Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Philosophical Investigations
Meaning is use — language is a family of games — philosophy leaves everything as it is, and the picture of the inner that held us captive is dismantled
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Philosophical Investigations (Late) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Immediate |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Immediate |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | None |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Experience |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Philosophical Investigations
The Investigations do not theorise time as such, but the whole approach is recognisably anti-Tractarian: meanings are constituted in the temporal extension of practices, not in atemporal logical relations. Time is real and relational in the strong Wittgensteinian sense — there is no fact about meaning prior to the time-extended practice of meaning-use.
Space
Philosophical Investigations
Not directly engaged. The implicit framework is the space of human practices and forms of life — relational, lived, oriented.
Matter
Philosophical Investigations
Not theorised. The Tractatus's "objects" are gone; the Investigations leave matter to the empirical sciences and to the ordinary practices in which we use object-language. Matter is real but relational in the precise sense that object-talk derives its content from use.
Observer
Philosophical Investigations
The Investigations' observer is plural, embodied, enmeshed in language-games, and self-corrected through reflective attention to the use of words. There is no transcendental subject (a major departure from the Tractatus). Knowledge is immediate but always practice-embedded. The "private language argument" (§§243–315) is the textual heart of the analysis of mind: there is no logically private inner realm; sensations have public criteria.
Energy
Philosophical Investigations
Not engaged. The framework is consistent with standard physical energetics in ordinary use.
Information
Philosophical Investigations
No substantival informational structure prior to use; no preserved inner record. Personal information is not philosophically privileged — the Investigations's analysis of pain, memory, and inner experience systematically displaces the picture of the inner as a private container of preserved data.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The relation between the Tractatus and the Investigations is the most-discussed author-stage problem in twentieth-century philosophy. Wittgenstein insisted that the two be read together — he wanted the Tractatus printed alongside the Investigations — but the philosophical positions are genuinely different. Resolute readers of the Tractatus try to soften the apparent break by reading the earlier work as already therapeutic; standard readers accept the change as a major philosophical reversal. The compare-pair on this site exists in part to make this disagreement legible.