optimist

I am not sure how to take remarks 6.43 and 6.431 of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. I included the passages below and then have my interpretation of the lines:
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6.43
If good or bad willing changes the world, it can only change the limits of the world, not the facts; not the things that can be expressed in language.

In brief, the world must thereby become quite another, it must so to speak wax or wane as a whole.

The world of the happy is quite another than that of the unhappy.

6.431
As in death, too, the world does not change, but ceases.

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The world is only the objects and the arrangement they are in. No ethics, no cause and effect... just objects sitting in a certain arrangement. So there is nothing like freewill "in" the world.

But Wittgenstein talks about things outside the world. Ethics, God, the Self, and I think freewill. When he speaks of death in 6.431 he says the world does not change but simply ends. When we die our death does not occur in our world, the world simply stops. There is no death scene in our movie, the movie just ends. "Death" seems straightforward, but what about freewill? Is freewill like the Camera filming our movie? It isn't "in" the movie, but chooses what gets to be in or not in our world? This would seem to actually affect the world, since our bodies are in the world and our "camera" is in our bodies.

Or is freewill just about being an optimist or a pessimist. That we cannot change the world, but simply take the facts as they are either in a positive or negative manner. This interpretation is suggested by the end of 6.43 I would rather think this is what Wittgenstein means, but what does the line " it can only change the limits of the world, not the facts; not the things that can be expressed in language." mean then?

Thanks,
Andrew Fyfe

Bill

I presume that you understand that the numbering scheme within the Tractatus is a heirarchical scheme? So, the first step (for me) in attempting to interpret 6.42 is to put it into context, thusly:

• 6.3 - Logical research means the investigation of all regularity. And outside logic all is accident.
  ...
• 6.4 - All propositions are of equal value.
• 6.41 - The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value -- and if there were, it would be of no value. If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental. It must lie outside the world.
• 6.42 - Hence also there can be no ethical propositions. Propositions cannot express anything higher.
  ...
• 6.43 - ... [your quote, above].

The key to this whole sequence is really 6.41 (which see, quoted, above). W is expressing, once again, his dichotomy of a "real world" that consisted only of facts and relationships between those facts that were established by accident, and a "non-world" (outside of the "real world") where all sorts of abstractions might be found; abstractions like God, ethics, and values. The former W characterizes as "that which can be said" and the latter W characterizes as "that which cannot be said, but only shown."

Thus, the first sentence of 6.43 merely re-states all this in a concise form. We have the abstractions (that necessarily lie "outside" of the "real world" of facts) and the facts, which are "the things that can be expressed in language" (or, more famously, "that which can be said").

So, the first part of 6.43 is merely a restatement of the fact that ethical values ("good or bad") cannot be part of the world; thus, if they cause any change in the world, they "can only change the limits of the world" (i. e., by moving the boundary between "that which can be said" and "that which can only be shown").

But still, no actual facts within the world can be changed by that which lies outside. So, we are left with the question of exactly what real change occurs when a boundary moves. This part is a bit beyond me.

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W asserts that "accident" is responsible for the "real world" of facts. In that assertion, W is speaking in the deepest possible sense, because for sure W would not ban causality from his world of facts. Causality is, itself, a scientific fact that is substantially proven.

But in the deeper sense, where causality does not provide any answer(s), then the only answer there might be is that the ultimate cause of everything is just another accident. That is where 6.3 draws its own dichotomy. Logic can speak of causal relationships, but outside of those lies only accident.

=====

So, the bottom line would be that, to W, there would be no "free will" because the concept of "free will" is a middle ground between causality and accident. [W thus asserts (6.3) that such a middle ground is excluded.

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I am not the expert on W here at the Internet Infidels. Jim Still is far more knowledgable than I am. So, please merely take my remarks as my own interpretation rather than the opinion of a "bonifide expert."

== Bill

Prodros

Andrew and Bill -

For the most part, I agree with what you have said. I have a couple of comments to offer, though.

Even if the physical body is an object in the world, the philosophical self - which W. identifies with the limit of the world - is not. This can be found in his discussion on solipsism (in 5.62 onwards) and his conclusion there addresses your point:

5.641 The philosophical self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit of the world - not a part of it.

The self - or what you call the camera, above - does not get to choose what gets to be in the world. What the self does get to choose is how we relate to the facts of the world. This is apparent in W's discussion on this topic in his Notebooks 1914-1916. (And a lot of the remarks from August of 1916 onwards made their way in the Tractatus.) A few pertinent entries:

7.8.16 The I is not an object.

12.8.16 (Basically the same as 5.641)

4.11.16 The will is the attitude of the subject to the world. The subject is the willing subject.


In one way, the will just amounts to being an optimist or a pessimist. But more specifically, the question about willing is a question about the attitude towards the world. The question could be phrased as follows: does one accept the world (the facts) as they are, or does one want them to be different? Nevertheless, the facts of the world cannot be influenced by the will.

6.373 The world is independent of my will.

6.374 Even if all thet we wish for were to happen, this still would only be a favour granted by fate, so to speak: for there is no logical connexion between the will and the world, which would guarantee it, and the supposed physical connextion itself is surely not something that we could will.

Thus, what one wills - or what one's attitude towards the world is - changes the limits of the world: the happy man sees the world (i.e. his life) as all there is whereas the unhappy man wills that there has to be more:

5.621 The world and life are one.

6.43 (Quoted above)

In a way, W. seems to be reflecting a Nietzschean theme (to paraphrase Nietzsche: Christianity's resolve to find the world ugly has made the world ugly). At least, this is how I read the following:

6.422 There must be indeed some kind of ethical reward and ethical punishment, but they must reside in the action itself. (And it is also clear that the reward must be something pleasant and the punishment something unpleasant.)


In other words, the punishment of the unhappy man is his unhappy attitude towards the world. But this attitude towards the world is not a part of the world. Rather, this is outside the world of facts; this is what is the mystical:

6.45 Feeling the world as a limited whole - it is this that is mystical.


Bill - a quick point here: Causality is a scientific fact, but W's use of the term 'fact' is much more technical than that in the ordinary sense. For W., causal laws pertain to accidents, (i.e. what is outside the realm of logic). The events that causal laws govern could be otherwise; however, causal laws only state how things are, not why they are that way.

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

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

6.375 Just as the only necessity that exists is logical necessity, so too the only impossibility that exists is logical impossibility.

In short, causal laws can only describe how things are. Even trying to ask why things are the way they are transgresses the limits of what can be said. Why things are in certain way - i.e. the sense of the world - is in W's view outside the world:

6.44 It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.


I claim to be no expert on the Tractatus (at least, not quite yet), but I have worked on this interpretation for a while now, and I hope it has helped you with your questions. (And in any case, feedback will be appreciated.)

T...

(Edited to correct the grammar.)

[ July 20, 2002: Message edited by: Prodros ]</p>

optimist

The help is much appreciated Bill and Prodros! I am just now realizing what a task Wittgenstein really is.

This might also be of interest, below I am posting comments I got about the same question from another forum. The essay recommended and linked to at the end of the post I found to be very helpful regarding Wittgenstein's ethics:

&gt; The world is only the objects and the arrangement they are in.

No, only the latter. Remember 1.1: "The world is the totality of facts, not of things."

&gt; But Wittgenstein talks about things outside the world. Ethics, God,
&gt; the Self, and I think freewill. When he speaks of death in 6.431 he
&gt; says the world does not change but simply ends. When we die our death
&gt; does not occur in our world, the world simply stops. There is no
&gt; death scene in our movie, the movie just ends. "Death" seems
&gt; straightforward, but what about freewill? Is freewill like the Camera
&gt; filming our movie? It isn't "in" the movie, but chooses what gets to
&gt; be in or not in our world? This would seem to actually affect the
&gt; world, since our bodies are in the world and our "camera" is in our
&gt; bodies.

But the "world" which is being referred to is not the physical world -- the physical world surely does not come to an end with anyone's death!
The world, in the Tractatus, is the totality of "all that is the case"
(1), and not the totality of every object that exists.

&gt; Or is freewill just about being an optimist or a pessimist. That we
&gt; cannot change the world, but simply take the facts as they are either
&gt; in a positive or negative manner. This interpretation is suggested by
&gt; the end of 6.43 I would rather think this is what Wittgenstein means,
&gt; but what does the line " it can only change the limits of the world,
&gt; not the facts; not the things that can be expressed in language."
&gt; mean then?

I'd like to emphasize that 6.43 speaks exclusively of "the good or bad exercise of the will" (or "good or evil willing," as Anscombe translates it in the Notebooks). This apparently means only such acts of willing as are executed out of an ethical wish to change either the amount or the distribution of happiness in the world -- instead of willing that just rolls with the punches, or so to say. But according to Wittgenstein's basically Spinozistic conception of happiness, nobody's happiness is ultimately tied to the current state of his or her world. "The world of the happy is quite another than that of the unhappy" means that a happy person will see the world as happy, and an unhappy person will see it as unhappy -- regardless of how much good luck, bad luck, pleasure, suffering, etc., there currently is in the world, and where. (This, I think, is merely a fact of folk psychology, which anyone's everyday experience can confirm.)

In other words, if someone's world is his world (cf. 5.6ff.), then only his unhappiness is his unhappiness. "There is no greater distress
to be felt than that of one human being," as Wittgenstein wrote around 1944 (Culture & Value, rev. ed., p. 53). This doesn't mean, by the way, that Wittgenstein suggests we ignore the sufferings of others (as one of my colleagues at this university has actually argued). Someone else's sufferings can of course be a contributing
cause to my unhappiness, but the point is that the resulting unhappiness is all mine and not the other's. As can be seen from the fact that someone's feigned suffering -- or even a fictitious person's suffering in a book, play or film -- can be a cause of my unhappiness
just as well as genuine suffering can.

Lars Hertzberg has also recently written at length on the conception of the will in the early Wittgenstein:

<a href="http://www.abo.fi/fak/hf/filosofi/Research/Powerlessness.doc" target="_blank">http://www.abo.fi/fak/hf/filosofi/Research/Powerlessness.doc</a>

Perhaps you'll find his remarks illuminating (I did, if only in part).

T P Uschanov
University of Helsinki
&lt;tuschano@c...&gt;

P.S. As always when considering isolated excerpts from the Tractatus, it would be healthy to ponder them in conjunction with 6.54 -- no matter to what school regarding its meaning one belongs to.

[ July 20, 2002: Message edited by: optimist ]</p>

Prodros

Indeed. Join the club, optimist.

Thanks for posting the link for the essay - I will have to take a look at that later.

T...

Genhancer

Having just finished the Tractatus, I found this discussion very helpful and I thank all who participated. I just found <a href="http://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org/articles/w_anscombe.htm" target="_blank">this</a> page which I found useful and which may offer some clarification.