The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is a text I’ve worked with already in the past.

This time I was intrigued by the simple yet super cool typed.js javascript library, which simulates animated typing.

After testing it out a bit I realised that this approach allows to focus on the text with more attention that having it all displayed at once.

Since the words appear one at a time, it feels more like a verbal dialogue than reading. As a consequence, also the way the meaning of the text gets perceived changes.

Slower, deeper. Almost like meditating. Try it out here.

Credits

Barry Smith is a prominent contributor to both theoretical and applied research in ontology. He is the author of many publications on ontology and related topics. In particular, the Basic Formal Ontology is a widely used top level model in the scientific community.

I’m a bit surprised that there was no mention whatsoever of the work I did a while back in the context of the PhiloSURFIcal project. Built as part my PhD, the PhiloSURFIcal software tool allowed to navigate a philosophical text, taking advantage of a map of the concepts relevant to the text. The map, in this case, relied on a rather generic ontology for philosophy, which I instantiated using concepts from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

At the time I could not find evidence for any other ontology modelling the philosophical domain, and still to this day I haven’t seen any that provides the same level of detail in modeling out the various nuances of philosophical ideas.

Admittedly, the OWL formalization wasn’t very good (in fact I originally implemented the ontology using a KR language called OCML). Maybe though I should take this as an incentive to revive this work and publish it again using a more modern Linked Data approach!

A detailed summary of the modeling approach can be found here:

Michele Pasin, Enrico Motta. Ontological Requirements for Annotation and Navigation of Philosophical Resources – Synthese, Volume 182, Number 2, Springer September 2011 .

In any case, here’s a few interesting links and slides from Barry Smith’s presentation:

The javaScript InfoVis Toolkit includes a number of pretty cool libraries that work in the browser and can be customised to your own needs. Some of these visualisations are specifically designed for trees and graphs, so I always wondered how a dynamic tree-rendering of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus would look like.

The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Latin for “Logical-Philosophical Treatise”) is the only book-length philosophical work published by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in his lifetime. It was an ambitious project: to identify the relationship between language and reality and to define the limits of science. It is recognized as a significant philosophical work of the twentieth century.
[…] The Tractatus employs a notoriously austere and succinct literary style. The work contains almost no arguments as such, but rather declarative statements which are meant to be self-evident. The statements are hierarchically numbered, with seven basic propositions at the primary level (numbered 1–7), with each sub-level being a comment on or elaboration of the statement at the next higher level (e.g., 1, 1.1, 1.11, 1.12).

The final result is available here (warning: it’s been tested only on Chrome and Firefox): http://hacks.michelepasin.org/witt/spacetree

Some more details

I’ve played around a little with one of the visualisation libraries the JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit makes available, the Radial Graph, to the purpose of transforming the Tractatus text into a more interactive platform. The Radial Graph is essentially a tree-rendering library built over a circular area (hence called also space-tree).

I liked the idea of making the tree-like structure of the text explorable one step at a time, within a framework that suggests a predefined order of the text-units but also allows for lateral steps or quick jumps to other sections. However I’m still trying to figure out what the advantages of looking at the text this way can be, once you go past the initial excitement of playing with it as if it was some sort of toy!

Some of the pros seem to be:

On the other hand, here are some cons:

I wonder how all of this could be developed further and/or transformed into a useful tool.. if you have any comment or suggestion please do get in touch !
I’m also planning to release the source code for the whole app as soon as a I clean it up a little; for the moment, here is the javascript bit that renders the graph:

Not entirely a new idea, but the detailed analysis of the two authors (who are world-recognised experts in their fields) makes the argument particularly poignant and eloquent. A few key excerpts from the book’s preface (bold font is mine):

Mathematics is seen as the epitome of precision, manifested in the use of symbols in calculation and in formal proofs. Symbols are, of course, just symbols, not ideas. The intellectual content of mathematics lies in its ideas, not in the symbols themselves. In short, the intellectual content of mathematics does not lie where the mathematical rigor can be most easily seen — namely, in the symbols. Rather, it lies in human ideas. But mathematics by itself does not and cannot empirically study human ideas; human cognition is simply not its subject matter. It is up to cognitive science and the neurosciences to do what mathematics itself cannot do — namely, apply the science of mind to human mathematical ideas. That is the purpose of this book.

[..]

The central question we ask is this: How can cognitive science bring systematic scientific rigor to the realm of human mathematical ideas, which lies outside the rigor of mathematics itself? Our job is to help make precise what mathematics itself cannot—the nature of mathematical ideas. Rafael Nunez brings to this effort a background in mathematics education, the development of mathematical ideas in children, the study of mathematics in indigenous cultures around the world, and the investigation of the foundations of embodied cognition. George Lakoff is a major researcher in human conceptual systems, known for his research in natural-language semantics, his work on the embodiment of mind, and his discovery of the basic mechanisms of everyday metaphorical thought.

[..]

One might think that the best way to understand mathematical ideas would be simply to ask mathematicians what they are thinking. Indeed, many famous mathematicians, such as Descartes, Boole, Dedekind, Poincaré, Cantor, and Weyl, applied this method to themselves, introspecting about their own thoughts. Contemporary research on the mind shows that as valuable a method as this can be, it can at best tell a partial and not fully accurate story. Most of our thought and our systems of concepts are part of the cognitive unconscious (see Chapter 2). We human beings have no direct access to our deepest forms of understanding. The analytic techniques of cognitive science are necessary if we are to understand how we understand.

[..]

One of the great findings of cognitive science is that our ideas are shaped by our bodily experiences — not in any simpleminded one-to-one way but indirectly, through the grounding of our entire conceptual system in everyday life. The cognitive perspective forces us to ask, Is the system of mathematical ideas also grounded indirectly in bodily experiences? And if so, exactly how? The answer to questions as deep as these requires an understanding of the cognitive superstructure of a whole nexus of mathematical ideas. This book is concerned with how such cognitive superstructures are built up, starting for the most part with the commonest of physical experiences.

…

By Srikumar S. Rao, who can be found also on TED talks. His class syllabus, Creativity and Personal Mastery is also an interesting read. Here’s an excerpt (which is actually a quotation from Anthony De Mello):

“Recall the kind of feeling you have when someone praises you, when you are approved, accepted, applauded. And contrast that with the kind of feeling that arises within you when you look at the sunset or a sunrise, or Nature in general or when you read a book or watch a movie that you thoroughly enjoy. Get a taste of this feeling and contrast it with the first, namely, the one that was generated within you when you were praised. Understand that the first type of feeling comes from self-glorification, self-promotion. It is a worldly feeling. The second comes from self-fulfillment. It is a soul feeling. Here is another contrast: Recall the kind of feeling you have when you succeed, when you have made it, when you get to the top, when you win a game or bet or argument. And contrast it with the kind of feeling you get when you really enjoy the job you are doing, you are absorbed in, the action you are currently engaged in. And once again notice the qualitative difference between the worldly feeling and the soul feeling.

Yet another contrast: Remember what you felt like when you had power, you were the boss, people looked up to you, took orders from you; or when you were popular. And contrast that worldly feeling with the feeling of intimacy, companionship – the times you thoroughly enjoyed yourself in the company of a friend or with a group in which there was fun and laughter. Having done this, attempt to understand the true nature of worldly feelings, namely, the feelings of self-promotion, self-glorification. They are not natural, they were invented by your society to make you productive and to make you controllable. These feelings do not produce the nourishment and happiness that is produced when one contemplates Nature or enjoys the company of one’s friends or one’s work. They were meant to produce thrills, excitement and emptiness.

Then observe yourself over the course of a day or a week and think how many actions of yours are performed, how many activities engaged in that are uncontaminated by the desires for these thrills, these excitements that only produce emptiness, the desire for attention, approval, fame, popularity, success or power. And take a look at the people around you. Is there a single one of them who has not become addicted to these worldly feelings? A single one who is not controlled by them, hungers for them, spends every minute of his/her waking life consciously or unconsciously seeking them? When you see this you will understand how people attempt to gain the world and, in the process, lose their soul.

And here is a parable of life for you to ponder on: A group of tourists sit in a bus that is passing through gorgeously beautiful country; lakes and mountains and green fields and rivers. But the shades of the bus are pulled down. They do not have the slightest idea of what lies beyond the windows of the bus. And all the time of their journey is spent in squabbling over who will have the seat of honor in the bus, who will be applauded, who will be well considered. And so they remain till the journey’s end.”

Victim of the Brain, 1:30:14 – 1988

[wikipedia article]

Victim of the Brain is a 1988 film by Dutch director Piet Hoenderdos, loosely based on The Mind’s I, a compilation of texts and stories on the philosophy of mind and self, co-edited by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett.

Features interviews with Douglas Hofstadter and Dan Dennett. Dennett also stars as himself. Original acquired from the Center for Research in Concepts and Cognition at Indiana University.

…

The Ethical Company

Recognisable features of the ethical company, in the literature and discussion of business ethics, involve these attributes:

Transparency
Straightforwardness
Accountability
Owning-up
Honesty
Fairness
Common decency
Distributive justice

Recognisable features of a company whose base is ethically challenged are these:

dissembling,
use of threats,
unkindness to employees,
a widespread use of gagging orders,
an inequitable distribution of company income.

On the contrary, a company which would rather conduct its business:

– verbally (particularly with regard to disputed issues) instead of committing its views to writing;
– commonly resorts to litigation, or employs the frequent threat of such; employs gagging clauses as standard policy;
– pays its directors highly disproportionate sums in comparison with its employees;

…this company is suspect and should be avoided wherever possible.

It is a sad commentary on current business and public life that this needs to be written, or debated, says Fripp.

His thoughts can be summed up as follows:

transparency + straightforwardness = honesty
accountability + owning-up = responsibility
distributive justice + fairness = equity
common decency = goodwill

And the Four Pillars of The Ethical Company are:

Honesty
Responsibility
Equity
Goodwill

Well today I sort of run into it by change, and I really liked it! Isn’t that a good feeling when you realize the things you’ve done in the past did actually make some sense?

…

Nonetheless, you can look for similarities and differences and come up with a nice classification. I think that’s what this article is doing:

Overall, we can thus distinguish four notions of logic:

• (L1) the mathematical study of artificial formal languages
• (L2) the study of formally valid inferences and logical consequence
• (L3) the study of logical truths
• (L4) the study of the general features, or form, of judgements

Then he continues with ontology:

The larger discipline of ontology can thus be seen as having four parts:

• (O1) the study of ontological commitment, i.e. what we or others are committed to,
• (O2) the study of what there is,
• (O3) the study of the most general features of what there is, and how the things there are relate to each other in the metaphysically most general ways,
• (O4) the study of meta-ontology, i.e. saying what task it is that the discipline of ontology should aim to accomplish, if any, how the question it aims to answer should be understood, and with what methodology they can be answered.

I also tried to run the article through WordSift (a text-visualizer tool I mentioned some time ago) but the results were not so exciting I must say. The initial hope was to extract the ‘core’ terms of the article, and somehow let the inherent argument or discourse emerge.. but I guess we’re still far from there! WordSift is probably useful for an english teacher to explain some of the most used terms in a text, but for anything deeper or more domain-centered than that we’ve got to look for something else…..

>>>>

the ‘words’ clouds in WordSift

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the visual thesaurus applet :

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