3.001 “A state of affairs is thinkable” means: we can imagine it [literally: we can make [for] ourselves a picture of it].
So yes, a thought is a picture we make for ourselves, i.e. a picture as this term has been used so far. Wittgenstein says (Letters to Ogden, p. 24) that there is meant to be a kind of pun here, which is why he uses “imagine” for the English translation, since “imagine” comes from “image.” Make of this what you will.
5 comments:
I'm inclined to read 'picture' (here and elsewhere) quite literally.
TLP 3.001 descends from a notebook entry date November 1, 1914: 'A situation is thinkable' ('imaginable' [vorstellbar]) means: we can make ourselves a picture of it.
Yes, that seems natural and reasonable. But what a literal reading of "logical picture," for instance, would be is obscure. Or so it seems to me.
I don't think that there are any logical pictures that are not also other sorts a pictures, a purely logical picture so to speak. Every picture is also a logical picture, i.e., the logic of representation is what all pictures share. Thus, an instance of a logical picture will always be a picture in another, more concrete, sense.
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Thanks. I have looked at your blog, which looks very interesting, but I haven't had time to join in any discussion there yet. If I ever have a blogroll I will certainly include yours. I'm too in the stone age for that yet though.
As for pictures, what you say again sounds right. My problem, I suppose, is making sense of the idea that a sentence, say, is literally a picture. Especially a spoken sentence. Talk of pictures here seems to be metaphorical. Unless, perhaps, meanings are thought of as something like pictures in the mind's eye. Surely that isn't right though.
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