What's W 'On Certainty' Main theme?

[Veritas Aequitas]

In this OP
Wittgenstein On Certainty and Kant
viewtopic.php?t=41948
I explained how Wittgenstein's "On Certainty" is traceable to Kant's Challenge to the Philosophical Realist's Scandal of Philosophy, in that they are unable to prove the existence of an absolutely mind-independent external world.

My question is what is the main and most fundamental theme of Wittgenstein "On Certainty" in addressing and explaining Moore was barking up the wrong three is taking up Kant's challenge?

Wittgenstein did not write any book titled "On Certainty". This title was generated by the compilers of W's related notes. It is likely the title 'On Certainty' may be misleading and not representing the fundamental main theme of W's intents.
Perhaps a better title would be 'An Exposition of Moore's Counter to Kant's Scandal of Philosophy' or something like that.

Here is the Preface to the book.

Preface
What we publish here belongs to the last year and a half of Wittgenstein's life.
In the middle of 1949 he visited the United States at the invitation of Norman Malcolm, staying at Malcolm's house in Ithaca.
Malcolm acted as a goad to his interest in Moore's 'defence of common sense', that is to say his claim to know a number of propositions for sure, such as
"Here is one hand, and here is another", and
"The earth existed for a long time before my birth", and
"I have never been far from the earth's surface".

The first of these comes in Moore's 'Proof of the External World'.
The two others are in his 'Defence of Common Sense'; Wittgenstein had long been interested in these and had said to Moore that this was his best article. Moore had agreed.

This book contains the whole of what Wittgenstein wrote on this topic from that time until his death.
It is all first-draft material, which he did not live to excerpt and polish.
The material falls into four parts; we have shown the divisions at #65, #192, #299.
What we believe to be the first part was written on twenty loose sheets of lined foolscap, undated.
These Wittgenstein left in his room in G.E.M. Anscombe's house in Oxford, where he lived (apart from a visit to Norway in the autumn) from April 1950 to February 1951.
I (G.E.M.A.) am under the impression that he had written them in Vienna, where he stayed from the previous Christmas until March; but I cannot now recall the basis of this impression.
The rest is in small notebooks, containing dates; towards the end, indeed, the date of writing is always given.
The last entry is two days before his death on April 29th 1951.
We have left the dates exactly as they appear in the manuscripts.

The numbering of the single sections, however, is by the Editors.
It seemed appropriate to publish this work by itself.
It is not a selection; Wittgenstein marked it off in his notebooks as a separate topic, which he apparently took up at four separate periods during this eighteen months.
It constitutes a single sustained treatment of the topic.

G.E.M. Anscombe; G.H. von Wright

Note: In trying to abstract what is Wittgenstein's main theme is this case, do not forget the main theme of Kant's Challenge, else it is non-sequitor.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Notes:
Why it is critical to include 'Moore' and 'Kant in the title;

[Me]: I believe it is more effective to include 'Moore' and 'Kant' in the title, else it would non-sequitor because it is fundamentally reference to Kant's challenge.
I have read a few commentaries of 'On Certainty' most of them did not take into account the original source of the issue from Kant and they ran off with 'On Certainty' in all sort of direction. This is even when the preface explained the source [mentioned Moore but not Kant] of how Wittgenstein wrote those notes.

[AI] [wR]
You make a strong case for including Moore and Kant in the title of Wittgenstein's notes, especially considering your experience with commentaries overlooking the historical context. Here's why including them is reasonable:

Historical Accuracy: It explicitly highlights the historical context and intellectual lineage of Wittgenstein's ideas.

Specificity: Including their names makes the title more specific and clarifies the historical context. Readers would immediately understand that the work deals with a specific philosophical debate.

Focus on Critique: Mentioning Moore and Kant clarifies that the notes are not a general treatise on certainty but a specific response to their ideas.
Accuracy: It acknowledges the roots of the problem Wittgenstein is addressing. Kant's "Scandal of Philosophy" and Moore's attempt to address it are crucial starting points for understanding Wittgenstein's later thought.

Avoiding Misinterpretations: As you point out, focusing solely on "certainty" can lead readers down different paths, potentially missing the specific philosophical context. A title referencing Moore and Kant helps keep the focus grounded.

Here are some revised titles that incorporate Moore and Kant:

"On Certainty: Remarks on Moore's Counter-argument to Kant's Scandal of Philosophy" (This is a longer version that captures most of the elements you mentioned)

"Wittgenstein on Certainty: Engaging Moore and Kant" (This is a shorter option that emphasizes Wittgenstein's role in the discussion)

"Beyond Skepticism: Wittgenstein on Moore and the External World" (This focuses on the core themes but still references Moore and the challenge to skepticism)

Wittgenstein on Moore and Certainty: Responding to Kant's Challenge

Beyond Skepticism: Wittgenstein's Auseinandersetzung with Moore and Kant on Certainty (A bit technical, "Auseinandersetzung" means grappling with in German)

Certainty, Doubt, and the External World: Wittgenstein on Moore's Response to Kant


Balancing Accuracy and Readability:
There's always a balance to strike between being historically accurate and having a clear, readable title. Including both Moore and Kant can make the title a bit long. However, given your concerns about commentaries overlooking the context, emphasizing them in the title could be quite helpful.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Notes:

And yet, about the notes that make up On Certainty, G.H. von Wright has this to say:

During the last year and a half of his life, Wittgenstein wrote almost exclusively about knowledge and certainty.
These writings possess a thematic unity which makes them almost unique in Wittgenstein’s whole literary output.…Considering that the remarks constitute a first, unrevised manuscript they seem to me remarkably accomplished both in form and content. (1982, 166)

That, in spite of being unpolished, these notes possess a thematic unity unparalleled in Wittgenstein’s other writings3 and seem remarkably accomplished, is not fortuitous.
They are an attempt by Wittgenstein to unravel the knots of a specific philosophical problem which he felt was posed by some of G.E. Moore’s essays; and this attempt lasted a year and a half.
Understanding Wittgenstein’s On Certainty
Danièle Moyal-Sharrock

Moore's essays, Proof of an External World, ......... are traceable to Kant's scandal of philosophy.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Notes:
A Wide Range of Interpretations re 'On Certainty'.

Wittgenstein’s philosophical purpose vis-a`-vis the skeptic in On Certainty is a matter for dispute. He has variously been held

• 1. to refute skepticism by showing that it is self-defeating;1
  2. to reveal the truth in skepticism and to offer an accommodation with it;2 and
  3. to diagnose the misconceptions that underlie skeptical doubt, which does not itself constitute a refutation of skepticism but opens the way to our liberating ourselves from its philosophical grip.3

These three approaches to interpreting the remarks collected in On Certainty do not, I am sure, amount to an exhaustive classification of the interpretations put forward in the secondary literature.

WITTGENSTEIN ON CERTAINTY
Marie Mcginn
in Chapter 17: Oxford Handbook of Skepticism

[Veritas Aequitas]

Notes:
Here is one interpretation of 'On Certainty' which aligns with my FSRC.

Wittgenstein’s On Certainty and Relativism
Martin Kusch
I shall give my own interpretation of On Certainty in relation to epistemic relativism.
I now shall try to give a brief summary of these arguments.
I begin with the “pro” case and shall focus on three authors, Paul Boghossian, Anthony Grayling and Rudolf Haller.

Features of an Epistemic System or Practice
(1) Dependence: A belief has an epistemic status (as epistemically justified or unjustified) only relative to an epistemic system or practice (=SP). (Cf. Williams 2007, p. 94).
(2) Plurality: There are, have been, or could be, more than one such epistemic system or practice.
(3) Exclusiveness: SPs are exclusive of one another.

SP is not exactly the same with my FSRC, but the fundamental is the same, i.e. there is the Framework and System underlying it.

You [FDP] asked me to refer to A C Grayling's video re Wittgenstein, but according to Kusch, Grayling is in the pro Epistemic Relativism and Practice camp which I argue aligns with my FSRC;

Grayling and Haller cite the following paragraphs in evidence:

65. When language-games change, then there is a change in concepts, and with the concepts the meanings of words change.
95. The propositions describing this world-picture might be part of a kind of mythology.
99. And the bank of the river consists partly of hard rock, subject to no alteration or only to an imperceptible one, partly of sand, which now in one place now in another gets washed away, or deposited.
166. The difficulty is to realize the groundlessness of our believing.
256. On the other hand a language game does change with time.
336. But what men consider reasonable or unreasonable changes.

§§65, 99, 256, and 336 all emphasize the occurrence of fundamental change: in language-games, concepts, word meaning, and rationality.
This for Grayling is “classically strong relativism” since it “constitutes a claim that the framework within which claims to knowledge and challenges of doubt equally make sense is such that its change can reverse what counted as either” (2001, p. 308).
§§94, 95, and 166 in turn raise the question “what if the background—e.g. your picture of the world—[were] different?” (Haller 1995, p. 229)
Does not Wittgenstein imply that there is nothing that can be said about such a scenario?
At least nothing evaluative?
It appears that “we remain without any ground for the decision between conflicting judgements based on different world pictures.” (Haller 1995, p. 230)
Boghossian suggests that it is first and foremost paragraphs §§609-612 that express a commitment to epistemic relativism (2006, p. 107):

609 Suppose we met people who … instead of the physicist … consult an oracle.
610 … —If we call this ‘wrong’ aren’t we using our language-game as a base from which to combat theirs?
611 Are we right or wrong to combat it? Of course there are all sorts of slogans which will be used to support our proceedings.
612 Where two principles clash that cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and heretic.
613 I said I would ‘combat’ the other man,—but wouldn’t I give him reasons? Certainly; but … at the end of reasons comes persuasion.
614 (Think what happens when missionaries convert natives.)

[Veritas Aequitas]

Notes: KIV

[Peter Holmes]

To what is the so-called external world supposedly external? To humans?

What is it that can or can't prove that the external world exists? Is it a thing for the existence of which no proof is needed?

If we (scandalously!) can't prove that the external world/reality/objects/things-in-themselves exist - then we also can't prove that we ourselves exist - that we aren't illusion-conjuring illusions. Down a rabbit hole.

[promethean75]

Indeed, P. Groove Holmes is correct. Only if philosophers believe there is such a thing as a cartesian container or space 'inside the head' would they think in terms of 'internal' and 'external' concerning experience and the objects of experience.

There isn't a 'u' inside here experiencing a 'world' outside there... reality is more like an ontological paste that has no edges or boundaries, and the line between where your 'soul' sits in your body (pituitary gland?) and the world your soul experiences, begins, is imperceptibly small. Reality is like a mobius strip sorta.

Yeah there's no u and then some sense data 'out there'. It's all sense data.

Real talk tho; this description of 'external' is a bad metaphor for what's tryna be said. It lets the speaker commit the Rylean category mistake and attribute properties to 'qualia' and this cartesian space that experiences it that are properties normally attributed to geometrical objects in space. There is an inside and an outside for these objects. But what about these facts and characteristics makes them good descriptions for what is happening when we sense the world. This is an entirely different kind of event... nothing about it would make me want to describe what is happening in a way that involves external and internal facts. Tellin ya that phrase 'external world' is one of the longest running bad metaphors in the history of philosophy.

[FlashDangerpants]

There isn't a 'u' inside here experiencing a 'world' outside there...

I dunno. VA has just run off a series of threads devoted to exposing the Linguistic Turn as some sort of philosophical catastrophe. But because he can't read his sources and doesn't have any idea of how this all fits together, he's mainly basing it on old books that are targetting Ryle not that mister W guy....

So VA is violently opposed to the argument against the Ghost in the Machine which of course he knows all about because he's the best and has read all the stuff and put it all into the most folders. So ... yeah ... he probably does think he has a little homunculus in his head looking at the theatre behind his eyes and drawing little pictures to remember stuff with.

[promethean75]

When Platonists do epistemology what they're doing is tryna re-empower the mind and intellect and give back to these what was lost when god died during the enlightenment and we lost faith in immortality. That's what i think.

Platonism of VA's sort is kinda like a religious but atheistic cartesian substance dualism that uses Kant's premise that the 'mind' structures reality (through the categories) and is as much responsible for constituting experience as the objects of the material world, are.

So i feel like VA is the type who would be able to deduce from a study/experiment in quantum mechanics that consciousness is an ontologically independent emergent epiphenomenal wave collapse event that effects the sense apperception of the world and 'distorts' it kinda... but this distortion is precisely the ordered world we perceive. Ergo, our minds are actively structuring a reality that does not reflect the nature of reality itself... the unperceived thing-in-itself before it's experienced... the raw unorganized sense data, as it were.

So then the Platonists are just spooky cartesian-kantian whitehead/hartshorne pseudo-atheists who think nothing is objectively true or a fact unless a whole buncha conscious transcendental language sharing intellects are together structuring the world intersubjectively. KIV.

[Veritas Aequitas]

To what is the so-called external world supposedly external? To humans?

What is it that can or can't prove that the external world exists? Is it a thing for the existence of which no proof is needed?

If we (scandalously!) can't prove that the external world/reality/objects/things-in-themselves exist - then we also can't prove that we ourselves exist - that we aren't illusion-conjuring illusions. Down a rabbit hole.

You don't believe the external world exists?
Do you believe the train [in the external] coming your way on the track you are standing exists as real?
If you do not believe the external world exists, then there you don't have to prove it.
How do you make sense of all this?
The above is a mess to you because you are grounding your reality based on an illusion, i.e. what is fact is a feature of reality that is just is, that is the case.

You can prove to yourself you exists based on first person's experience, I think therefore I am.

My question in this OP is
What's W 'On Certainty' Main theme?
taking into the historical basis of his "On Certainty".
You mentioned "On Certainty" a few times, do you know the historical basis of it?

[Veritas Aequitas]

There isn't a 'u' inside here experiencing a 'world' outside there...

I dunno. VA has just run off a series of threads devoted to exposing the Linguistic Turn as some sort of philosophical catastrophe. But because he can't read his sources and doesn't have any idea of how this all fits together, he's mainly basing it on old books that are targetting Ryle not that mister W guy....

So VA is violently opposed to the argument against the Ghost in the Machine which of course he knows all about because he's the best and has read all the stuff and put it all into the most folders. So ... yeah ... he probably does think he has a little homunculus in his head looking at the theatre behind his eyes and drawing little pictures to remember stuff with.

The OP asked
"What's 'On Certainty' Main theme?"

So what is 'On Certainty' Main theme?" according to you.
Are you aware of the historical basis linking to W's 'On Certainty' Main theme?"
I anticipate your interpretation of the main theme of 'On Certainty' is a shortsighted one probably based on an extension of his PI.

It appear you are relying on W 'On Certainty' as a strong foundation to your philosophical view; you mentioned it a few times in support your condemnation of my views re FSRC.

Based on my reading of "On Certainty' and taking into consideration its historical context and how it all started, the main theme of 'On Certainty' is that of a FRSC.
W's On Certainty is alluding his language game is fundamentally a FRSC.

What say you?

[Veritas Aequitas]

Platonism of VA's sort is kinda like a religious but atheistic cartesian substance dualism that uses Kant's premise that the 'mind' structures reality (through the categories) and is as much responsible for constituting experience as the objects of the material world, are.

Where did I claim I am a Platonist? believing in real universals existing in an external realm.

You need to exercise some intellectual integrity to be sure of what you are attributing to others.

Suggest you read up Kant's CPR before you assert anything on his behalf or at least understand what are the main different interpretations [camps] of Kant's CPR.
Only one camp is right, and from you post, you are with the wrong camp.

[promethean75]

No way am i ever reading Kant's Critiques. Two more I'll never read are Heidegger's Being and Time and Hegel's Phenomenology Of Spirit. I read three quarters of Being And Nothingness tho so i'd run with the existential phenomenologists if i could just remember any of it.

[Veritas Aequitas]

No way am i ever reading Kant's Critiques. Two more I'll never read are Heidegger's Being and Time and Hegel's Phenomenology Of Spirit. I read three quarters of Being And Nothingness tho so i'd run with the existential phenomenologists if i could just remember any of it.

I assure you, if you invest time in a thorough reading of Kant's Critique, you will gain a lot in an reinforced foundation and never regret anything, plus with a great sense of enlightenment no drugs can provide.

But first you need an effective methodology, else it would be very tiresome and likely to give up easily. This is how I have read the above 3 books and 8 of the toughest 10 books.