Decoding Symbols: The Philosophical Journey from Abstract Thought to Concrete Notation

From physics to logic, symbolic writing has been a key way to formalise ideas, show how they fit together logically.

I first stumbled upon this idea in the more idealistic side of my mind. I pondered the concept of art that can teach, art which is innately know for convey an abstract meaning and emotion. But its usually left in this grey area for other people to interpret.

In philosophy, the move towards using symbols to describe abstract philosophical ideas and arguments is also an attempt to be clear and precise. Philosophy deals with open-ended questions that are hard to formalise in a clear way.

However, philosophical notations can help clarify ideas that are hard to explain in plain language. Notations are a useful way to show relationships between philosophical ideas.

They do this by condensing complicated ideas into short, symbolic expressions.

This was my first attempt at creating what I have dubbed as a Dialemes - "Dialectic" for philosophical + "meme"

There has always been this beauty to a concise equation that is able to explain something in a way that gives it shape and structure. Also, they let complex lines of thought be broken down step by step in a way that is similar to how math proofs work.

But psychological notations are not the same as mathematical symbols in every way. Given that philosophical enquiry is inherently vague, they are more like tools for thought modelling that give insights through visualisation but are not as clear as a mathematical proof.

Still, when they are used in the right way, they provide a unique way to think about the basis of logic. As we'll see, figuring out what these notations mean raises important questions about the limits of language and the ways people can communicate.

Philosophical notations are symbols that are used to make more detailed models of philosophical ideas, arguments, and how they relate to each other. Inspired by the symbols used in logic, math, and other technical areas, these notations make it easier to express complex philosophical ideas in a short way. For example, some types of propositional calculus use symbols like,, and to stand for "and," "or," and "not," which makes it possible to map out the logical structure of arguments. Philosophical notations try to make thinking just as clear and precise. Some of them go back to thinkers like Leibniz, who thought there should be a "universal characteristic" that all ideas could be represented by and used to calculate. Different schools of thinking and topics in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and other areas are represented by modern symbolic notations. They make vague ideas easier to understand by giving them a physical form. But because philosophical questions can go in any direction, these notations are more flexible than formal proofs. Their goal is to make ideas that are hard to explain in words clearer by showing how they fit together in a way that is easy to understand. When made and used with care, they can be used as tools to give insights and make it easier to think about hard questions.

Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus, written by Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in 1921, continues to have a significant impact on analytic philosophy. Wittgenstein looks at the link between language, thought, and reality through a few simple statements. He says, "The limits of my language are the limits of my world," to show that language and the world have clear bounds. Words and ideas can only make sense when they show facts and make sense. Anything more than this makes no sense. So, the Tractatus shows how philosophy can be talked about in a useful way. Even though this is a small topic, it gives Wittgenstein a good place to start unpacking ideas about representation, meaning, and how symbols are used to map reality. His ideas help us figure out how to evaluate intellectual notes.

The Tractatus argues language functions as a logical picture of factual states of affairs in the world. Meaning is derived from this mapping relationship – propositions model combinations of objects possible in reality. Wittgenstein states “In a proposition a thought finds an expression that can be perceived by the senses.” So thoughts and propositions share logical form, and meaningful language mirrors real possibilities while nonsense attempts the undepictable. For Wittgenstein, language’s limits are reality’s limits; discourse can only concern facts of experience. This notion that meaning requires logically picturing facts provides context for evaluating philosophical notations – do these symbols succeed in modeling reality or exceed language’s bounds?

Even though the Tractatus has a narrow view of what meaning is, its ideas continue to influence philosophy and logic today. Wittgenstein demanded a new level of rigour in analysing language. He was one of the first people to use formal symbols in logic. Even though his exact theory about how people picture facts is debated, the Tractatus still makes people think about the limits of thought and words. It raised some of the most important questions about what can be said in a relevant way.

Wittgenstein thought that the purpose of philosophy wasn't to answer life's big questions, but to make them clearer. He thought that misunderstandings about language caused a lot of philosophical problems. Imagine for a min that there was an art museum that you could take your child to and within those halls were daileme artworks depicting the concepts of truth as we understand them.