A brilliant piece of philosophy. These are the notes of Wittgenstein trying to cope with the problem posed by Moore. 'I know this is my hand' - is this sufficient proof for the existence of the external world? Wittgenstein clarifies what he means by Sprachspiel, what the rules of this game are and why such a remark cannot be placed inside the game. It is genius at work: raw and unedited (with hilarious side notes). It is a very personal account of what philosophy for this great Austrian meant. ( )

On Certainty is a philosophical book compiled from Ludwig Wittgenstein's notes collected over four periods in the eighteen months leading up to his death on April 29, 1951. The focus is on issues raised by G. E. Moore, particularly those surrounding knowledge and doubt. Some of the key ideas explored include the concept of "world-picture" and the nature of a ground for your beliefs. The requirements of doubting are discussed at length along with references to concepts introduced in the Philosophic Investigations. ( )

12/11/21

Collected notes from Wittgenstein published posthumously. He struggles to reconcile Moore's smart-ass "here is a hand" response to skepticism with the challenges strong skepticism poses, and fit it into his own language-game model. He approaches several solutions, finds them unsatisfactory and re-starts. His overall approach is to look at what we mean when we say "I know" rather than to prescribe a universal level of proper skepticism. ( )

I’m not…certain how I feel about this book. What I mean more precisely is…that…it is impossible for me to be certain how I feel about this book. In fact, it’s impossible for me to really be certain of anything whatsoever. According to Mr. Ludvig Vittgen-shhhhhhhtein, that is.

On Certainty was a rather enjoyable read despite the fact that it contained 676 numbered paragraphs of somewhat repetitive analysis. But if one is as fascinated by philosophy as I am, then it’s no bother. Some would say Wittgenstein is a philosopher’s philosopher because he spends much of his effort debunking traditional philosophy. Here is what I can tease out of this text:

All things that we are certain of, including science, are part of a world-view. World-views are based on language and language games (meaning the “rules” we create for language, in order to understand each other.) All the things that we consider to be “certain” or sure (i.e. True), are actually premises for our language games. In other words, you can point to every fact we are so sure of, “The world is spherical,” or “This is my hand,” and they always end up pointing back to what are assumptions of the language game. Things we believe are so because we defined them in our language game as so. He would say that nothing is ever truly objective because there is always some lower level “fact” that points to another “fact” that points to a “fact” that points back to language. It points back to an assertion, something we are taught. Facts are really socially constructed in our worldview. Certainty is constructed meaning, not objective meaning.

Certainty has no ground. If you say, “I know the earth is round,” how is that different from “I am of unshakeable conviction that the earth is round.” What “I know” really means is that you are convinced of some set of rules you have been taught. LW would say that in the end every “I know” is merely a statement of your relation to an accepted world view, not a factual ground. All our grounds are merely hardened propositions accepted by each of us in order to be welcomed into a taught world-view.

There is no ground beneath her feet.

He compares the world views of different societies as well to further communicate his point. In some tribal society, it may be the shaman who causes rain, not a meteorological phenomenon. Are they demonstrably wrong? Perhaps…but what if…cause and effect were actually wrong. Scientific evidence is all based on cause and effect being true, but it’s impossible to objectively demonstrate cause and effect. Even if something happens a billion times repeatedly…that is not objective proof that it will always happen that way. Or that it happens for the reason we thought it did. The future cannot be predicted. Science can suddenly alter its worldview and then suddenly the facts that were our ground, no longer are. There is no objective ground. No certainty.

Some writers claim that LW actually debunks skepticism because he claims skepticism’s questions (such as “Is this all a dream?”) don’t fit into the language game of a given world view so they are not coherent questions. For a question to be coherent, it must fit into the language game. But I don’t see that. He actually seems like the ultimate skeptic, to me. You just need to reword the questions and ask things like, “If we can’t be certain of anything, because in the end language only points to itself, then how can we be certain we aren’t all just in a dream?”

So how can we? ( )