If you mean by metaphysical, propositions about the nature of ultimate reality, there is no metaphysics in the Tractatus. In fact he is at pains to deny the possibility of metaphysics. There is the mystical. But you can't say anything sensible (true or false) about it. Of course it is rather ironic that as W. himself points out his own numbered propositions in the Tractatus are often not propositions at all but strictly nonsense--not true or false, but pragmatically useful like ladders allowing one to get a clear view of whatever...W. writes about 70 pages about that whereof one must pass over in silence. Oh well..Wow> He is a Zen master and this is a Koan....lol. I cant see how he is like Kant. Does he talk about Kant? Certainly there would seem to be no synthetic a priori propositions, and these are basic to Kant. Both Kant and W. reject metaphysics as traditionally understood but then so do the logical positivists and Hume who are hardly Kantian..
Note that the only real questions are all possible scientific questions, the only "real" propositions i.e.what can be said, are the propositions of the natural sciences. The only propositions with content are about the "world", Hume's matters of fact. Now you may say that W is metaphysical but W clearly says that if you ever should catch him saying something metaphysical you should take him to task and point out to W that he had failed to give meanings to certain signs in his statements. To say that the Tractatus contains metaphysical statements is to miss the whole point of the Tractatus. What you call metaphysics is part of the scaffolding to be thrown away once you get a clear view of things.
Cheers, Ken Hanly
>From the Tractatus.
6.5 When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be
put into words. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be framed at
all, it is also possible to answer it.
6.51 Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical, when it tries to raise doubts where no questions can be asked. For doubt can exist only where a question exists, a question only where an answer exists, and an answer only where something can be said.
6.52 We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. Of course there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer.
6.521 The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem. (Is not this the reason why those who have found after a long period of doubt that the sense of life became clear to them have then been unable to say what constituted that sense?)
6.522 There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.
6.53 The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science--i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy -- and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. Although it would not be satisfying to the other person--he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy--this method would be the only strictly correct one.
6.54 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.)
7 What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Monday, October 29, 2001 10:40 PM Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: book: wittgenstein's poker]
>
> >KH:
> > >Well, the Tractatus was in the empiricist >tradition and combined that
> >with
> > >the propositional logic developed by Russell >and Whitehead among
others.
> > >But it is hardly any inheritance of Russell. The >Tractatus influenced
> > >Russell as I understand the matter
>
> Russell wrote a moving introduction to it; W told him that he understood
> nothing. Thee is nothing "empiricist" about the T, and not only because of
> the mysticism that Charles comments on ("That whereof we cannot speak, we
> must remain silent"; it's beautiful in German: Wovon man nicht schrechen
> kann, darueber muss man schweigen."), but because it is high metaphysics.
> "Facts" and "picturing," all sorts of strange stuff. You mustn't think
that
> just because it uses(and develops) math logic that it is empiricist; it
was
> the logical positivists who put Hume together with Frege.
>
> >
> >When Russell and Wittgenstein were hot on the topic, the term 'logical
> >atomism' was used a lot.
> >Russell (though not an empirical scientist) made appeal to 'direct
> >acquaintance' for getting at the 'atomic units' of meaning.
>
> Whatever made anything that acquaibtance has anything to do with empirical
> science?
>
> >
> >Some of this was passed on to the logical positivist movement. The LPs
saw
> >the Tractatus, at least some of it, as their starting point.
>
> More Kant than W, as Michael Friedman has shown.
>
> Wittgenstein
> >did maintain contact with some of the LPs and the Vienna
Circle(especially
> >Neurath and Waismann, though the names Carnap and Ayer are more famous
> >now),
> >so there must have been some mutual understanding there.
>
> I doubt it. The LPs shared some preoccupations with W, but none of his
> obsessions. He thought their work misguided and dull.
>
> >
> >If you take the time to read the Tractatus (the much later work,
> >Philosophical Investigations is read much more), you see that it is a far
> >more mystical and transcendental work than anything Russell or the VC
were
> >capable of. Even German-speakers who didn't understand that approach to
> >philosophy and logic, upon reading it in German, found its use of the
> >language breathtaking and groundbreaking (as groundbreaking as Musil, a
> >fiction writer).
>
> It is a literary masterpiece. It's German _glows_.
> >
> >I believe the post-modern episteme finds in Wittgenstein, like
Kierkegaard
> >and Nietzsche, a far more amenable mind than either Russell or Popper.
>
> Well, sure, though pomo irony finds the mysticism of W and K,w ho
influended
> him, sort of quaint and silly.
>
> And
> >Feyerabend is a true post-modern.
> >
>
> Oh, no. He's a hard boiled realist (for a relativist), really serious
about
> science, about which he knows a lot--he'd have utter contempt for the
Social
> Text crowd and would never have fallen for a second for the Sokol hoax;
he's
> serious about politics; he writes gorgeously; and while capable of
brilliant
> sarcarism, he has no irony at all.
>
> jks
>
>
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