Wittgenstein's - Tractatus

Apparently, Wittgenstein walked away from philosophy after publication of the Tractatus. He thought he had solved the problems of philosophy, logic and reality.

In trying to ‘see’ Hodges’ model, in mathematical terms, there may be lessons in Wittegenstein’s approach, both in content and style. Of course, as a non-mathematician, I probably should leave well-alone; and stick to nursing. But that is the problem: from 1987-88 there is a need for a different perspective, even if this is a personal challenge. As with many ‘reviews’ here, we can look at Wittengenstein’s work, reflect upon it, and consider how it relates to the purposes, structures and content of Hodges’ model.

The Tractatus’s first line then, offers a warm welcome.

‘The world is everything that is the case.’ [I]

Making the decision to become a nurse and enrolling as a student makes you an educational and workforce demographic case.

Once a student in the university lecture theatre, you hopefully whether consciously, or not are exposed to the theory – practice gap; as you yearn to be on your first placement. Now it you who is seeking ‘cases’. As we live, and statistics roll and tally, the question of caseness (and categories) is key, one that is carried around even if not always active, recognised as such.

As noted in the previous post, we can for Hodges’ model (and other models, frameworks it must be said) think of ‘case’ as a, or the situation. 

A mathematical approach to Hodges’ model involves looking at things, concepts, people as objects. This includes patients and carers. In terms of a project worthy of pursuing in nursing and other disciplines involved in healthcare, this mathematization presents a non-trivial challenge. A fully-deserved response would be: 'What have you done to the aptitude for care and caring attitude? You've cancelled - subtracted it!' Humour aside:

'In order to know an object, I must know not its external but all its internal qualities.' [2.01231] 

Is this equivalent to us getting to know our patient / client and their socio-political context? 

‘The way in which objects hang together in the atomic fact is the structure of the atomic fact.’ [2.032] 

It is a help that Wittgenstein points to structure (crumbs of understanding are welcome here, as incremental steps). In formulating Hodges’ model we first identify the axes. It is the axes that then provide a space, four domains in total, to frame the objects that we decide; or, as the situation dictates, what concepts are placed in the domains of Hodges' model.

There is a successive series that follows, combining place, space and logic: ‘The proposition determines a place in logical space: the existence of this logical place is guaranteed by the existence of the constituent parts alone, by the existence of the significant proposition.’ [3.4]

‘The propositional sign and the logical coordinates : that is the logical place.’ [3.41]

‘The geometrical and the logical place agree in that each is the possibility of an existence.’ [3.411]

‘Although a proposition may only determine one place in logical space, the whole logical space must already be given by it.
(Otherwise denial, the logical sum, the logical product. etc., would always introduce new elements -in co-ordination.) 
(The logical scaffolding round the picture determines the logical space. The proposition reaches through the whole logical space.)' [3.42]

While Wittgenstein came to view ‘the picture theory of meaning’ as incorrect, as a conceptual framework and diagrammatic resource Hodges’ model is closely tied to this form of representation.

Of course, the logic at work here, is far from mathematical, but there is surely a logic.

'Formal concepts cannot, like proper concepts, be presented by a function.' [4.126]

'There is therefore really a sense in which in philosophy we can talk of a non-psychological I.
The I occurs in philosophy through the fact that the "world is my world'".
The philosophical I is not the man, not the human body or the human soul of which psychology treats, but the metaphysical subject, the limit - not a part of the world.' [5.641] 

'Although the spots in our picture are geometrical figures, geometry can obviously say nothing about their actual form and position. But the network is purely geometrical, and all its properties can be given a priori.

Laws, like the law of causation, etc., treat of the network and not of what the network describes.' [6.35]

There is much more in this work, and much that remains a challenge. Many commentators have written and said in interviews that the Tractatus rewards re-reading and some sentences stay with you for life (The Great Philosophers BBC TV). 

I'm still seeking mine.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5740/5740-pdf.pdf

THE GRID by Eli Payne Mandel

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group

[125] 'Therefore, a mathematician babbles when he refers to cutting a given line in two. The actual line that he shows to us on the abacus has length and width. But the line he has in mind is a stroke with length and no width. What is drawn on the abacus cannot be such a stroke, and he who goes about cutting it cuts not the line that is but the line that is not.' (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians 9.282) (n.b. The above is printed upside-down on the page.) Scatter the trace of the vessel from the ash. Pythagoras here is riddling about confusion and mental cloudiness, for if one wants to do philosophy one must pass over physical and sensible demonstration in favor of abstract argumentation. The ash is analogous to the dust on the abacus in which diagrams are delimited and proofs brought to an end.  (Iamblichus, Exhortation to Philosophy 34)' p.55

'[1] In ancient Greek, an abacus is a sand table. 'The abacist draws lines and maybe moves pebbles around the lines. When done, she wipes the sand blank.  [2] A board or slab for drawing, computation, games; a cutting board. Technical term, likely to be a loanword, but conjectured origin in Hebrew abãq "dust" remains unproven. --  Pierre Chantraine, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue greque.' p.10.

'[122] The abacus computes and it erases. It tells a life. Then gambles it away. Achilles and Ajax sit down to play a game of dice. They have hung up their shields. They lean on their spears. They are tired. The Anatolian air is cold off the water. Attendants wrap them each in wool cloaks thick with eight-pointed stars. The stars wander along eddies and meanders. The only straight lines are servants of error. Their fingers are on the abacus, but Achilles and Ajax do not play, do not speak, lost in the maze of their cloaks. [124] The first reference in Western literature to written language is in the Iliad. An unsuspecting  man in a story is carrying semata lygra / grapsas en pinaki ptukto thymophthora polla: baleful signs written on a folded tablet, utterly soul-  destroying. The words, which some scholars conjecture to be Linear B, spell out the man's death, and the reader murders  the unreading man. After the murder, Death Wipes the tablet  blank and folds it back again.' p.54.

'[3] Because dust blows away and only the slab remains, an abacus is also the part of a column in immediate contact with what it supports. If that structure no longer survives, the abacus upholds the edifice of the sky.' p.10.

THE GRID by Eli Payne Mandel, Carcanet Press. 2023.

https://www.elipmandel.com/

Previously on W2tQ (with overlap):

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