Austere Realism of the Tractatus Borut Cerkovnik University

Austere Realism of the Tractatus Borut Cerkovnik University of Ljubljana

Tractatus • 2. 02 Objects are simple. • 2. 0201 Every statement about complexes can be resolved into a statement about their constituents and into the propositions that describe the complexes completely. • 2. 021 Objects make up the substance of the world. That is why they cannot be composite. • 2. 0211 If they world had no substance, then whether a proposition had sense would depend on whether another proposition was true. • 2. 0212 In that case we could not sketch any picture of the world (true or false).

Analysis • (a) 1 a 2 b a. Rb =def a. Rb • (b) a. Rb a. Rc b. Sc =def a. R b. Sc • “My broom is in the corner” = “The stick is in the corner”, “The brush is in the corner”, “The stick and the brush are in a particular relation to one another” • 3. 23 The requirement that simple signs be possible is the requirement that sense be determinate. • 3. 24[4] The contraction of a symbol for a complex into a simple symbol can be expressed in a definition. • “my broom” =def “the stick and the brush in a particular relation to one another”

Austere Realism • Ontological Theses • 1. There is a mind-independent, discourse-independent, world. • 2. The right ontology excludes most of the posits of everyday belief and discourse, and also many of the posits of mature scientific theories. • Semantic Theses • 1. Truth is correspondence between language and thought on one hand, and the world on the other. • 2. Numerous statements and thought-contents involving posits of common sense and science are true, even though the correct ontology does not include these posits. • 3. Truth, for such statements and thought contents, is indirect correspondence.

Atomism/Plurarism/Blobjectivism • (APHP) Horgan / Potrč – semantic holism • (1)-(3) + (APHP) “entails” There is really just one concrete particular, namely, the whole universe (the blobject). • (APW) Wittgenstein – semantic atomism • (1)-(“ 3”) + (APW) “entails” The world is the totality of (atomic) facts, not of things. • (APc) Lewis (? ) – semantic contextualism • (3 c) Truth, for all statements and thought contents, is correspondence in contextes. • (1)-(3 c) + (APc) “entails” ontological pluralism (? )

Question • Is blobject a n-place complex?

Question • Is blobject a n-place complex? • Horgan & Potrč: “The blobject has enormous spatiotemporal structural complexity and enormous local variability—even though it does not have any genuine parts. ”