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Visualization of Wittgenstein's Tractatus logico-philosophicus

pbellon.github.io

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Re: Visualization of Wittgenstein's Tractatus logico-philosophicus

#21

Post by sibane »

blululu wrote: post #19

This is cool in general, but I feel like it disrupts the flow of the writing/presentation. There is something fundamentally poetic about the structure and rhythm of the Tractatus. Perhaps that is why it has held so much appeal. In any case I feel like indentation or some other nesting convention found in software formatting would do a better job of visually representing the logical structure of the book without disru…

I personally think the structure of the book is it's biggest weakness. No matter how poetic, it really doesn't support communicating it's material very well. At least not to normal people.

That said, I actually did a redesign of the book (https://i.imgur.com/QFyuIsd.jpg) years ago using indentation and lines as guides. I reckon that's the best way to improve the experience in book form without fundamentally altering the text itself.

If I were to do the same for web, I'd also make sure the reader always sees the statements from upper layers to get the full picture of the context in which the current statement is said.

Re: Visualization of Wittgenstein's Tractatus logico-philosophicus

#22

Post by gjm11 »

The_rationalist wrote: post #9
74d-fe6-2c6 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> e.g even the truth tables in it are invalid that would be a very specific and relevant point to make. can you back this up with sources or more than one example? > My theory is that the tractacus was a bullshit detector Are you serious? This seems like a fun idea but doesn't really pass my own bullshit detector.

can you back this up with sources or more than one example? I am referring to the case x=3 y=3 of the assertion 4.442

There is no x nor y in 4.442. I have two guesses at what you might mean.

1. Maybe you're referring to the last sentence "(The number of places in the left-hand pair of brackets is determined by the number of terms in the right-hand pair.)" and saying: haha, if the number of terms in the right-hand pair is 3 then the number of places in the left-hand pair is 8, not 3. But Wittgenstein doesn't say "is equal to", he says "is determined by", and that's correct.

2. Maybe you're referring to the concrete truth-table, where if you label its rows and columns 1,2,3 etc., the slot with x=y=3 is left blank. That's a weird notational choice but I'm pretty sure it isn't a mistake. Look at 4.44: "The sign that results from correlating the mark 'T' with truth-possibilities is a propositional sign." Wittgenstein's being terse as usual, but I think what he means is that when reading one of these truth-tables what we need to know is where the Ts are. For a bit more explicitness, look further back at 4.43: "We can express agreement with truth-possibilities by correlating the mark 'T' (true) with them in the schema. The absence of this mark means disagreement." (Emphasis mine.) So the right-hand column of his truth tables uses T to mean that the corresponding proposition is true, and the absence of a T to mean that it's false. Which is exactly what he does in 4.442. He's clearly aware that there's a cost in clarity, which is why after writing it as "(TT-T)(p,q)" he says: "or more explicitly (TTFT)(p,q)".

Either way, I think you're wrong to characterize this as a mistake.

Re: Visualization of Wittgenstein's Tractatus logico-philosophicus

#23

Post by The_rationalist »

gjm11 wrote: post #22
The_rationalist wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you back this up with sources or more than one example? I am referring to the case x=3 y=3 of the assertion 4.442

There is no x nor y in 4.442. I have two guesses at what you might mean. 1. Maybe you're referring to the last sentence "(The number of places in the left-hand pair of brackets is determined by the number of terms in the right-hand pair.)" and saying: haha, if the number of terms in the right-hand pair is 3 then the number of places in the left-hand pair is 8, not 3. But Wittgenstein doesn't say "is equal to", he say…

I agree

Re: Visualization of Wittgenstein's Tractatus logico-philosophicus

#25

Post by davidivadavid »

gjm11 wrote: post #22
The_rationalist wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you back this up with sources or more than one example? I am referring to the case x=3 y=3 of the assertion 4.442

There is no x nor y in 4.442. I have two guesses at what you might mean. 1. Maybe you're referring to the last sentence "(The number of places in the left-hand pair of brackets is determined by the number of terms in the right-hand pair.)" and saying: haha, if the number of terms in the right-hand pair is 3 then the number of places in the left-hand pair is 8, not 3. But Wittgenstein doesn't say "is equal to", he say…

I would always give Wittgenstein the benefit of the doubt on such relatively trivial things given 1) this work was checked thoroughly by the likes of Bertrand Russell 2) the topic has evolved considerably over the last ~100 years, or at least the language and notation used to talk about it, which may lead to misunderstandings for today's readers.

Re: Visualization of Wittgenstein's Tractatus logico-philosophicus

#26

Post by 74d-fe6-2c6 »

The_rationalist wrote: post #23
gjm11 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no x nor y in 4.442. I have two guesses at what you might mean. 1. Maybe you're referring to the last sentence "(The number of places in the left-hand pair of brackets is determined by the number of terms in the right-hand pair.)" and saying: haha, if the number of terms in the right-hand pair is 3 then the number of places in the left-hand pair is 8, not 3. But Wittgenstein doesn't say "is equal to", he say…

I agree

well, that escalated quickly ... :D

Re: Visualization of Wittgenstein's Tractatus logico-philosophicus

#28

Post by hilbert42 »

Rerarom wrote: post #24

There was also this some years ago https://wittgenstein-network.gitlab.io https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04336

"https://wittgenstein-network.gitlab.io"

Well, clearly, that's a good enough reason why the Tractatus isn't taught in the first semester of phil. 101. :-)

Re: Visualization of Wittgenstein's Tractatus logico-philosophicus

#29

Post by MayaFey »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #17

I've actually always wanted something like this for Spinoza's Ethics. The whole book is a directed graph, and is hard to read without constantly leafing around (propositions supported by other propositions and their corollaries, etc.). Similar in structure to this book (the "geometric method") as both are inspired by Euclid's Geometry (and I'm sure Wittgenstein had read Spinoza as well). Spinoza's Ethics is probably…

A truly great tool might as well generalize to the axiomatic method in general. When I've gone through math texts (Euclid's Elements, calculus, topology, etc.) I find it annoying to flip back so much when they are constantly referencing past figures. Even if you write the often used axioms and definitions down, there will still be some that are a pain to access.

I think there's a big opportunity to figure out a way to display these systems in a way no one has done well yet. I'm surprised that if I want to go through Euclid's elements in 2021, it's probably going to be in a pdf or a really basic static webpage. How is there not a super slick app that reveals all kinds of connections in a way only possible with interactive media?

Re: Visualization of Wittgenstein's Tractatus logico-philosophicus

#30

Post by dang »

bondarchuk wrote: post #14
The_rationalist wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two objects of the same logical form are—apart from their ex- ternal properties—only differentiated from one another in that they are different. differentiated in that they are different. It is a mediocre circular reasoning. The correct statement could have been to say that they are internally structurally the same object but have different identity like e.g in nominal typing. HOWEVER, I skimmed the tractacus years a…

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