1. THE WORLD IS ALL THAT IS THE CASE
It is difficult to conclude much from this statement - ie what it's ruling out, what confusions or claims it is insisting one not make, as well as what kinds of things would follow from it. It is, as so many of these early PROPS are, an identity claim, or maybe more precisely, a definition: the world is the totality of things that are the case, that we will say, illicitly, share the property of being the case, of holding. I will unfold the sentence so as to elaborate on each term as we go along. Not everything said therefore will be understandable from this point in the Tr.
World = ("is determined") All that is the case (=to be the case is the existence of a state of affairs) = totality of facts = (not the totality of things)
1.1 THE WORLD IS THE TOTALITY OF FACTS, NOT OF THINGS
This maybe anticipates the idea that names do not have meaning except in the context of a proposition. That we cannot really meaningfully speak about a bare thing in the world; meaning enters the picture when we situate a represented thing in some way or other.
If the world were a totality of things then it seems that there order would be itself a thing. A fact is, we will see, a concatenation of things - they're relation is not a third thing, but rather each thing is 'pierced' by the other, hanging together like 'links in a chain'. For Wittgenstein, the world is composed of things in their matter of fact contingent arrangements. What in the world would correspond to the "R" in "aRb" if the world as such just had things like a, b, c... in it? For Wittgenstein, the relations depicted between elementary objects hold if the objects are so situated, that is, what grounds truth is the objects being so situated. If the world is just made up of all the objects' situations, then the world, in it's ability to share a common kind of situatedness (ie., logical form) with our propositions about it, can be the source of linguistic meaning.
Perhaps one simple thing this claim is warding off is the idea of the world as a thing, as a heap, eg., that one might make the object of a thought, one might even visually imagine.
Or maybe even more simply, its that fact-as-primitive aspect of the world was derived from the proposition-as-primitive assumption about language.
1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts.
The world is determined, that is, it is limited by giving differentiating characteristics; non-existent states of affairs delimit the world, an incomplete set of facts does not yet constitute the world. The world is all existent states of affairs (all that is the case).
1.12 For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever is not the case.
This maybe anticipates Ws claims about negation. To have the totality of facts would also be to have the totality of falsehoods. Negation corresponds to nothing in the world; it is holding up a situation to the world to determine whether the situation holds.
1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.
To me this can only be an elaboration of what he means by totality. It is really the only difference from 1.1, the world is the totality of facts. Logical space will be elaborated on later. One could imagine the claim: the geometrical facts in geometrical space are the geometrical world; Here the important idea is that geometrical space will be the common framework or element between the structure of the geometrical objects and our representation of them. Logical space it seems will be the possibility of shared structure between language and the world such that the former can meaningfully represent the latter. Here we see maybe surprisingly facts as denizens of logical space before e.g., reasons or propositions.
1.2 THE WORLD DIVIDES INTO FACTS
Is this a claim about the ultimate semantic constituents again, anticipating the compositional meaning that will be arrived at later, the point being that one doesn't really divide the world beyond facts, e.g., into simples? It is difficult to see this as what he's saying, since refering to simples, simples as constituents of propositions etc will be so central to this theory. Of course, the statement is not committed to the world dividing into facts and no further.
1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same.
Again, it is a bit unclear whether this is a postulate, a presupposition of a theory, or a result of a theory. But much will be involved with this claim; here is a radical kind of empiricism: that the atomic facts about the world are logically independent of each other. As such, there are no necessary atomic facts; the substance of the world is contingent. It will turn out that the only kind of necessity is logical, that is, it is an entailing relation between propositions, a regulative feature of our speech. A simple picture suggests itself: imagine a gridded two dimensional field (infinite I suppose?), and each grid coordinate being either black or white. Each grid point then is an atomic proposition and whether it is black or white is whether or not it is the case. This says that every possible complete black/white arrangement of that grid represents a possible world, that every arrangement is entirely self-consistent is to say that the shade of any one grid entails nothing about the shade of any other grid. Much like repeatedly flipping a coin, each toss having nothing to do with the previous and no bearing on the next. This isn't a wild idea, it is merely very difficult to imagine what such logically un-entangled propositions would look like. W entertains the example, This is red, an intuitive example of a primitive, but it follows that it is not the case that this is green, that this is blue, etc., all of which would have to equally be candidates for atomic facts. What will emerge is that logical independence will be more of a requirement of the possibility of sense, and indeed a requirement of the truth-functional model employed here and which is, in many ways, the power of which, the excitement and eagerness, drives the project forward into inhospitable climes.
It is difficult to conclude much from this statement - ie what it's ruling out, what confusions or claims it is insisting one not make, as well as what kinds of things would follow from it. It is, as so many of these early PROPS are, an identity claim, or maybe more precisely, a definition: the world is the totality of things that are the case, that we will say, illicitly, share the property of being the case, of holding. I will unfold the sentence so as to elaborate on each term as we go along. Not everything said therefore will be understandable from this point in the Tr.
World = ("is determined") All that is the case (=to be the case is the existence of a state of affairs) = totality of facts = (not the totality of things)
1.1 THE WORLD IS THE TOTALITY OF FACTS, NOT OF THINGS
This maybe anticipates the idea that names do not have meaning except in the context of a proposition. That we cannot really meaningfully speak about a bare thing in the world; meaning enters the picture when we situate a represented thing in some way or other.
If the world were a totality of things then it seems that there order would be itself a thing. A fact is, we will see, a concatenation of things - they're relation is not a third thing, but rather each thing is 'pierced' by the other, hanging together like 'links in a chain'. For Wittgenstein, the world is composed of things in their matter of fact contingent arrangements. What in the world would correspond to the "R" in "aRb" if the world as such just had things like a, b, c... in it? For Wittgenstein, the relations depicted between elementary objects hold if the objects are so situated, that is, what grounds truth is the objects being so situated. If the world is just made up of all the objects' situations, then the world, in it's ability to share a common kind of situatedness (ie., logical form) with our propositions about it, can be the source of linguistic meaning.
Perhaps one simple thing this claim is warding off is the idea of the world as a thing, as a heap, eg., that one might make the object of a thought, one might even visually imagine.
Or maybe even more simply, its that fact-as-primitive aspect of the world was derived from the proposition-as-primitive assumption about language.
1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts.
The world is determined, that is, it is limited by giving differentiating characteristics; non-existent states of affairs delimit the world, an incomplete set of facts does not yet constitute the world. The world is all existent states of affairs (all that is the case).
1.12 For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever is not the case.
This maybe anticipates Ws claims about negation. To have the totality of facts would also be to have the totality of falsehoods. Negation corresponds to nothing in the world; it is holding up a situation to the world to determine whether the situation holds.
1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.
To me this can only be an elaboration of what he means by totality. It is really the only difference from 1.1, the world is the totality of facts. Logical space will be elaborated on later. One could imagine the claim: the geometrical facts in geometrical space are the geometrical world; Here the important idea is that geometrical space will be the common framework or element between the structure of the geometrical objects and our representation of them. Logical space it seems will be the possibility of shared structure between language and the world such that the former can meaningfully represent the latter. Here we see maybe surprisingly facts as denizens of logical space before e.g., reasons or propositions.
1.2 THE WORLD DIVIDES INTO FACTS
Is this a claim about the ultimate semantic constituents again, anticipating the compositional meaning that will be arrived at later, the point being that one doesn't really divide the world beyond facts, e.g., into simples? It is difficult to see this as what he's saying, since refering to simples, simples as constituents of propositions etc will be so central to this theory. Of course, the statement is not committed to the world dividing into facts and no further.
1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same.
Again, it is a bit unclear whether this is a postulate, a presupposition of a theory, or a result of a theory. But much will be involved with this claim; here is a radical kind of empiricism: that the atomic facts about the world are logically independent of each other. As such, there are no necessary atomic facts; the substance of the world is contingent. It will turn out that the only kind of necessity is logical, that is, it is an entailing relation between propositions, a regulative feature of our speech. A simple picture suggests itself: imagine a gridded two dimensional field (infinite I suppose?), and each grid coordinate being either black or white. Each grid point then is an atomic proposition and whether it is black or white is whether or not it is the case. This says that every possible complete black/white arrangement of that grid represents a possible world, that every arrangement is entirely self-consistent is to say that the shade of any one grid entails nothing about the shade of any other grid. Much like repeatedly flipping a coin, each toss having nothing to do with the previous and no bearing on the next. This isn't a wild idea, it is merely very difficult to imagine what such logically un-entangled propositions would look like. W entertains the example, This is red, an intuitive example of a primitive, but it follows that it is not the case that this is green, that this is blue, etc., all of which would have to equally be candidates for atomic facts. What will emerge is that logical independence will be more of a requirement of the possibility of sense, and indeed a requirement of the truth-functional model employed here and which is, in many ways, the power of which, the excitement and eagerness, drives the project forward into inhospitable climes.
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