You are likely in a position similar to where you were when you wrote the first blog: confused and overwhelmed. This is still to be expected, especially insofar as we’ve been working our way through what might be the most difficult part of the TLP: the logical atomism. The idea, however, is that if you grasp the basics of logical atomism, then the rest of the text is more interesting and fruitful. And you most likely grasp these basics already – and that you do so will become evident when we start to apply (so to speak) the logical atomism to thought, subjectivity, logic, and ethics.
The main prompt for your second blog post is quite simple: “Describe the logical atomism as fully and as clearly as you can.” As you do this, you will find yourself perhaps having the thoughts of the TLP – the thoughts without which you cannot understand the text (although one must wonder whether thoughts of logical atomism picture any possible facts – and so whether these thoughts are really thoughts or are instead something else). And what I said in the first blog prompt remains true: “Struggling with these thoughts should lead you to question a lot of what you take for granted – even if you continue to believe what you take for granted.” And what you might take for granted at this point is what simple, everyday words such as ‘object,’ ‘name,’ ‘fact,’ ‘sentence,’ ‘reality,’ and ‘world’ (to mention just a few) really mean. Indeed, with this in mind, another statement that I made in the first blog prompt remains quite true: “Many of these terms are everyday words, but they clearly mean something slightly different here.”
It’s the use of everyday words to denote (if that’s the right word) technical philosophical concepts that makes the initial encounter with the logical atomism of the TLP so frustrating but also so uncanny (with ‘uncanniness’ being the kind of thing that lures one into philosophical reflection). Some of you might have felt that you had a basic grasp of those words and so of logical atomism when I first introduced it in Class 3, but now that we have pushed further into the logical atomism and the reasons for it, you might find yourself doubting what you initially thought. You perhaps had a mere pseudo-grasp of logical atomism, and you’re now on your way to replacing it with an actual grasp of this ontology. This is to be expected – and it is part of why we have pushed further in Classes 4 and 5: we have pushed further not so that you can grasp and understand all the various arguments one might make for logical atomism (although I hope that some of you grasp some or even all of them) or the problems that arise with logical atomism. Rather, asking these questions (What arguments support it? What problems can one find with it (on its own terms)?) help to make clear what the basic parts of this ontology are. And that’s all I want – to make sure that you could spell out, in two or three hundred words or less, what the theory of logical atomism states and maybe also a basic sense of why it states that.
This basic grasp of logical atomism – and it need only be very basic – is necessary to make sense (and have fun with) the rest of the TLP and, beyond that, the Philosophical Investigations. Why you need to know those basics – and why the grasp need only be basic – will become clearer later.
However, the process that we’ve undergone in the past couple of classes is one that will be repeated throughout the course: We’ll introduce ourselves to some philosophical set of concepts or perspective, and it will be introduced using ordinary language, but those ordinary words will be used and joined together in such a way that we question what we think they mean (and how we ourselves see things). Grasping that new meaning will require that we question them thoroughly, and this leads to two things. First, it leads to a better understanding of our ordinary language and our ordinary thinking and how they both work (when they work) and trip us up (when they don’t work so well). It also introduces us – and this is ultimately what is of value – to actual thinking. Wittgenstein wrote in such a way that what he thinks cannot just be handed to you like a piece of information that you memorize or a method that you can then quickly apply for yourself. Rather, you must think the thoughts yourself, and in the process you must work on and refine your own capacities for thinking. It calls for many mental qualities: flexibility; precision; inquisitiveness; endurance; the ability to imagine various reasons for a belief (especially beliefs that are not one’s own); the ability to look at things from many perspectives; and the ability to take a complicated thought and see how all its parts hang together and require each other. The logical atomism of the TLP is indeed faulty; however, it has enormous strength – especially in the context of the text as a whole – as a method for helping you to develop your capacity to think critically and philosophically.
Three last thoughts. First, I’m blogging (here in “The Unsayable Panda”) a review – or in the case of “interlude” posts, a preview – of our classes. I realize that it can be hard to hold onto everything we do in class, and so these posts will help us to keep a record of everything.
Second, in addition to blogging about what logical atomism is and why Wittgenstein believed it was, as an ontology, necessary, you might also begin to closely read and make sense of the 3.1s. They are vexing, but in a very interesting way. If you have a nice clear grasp of logical atomism, you should find that you can both summarize that and then turn to the 3.1s. Of course, you might also wish to present a grasp of logical atomism and then turn to the questions of why one might hold this ontology or how one might defend it or what its main problem is.
Finally, don’t worry about understanding everything. There is a lot in this tiny text, and we just want to grasp the basics, even thought getting that grasp requires that we push beyond the basics. But when it comes time to write about the TLP, you will be able to pick your topic and you will be allowed to write expositions instead of arguments (meaning that you can seek to explain and clarify as opposed to argue for or against). For instance, you might wonder at what the logical atomism is and then, once you grasp it, at how it entails the views on the subject or ethics that Wittgenstein will later introduce. But if you think of each proposition as a battle (a battle to make sense of it), you might then decide not to fight each battle. Instead, fight strategically and aim to win the war (which is the fight to get a basic grasp of the text as a whole).
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