Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (English): Difference between revisions

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (English) (view source)

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 (If I fix my eyes first on the corners ''a'' and only glance at ''b'', ''a'' appears in front and ''b'' behind, and vice versa.)
+.55 We must now answer a priori the question as to all possible forms of the elementary propositions.
+The elementary proposition consists of names. Since we cannot give the number of names with different meanings, we cannot give the composition of the elementary proposition.
+.551 Our fundamental principle is that every question which can be decided at all by logic can be decided off-hand.
+(And if we get into a situation where we need to answer such a problem by looking at the world, this shows that we are on a fundamentally wrong track.)
+.552 The "experience" which we need to understand logic is not that such and such is the case, but that something ''is''; but that is ''no'' experience.
+Logic ''precedes'' every experience — that something is ''so''.
+It is before the How, not before the What.
+.5521 And if this were not the case, how could we apply logic? We could say: if there were a logic, even if there were no world, how then could there be a logic, since there is a world ?
+.553 Russell said that there were simple relations between different numbers of things (individuals). But between what numbers? And how should this be decided — by experience ?
+(There is no pre-eminent number.)
+.554 The enumeration of any special forms would be entirely arbitrary.
+.5541 How could we decide a priori whether, for example, I can get into a situation in which I need to symbolize with a sign of a 27-termed relation ?
+.5542 May we then ask this at all? Can we set out a sign form and not know whether anything can correspond to it?
+Has the question sense: what must there ''be'' in order that anything can be the case?
+.555 It is clear that we have a concept of the elementary proposition apart from its special logical form.
+Where, however, we can build symbols according to a system, there this system is the logically important thing and not the single symbols.
+And how would it be possible that I should have to deal with forms in logic which I can invent: but I must have to deal with that which makes it possible for me to invent them.
+.556 There cannot be a hierarchy of the forms of the elementary propositions. Only that which we ourselves construct can we foresee.
+.5561 Empirical reality is limited by the totality of objects. The boundary appears again in the totality of elementary propositions. The hierarchies are and must be independent of reality.
+.5562 If we know on purely logical grounds, that there must be elementary propositions, then this must be known by everyone who understands propositions in their unanalysed form.
+.5563 All propositions of our colloquial language are actually, just as they are, logically completely in order. That simple thing which we ought to give here is not a model of the truth but the complete truth itself.
+(Our problems are not abstract but perhaps the most concrete that there are.)
+.557 The ''application'' of logic decides what elementary propositions there are.
+What lies in its application logic cannot anticipate.
+It is clear that logic may not conflict with its application.
+But logic must have contact with its application.
+Therefore logic and its application may not overlap one another.
+.5571 If I cannot give elementary propositions a priori then it must lead to obvious nonsense to try to give them.
+.6 ''The limits of my language'' mean the limits of my world.
+.61 Logic fills the world: the limits of the world are also its limits.
+We cannot therefore say in logic: This and this there is in the world, that there is not.
+For that would apparently presuppose that we exclude certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case since otherwise logic must get outside the limits of the world: that is, if it could consider these limits from the other side also. What we cannot think, that we cannot think: we cannot therefore ''say'' what we cannot think.
+.62 This remark provides a key to the question, to what extent solipsism is a truth.
+In fact what solipsism ''means'', is quite correct, only it cannot be ''said'', but it shows itself.
+That the world is ''my'' world, shows itself in the fact that the limits of the language (''the'' language which I understand) mean the limits of ''my'' world.
+.621 The world and life are one.
+.63 I am my world. (The microcosm.)
+.631 The thinking, presenting subject; there is no such thing.
+If I wrote a book "The world as I found it", I should also have therein to report on my body and say which members obey my will and which do not, etc. This then would be a method of isolating the subject or rather of showing that in an important sense there is no subject: that is to say, of it alone in this book mention could ''not'' be made.
+.632 The subject does not belong to the world but it is a limit of the world.
+.633 ''Where in'' the world is a metaphysical subject to be noted?
+You say that this case is altogether like that of the eye and the field of sight. But you do ''not'' really see the eye.
+And from nothing ''in the field of sight'' can it be concluded that it is seen from an eye.
+.6331 For the field of sight has not a form like this:
+[[File:TLP 5.6331en.png|250px|center|link=]]
+.634 This is connected with the fact that no part of our experience is also a priori.
+Everything we see could also be otherwise.
+Everything we can describe at all could also be otherwise.
+There is no order of things a priori.
+.64 Here we see that solipsism strictly carried out coincides with pure realism. The I in solipsism shrinks to an extensionless point and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it.
+.641 There is therefore really a sense in which in philosophy we can talk of a non-psychological I.
+The I occurs in philosophy through the fact that the "world is my world".
+The philosophical I is not the man, not the human body or the human soul of which psychology treats, but the metaphysical subject, the limit—not a part of the world.