Monday, November 13, 2006

2.013 Each thing is, as it were, in a space of possible states of affairs. I can conceive of this space as empty, but I cannot conceive of the thing without the space.


Black (p. 50) points out a possible echo of Kant CPR A 24/B 38 here.

My first thoughts: Logic is here presented metaphorically as a kind of extra dimension, or even another set of dimensions. Objects, like puzzle pieces, belong in the context of a state of affairs (a puzzle). But states of affairs themselves (puzzles) exist in another, larger context. The dimensions in which states of affairs exist (three of space and one of time, we might think) themselves exist within the world of possibility, the dimensions of logic. All this is only metaphorical, remember, but still. But: a) logic cannot be just more metaphysics (surely) or else the great insights of Kant and Frege would be no insights at all, the dimensions of logic cannot be dimensions in the same sense in which those of space are dimensions, and b) each of Wittgenstein's terms (object, state of affairs, space of possibilities, etc.) has so far been defined only in terms of the others, so so far really nothing has been said. We have had definition-proposals, like IOUs, but they have not been completed or cashed yet.

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