Monday, December 9, 2013

Solipsism and Language

In 5.62 of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein asserts that "the world is my world", in the context of considering in what respect "solipsism . . . is quite correct".  In contrast, from the outset, the environment of the Investigations is social.  Accordingly, the transcendence achieved by the end of the earlier work is not an ascent into some mystical realm, as some interpret it, but an escape from the Solipsism-bottle.  Analogously, the transition is from conceiving verbal Language as the description of one's World, to realizing that it is a means of interpersonal Communication.

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