#subahibi induced reading madness

[mylittlemiyaomeow]

SubaHibi Induced Reading Madness Report #1: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

I want so badly to write a SubaHibi fic that's just me bitching about the parts of SubaHibi I don't like while building off the shit I did like. Actually I think any SubaHibi fic I write would be that. But in order for it to be properly SubaHibi, I need to better understand SubaHibi. And in order to do that, I have decided to go on a reading spree.

This reading spree will include both books referenced by SubaHibi alongside other stuff I think could add to the big SubaHibi idea I want to write. Like, part of that idea involves Yuki being a Japanese Lit major (I feel like she'd want to study books since she likes those and she figured it would be easier to go with studying lit in a language she's already fluent in, though I can imagine she still takes foreign language lit electives for the hell of it), and I kinda need to read Japanese lit if I'm going to go through with that.

With that out of the way, I have finished "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus". You can actually get this book off of Gutenberg as I found out in the download I found, but I wouldn't have found another book I'm reading now if I didn't decide to look through a more shady avenue.

I am not super great at understanding philosophy (I did okay in the class I had to take, but that was mainly because the professor walked us through our take-home tests the day before said tests), especially when it comes to stuff involving math (philosophy is like word math to me). While I was looking for a download of this work, I found another book titled "Tractatus in Context", which I decided to download because I knew I would need help. Actually I started reading it just now, but this report isn't about that.

I kinda made the mistake of not taking notes as I was reading (a mistake I expect to make many times throughout this journey), so a lot of the stuff I talk about will be shit I half-remembered and then hastily looked for the specific lines of in a .pdf.

The main thing I understood and enjoyed from this book was its engagement with the concept of language.

On 4.022 (the first one, since apparently my copy includes two proposition 4.022s, this one is after 4.001), there is this quote. "Language disguises thought. So much so, that from the outward form of the clothing it is impossible to infer the form of the thought beneath it, because the outward form of the clothing is not designed to reveal the form of the body, but for entirely different purposes.".

I think I remember SubaHibi touching on this a bit. About how the purpose of language isn't to express thoughts, but to communicate with other people. Or maybe that was some other work that engaged with philosophy that I forgot about.

As for my own thoughts on this... Your thoughts only need to be understood to you yourself. But when you explain them to other people, you need to translate it to a language they understand. They can never understand the purest essence of what you were thinking. But if you're particularly good at translating your thoughts into words, the purity of the essence won't really matter.

When it comes to writing, what I usually care about is being understood and having my words interpreted correctly. I don't give a damn about essence if someone walked away from my words with the meaning I wanted them to. Hell, sometimes people add their own meanings to my words and those meanings are good too.

Sometimes in language though, you use words for ulterior motives other than expressing a simple thought. You use them in order to get other people to feel what you want them to feel, regardless of what you actually think. It doesn't have to be malicious; It can be as something as simple as pretending to be interested when your friend infodumps about something you don't really care about because it makes them happy.

Sometimes, in the process of giving language to your thoughts, your thoughts take on a shape that it didn't have before.

4.025 states "When translating one language into another, we do not proceed by translating each proposition of the one into a proposition of the other, but merely by translating the constituents of propositions. (And the dictionary translates not only substantives, but also verbs, adjectives, and conjunctions, etc.; and it treats them all in the same way.)".

I understand this as "Translation is about getting the contents across, not making sure every word matches its equivalent in the other language.", but honestly I'm not sure. Regardless of what this means, we've been having this discourse for at least a century huh. Maybe for all of time even.

5.6 states "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world."

One cannot understand what one does not have the language for. So it is beyond them. But in my eyes, these limits aren't hard and fast. One can find and learn new language for things, and thus expand their world. It is through this process that one grows.

6.43 states "If the good or bad exercise of the will does alter the world, it can alter only the limits of the world, not the facts--not what can be expressed by means of language. In short the effect must be that it becomes an altogether different world. It must, so to speak, wax and wane as a whole. The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man."

I feel like this is a decent follow-up to my thoughts on 5.6. I mean, I don't really get it that much, but I do like the quote "The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.". It relates to some earlier stuff I didn't quote about how everyone has their own world or whatever. SubaHibi engages with that concept a lot and just like in SubaHibi, I mainly just went "That's neat" and didn't know what to expand onto it. Like yeah, everyone has their own view of the world. Everyone has their own experience.

Oh, I guess this could connect to my earlier ramblings about the "language disguises thought" thing! No one has the same experience of the world, so in order to express your own experience, you have to translate it into words.

While I was reading this book, I was reminded of something one of my acquaintances said about their experience with DID and plurality. According to my memory of what they said, it's something that often has to be expressed through metaphors.

My main beef with SubaHibi is how it completely fumbles the subject of plurality around the end, so naturally the main thing I would want to include in a SubaHibi fic is an exploration of plurality that isn't completely fumbled. But I am not plural. I cannot pretend to completely understand the experience of plurality. I just have to do my best with the metaphors and descriptions of people that do actually experience plurality and hope that any fumbles I make are minor.

I assume it's a similar thing for psychotic conditions. I haven't done nearly as much research into those as I have for plurality, so I should read up on those before writing about characters who have psychotic symptoms.

Trying to figure out how to express my thoughts on some parts of this book kinda made my brain hurt, but I think that's just what thinking is like sometimes.