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Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
Posted: Sun May 28, 2017 5:35 pm
by Philosophy Now
Re: Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
Posted: Sun May 28, 2017 5:49 pm
by spike
I don't get it about Ludwig Wittgenstein. What is the big deal? One thing he says is "the world is not made up of things, it is made up of facts" But things and facts are much the same. Wars were things and they certainly proved to be facts. Sometimes I wonder about philosophers.
One philosophers that didn't change anything, though he was interesting to read, was Russell.
Re: Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2017 12:32 am
by RickLewis
spike wrote: ↑Sun May 28, 2017 5:49 pm
I don't get it about Ludwig Wittgenstein. What is the big deal? One thing he says is "the world is not made up of things, it is made up of facts" But things and facts are much the same. Wars were things and they certainly proved to be facts. Sometimes I wonder about philosophers.
Facts and things certainly seem very different, even if facts often involve things.
Look, here are a couple of things: a car, and an elephant.
And here is a fact: "the elephant is sitting on the car."
If you made a comprehensive list of all the things in the world, that list still wouldn't be a very good description of the world, because it wouldn't say anything about the arrangement of those things relative to one another. For instance, are the things arranged in the way they are in our world, or are they all whirling around together in a big vortex? Your list would be the same either way. Therefore to me it does make more sense to say that the world is made up of facts rather than just of things.
Re: Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2017 12:03 pm
by Londoner
spike wrote: ↑Sun May 28, 2017 5:49 pm
I don't get it about Ludwig Wittgenstein. What is the big deal? One thing he says is "the world is not made up of things, it is made up of facts" But things and facts are much the same. Wars were things and they certainly proved to be facts. Sometimes I wonder about philosophers
The world as we experience it is made up of facts.
The table is brown, the table is hard, the table is heavy....these are facts. But we never experience just '
the table' on its own, separate from any fact about the table.
That '
the table' is a 'thing', in some way existing as the source of those facts (but distinct from them), it not something we can experience. It is not part of the world, it is 'metaphysical'.
Re: Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2017 8:22 pm
by Impenitent
RickLewis wrote: ↑Sat Jun 03, 2017 12:32 am
spike wrote: ↑Sun May 28, 2017 5:49 pm
I don't get it about Ludwig Wittgenstein. What is the big deal? One thing he says is "the world is not made up of things, it is made up of facts" But things and facts are much the same. Wars were things and they certainly proved to be facts. Sometimes I wonder about philosophers.
Facts and things certainly seem very different, even if facts often involve things.
Look, here are a couple of things: a car, and an elephant.
And here is a fact: "the elephant is sitting on the car."
If you made a comprehensive list of all the things in the world, that list still wouldn't be a very good description of the world, because it wouldn't say anything about the arrangement of those things relative to one another. For instance, are the things arranged in the way they are in our world, or are they all whirling around together in a big vortex? Your list would be the same either way. Therefore to me it does make more sense to say that the world is made up of facts rather than just of things.
"facts" would be instantiations about fleeting observations lasting momentarily for the car is now a scrap of crushed metal, plastic, glass and fabric...
new moment, new facts...
-Imp
Re: Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2017 8:48 pm
by spike
Thanks, I like that!
Re: Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2017 11:26 pm
by Dubious
...so it seems a fact acts merely as a predicate on a thing, yet in most cases, the fact (predicate) wouldn't exist, or not likely to, if the "thing", its object, wouldn't preexist. The conclusion, though I may be screwed, is that for facts or relationships to exist requires prior entities - whether actual or supposed wouldn't really matter - to create the correspondence called a Fact. In short "fact" is the synthesis of an object combined with its current state.
Re: Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2017 12:42 am
by Impenitent
caveat- no observer, no fact
-Imp
Re: Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2017 12:09 am
by fooloso4
Things or objects, according to Wittgenstein, exist in logical relationships with each other. He was pointing beyond objects to the logical structure that underlies the facts of the world, thought, and language.
The later Wittgenstein rejected the notion of a transcendental logic.