Installmant 2: Ludwig Wittgenstein (#6)

The early Wittgenstein:

              The early Wittgenstein worked closely with Russell, his mentor, and shared his idea that the use of mathematical logic held great promise for an understanding of the world. Wittgenstein claimed that the point of Tractates was ethical, and he stated in the book’s preface that its value consists of two things: “that thoughts are expressed in it” and “that it shows how little is achieved when these problems (of philosophy) are solved.” However, the book doesn’t appear to be about ethics. It consists of short numbered sections in 7 sets, The seventh being “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.” The main message of the book was that the most important questions about ethics and religion lie beyond our scope of understanding.

              The opening pages of Tractatus, deal with what the world is ultimately made up of. According to the Tractatus, the world is made up of facts not things. The most basic building blocks being objects that combine to form states of affairs. The world is made up of all states of affairs and combined together they form complex facts. States of affairs also exist in logical space. Lastly logical space holds everything that is logically possible. So regardless if something is true or false, if it is possible it exists in logical space and contains all states of affairs. With Tractatus, Wittgenstein creates a division between things that can be said and things that can be shown. Anything that does not concern facts cannot be said, but can be shown. And some of the things we can’t say are, ethics, the meaning of life, nature of logic, etc.

The Later Wittgenstein:

              Later Wittgenstein wrote the Philosophical Investigations and his mind about language had changed. His first book suggests that a name means an object; however, later he realized that a word has no meaning if nothing corresponded to it. A central theme in his later work was “bewitchment by language”. Wittgenstein believed that language was a spell that confused philosophers. To solve this problem, he created a device called “language games”, which are different activities we perform using language.  The meaning of words leads people to believe that they are limited to boundaries and restrictions; however, meaning is not fixed by the relationship between words and things but by how they are used.  Wittgenstein also believed that there is no such thing as private language, because the functioning of language relies on shared practices.

Wittgenstein pointed out that I would never have learned the meaning of the word "pain" without the aid of other people. Unlike those before him, Wittgenstein refuted that an individual’s mind was private, because if we did have private inner experiences, it would be possible to represent them in a corresponding language. Wittgenstein is a key figure in the development and history of analytic philosophy; however, because of the difficulty of his work he has become less popular.

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Sources:

http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/6s.htm#trac

http://donamajicshow.tumblr.com/post/127243286/tractatus-logico-philosophicus-the-philosophical

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/investigations/summary.html

http://www.iep.utm.edu/wittgens/