Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus · Philosophical Investigations, Part I · On Certainty
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus · Philosophical Investigations, Part I · On Certainty
Chinese content v1.3｜method version v1.3｜2026-10-23
Front-page core original-text marks: Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt. (Tractatus 5.6); Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.
(same work, 7); Die Bedeutung eines Wortes ist sein Gebrauch in der Sprache. (Philosophical Investigations §43, valid only for the “large class of cases” in the text, not taken as a universal unconditional proposition).
One-line placement: the early Wittgenstein investigates how the logic of language represents the world, and in Tractatus 6.54 links understanding, throwing away the ladder and “seeing the world rightly” into a procedure of completion peculiar to that book; the later Philosophical Investigations carries out grammatical therapy anew from concrete uses, rules and language-games, and §133 explicitly acknowledges different methods for different philosophical problems. Both periods start from fundamental perplexities about meaning, yet there is insufficient evidence that the early “seeing the world rightly” is a single non-deletable ultimate cognitive completion shared by both periods. Taking his core T1 texts together, ③ “Inquiring into the Ground” (B), with the ②-type relation of completion in the early single book kept as a C-grade cross-period dispute.
Most distinctive point: the early “showing” does not cancel all cognitive functions;
4.1212 only denies that a certain logical form can be stated again in propositions, 6.522 says that the inexpressible shows itself, and 6.54 still requires the reader to understand and surmount the book’s own propositions. The “different therapies” of late §133 and the early single procedure of throwing away the ladder cannot be treated as one and the same unchanging endpoint.
Core question: how are meaningful propositions related to the world? When philosophy tries to state the logical conditions of language, do its own words also overstep the limit? Do the rules of language, private sensations and doubt need a final supra-linguistic knower as guarantor?
Content status: the Chinese text for this figure has been settled after checking against the original texts; the textual evidence and boundaries of judgment are set out in each chapter.
This archive distinguishes “textual reliability” from “strength of structural judgment”: T1–T4 describe the authorial attribution, date, stability of transmission and representativeness of the text itself; A–D describe the certainty of judgments made from the text.
A = stated directly in the original; B = a strong structural inference supported by several passages; C = grounded, but with an equally reasonable alternative reading; D = an objector’s stress test / a hypothesis awaiting verification. An A-grade original only guarantees that “this text states so”, and cannot automatically make a structural inference A.
Direction marks: support = supports the current six-position placement; limit = shows a functional mediation still bearing load or constituting a boundary; disputed = the text does not point one way; neutral = the text holds but does not constitute a core limit in the present deletion test. The mark on a single E card does not replace the overall structural argument.
Range of core texts and method of research: for the early period, the numbered propositions of the Tractatus (German 1921 and the 1922 English–German parallel edition) are T1; for the later period, Philosophical Investigations Part I (completed by the author but published in 1953; attribution of the text is strong, taken as T1 with posthumous publication noted) is T1; On Certainty (late notes edited posthumously) is used as T2. The different stages are not directly synthesized into one “final ontology”;
only the continuity of their themes and the change of method are checked. Online machine English translations of the Investigations serve only for location, and formal judgments rely as far as possible on the German original.
Detailed T1—T4 for this figure: T1: the Tractatus, published and reviewed in the author’s lifetime, and reliable passages of Part I of the Investigations finalized in his lifetime (though published posthumously); T2: On Certainty and late notes of the author explicitly marked by editors; T3: material with missing layers of record or heavy editorial reorganization; T4: later interpretations such as Kripke’s, not poured back into the original author. “Published posthumously” and “later thought” cannot be mechanically equated.
Principle of transcription on the text cards: all E cards give the chapter of the original and a note on the authorial layer; the “proposition in the original” is mainly research paraphrase, and except where the original wording is marked and checked, it does not pass for a verbatim quotation. Electronic transcription is not the same as completed authoritative collation.
How are meaningful propositions related to the world? When philosophy tries to state the logical conditions of language, do its own words also overstep the limit? Do the rules of language, private sensations and doubt need a final supra-linguistic knower as guarantor?
1. The early Tractatus: the world is the totality of facts, and propositions express possible states of affairs through logical pictures.
2. Logical form is not yet another fact that propositions can state; what can be shown and what can be said must be distinguished.
3. Ethics, the meaning of life and the sense of the mystical are not simply objects of empirical science; 6.54 places even the whole book’s propositions under the demand of withdrawal.
4. The later Philosophical Investigations dismantles the universal status of a single representational theory, displaying many language-games and practices of life.
5. Meaning in a great many cases shows itself in use; “family resemblance” prevents the search for one hidden essence shared by all uses.
6. Philosophy does not propose scientific hypotheses to replace ordinary language, but brings terms back from metaphysical misuse to everyday use.
7. Following a rule is neither an endless chain of interpretations nor a private instant within each person; public practice takes part in constituting “correct”.
8. The late On Certainty finds that doubt and justification rely on hinge-like certainties, but these are not an additional set of infallible cosmic knowledge.
Note on the evidence base: T1–T4 concern the authorial / transmission / edition reliability of the text itself; A–D concern the strength of judgment. A means only that the original really says so; B is a structural inference supported by several texts, C keeps a competing reading, D is only an objector’s hypothesis. Support / limit / disputed / neutral mean respectively support for, functional-mediation limits on, open dispute about, and non-core evidence for the present six-position judgment. The “propositions in the original” below are in principle Chinese paraphrases with sources; only short phrases explicitly marked in the original wording count as excerpts of the original.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: The world is all that is the case, the totality of facts, not of things.
Structural role of this evidence: The fundamental point of entry is the expressible relation of facts and propositions, not a class of secret metaphysical things.
What it does not prove: This is only the early scheme, and may not be taken as the whole of the later theory.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: We grasp possible states of affairs through pictures; the picture and what it depicts must share logical form.
Structural role of this evidence: It establishes the necessary formal condition for “rightly expressing facts”.
What it does not prove: A picture is not a photograph; logical form cannot be treated as another photographable fact.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: Most traditional philosophical questions arise from confusions produced by failing to understand the logic of language.
Structural role of this evidence: It dismantles philosophy’s self-image as able to provide descriptions of supra-factual objects.
What it does not prove: It does not mean that all ethical or religious questions are declared worthless.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: What can be shown cannot be said.
Structural role of this evidence: The “showing / unsayable” of 4.1212 marks the limits of expression of propositions. What is deleted is the proposition’s restating of its own logical form, not automatically the function of understanding, recognizing or seeing; it must be read together with 6.522 and 6.54.
What it does not prove: Showing does not automatically mean that the manifestation of the universe itself has no cognitive function at all.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: “Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt.” (the limits of my language mean the limits of my world).
Structural role of this evidence: It limits the subject from standing outside world and language to make a comprehensive statement.
What it does not prove: “My” and the discussion of the subject in 5.62 cannot be read directly as a psychological private-language system.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: Statements such as “the subject does not belong to the world, but is a limit of the world” are connected with the discussion of solipsism.
Structural role of this evidence: It questions adding a self-sufficient viewer outside all facts.
What it does not prove: “No subject visible within the world” does not mean that the function of seeing the world rightly is deletable.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: Logic is not a doctrine but a mirror-image of the world;
it is transcendental.
Structural role of this evidence: Form is not an object that can stand alongside empirical things.
What it does not prove: Logical form should not be ontologized into a god outside the world.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: The sense of the world cannot be stated as yet another fact within the world; ethics belongs to the unsayable.
Structural role of this evidence: It limits replacing the meaning of life and ethical tasks with scientific propositions.
What it does not prove: The unsayable does not automatically prove an independent mystical entity.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is; feeling the world as a limited whole.
Structural role of this evidence: It shows that the early work does not deal only with technical logic, but touches on the mode of manifestation of the whole of being.
What it does not prove: The mystical feeling cannot be written directly as a verifiable positive structure providing the whole cosmic ground.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: Even if all scientific questions were answered, the problems of life might remain untouched.
Structural role of this evidence: It distinguishes the fundamental questions from factual answers.
What it does not prove: This does not mean that “the problems of life have been solved by a special right knowledge”.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: The author says that one who understands the book’s propositions will recognize them as nonsensical, must throw away the ladder and “see the world rightly”.
Structural role of this evidence: 6.54 concludes the whole book with the reader’s “understanding — surmounting the book’s propositions — seeing the world rightly”, and this cognitive / understanding relation clearly bears structural load within the early single book. Whether it equals a non-deletable right recognition of the ground across the author’s whole mature thought must be compared separately with Philosophical Investigations §133, and cannot be directly raised into a lifelong endpoint.
What it does not prove: This instruction to the reader may not be defined directly as ② for the whole thought without reading it against the whole book and the late works.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
Structural role of this evidence: The limit of expression in turn constrains the book itself: it cannot at the same time be taken as an unconditional omnipotent super-theory.
What it does not prove: The single sentence on “silence” is not a positive account of where thought itself ultimately stands in the world.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: Through the builders’ language of commands it shows that linguistic meaning does not always fit a single model of reference—object.
Structural role of this evidence: It limits the universalization of the early picture theory, refusing a single essence of language.
What it does not prove: This does not say that language never refers to facts.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: There are many kinds of language-games; speaking a language is part of an activity, of a form of life.
Structural role of this evidence: Speech is positively placed within the whole of human activity, important structural evidence for later self-inclusion.
What it does not prove: Many games do not mean that all interpretations are equally correct.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: “Meaning is use” applies to a large class of cases of use; the author explicitly says it does not apply to all.
Structural role of this evidence: It forbids turning a slogan into a new omnipotent metaphysical axiom.
What it does not prove: One cannot drop the qualification and say that the whole meaning of every word is merely behavioural rules.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: Using the example of games to explain “family resemblance”: concepts do not need a single common essence.
Structural role of this evidence: It dismantles the notion of a highest universal as a hidden single substrate.
What it does not prove: Having no common essence does not mean that concepts have no boundaries at all.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: Philosophy examines the uses of linguistic expressions and their bewitchments, not empirical hypotheses about objects of natural science.
Structural role of this evidence: It defines what philosophy asks as the fundamental questions of the structure of meaning, not merely external statistics on linguistic behaviour.
What it does not prove: Studying grammar does not automatically place it in ④ as sociology of language.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: It refuses to replace description with theory; philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our understanding by means of language.
Structural role of this evidence: It imposes methodical self-limitation on its own urge to explain, an important ground for self-reflexivity and self-inclusion.
What it does not prove: The metaphor of therapy does not mean taking philosophy to be a medical experiment.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: Bringing words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.
Structural role of this evidence: From the independent essence of abstract nouns back to actual differentiated use.
What it does not prove: “Everyday” does not mean “everything a society is presently accustomed to is beyond criticism”.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: Perspicuous representation makes relations discernible; philosophy does not alter the actual use of language, and in the end only describes.
Structural role of this evidence: Philosophy’s own description belongs to linguistic activity, and does not claim to stand outside and manipulate the whole of language.
What it does not prove: “Making relations clear” is the task of resolving conceptual perplexity, but does not directly define an endpoint of knowing the ground.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: Philosophical problems can be treated by many methods; the disappearance of some problems belongs to the end of a particular piece of work.
Structural role of this evidence: §133 explicitly connects the disappearance of philosophical problems with many methods / therapies, denying that there is only one unified global philosophical method.
It shares with 6.54 the task of opposing philosophy’s misuse of language, but does not repeat the early single sequence of completion “after throwing away the ladder, seeing the whole world rightly”.
What it does not prove: Dissolving problems does not mean that no philosophical activity will ever be needed.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: Following a rule is not an endless chain of personal interpretations; “thinking one is following a rule” is not following it.
Structural role of this evidence: Correctness is placed in custom and practice, not relying on a private final observer.
What it does not prove: The standards provided by social practice remain open to criticism; shared habit cannot be equated with eternal correctness.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: The private-language discussion: if meaning relied only on privately indicating sensations that cannot be calibrated, correct / seeming correct could not be stably distinguished.
Structural role of this evidence: It cancels the cognitive exemption of a purely inner realm without public standards.
What it does not prove: It does not deny that pain or inner experience exists.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: Knowledge and justification rely on a shared world-picture and activities of life; infinite doubt is not how things actually work.
Structural role of this evidence: The late work examines the conditions of doubt reflexively, extending methodical self-inclusion.
What it does not prove: The late edited notes are T2, and may not override the completed text of the Investigations.
Proposition in the original / verifiable short phrase: Questions of doubt turn on certain hinges that are not doubted at the same time.
Structural role of this evidence: It does not add an indubitable “first ground”, but describes how doubt actually takes place.
What it does not prove: Hinges are not objects of salvation that everyone must explicitly “rightly recognize” in order to complete philosophy.
Sachverhalt／Tatsache: state of affairs / fact, the level of the world to which early logical propositions correspond.
sagen／zeigen: saying / showing; not a difference of linguistic mood.
unsinnig: the withdrawal of the book’s propositions in Tractatus 6.54; its interpretation is disputed.
Sprachspiel: language-game: concrete uses in which language and activity are woven together.
Lebensform: form of life, not the same as the static cultural essence of a single people.
Familienähnlichkeit: family resemblance, opposing one essence covering all uses of a concept.
Grammatik: grammar: the actual network of rules determining relations of meaning in usage, not merely syntax.
übersichtliche Darstellung: perspicuous representation, a clear connecting rather than a secret ultimate intuition.
Gewißheit／hinges: certainty and hinge propositions, background conditions of certain doubts rather than a self-evident theological foundation.
Positive evidence: the early work treats the possibility of meaning through the world of facts, picture / logical form and the distinction of saying / showing; the later work treats similar fundamental perplexities through the concrete uses of language-games, rules, forms of life and grammar.
Limiting evidence: both core works are T1, and their textual reliability is not mechanically lowered because the early one was published earlier or the later written later; but the later work does change method and withdraw certain universal presuppositions of the early one.
Disputed reading: early 6.54 presents an explicit relation of completion requiring the reader to understand and see the world rightly, and ② has fairly strong grounds within the single book; late §133 has no common single endpoint, nor does it give the same determination of “the ground being rightly recognized”.
Present conclusion: the later period is not assumed to be “more true” by default; instead each of the two equally core stages is judged, and then it is asked whether there is a non-deletable relation of completion running through the whole. The overall main task is still dealing with the fundamental questions of meaning / logic / rules, ③ (B).
Already withdrawn / de-substantialized: a single all-purpose essence of meaning, a private tribunal of rules, philosophical language needing no self-examination, propositions able to state all of their own logical conditions.
Core structural load-bearing points: the showing of logical form in the early work and the self-withdrawing procedure of 6.54; in the later work, language-games, public rules, forms of life and the clarification of concrete perplexities.
Disputed functional load-bearing point: the early reader’s “understanding — surmounting — seeing the world rightly” is a relation of completion within the single book; there is as yet no B-grade evidence that it can serve as a general condition of completion for late philosophical therapy.
Single object of deletion: delete from the whole thought the general cognitive relation “seeing the world rightly once / the highest language—world relation completes all philosophical problems”; keep the concrete logical discussions of the early text, the many grammatical clarifications of the later work and public practice. The early control test separately removes the reader’s understanding in 6.54, and may not be merged into the same deletion.
What still holds after deletion: the many forms of late grammatical therapy, language-games and the practice of rules can still proceed; the early questions of logic / limits of expression can still be studied, but its particular way of concluding the book needs separate explanation.
Where it breaks after deletion: deleting the understanding—seeing relation of 6.54 within the Tractatus produces a structural-layer break in the book’s conclusion; but treating this relation as a non-deletable premise of the whole method of the Investigations lacks positive evidence of the same grade.
Levels of break: the early single book = structural layer (6.54); late concrete therapies = teaching / path or local structural layers varying with the problem; a unified cross-period final cognitive relation = not yet established, and may not be falsely called the final layer.
Status within the complete ultimate structure: particular local explanations may require “seeing” grammatical or logical relations, but their object is not a single highest being fixed throughout, nor a common condition of completion explicitly laid down for the whole thought.
Mode of being after completion: there is no knowing subject permanently viewing the world from above; when philosophical problems are relieved, the life of language continues.
The place of thought itself: 6.54 places the book’s own propositions under the standard of withdrawal (self-reflexivity); §§23, 109, 124 locate philosophical speech within linguistic practice (self-inclusion, local B); neither amounts to having proven all of ①’s conditions.
Return: not eliminating everyday language, pain, mathematics or science, but letting them function in their respective practices.
Another reasonable reading: the early “seeing the world rightly” can be understood as an overall therapeutic direction also kept by the later work; but one must then propose the same condition of cognitive completion running through both T1 stages, otherwise only a cross-period C can be kept.
Present safest boundary / grade: ③ (B), early 6.54 bears load within the single book (B); whether early and late can be unified into ②’s final relation of completion is C.
Positive evidence: 6.54 makes the propositions of the Tractatus subject to the book’s own standard of expression; late §§23, 109, 124 place thought and linguistic activity within the network of practice and grammar.
Limiting evidence: the early throwing away of the ladder is mainly self-reflexivity; the later work has an explicit positive placement at the pragmatic level (local B), but it cannot therefore be assumed that the later work has given a fundamental structure of the occurring of all being.
Disputed reading: there is some reason to regard the later concrete location of philosophical activity as ①’s first condition;
but ① also requires a more basic complete structure and evidence that the endpoint remains complete once “right recognition of the ground” is deleted, and pragmatic location alone is not enough.
Present conclusion: self-reflexivity A, pragmatic self-inclusion of philosophical speech B (local); neither the sufficiency of a whole ontological structure for ①’s first condition nor the second condition is adequately proven.
Positive evidence: Tractatus 4.1212 and 6.522 lay down “showing”, and 6.54 requires the reader to understand and, after surmounting, see the world rightly; Philosophical Investigations §133 explicitly speaks of many methods / therapies.
Limiting evidence: the “unsayable” concerns only the mode of statement, and does not automatically prove that the cognitive function has been deleted; the later “disappearance of problems” cannot be forcibly read as the completion of the early overall world-picture.
Disputed reading: it can be said that the two stages share the task of dissolving philosophical bewitchment, but that is not the same as sharing one non-deletable object of right recognition and procedure of completion.
Present conclusion: ③ (B); after treating the core texts of both periods equally, the early ② candidate is strong evidence within the single book and a C-grade cross-period competitor, not mechanically excluded by “priority of the later period”.
Current six-position placement: ③ Inquiring into the Ground (B); early Tractatus 6.54 has ②-type local structural load, and judging ② for the whole across periods remains a C-grade competitor; ④’s description of linguistic practice is not the main goal.
Chain of argument that must be read through: the place of the ground → the non-deletable functional load-bearing points → the levels of break after deletion → the positive place of thought itself → the most delicate deciding point → the six-position placement.
The early Wittgenstein investigates how the logic of language represents the world, and in Tractatus 6.54 links understanding, throwing away the ladder and “seeing the world rightly” into a procedure of completion peculiar to that book; the later Philosophical Investigations carries out grammatical therapy anew from concrete uses, rules and language-games, and §133 explicitly acknowledges different methods for different philosophical problems. Both periods start from fundamental perplexities about meaning, yet there is insufficient evidence that the early “seeing the world rightly” is a single non-deletable ultimate cognitive completion shared by both periods. Taking his core T1 texts together, ③ “Inquiring into the Ground” (B), with the ②-type relation of completion in the early single book kept as a C-grade cross-period dispute.
Handling of disputes: a local C does not automatically become a global C; conversely, a main-class B cannot swallow genuine local disputes. T1 does not automatically equal an A-grade interpretation.
Placing the language of philosophy itself under examination, both proposing a strict division between saying and showing, and showing, through language-games, rule-following, the critique of private language and hinge certainty, how meaning can be clarified without setting up a supra-worldly tribunal.
Counter-question: Early 6.54 explicitly requires seeing the world rightly, so it must be ②.
Main grounds: Tractatus 6.54.
Reply: It is accepted as local structural load; but the late modes of completion are plural, and do not uniformly define an endpoint of “direct seeing of the ground”.
Counter-question: Late language-games have no ultimate truth and all cognition is built into life, so it should be judged ①.
Main grounds: Philosophical Investigations §§23, 43, 124.
Reply: Self-inclusion has structural evidence, but ① also needs to prove that the structure of being / the whole remains complete after “right cognition of the ground” is deleted; the later work does not positively lay down such a highest structure of occurring.
Counter-question: The late work is merely a description of linguistic behaviour, so it belongs to ④.
Main grounds: §§23, 43, 124.
Reply: The main object of grammatical therapy is fundamental perplexity about meaning, not establishing an empirical science of social language; ④ is a field of application, not the overall main task.
Counter-question: The critique of private language denies subjective sensation.
Main grounds: Philosophical Investigations §243 ff.
Reply: The argument is aimed at purely private indication that cannot distinguish correct / thinking correct, not at denying the existence of pain and its experience.
Counter-question: The hinges of On Certainty are the highest non-deletable being.
Main grounds: On Certainty §§341—343.
Reply: Hinges are conditions of concrete practices of doubt, and should not become an entity outside the world;
they also belong to posthumously edited T2, and cannot be poured back into all the early works.
Counter-question: The Tractatus ends in ethics and the mystical, so the main task of the whole book is experiencing “the mystical”, and it should be ⑤.
Main grounds: Tractatus 6.41—6.45, 6.52, 6.522.
Reply: These propositions do place ethics, the meaning of life and the mystical at the close of the book (E-08—E-10);
but the book handles them by drawing the limits of what can be said, not by offering a practice of experience, and the completion of 6.54 still passes through understanding and climbing beyond the propositions (E-11); the later Philosophical Investigations also does not continue a style ending in the experience of “the mystical” (E-21). ⑤ does not form competition for the main class; ③ (B) is unchanged.
With No.50 Heidegger (a comparative hypothesis awaiting verification): both reflect on the activity of speech itself, but Heidegger studies the clearing of being and Wittgenstein analyses meaning and rules, and they cannot be classed as isomorphic on the strength of the single word “language”. Compared with No.43 Descartes (placed at ③): Descartes seeks an indubitable foundation of knowledge, while the late Wittgenstein asks in turn about the actual grammar of doubt and foundation.
The early Wittgenstein investigates how the logic of language represents the world, and in Tractatus 6.54 links understanding, throwing away the ladder and “seeing the world rightly” into a procedure of completion peculiar to that book; the later Philosophical Investigations carries out grammatical therapy anew from concrete uses, rules and language-games, and §133 explicitly acknowledges different methods for different philosophical problems. Both periods start from fundamental perplexities about meaning, yet there is insufficient evidence that the early “seeing the world rightly” is a single non-deletable ultimate cognitive completion shared by both periods. Taking his core T1 texts together, ③ “Inquiring into the Ground” (B), with the ②-type relation of completion in the early single book kept as a C-grade cross-period dispute.
This archive contains no scores or rankings. Nominalization ≠ substantialization, de-subjectivizing cognition ≠ deleting a function; cognition on the path does not necessarily bear load, but if it changes the overall completion it cannot be deleted because it occurs on the path. Self-reflexivity ≠ self-inclusion, and insufficient evidence allows C.
S-01｜Tractatus, German–English parallel full text https://people.umass.edu/klement/tlp/tlp-hyperlinked.html
S-02｜Tractatus, note on the 1922 edition reviewed by the author https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus
S-03｜Philosophical Investigations, online index and sections of the author’s German manuscript https://www.wittgensteinnachlass.com/en/w-pi/
S-04｜On Certainty, full German text https://www.wittgensteinproject.org/w/index.php/%C3%9Cber_Gewi%C3%9Fheit
S-05｜Periods of Wittgenstein’s philosophy and textual disputes (SEP) https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/
Limits of verification: Tractatus 4.1212, 6.522, 6.54 and Philosophical Investigations §133 have all been read against the available originals and translations; the interpretation of 6.54 is substantively disputed in scholarship. On Certainty is edited T2, and cannot replace the two T1 core works.
Textual boundary: the following judgments use only the author’s texts / early witnesses listed in this archive and the corresponding documentary levels; unapproved later interpretations may not replace the original author’s evidence.
Coverage of evidence: 25 E evidence items, 5 R objections;
each is governed by its verifiable edition and range of the original.
Interpretive boundary: a structural judgment that has obtained B-grade support is not wholly invalidated by another local C; likewise, a C-grade ambiguity may not be rewritten as a definite defect of the thought.
Comparative boundary: neighbour comparisons count as formal only where the other party’s text has been formally completed and is verifiable; where there is no verifiable formal archive, they are only comparative hypotheses awaiting verification.