What is the best secondary resource to help me really understand

>>9161547

Hello OP, I have a math degree, and I minored in philosophy. With regard to reading the tractatus closely (as in: actually grinding out the math-bits), I strongly recommend this wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_function

Which should partially be a review of things you say you've already learned, but what makes this particular wiki so good is that it contains pretty much all of the historical symbols for the various operators, and which you will encounter very differently in the literature, depending on what you training is/was, what text you used, and particular instances of which Wittgenstein himself uses. Mathematical logic/modern logic in general is young enough that notation still hasn't been standardized. Wittgenstein spends about half the little book developing uncontroversial ideas about two-valued (mathematical) logic, which he variously formulates with math-y bits (and which several of his contemporaries were getting up to at around the same time, as I understand it). This part is absolutely clear to me, and is undeniable. It is either the "meat" of the text, or its window-dressing, depending on your point of view. But you WILL be in a better position to understand the "concrete math stuff" if you do exercises to brush up, ask your own questions, and do a good bit of sketching/writing/doodling (write down truth tables, ask yourself why they work the way that they do, and importantly, ask yourself /how many different various situations/ might crop up with n atomic proposition "p, q, r,..." etc. The above wiki goes directly to this, which in turn goes directly to reading the "math" side of the Tractatus.

Other math bits that you should brush up on (if need be) include sigma notation, powers of two, and combinations (the "choose" function, n choose k, etc). These make appearances in the book as well: hint: Pascal's triangle is extremely relevant here. Exercise: what did the anon mean by this: where do powers of 2 and "combinations" show up in Pascal's triangle?

The part which is more amenable to disagreement/discussion/interpretation are the other more opaque/mystical bits, where Wittgenstein verbalizes his primitive thoughts which eventually build up into the math-stuff. This includes certain of the early bits, and certainly the last few pages, where he seems (being careful, now) to change gears from what the bulk of the text had been about, a more technical inquiry, to get mystical: "whoops all I've done is to explain a bit about how things are, time to throw the ladder away", or something like that.

I understand that he hated Russell's intro; I invite someone to expand on exactly why, without any memeing; exactly what it was that Russell got wrong, etc.

>>9161547
>What is the best secondary resource to help me really understand the Tractatus?

Philosophical Investigations

>>9161547
If you have a degree in philosophy and find it that difficult then philosophy clearly isn't for you. Have a go at media studies instead.

>>9161699
Thank you!

>>9161711
Yes, I intend to read this after.

>>9161935
Not that guy, but you should read the PI first, with Hacker & Baker's commentary, then read the Tractatus later. The Tractatus is very contentious and difficult to interpret even once you have a solid opinion on Wittgenstein's overal philosophical trajectory. It's nearly impossible to interpret meaningfully by reading it in isolation.

>>9161699
I can't help much, but I can recommend Newton Garver's book on Wittgenstein, _This Complicated Form of Life,_ which has good essays on his Spinozist mysticism

>>9161967
Thanks for the heads up. I assumed that I should read it first simply because he wrote it first and PI makes frequent references to it.

>>9161967

>It's nearly impossible to interpret meaningfully by reading it in isolation.

I'm the math-anon and for my part, I sincerely disagree with this.

My confidence on this point leads me to fancy myself the anon "for whom he wrote the book", but something tells me that something's missing. That just because I can do the math bits, that I haven't /realllly/ grok'd the text; that if he were around and I claimed to have understood his book, he'd go face a corner and start loudly reading from the Upanishads or somesuch. I'd simply put this down to him being "autistic", as we say.

File: w.jpg (32KB, 372x600px) Image search: [Google]

32KB, 372x600px

Here is my Wittgenstein guide, I have updated it from my previous paste-bin version. I will be continually updating it so save the link:


https://www.docdroid.net/fWoqZ0F/wittgenstein-guide.odt.html


I am yet to add more 'New Wittgensteinians' and my Frege section could do a bit of work. I have included Kant and Hume as a sort of background to where many ideas came from as Wittgenstein does make some Humean points.

If there are any Wittgenstein readers here, please make some suggestions so that I can continue to update my guide. I know of many other things I wish to introduce.

>>9162317
I have updated the document again (don't worry, the docdroid link is the same) with more links and thinkers that influenced Wittgenstein.

>>9162200
can you explain what you think he meant by "those who have thought these thoughts" or whatever he said. Is he referring to language being artificial in some way or purely object? I just picked it up last weekend and have yet to dive into it.

>>9163384

I take this statement from Wittgenstein's own preface simply to mean that he was detailing (and co-founding with others) a relatively abstract inquiry into logic, which proceeds in a fairly scientific manner, which he then later CONfounded (pun not intended but there it is) somewhat by spending a few lines on the rest of life, in a more properly philosophical (read: unscientific, speculative) way. He says it pretty clearly: he just wanted to write his thoughts down in an aphoristic, organized way and let them stand as-is, without building the thing up into some grand huge technical system, like the "textbook" which his little book is not. "Here's a book, I hope you like it, but I'm not going to explain every little detail. Work those out for yourself, or else if you'd agreed already, then you're my target audience." More cynically (and this is merely a suggestion for how to read things, not purporting to be historical fact), this is a slight "branding" thing in the sense that Witty is building up the cult about himself, by automatically presupposing some Initiated or Elect who happen to agree with him, and then sort of shit-testing the reader whether they might be part of that group.

I am a strange duck (rabbit? :^). I have read the Tractatus and I have /not/ read PI (I'll do at some point), so there's a rather large admitted gap there.

Oh, also a more serious math-related thing related to the text: look up sheffer-strokes versus NAND/NOR logical operators (in modern parlance), and how these are "sufficient" to-a-point. This relates directly to 6.etc, and whatever one's opinion of Russell's intro, he (Russell) was quite right to bring them up as a pertinent item, because Witty does build up a closely related thing in 6.etc. I'm starting to think that between his skepticism of mysticism in general, and his tone of "oh he could have done this-and-that better", that it was natural for Wittgenstein to hate/resent the Russell intro, regardless of whatever it got right (I'd have to re-read closely rather than just skim).

> I have heard it's worthwhile to really put in the effort to understand Wittgenstein's ideas

It is, but mostly the later. Early Witty is great but his import is mostly specialized. His approach to a lot of different issues is pretty interesting and insightful though.

It's later W you want, my man. I suggest diving right into PI and after about 200 or so "aphorisms" checking out the Routledge guide.