Chortle's Log

(TLP) 1. The world is everything that is the case

1. More questions than answers

Wittgenstein's first assertion leaves us with more questions than answers. Why begin with the enigmatic statement that the world is everything that is the case?1 What is the difference between a fact and a thing2? Why should we see the world as divisible into facts3 rather than things?

According to Morris Wittgenstein presents this view of the nature of the world because philosophers are supposed to want to understand the nature of reality4 and he thinks that language use would not be possible if the world was not as he has described. It appears then at this point Wittgenstein is doing metaphysics.

2. What is a fact? and why are facts basic entities, rather than things?

For Wittgenstein a fact appears to be an entity characterised by a whole sentence: that X is the case. Here he is adopting an Aristotelian view of entity as being indivisible and independent5. Wittgenstein observes that things are dependent upon attributes (and vice versa), and therefore neither represents basic entity. The only fundamental entity is a fact6.

Although still doing metaphysics This is different to the traditional kind of entity we might refer to ordinarily that exists in space. Indeed there are many possible facts that do not occupy space and are not the case but can still be expressed. Wittgenstein indicates then that ordinary things exist in space but facts must exists somewhere else and he proposes they exist in logical space78.

To get the truth of what is the case and isn't (the world) we need more than the things that make it up; we need the way things are or the facts9 and indeed all of them. What the world must be, according to Wittgenstein, is the totality of facts not things.

  1. “1. The world is everything that is the case.∗” (Wittgenstein, 1922, p. 25)  ↩

  2. “1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things” (Wittgenstein, 1922, p. 25) ↩

  3. “1.2 The world divides into facts.” (Wittgenstein, 1922, p. 25) ↩

  4. “Philosophers are supposed to want to understand the nature of reality: this is the traditional task of philosophy...Very well, then: Wittgenstein will tell us how the world must be. He tells us in these first sections, up to 2.063. You will then wonder why we should accept this particular metaphysical view. The explanation will emerge gradually, as the nature of language — any possible language — is explained.” (Morris, 2008, p. 23) ↩

  5. “A basic entity is something which does not depend for its existence on the existence of any other entity.” (Morris, 2008, p. 28) ↩

  6. “individual things can only exist somehow qualified, and this will require them to exist in combination with other things. If there is to be anything which is a really basic being, in anything like the sense of (Ind), it cannot be either what we antecedently think of as an individual thing or a quality: it can only be a fact.” (Morris, 2008, p. 30) ↩

  7. 1.13 The facts in logical space are the world. ↩

  8. For Wittgenstein in the Tractatus logical space represented a space of possibilities. Whilst many other Facts may have existed the actual facts are only some of the possible facts; possibility therefore delimits the bounds of logical space as only some locations are actually occupied by what is the case. ↩

  9. “It seems that to get all the truths fixed we need more than the things: we need, as it were, the way things are — that is to say, the facts.” (Morris, 2008, p. 27) ↩