Tractatus Logico-philosophicus notes

Ludwig was born in to a wealthy Austrian family, served in the Austrian Army in the first world war. Worked on Tractatus towards the end of the first world war. Inherited money but gave a lot away to Austrian writers and artists, very patriotic. Says that logic represents the structure of reality. Says that objects can be analyzed as they are the truth in existence. When comparing to other philosophers theories he says that a lot of the problems arise from the philosopher’s inability to understand language. Which makes their questions ‘non senseical so they can’t be right. The world is determined by facts. This is the basis for logical thinking, in the world facts exsist. Objects exist in the world which make it real Space, time and colour are forms of objects The structure of a fact consists of the structures of states of affair. The state of affairs is the combination of objects or things. So a factual statement consists of a combination of objects, that fit in to each other like a chain to make sense. A picture is a fact. A picture represents a possible situation in logical space. A picture represents what it portrays in its pictorial form only. Whether it is true or false is different to what the picture itself represents. To know whether a picture is true or false we must compare it with reality, but we can’t tell if a picture is true or false just from looking at it. A thought is true if you have no knowledge of anything to compare it to. So if you have a thought then it is true if you don’t know anything to contradict that thought apriori. ‘Language disguises thought.’ Wittgenstein says that language and be spoken by a human without the person knowing exactly how the sound of what they are saying is made. He compares clothes covering a body. You cannot tell what a body looks like as the clothes cover the true form of the body. This could mean that people can say things to cover what they really mean like lying or just not knowing what the f they are talking about. In other words some people just Gas a load of hot air not knowing what they truly mean hence disguising the thought. Wittgenstein says that things can only be said that are factual about the world. Things can’t be said that cannot be proven such as a certain moral belief. Ultimately he is saying that we must use language to try and explore facts as people can lie or not know what they are talking about. Understanding language and logic, we can ourselves find the truth without having to rely on what people are saying we can determine it for ourselves.