According to Wittgenstein, there subsist simple objects that cannot be broken down into constituent parts:
Though he did think, at least at one point after wnting the Tractatus, that we were acquainted with them. We
learn the use o f names by examining them. See ‘Some Remarks On Logical Form’, and chapter 4 o f this thesis for a discussion.
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.
Object are absolutely simple so that we can (at least in theory) reduce statements about ordinary objects down to elementary propositions that relate to the world. To say that Objects are simples that make up the substance of the world is to say that this theoretical limit of analysis exists, and that it corresponds in some primitive way to the structure of the world. Wittgenstein’s point is that it must
exist if language is to picture the world. The world and language must share a structure: they must share their loÿcal form. The requirement that objects are simple and unalterable (2.026 — 2.0271) is the requirement that they cannot be described by means of a further (contingent) proposition. That words stand for objects must be a necessary truth. It cannot depend on whether another (empirical) proposition is tme, for then it would be a contingent matter whether or not it had sense. And this cannot be the case if language is to depict the world. That propositions already have sense is a necessary condition on them being tme or false:
2.021 Objects make up the substance of the world. That is why they cannot be composite.
2.0211 If the world had no substance, then whether a proposition had sense would depend on whether another proposition was tme.
2.0212 In that case we could not sketch any picture of the world (tme or false).
This point can also be made in terms of possibility. What is possible is equivalent, for Wittgenstein, with what is thinkable (what is imaginable, 2.022), and this is
equivalent to what is representable (that which we can picture to ourselves, 3.001). The conditions for representation are thus given for all possible worlds, so these conditions cannot be given by what happens to be the case in this or that particular possible world. These conditions, which include the requirement that there are simple Objects, are also the conditions that a proposition has sense. Thus, whether there are objects cannot depend on any empirical proposition being true or false. It is a necessary condition for us to be able to describe the world (2.211):
2.022 It is obvious that an imagined world, however different it may be from the real one, must have something — a form — in common with it. 2.023 Objects are just what constitute this unalterable form.
The requirement that there are simple objects could also be called a ‘transcendental’ condition. While there is some controversy concerning what properly constitutes a ‘transcendental argument’, a rough characterisation will be sufficient for our purposes. Kant uses the term for anti-sceptical arguments for (synthetic) a priori claims established on the basis that their truth is necessary for the possibility of experience. But more generally, a transcendental argument is any argument where a certain phenomenon p (or the structure of this phenomenon) is argued to have a set of conceptually necessary conditions thus establishing the ‘transcendental validity’ of the concepts included in those conditions. Whilst Kant was interested in the conditions of knowledge, the
To put this in terms introduced in the previous chapter, a phenomenon is argued to be formal^ dependent on the concept o fp, and the concept of^ is conceptual^ dependent on the (transcendentally valid) concept C.
Wittgenstein of the Tractatus was interested in the conditions for describing the world. These necessary conditions included the idea that the sense of propositions must be independent of whether they are true or false (2.22 What a picture represents it represent independently of its truth or falsity, by means of its pictorial form.) There must be contact between language and the world that is prior to the truth or falsity of any proposition about the world. This contact he characterises with the relations of naming and picturing, relations that presuppose a certain logical form that is shared by language and the world.
The Objects of the Tractatus play a role that is in some ways analogous to the role played by ‘the given’ in Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. According to Kant, the faculty of sensibility is distinct from the faculty of the understanding. It is through the sensibility that the mind has a ‘receptivity’ to the given, and through the understanding that they are thought about. Both are required for meaningful thought. “Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are bHnd”.’^^ A thought without content is a thought that does not take in elements of the given. Such thoughts are merely representations, produced by the understanding, but without real application. The psychological idiom in which this idea is cast by Kant is completely missing from Wittgenstein’s philosophy of logic and language, but a similar idea is central to his thinking. Any thoughts that do not picture possible states of affairs are senseless precisely because they do not picture combinations of objects.
Now this idea that Kant and Wittgenstein share contains a problem. The thought that ‘thoughts without content are empty’ is devoid of any specific reference to the given. It is without content, and therefore empty. Similarly, the thoughts about Objects in general are presumably not combinations of names that refer to specific Objects.
Both the given and tractarian Objects are transcendentally ‘real’ in that they are independent of the subjective conditions of thought and representation. The given cannot be considered to have conceptual form since it provides the raw data on which the understanding grounds its lowest level conceptualisations. Elements of the given form part of the very conditions for meaningful (non empty) thought. likewise, tractarian Objects are not part of what can be described, but are part of the conditions for being able to describe anything. But then how can we speak of them at all?^^ Wittgenstein considered his radical solution to this problem as the central point of his early philosophy. Strictly speaking, we cannot speak of them (and Wittgenstein acknowledges that his own propositions are nonsense, 6.54), but the fact that we can speak at all, shows that they exist. They make themselves manifest.