Philip Kerr, A Philosophical Investigation

Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

9      Language disguises thought, to the extent sometimes it is not possible to determine the mental action which inspired it.

4.002: … Language disguises thought. So much so, that from the outward form of the clothing it is impossible to infer the form of the thought beneath it, because the outward form of the clothing is not designed to reveal the form of the body, but for entirely different purposes..

35    Knowledge of my difference was quite naturally tempered with an awareness of what philosophers tell us is simply solipsism—the theory that nothing exists except me and my mental states. So I have no real evidence to support the perception that I was different in that I considered my mental states to be unusual.

5.62: … The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world.

36  A picture is a model of reality. A Picture is a fact. It is impossible to tell from the picture alone whether it is true or false. All right then, I can compare it with reality. But there are no pictures that are true a priori. Whatever it is you happen to be thinking about.

2.12: A picture is a model of reality.

2.223: In order to tell whether a picture is true or false we must compare it with reality.

2.224: It is impossible to tell from the picture alone whether it is true or false.

50    Names are like points; propositions are like arrows — they have sense.

3.144: Situations can be described but not given names.

   (Names are like points; propositions like arrows—they have sense.)

52   Russell said that there were simple relations between different numbers of things (individuals). But between what numbers? And how is that supposed to be decided? By experience? There is no pre-eminent number.

4.128: Logical forms are without number.

   Hence there are no pre-eminent numbers in logic, and hence there is no possibility of philosophical monism or dualism, etc.

5.453: All numbers in logic stand in need of justification.

   Or rather, it must become evident that there are no numbers in logic.

   There are no pre-eminent numbers.

61    … if things can occur in states of affairs, this possibility must be in them from the beginning.

2.0123: If I know an object I also know all its possible occurrences in states of affairs.

   (Every one of these possibilities must be part of the nature of the object.)…

2.0124: If all objects are given, then at the same time all possible states of affairs are also given.

2.0141: The possibility of its occurring in states of affairs is the form of an object.

79    Death is the one true certainty. When we die the world does not alter, but comes to an end. Death is not an event in life.

6.431: So too at death the world does not alter, but comes to an end.

6.4311: Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.

103  … if you could lump all the true thoughts together, namely the logical pictures of facts, what you would have would be a picture of the whole world.

3.01: The totality of true thoughts is a picture of the world.

103   We cannot think what we cannot think; so what we cannot think we cannot say either.

5.61: …We cannot think what we cannot think; so what we cannot think we cannot say either.

112  A name means an object. The object is its meaning. I can only speak about names. I cannot put them into words.

3.023: A name means an object. The object is its meaning…

3.221: Objects can only be named. Signs are their representatives. I can only speak about them: I cannot put them into words. Propositions can only say how things are, not what they are.

129 And the idea that there is some kind of natural explanation for everything, and that this natural law is something inviolable is, frankly, nonsense.

6.371: The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanation of natural phenomena.

6.372: Thus people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as something inviolable, just as God and Fate were treated in past ages.

   And in fact both are right and wrong…

142  Believe me I have found it easier to bend my mind in trying to say what cannot be said. Thinkable is possible too, in the sense that one cannot think of anything illogical: we could not honestly say what something that was illogical would look like.

6.362: What can be described can happen too: and what the law of causality is meant to exclude cannot even be described.

142  … to say that language cannot represent the Holocaust is to misrepresent it as something not of this world… Yet it is the fact that the Holocaust is so very much of this world and therefore that it can indeed be said and is not something unspeakable, which makes it so terrible.

3.02: A thought contains the possibility of the situation of which it is the thought. What is thinkable is possible too.

3.031: It used to be said that God could create anything except what would be contrary to the laws of logic.—The truth is that we could not say what an ‘illogical’ world would look like.

142 … all propositions are of equal value and there are no such things as propositions of ethics. Ethics are transcendental and cannot be put into words. In short Ethics are impossible. … But it is also impossible to speak about human will in so far as it is the subject of ethical attributes. And so I kill because there is no logical reason not to.

6.4: All propositions are of equal value.

6.42: So too it is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics…

6.421: It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words.

   Ethics is transcendental.

6.423: It is impossible to speak about the will in so far as it is the subject of ethical attributes…

5.473: Logic must look after itself.

   If a sign is possible, then it is also capable of signifying.

   Whatever is possible in logic is also permitted…

6.362: What can be described can happen too…

171  … death itself is a cure for life…. You see how mysterious life really is. Life is no more the negation of death than death is the affirmation of life. Yet it is only death which can confirm that there has indeed been life as we know it. Death is not the opposite of anything. It is death, and nothing else besides.

6.431 So too at death the world does not alter, but comes to an end.

301  Logic, where nothing is accidental. Logic, which deals with every possibility and where all possibilities are its facts.

6.37: There is no compulsion making one thing happen because another has happened. The only necessity that exists is logical necessity.

310         It’s at times like these, when I’m wondering about the riddle of life in space and time, that I think the solution lies outside time and space altogether. Outside my own life itself perhaps.

6.4312: Not only is there no guarantee of the temporal immortality of the human soul … but, in any case, this assumption completely fails to accomplish the purpose for which it has always been intended. Or is some riddle solved by my surviving for ever? Is not this eternal life itself as much of a riddle as our present life? The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time.

327         `When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question. Well then. The riddle does not exist. And the solution to the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem.’

6.521: The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem.

354         `If I had asked you to bring me a red flower, would you have looked up the colour red in a table of colours and then brought a flower of the colour that you found in that table?’

                … `this is how memory and association may be said to work, within the context of a language game.’

Blue Book 3: If I give someone the order “fetch me a red flower from that meadow”, how is he to know what sort of flower to bring, as I have only given him a word?.... In fact the process may be this: I carry a chart co-ordinating names and coloured squares. When I hear the order “fetch me etc.” I draw my finger across the chart from the word “red” to a certain square, and I go and look for a flower which has the same colour as the square…. It seems that there are certain definite mental processes bound up with the working of language, processes through which alone language can function.

344 … the fallen stepladder he had used to climb up to the noose and which he had then kicked away…

6.54: My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to climb up beyond them. (he must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)

357         `Where one has faith in nothing, then there is only logic that’s left to answer to … it was not the voice of God which made me do it, but the voice of Logic.’

6.37: There is no compulsion making one thing happen because another has happened. The only necessity that exists is logical necessity.

Philip Kerr, A Philosophical Investigation

Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations

((Meaning is a physiognomy.))

(Hacker 1996, 390: ) We are capable of a high degree of sensitivity with regards to words. We sometimes feel that a word has ‘taken up its meaning into itself, that it is an actual likeness of its meaning’ (PI, p. 218). This feeling is manifest in the way we choose and value words… Though the meaning of a word is not the experience one has in hearing or using it, nevertheless there is such a thing as ‘experiencing the meaning of a word’, and the experience can be described as the familiarity with and recognition of its ‘physiognomy’.

247 the most explicit evidence of intention is by itself insufficient evidence of intention.

(Hacker 1996, 614: ) My intention, just as it was, was no less certain than if I had actually announced it. (It was no mere seed of an intention.) Moreover, even if I had announced the intention at the time, that would not, by itself, have been sufficient evidence that I so intended, since I might not have meant what I said.

247: `What is your aim in philosophy? To show the fly the way out of the fly bottle.’

PI 1, 309: What is your aim in philosophy?—To shew the fly the way out of the fly bottle.

(Hacker 1990, 263:) Ryle asked `But what has the fly missed, that has never got into the bottle and therefore never looked for or found the way out of it?' This is misleading, and the tempting answer that `It has missed philosophical insight' is equally so. The correct answer would be: nothing at all save the experience of being trapped - but has there ever been such a fly? Only a clod or a god could resist being drawn into the fly-bottle of philosophical bafflement, a clod because he barely flies (thinks), a god because he already sees both the way in and the way out, so is not tempted in.