consists entirely of tautologies when (1) so many of its propositions obviously cannot be understood as such, e.g. the passage I just quoted and (2) there is overwhelming evidence that Wittgenstein himself regarded them to be nonsensical, as I just pointed out.
And, it goes without saying, I disagree fundamentally that "the whole Tractatus is just really a big joke." Although I know that this sort of reading has been popularized by Diamond and her followers, I believe not only that there is no coherent reading that would yield this conclusion, but also that such a reading is incompatible with everything that we know about Wittgenstein's life and character.
You both agree that Tractatus propositions seem necessary, they seem evident as logic itself. But the problem is that they aren't necessary entailed by logic, they remain part of the philosophy (a kind of a metaphysics or meta-logic) or of the way Wittgenstein is seeing the world.
(That's why although they seem evident or apriori, yet they aren't entailed by logic, so they are nonsense and not senseless)
Wittgenstein is not trying to tell us a number of things that we did not already know; he is trying to instruct us in a way of thinking that will help us out of philosophical muddles. While the propositions of the Tractatus may themselves be nonsense, Wittgenstein hopes that they have served their instructive purpose. We are expected to put down this book with a new and correct perspective (see the world rightly). The goal of the Tractatus, as Wittgenstein claims in his preface, is "to draw a limit … to the expression of thoughts". But in order to draw a limit to language, we have to cross that limit, and in this contradiction lies the mystical side of the Tractatus, a inevitable contradiction indeed.
(crossing the limit means to go over the senseless boundary into the realm of nonsense, which is inevitable if we wanted so the world in the right way)
So I think you both agree on the same points, but you draw different conclusions based on a wrongful mix between what is logically entailed (senseless) and what seems an evident meta-logical metaphysical view (nonsense).
Ah, alright. My apologies; that was not clear to me. On a bit of a side-note, do you have any specific interests within the field of Wittgenstein studies?
It seems to me that Wittgenstein's comment in PI about the TLP containing "grave mistakes" is most intuitively to be interpreted as referring to errors at the level of philosophical doct..."
I don't think the so-called proofreading of a philosophical work is as easy a task as that of ordinary ones. Deciding either unsinnig or sinnlos in prop 6.54 is a matter of comprehension of these concepts as well as of the nature of propositions set forth in the TLP, but not of a clerical error, for a so-called proofreader, substantially speaking.
Concerning the passage TLP 4.1272, you misinterpreted it. "formal concepts" and "proper concepts" are different. Please read again from passage 4.126:-
"Formal concepts cannot, like proper concepts, be presented by a function.
…
Every variable is the sign for a formal concept.
…
Wherever the word 'object' ('thing', etc.) is correctly used, it is expressed in conceptual notation by a variable name.
For example, in the proposition, 'there are two objects which…', it is expressed by '(∃x, y)...’
Wherever it is used in a different way, i.e. as a proper concept word, nonsensical pseudo-propositions are the result."
The concepts "object" or "state of affair" are used in the TLP as formal concepts, not as proper concept words. No reference is given for such concepts because in the TLP they are used as atomic terms, but not used in a representative way (in conceptual notation by a variable name - with reference) so as for us to judge whether they are used correctly or they are nonsensical if used incorrectly. Improper reference leads to the realm of the nonsense, such as the prop "Socrates is identical" is nonsensical. Whilst, no reference for a concept put in logical proposition leads to the senseless. Both are meaningless as they depict no possible picture of reality but the latter are always true, which is the essential difference. You just need to read the Tractatus again and examine its entailed propositions more carefully.
Besides, I don't know who Diamon and her followers are but if they view the Tractatus as a joke then we think alike. Seeing the Tractatus is a good joke is the result of my own comprehension which has never been affected by any kind of popularization. Claiming that "this sort of reading has been popularized" by some group is a disrespect to my own understanding of the TLP, tbh.
By joke, I mean in the TLP, truths (meaningless but true propositions - tautologies) are expressed like witty remarks. From one remark to another, Wittgenstein cleared out philosophical theories and problems in essentials - nonsensical products of traditional philosophy (ie, products of misunderstanding of the logic of our language / of meta-logical attempts to speak the unspeakable, incl. skepticism, aesthetics, ethics, theory of free will, utilitarianism, hypothesis of natural science be it Darwinian theory or Newtonian mechanics - the laws of physics, etc.)
Allow me to quote the following fyi:-
"It is worth noting that Wittgenstein once said that a serious and good philosophical work could be written that would consist entirely of jokes (without being facetious).” - Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir
"On the other hand the truth of the thoughts communicated here seems to me unassailable and definitive. I am, therefore, of the opinion that the problems have in essentials been finally solved. And if I am not mistaken in this, then the value of this work secondly consists in the fact that it shows how little has been done when these problems have been solved." - Wittgenstein, preface, TLP
Once you understand logical propositions more fully, you will finally see that all the propositions of TLP logically entail each other and thus, are tautological - being true on their own merit and unassailable. TLP is an example of a true philosophical work as philosophy is an activity of clarification of thoughts by means of language and its product is not a number of philosophical theories the truth or falsity of which is arbitrary but is essentially elucidations the truth of which is self-evident from the propositions alone.
By and large, if you then still maintain that the propositions in TLP are nonsensical, I have nothing more to say, as now, after all the discussion and re-reading the Tractatus, I found the answer. Many thanks both for your sharings and responses in this regard, which I appreciate a lot.
I will nonetheless point out, for what it's worth, that as far as I know, no one in one hundred years of Wittgenstein scholarship has ever suggested that the propositions of the Tractatus are actually senseless tautologies. This includes those who knew Wittgenstein personally and discussed the book with him, like G.E.M. Anscombe, Frank Ramsey, and Paul Engelmann. This is, of course, not conclusive on its own. But combined with my previous point, it strongly suggests to me that your reading is a very big stretch.
You say "Claiming that 'this sort of reading has been popularized' by some group is a disrespect to my own understanding of the TLP, tbh."
But I in no way meant to suggest that you have only advanced your reading because it has been popularized, as if you were mindlessly following a trend. As I have already pointed out, your reading is not shared by any commentators that I know of. So I certainly meant no offence.
Rather, I was guarding a possible counter-objection — namely that other commentators have also read the Tractatus as a "joke" or "ironic exercise" (even though, once again, the details of these readings differ immensely) — by pointing out that I was aware of these readings and thought that I could account for them. In fact, I probably should have done the same thing regarding Wittgenstein's own comment about a philosophical work consisting entirely of jokes, with which I am, of course, familiar.
I think we all agree with you when you say "Once you understand logical propositions more fully, you will finally see that all the propositions of TLP logically entail each other and thus, are tautological".
But do you agree with us that they aren't entailed by logic? Here lies the difference between our views, we say that they aren't necessary entailed by logic, they remain part of the philosophy (a kind of a metaphysics or meta-logic) or of the way Wittgenstein is seeing the world. (That's why although they seem evident or apriori, yet they aren't entailed by logic, so they are nonsense and not senseless). So I think we all agree on the same starting points, but we draw different conclusions based on a wrongful mix between what is logically entailed (senseless) and what seems an evident meta-logical metaphysical view (nonsense).
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1769835947?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1