Tractatus logico-philosophicus

A philosophical work by Ludwig Wittgenstein

6.3611

We cannot compare any process with the “passage of time”—there is no such thing—but only with another process (say, with the movement of the chronometer). Hence the description of the temporal sequence of events is only possible if we support ourselves on another process. It is exactly analogous for space. When, for example, we say that neither of two events (which mutually exclude one another) can occur, because there is no cause why the one should occur rather than the other, it is really a matter of our being unable to describe one of the two events unless there is some sort of asymmetry. And if there is such an asymmetry, we can regard this as the cause of the occurrence of the one and of the non-occurrence of the other.


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