3.01 The totality of true thoughts is a picture of the world.

OK, but this idea still seems problematic. Black (p. 97): “The remark is very important as indicating that W. wished to include more than elementary propositions under ‘pictures’.”

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.

3 A logical picture of facts is a thought.

So, what has so far been called a picture is now being called a logical picture, making clearer its non-physical (and non-metaphysical) nature. It is now called a thought, which is surely a Fregean idea, being more to do with propositions than anything psychological. But it may be premature to assume that Wittgenstein is thinking in such a Fregean way here.

Black (p. 96): “I think W. deviates from Frege in regarding a ‘thought’ as the propositional sign in use, i.e. as the sentence with its sense, i.e. as the significant proposition. The ‘thought’ is not, as with Frege, the ideal sense of the proposition.” Black also quotes Ramsey (Foundations, p. 274): “As to the relation between a proposition and a thought Mr W. is rather obscure…”

2.225 An a priori true picture does not exist.

2.224 From the picture alone nothing can be known about whether it is true or false.

So there are no necessarily true pictures then, I suppose.

2.223 In order to know whether a picture is true or false we must compare it with reality.

But what does this mean? How do we compare a logical picture with reality? See 4.05. Black says to read Schlick on ‘Facts’ and Hempel’s ‘Remarks’ for discussion of this.

2.222 Its truth or falsehood consists in the agreement or disagreement of its sense with reality.

Theory of truth? This contrasts, says Proops (p. 59), with Russell’s view in the Principles, according to which truth and falsity are indefinable properties belonging to propositions, the latter being complexes which he found it difficult to define (see “The Nature of Truth” (from 1905) in Russell’s Collected Papers Volume IV, p. 503, quoted in Proops on pp. 59-60, note 157).

2.221 What a picture presents is its sense.

Theory of meaning beginning here? See also 4.031. Black (p. 93) prefers ‘shows’ here, and in 2.2-2.22, for darstellt, rather than ‘represents,’ in order to avoid the “bad mistake” of thinking that a picture represents its sense “in the way that picture-elements represent, go proxy for, the corresponding objects.” Generally, though, Black prefers 'to present' for darstellen, and I follow him in this, saving 'represent' for vorstellen. It seems a good idea to be consistent (although I have not checked yet to see whether my own translation of these words is consistent).

2.22 A picture represents what it represents, independently of its truth or falsehood, by its form of representation.

No comment necessary?

2.21 A picture either agrees with reality or does not; it is correct or incorrect, true or false.

If it follows that a proposition is essentially such that it can be true or false, then there can be no necessary truths or necessary falsehoods expressible in propositions. Apparently Hacker thinks this “bipolarity principle” is both rooted in an intuition (and hence rather indefensible) and hugely important. McManus argues against this view on p. 59.

2.203 A picture contains the possibility of the state of things that it represents.

A picture is pregnant with possibility? No. That would be metaphysical, this is logic. It might be better to say that it implies the possibility it represents. That is, it implies the possibility of the possibility that it represents. The picture: "The cat sat on the mat" implies the possibility of the cat's having sat on the mat.

2.202 A picture represents a possible state of things in logical space.

2.203 A picture contains the possibility of the state of things that it represents.

A picture is pregnant with possibility? No. That would be metaphysical, this is logic. It might be better to say that it implies the possibility it represents. That is, it implies the possibility of the possibility that it represents. The picture: "The cat sat on the mat" implies the possibility of the cat's having sat on the mat.

2.201 A picture pictures reality by representing a possibility of the existence and non-existence of states of affairs.

"And" rather than "or" here suggests (to me) that all states of affairs are contingent, capable of existing and not existing.

2.2 A picture has the logical form of representation in common with what it pictures.

Cf. 2.17. Nothing much new here.

2.19 A logical picture can depict the world.

Can it? See comment on 2.063. What is "the world"? Have we been told yet in terms that have been explained without reference to other unexplained terms? Cf. 2.171. Maybe what it can depict is just some bit of the world, so that "picturing the world" means picturing stuff. If so, this remark does not seem very informative.

2.182 Every picture is also a logical picture. (On the other hand, for instance, not every picture is a spatial one.)

Well, why would this be? What determines a picture's form of representation? I would have expected "Every picture can be a logical picture," but that isn't what we get. That aside, we are back to the idea of logic (or the logical) as something like a realm beyond, including, the realms of space, color, etc. But this spatial metaphor is obviously dangerous, since it is only a metaphor. For what?

2.181 If the form of representation is the logical form, then the picture is called a logical picture.

My original comment was this: "From 2.17 and 2.18, every picture would seem to be a logical picture. So the idea that Wittgenstein's "pictures" are physical objects (or "metaphysical objects") seems to be a mistake."

But a picture might share logical form with reality without that being its particular representational form, mightn't it? In that case not every picture would be a logical picture. And does anyone think that pictures are objects?

2.18 What every picture, of whatever form, must have in common with reality in order to be able to picture it at all -- rightly or falsely -- is the logical form, that is, the form of the reality.

Or perhaps: the form of reality. Wittgenstein seems to use Wirklichkeit to mean "bit of reality", so that one can (and he does) distinguish between this and that reality (as here, I think) and the totality of reality (as in 2.063). Nothing really new here. Except the idea of “logical form.” Ostrow (p. 47), following Burton Dreben, suggests that the point of the notion of logical form is to ease us into the idea that written propositions are pictures of reality, even though they do not appear to be (see 4.011). Otherwise the concept of pictorial form would seem to have been pointless – Wittgenstein could just have referred to logical form throughout. On the same page, Ostrow rejects Friedlander’s suggestion that logical form is more general and additional to the pictorial form, on the grounds that the nature of the generalization in question would be unclear, and (see note 2 on pp. 144-145) that 2.181 implies that it makes sense to speak of cases in which the pictorial form is the logical form, whereas Friedlander treats them as corresponding to very different dimensions of the picture.

2.174 But a picture cannot place itself outside its form of representation.

Obscure, but seemingly the same meaning as 2.172. Cf. 2.1513.