Kelly Hamilton

Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is a difficult and enigmatic little philosophical classic, which has fascinated philosophers since its publication in 1921. Interpretations of it are still controversial, and the theory of what can only be shown, and not said, in particular, continues to be a matter of serious philosophical debate. The importance of his Central European background and engineering training has long been recognized. Although there is a substantial tradition of scholarly work concerning the influence of Heinrich Hertz and Wittgenstein's interest in physics and the philosophy of science on the philosophical content of the Tractatus, there has been little serious historical research concerning his scientific training as an engineer. ;Wittgenstein was educated in a technical track, eventually earning an engineering certificate from the finest Technical Institute on the continent, the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenberg-Berlin. There has been a recognized need for fine-grained historical research on his education at the Oberrealschule in Linz, Austria, and his engineering work in Berlin, to fill an important gap in the scholarship concerning his early intellectual formation. One reason that this had not been addressed is that his records at Charlottenberg were lost during the bombing raids of World War II, and it seemed unlikely that important material concerning his engineering training remained. The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate Wittgenstein's engineering training, in order to fill the gap in the existing scholarship, and, more importantly, to determine what significance it had for the philosophical content of the Tractatus. ;In the course of archival research in Berlin, the required schedule or courses for mechanical engineers during Wittgenstein's attendance was discovered, making it possible to identify his professors and characterize the content of his coursework. His technical training focused heavily on mathematical drawing, which led me to investigate the role of visual thinking, as it was involved in engineering training, on the philosophical content of the Tractatus. I argue that both the Bild theory of language, and the theory of what can only be shown, and not said, were significantly shaped by the mindset developed during his Central European engineering training

: Before he studied philosophy under Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein was trained as an engineer at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin. He then worked as a graduate research engineer at the University of Manchester, where he designed a variable volume combustion chamber and received a patent for an innovative propeller design in 1911. I argue that the methodology of contemporary aeronautical engineering research, involving the systematic use of experiments and scale models, affected the Bild theory of language in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The principle of similitude, underlying the mathematical resolution of scale effect problems associated with wind tunnel research on models, is reflected in the law of projection in the Tractatus

Ludwig Wittgenstein's conception of the role of objects in our philosophical understanding of the logic of our language is critical for his early philosophy in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. While the important connections between Heinrich Hertz's Principles of Mechanics and Wittgenstein's Tractatus have long been recognized, recent work by Jed Buchwald has deepened our knowledge of the importance of the object-orientation of Hertz's scientific work in a manner that should also deepen our understanding of the nature of objects in the Tractatus. I will argue that there are important ontological links, involving "a certain physical scheme, one that had powerful implications for thinking as well as doing," between Hertz's work and Wittgenstein's early philosophy

Forgiveness is traditionally thought of as the forswearing of resentment. Resentment has been argued to be a moral emotion, tightly interrelated with moral protest against a wrongdoing. This has lead to forgiveness being thought of as the forgetting or condoning of wrongdoing. I will argue for a concept of forgiveness that is ‘uncompromising’ for it does not involve giving up one’s judgements about the wrongdoing. I will argue that resentment should be understood as a type of reactive attitude, and that this means that it is not necessarily connected with moral protest. I will show that forgiveness is better understood as the overcoming of reactive attitudes (which includes resentment, but also indignation, anger, and other similar emotions). This will allow for forgiveness to be compatible with maintaining condemnation of wrongdoing

Forgiveness is traditionally understood as a personal change of heart, in which an individual victim of a wrongdoing overcomes her resentment towards the perpetrator of that wrongdoing. Peter Strawson famously argued that resentment is a personal participant retributive reactive attitude, and the overcoming of such an attitude through forgiveness is itself a personal reactive attitude – in other words, forgiveness is an affective response to a wrongdoing by an individual victim, that is devoid of a retributive element. Because reactive attitudes are personal, it is argued that collectives – groups of individuals – cannot forgive, since collectives cannot, as collectives, hold reactive attitudes. I argue against this. I show that it is possible for collectives to hold attitudes in a way that is not reducible to individuals holding attitudes as individuals, and yet these attitudes still remain personal. Individuals exist within communities, and are interdependent on one another. Much of an individual‟s beliefs and attitudes depend on the collectives that she is a part of. I argue that an attitude is collective when it is deemed to be the appropriate attitude for members of the collective to hold. Members of the collective will take this attitude on as their own insofar as they identify themselves as members of the collective. Individuals hold the attitude, making the attitude personal, but since the individuals hold the attitude in virtue of their membership to a collective, the attitude is also collective. Given that forgiveness is itself a reactive attitude, and that collectives can hold attitudes, I argue that it is possible for a collective to forgive. Members of a collective will come to forgive when forgiveness is held up as the appropriate attitude for them, and once enough members have taken on the attitude of forgiveness as their own attitude, a collective can be said to have forgiven