Notes on the Tractatus
Posted by Ali Reda | Posted in | Posted on 5/05/2017
Propositions
The sense of a proposition is its agreement and disagreement with possibilities of existence and non-existence of states of affairs. So propositions are classified into:
senseless -> They can be logically analyzed to elementary propositions, but they do not have sense because they do not tell us anything about the world, but only its limits, they are necessary. Like propositions of logic, tautologies and contradictions “for the one allows every possible state of affairs, the other none”. They don't picture anything, and this includes the notion of limit and the limit points themselves. [Purble is a colour or a squared circle] (The problem with this point is epistimological, because Not all tautolgies are sensless, some have sense which was unknown then would be known, like the [a morning star and an evening star and venus, all of them being the same star])
non-sense -> when a proposition transcends the bounds of sense and can't be masured against reality or analysed. They become out of logic, illogical, logic can't judge them [what is good? or God or The Sufi recieved Knowledge from God or just I] We can't talk about it, but only name them (thinking about them, is thinking about concepts and names without further analysis), they can only be shown.
with sense -> Propositions which do have sense are bipolar; they range within the truth-conditions drawn by the propositions of logic. It doesn't matter if they are true or false. If they are false, they may be true in another world which is logically possible, they are contingent. But they can't be always true or false or else they would be sensless. [John is talking now, this man has wings]
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
Logic and Thought
How come I can think about God, even If God is out of Logic? Because we subject God to the same rules of our world, we logicze God to be part in our world. Hence comes all false doctrines of God, we say non-sense. We can't analyze God, we can Only name him and know that he is the source of value outside our world, outside space and time. And our Logic fails Outside of space and time.
What can be shown lies on the boundry between Logic and ILLogic, only names lie on this boundry. We try to find using Logic relations between this boundry and the Logical space i.e relations between those names and our world. The problem arise if we push the names in our Logical space.
Logic must look after itself. What makes logic a priori is the impossibility of illogical thought. Logic fills the world: the limits of the world are also its limits. (1) Logic + senseless names that can be shown = Thought 2) Logic - Contradictions = Imagination, what we can conceive or form an idea about, is logically possible [a talking circle])
Thought and Language
What we cannot think, that we cannot think: we cannot therefore say what we cannot think. (we shouldn't say what we cannot think, because we can say what we can't think [a squared circle], we can say non-sense statements. So Thought is subset of Language, so Logic is subset of Langauge.
1) Language = Logic (with-sense and senseless)+ Illogical (non-sense)
2) Language = Thought + Illogical
Sense outside of language and logic
but all non-sense statemnets (illogical propositions) are nonsense, even if they can't be said, they can be shown. (metaphysical, ethical, aesthetic) propositions of philosophy belong in this group.
There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical. It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists. What can't be said, can only be shown.
The power in the tractatus is in showing that illogical is different from a contradiction. And that although we can't talk about the illogical, it isn't nonsense, it sense can only be shown.
Who draw the limits of logic, the limits of language and the limits of the world?
