Wittgenstein's use of the word "form", seems a tad inconsistent.
The first time he attempts to define it (2.0251), "Space, Time, and Colour (colourdness) are forms of objects.", and if we combine this with what he has already established in (2.0131), "A spatial object must lie in infinite space. ... A visual speck need not be red, but it must have a colour. It has, so to speak, a colour-space around it. A tone must have a pitch..." , and in (2.02331), "Either a thing has properties which no others have, and then one can distinguish it from the others straight away, from the others... (or it doesn't).", then the meaning becomes obvious.
Every object has certain attributes/properties. Every object is defined by its properties, and the total of all the properties of an object is the "form". Fair enough.
However, he then proceeds to say, in (2.033), that "The form is the possibility of the structure.", structure having been already defined as "The way in which the objects hang together in the atomic fact.", with the atomic fact being "The configuration of the objects, (presumably in relation to one another)". So, by this definition, the "form" of the object(s), is "The possibility of the way in which objects hang together in the configuration of the objects." Rearranging that to be less tautological, and more readable, we get "A possible way in which the objects are configured, in relation to each other." Again, fair enough.
However, you will have noticed that "The totality of the qualities that define an object, and differentiate it from other objects." is not the same thing, as "A possible way in which the objects are configured, in relation to each other.". So, in the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, what exacty is "form", and what is the relation between these two concepts?
Are those inconsistent? If "qualities" are qualities insofar as they're relative to / different from different qualities in other objects (including coordinate location), aren't the two definitions you give there basically identical?
I have no idea what I'm talking about though, so this is mostly a bump.
>>8181679
The second definition is deailng with the structures that objects form by interracting with one another in some way, not just their relative positions to each other in physical space.
>I have no idea what I'm talking about though
Welcome to predicate logic motherfucker.
>>8181692
But isn't an object's place IN the structure part of its thing-ness?
Maybe I'm thinking about this too epistemologically + with random vague structuralist jargon about ~interdependence of things in a system~.
>>8181713
But he is not discussing the objects place within the structure (though that could be taken as an attribute), he's specifically discussing the structure itself, and more specifically, the possibility of its existence, vs whether it actually does exist.
I want Wittgenstein to bully me to tears with mean remarks and hitting!
>>8181719
Well, fuck. I'm going back to the continentals where it's OK to vaguely believe that Jungian mysticism is real.
>>8181726
You are, obviously, free to go.
>>8181644
>Rearranging that to be less tautological, and more readable
not even
>>8181644
Hello OP, I have read the Tractatus on one occasion. You're referring to early passages, and since the book is so small, they are good enough to reproduce the original German parallel to our English, and Wittgenstein does indeed repeat his usage of "Form/Formen" in these two different places. That was the first thing I wanted to check.
My initial thought is that the word is being used in slightly different ways in the two contexts. A "thing" (or better, fact) (that is, some physical object, say, and the true statements about it) has a bunch of attached physical properties color/shape/texture/x,y,z... and so all these attributes are properties of literal physical objects. (and ultimatley the facts which entail them) This is what I took (and take) the original "form" to mean. Whereas OTOH, in the second instance (2.033) I take "form" to mean "the overall scheme of this given physical object, (or better per Witty, "fact"). Fact: "Five of the six cube's sides are made of stainless steel, while the sixth side has green shag carpet on it, etc."
I think I've basically regurgitated (and concluded with) your simple idea that the word is being used in two different ways, which you find off-putting. I would suggest that this is one of those situations where a word so important and primitive has to continue to be amenable to natural language (that is, mean multiple, squishy things) for Witty to build up what he wants. He does later build a vocabulary of more "scientifically" expressed words (proposition, truth-possibility) which he uses in a more consistent way in the meat of what he's doing, but to get to that, he is starting with natural language. And of course, the whole book goes all "mystical" at the end.
cont.
>>8181896
But let's autistically push this a few steps further - it's analytic, after all. Recall that Witty set up his book in a "comment-on-a-comment" structure, which anticipates web pages (as an aside).
I suggest and set myself some exercises. Pull up your own Tractatus if you have one, and/or go here:
http://www.tractatuslogico-philosophicus.com/
1) Blow the whole thing up, and ctrl+f every instance of the string "form". cross-reference them.
2) wherever "form" is used in a comment, isolate the related comment-strings and investigate them up-and-down as far as is necessary.
I thought of these, thinking that the usage of "form" might be more limited, but this turns out not to be the case: searching the page returns over 100 matches. But even without checking, this tells us something interesting: that the string "form" is pervasive in the book, and should just about implicate the entire book, per what I'd suggested before checking. We could therefore 3) confine ourselves to the bits that you were talking about, and take those comment-strings all the way up and down, check them, look at them.
An aside about the comment-structure: Witty makes an early "2.0" goof which is inconsistent with the numbering convention of the rest of his book, and it just so happens that it's right around the part of the book that we're discussing: the first few pages after 1.x.
The point of OP's thing is to compare and contrast 2.0251 with 2.033 vis a vis "form". However, he also specifies 2.0131 and 2.02331 in connection with the former. I therefore propose to isolate and list all ancestor and descendant-comments on these four comments, beginning with the former two, starting now. The simplest way to do this is to take pictorial advantage of the above website (pic related).
>>8182034
>>8181938
>>8181896
>tfw if you read this really fast while watching a video of a child being beaten out of the corner of your eye, you can simulate what it was like to be wittgenstein
>>8182057
Good idea for a new VR game.
Don't forget to note very exact but ultimately mundane things about the interior architecture either i.e. that ceiling is 7 mm too low.
>>8182178
ebin reference to his haus, my dear reddit browser :^)
