Impossible is a degree of difficulty... The word has no absolute meaning... Like most words... Neither does knowing have an absolute meaning... Are you guys dense or what... People act as if they do know when they do not... I admit I know not, so I do not, and you want me to drink hemlock... I swear.

I did not say I did not know anything meaning everything, but of moral forms no one can say they know, including myself...

6.363 The procedure of induction consists in accepting as true the simplest law that can be reconciled with our experiences.
6.3631 This procedure, however, has no logical justification but only a psychological one. It is clear that there are no grounds for believing that the simplest eventuality will in fact be realized.
6.36311 It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise.
6.37 There is no compulsion making one thing happen because another has happened. The only necessity that exists is logical necessity.
6.371 The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.
6.372 Thus people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as something inviolable, just as God and Fate were treated in past ages. And in fact both are right and both wrong: though the view of the ancients is clearer in so far as they have a clear and acknowledged terminus, while the modern system tries to make it look as if everything were explained.

By logical necessity, I think he can only mean transcendental logic. Tiny enough creatures on a large enough sphere would think they lived on an infinite plane.

6.4321 The facts all contribute only to setting the problem, not to its solution.
6.44 It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.
6.45 To view the world sub specie aeterni is to view it as a whole-a limited whole. Feeling the world as a limited whole-it is this that is mystical.

6.53 The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science-i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy-and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. Although it would not be satisfying to the other person-he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy-this method would be the only strictly correct one.
6.54 My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.

If this work has any value, it consists in two things: the first is that thoughts are expressed in it, and on this score the better the thoughts are expressed-the more the nail has been hit on the head-the greater will be its value.-Here I am conscious of having fallen a long way short of what is possible. Simply because my powers are too slight for the accomplishment of the task.-May others come and do it better.
On the other hand the truth of the thoughts that are here communicated seems to me unassailable and definitive. I therefore believe myself to have found, on all essential points, the final solution of the problems. And if I am not mistaken in this belief, then the second thing in which the of this work consists is that it shows how little is achieved when these problems are solved.

A limited whole. Sounds like monism. Or nonism. Also the mystical is presented as a feeling.
Let me say again: I admit I am twisting W to my purposes. He's an influence, not an idol.

---------- Post added 04-17-2010 at 12:13 PM ----------

These are some complicated lines. His "correct method of philosophy" is utterly ironic, as it violates the principle it intends to establish. It negates itself. Just as Nietzsche's dynamic theory of truth calls itself into question. When Witt says we should tell so-and-so that he should give a meaning for his signs, he might as well be talking to himself, as this very statement of his is metaphysical. Or shall we argue that discussions of meaning are the "propositions of natural science"? In my opinion, W's irony and complexity here is missed by many. Surely he was aware, great logician that he was, that his statement swallows its own tail.

Indeed, he quickly moves on to using a strange and beautiful ladder metaphor, which is quite metaphorical/metaphysical/mystical in its way. This is another Hegel relation. You can't throw away the ladder until you have climbed it. Just as Hegel stresses that man develops historically. Reality is a process. Self-knowledge is a process. The ladder is placenta. The ladder is training wheels. The ladder is baby teeth. The ladder is all those dichotomies and self-alienations that were necessary on the way. The ladder is dialectical progress, an ascension. And W, just like Hegel, suggests a resolution to this dialectic, an end point, a finish line.

---------- Post added 04-17-2010 at 12:21 PM ----------

These are bold statements. W claims to have found the final solution. It's hard to think of him simply as anti-metaphysical, or as someone who is merely practical. He was a man with the truth in his hand. (Such is his claim) True, this truth was twisted in on itself.....

The world as we know it is structured by human concept. Even if there is a structure beneath or above our human concept, this itself is still just a human concept. Human concept is all the structure we have and are ever going to have, it seems to me.
We cook up gods and theories and philosophies, and this is the intelligable structure of the world. And we cannot speak or think outside of structure, also known as ratio, also known as rationality.
I just got David Foster Wallace's book on infinity. It's good stuff. And it's a good example. We can cook up a concept like infinity only by negating our concept of the finite. We can't think infinity and we can't think the unthinkable. But we can put a minus sign in front of anything.

This is my view as well, .

It is my view that - in the world we know of - there are only concepts, using that term very loosely; a better term would be experiences. When those concepts refer to anything at all, they refer to other concepts. If you say that they refer only to things outside of experience, outside of the world we know, then in fact they refer to nothing as far as we know.

This is my view as well, however, I have one minor objection - maybe already dealt with, but I haven't read all 17 pages of the thread, so humor me.

How would you account for what is typically called the sub-conscious and irrationality? I would consider this structured as well, though to a lesser degree.

I struggled with this line at first. How is the real rational, when we are always still figuring out what reality is?

It now makes perfect sense to me, so I'm sharing my view on it, and encouraging a friendly discussion on the matter. Here's my view on it.

The world as we know it is structured by human concept. Even if there is a structure beneath or above our human concept, this itself is still just a human concept. Human concept is all the structure we have and are ever going to have, it seems to me.
We cook up gods and theories and philosophies, and this is the intelligable structure of the world. And we cannot speak or think outside of structure, also known as ratio, also known as rationality.
I just got David Foster Wallace's book on infinity. It's good stuff. And it's a good example. We can cook up a concept like infinity only by negating our concept of the finite. We can't think infinity and we can't think the unthinkable. But we can put a minus sign in front of anything.

If you are suggesting that Mt. Everest is some thing existing outside of experience, that's a fine proposition, but then it necessarily follows that you wouldn't know that it exists.

That's Immanuel Kant. Kant was trying to save Empiricism
from it's own self devouring Logic. He used Absolute Mind
to discern between what is Real and what is Rational. The split
between Real and Rational remained, but Kant Encompassed it into
something called the Absolute Mind, or the mind of Man within the
Absolute awareness of God, if you will.

I'm not sure if this is addressed toward me, but in case it is, allow me to reply.
That's exactly the sort of duality I'm trying to avoid. So perhaps you are responding to someone else. For me, reality is experienced conceptually. And time itself is a byproduct of conceptualization. Also causality/

The word irrational, if applied in the sense of non-conceptual, is comparable to the phrase "round square." If we talk of unconceptualized sensation, we have already conceptualized it.

I also want to avoid the duality. There are only phenomena, or concepts as you say, nothing more - as far as is known. And, indeed, the proposition that there exists something ex the phenomenal world is also a concept within the phenomenal world. It was this I was trying to communicate to kennethamy, as he was arguing that Mt. Everest is not a concept, but 'a rather large mountain.'

If we talk about visceral sensation, we are indeed dealing with a concept. But when we actually are experiencing some visceral sensation, how are we dealing with a concept? The concept 'concept' (pun intended) to my mind involves representation. Visceral sensation is itself and represents nothing - while all concepts represent either visceral sensations or other concepts. Both are phenomena, which together and exclusively constitute the world.

If you believe that the world is constituted only by concepts, and you believe that sensations in fact exist, which I assume you do, then you must hold that sensations are concepts. How do you explain this?

If Mt. Everest is not a concept (in the loose sense: i.e. some kind of experience*), how do you know about it? If you are suggesting that Mt. Everest is some thing existing outside of experience, that's a fine proposition, but then it necessarily follows that you wouldn't know that it exists. In short, anything you are aware of is a concept - you assume that concepts refer to 'real' things outside of experience that you do not know about. I do not make that assumption - I assert the reality only of that which I know empirically, and all of those things are concepts in my own mind.

* For you, that probably means a conglomeration of images and descriptions of Mt. Everest; for some, that means memories of actually being there; for a few, that means the actual present experience of being there

Brightnoon, are you into math at all? Familiar with the limit concept? It all seems to stretch back to Zeno. I love math because math is forced to deal with pure (or relatively pure) precise concept. Calculus strikes me as the collision of discrete thought with continuous motion (or curves). The numbers pi and e are both not only irrational but transcendental. We can't even write them in a closed form. And yet these constants lurk in the structure of our measured sensation...

Dig this strangeness. What is value for x will give this expression its maximum value: x^1/x. It happens to be e. And it's more beautiful when written with a surd. The x root of x.